Richard "Cactus" Pryor (born January 7, 1923) is considered a legend in Texas broadcasting. A native Austinite, Pryor has been a fixture in Texas broadcasting and entertainment since 1944. He received his nickname after the old Cactus Theater on Congress Avenue in Austin, Texas, which was run by his father, Skinny Pryor. Pryor has also appeared in two movies, Hellfighters and The Green Berets with John Wayne. He is the author of a 1995 collection of some 40 essays entitled "Playback". He currently regales audiences on Austin radio with a daily 2-minute trip down memory lane, reminiscing about places and people from his past. Many of those of whom he speaks are long-gone. He is a confessed liberal, and has acknowledged that his (adult) children are conservative. Pryor also claims to be one of the first people to have heard of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, having been at the ranch of then-vice president Lyndon Baines Johnson at the time. Pryor has for several years been a radio spokesman for the Austin-based Tex-Mex restaurant chain Serrano's. In these ads, he is often called "Nopalito", which loosely means little cactus, after the Spanish word nopal. Nopal is Spanish for prickly pear cactus. Nopales, used in many Mexican dishes, are commonly available throughout the American Southwest at most grocery stores and markets. His broadcasting sign-off consists of a series of nonsense words, "thermostrocka mortimer". The spelling and meaning of such are up to speculation. Cactus has stated, "The phrase is in the Bible; if you don't find it, keep reading."
