Jim Benelli's “Big Joe and the Red Headed Hitchhiker” on Valley Writers Read

KVPR | By Franz Weinschenk

Published January 22, 2014 at 7:01 PM PST

Jim Benelli reads “Big Joe and the Red Headed Hitchhiker.” A beer-drinking, Buck Owens-loving truck driver is on his way to St. Louis with a load of tomatoes. He picks up a red-headed hitchhiker who knows all the words to Buck Owens' songs but somehow disappears after the truck has an accident out in the Mojave desert.

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Arts & Culture James Benelli

Franz Weinschenk

Franz Weinschenk, his parents and his older brother Fritz were indeed lucky to get out of Germany just before World War II. For a while they lived in Brooklyn, N.Y., before moving to Madera, CA. He graduated from Madera High and Fresno State. From 1948 to 1952 he taught at Edison High School in Fresno after which he was drafted and served in the US Army for two years.

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