I'll Call It Like I Feel It

by sheila morris

Humor Me

  • Test Your Knowledge: Female Icons of the 80s

    Test Your Knowledge: Female Icons of the 80s


    Exactly one year ago (11-11-2025) I published this piece which has absolutely nothing to do with Veterans Day, but I decided I would bring it back regardless of the holiday today. However, this disregard of the calendar doesn’t preclude my undying gratitude to those who have served our country with honor and distinction. I am a daughter of a military family in WWII. I will remember for sure, but this is one of my favorite posts and here we go again…

    I am all over the place with this piece because I’ve gone down one too many rabbit holes doing my research on two of my favorite female musicians. Honestly, y’all, is there anything sacred – anything at all unavailable to a persistent person if you keep searching into people’s pasts?

    Pop Quiz on Three Musical Ladies from the 80s

    1. One of these women was born in Arkansas but called Houston, Texas, her home. Was it: a. Cynthia Clawson b. me c. K.T. Oslin
    2. Two of these women graduated from Milby High School in Houston, Texas. Were they: a. Cynthia Clawson and me b. K.T. Oslin and me c. Cynthia Clawson and K.T. Oslin
    3. One of these women attended Lon Morris College in Jacksonville, Texas. Was it: a. K.T. Oslin b. Cynthia Clawson c. me
    4. Other notables from Lon Morris College include the following: a. Margo Martindale b. Tommy Tune c. Johnny Horton d. All of the above
    5. One of these women had a father who coached football at Louisiana College in Pineville, Louisiana. He died in Lufkin, Texas, at the age of 39 when this little girl was 5: a. me b. Cynthia Clawson c. K.T. Oslin
    6. One of these women had a mother who taught her how to sing and play the piano. She also taught her music class at elementary school in the seventh grade: a. K.T. Oslin b. me c. Cynthia Clawson
    7. Who signed her first major recording contract at 45 years of age? a. Cynthia Clawson b. K.T. Oslin c. me
    8. Which woman and/or women never married? a. me b. K.T. Oslin c. Cynthia Clawson
    9. Who died from Covid-19 with an underlying condition of Parkinson’s and heart disease in December, 2020, at the age of 78? a. K. T. Oslin b. Cynthia Clawson c. me
    10. Whose daddy was a Baptist preacher? a. mine b. Cynthia Clawson’s c. K.T. Oslin’s

    *************************

    Answers

    1. K. T. Oslin was born in Crossett, Arkansas, on May 15, 1942, but moved to Texas with her brother and mother who had family there. She went to high school in Houston, graduated from Milby High in 1960, took music from Mrs. Claire Patterson who herself had graduated Milby in 1949.
    2. Cynthia Clawson was born on October 11, 1948, in Austin, Texas, and also graduated from Milby High in Houston, studying music from the same teacher, Mrs. Claire Patterson. Cynthia finished high school in 1966. (I didn’t go to Milby High in Houston – Columbia High in West Columbia, Texas – born in Navasota, Texas on April 21, 1946, high school diploma in 1964, really shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breath with the other two women)
    3. K.T. Oslin studied drama/theater at Lon Morris College, a two-year Methodist college in Texas near the oil fields of Kilgore. She also formed a folk music trio with David Jones and singer-songwriter Guy Clark while she was at Lon Morris. The three sang in a variety of venues around Texas during her college years.
    4. All of the above.
    5. c. K.T. Oslin. Her father played football in high school and then coached at Louisiana College for two years before resigning to return to his home town of Crossett, Arkansas, to work in the paper industry.
    6. b. That would be me. My mother insisted I practice the piano for 30 minutes every day after school from the time I was in the first grade. When I was in the seventh grade, she took me for private lessons to Sam Houston College in Huntsville once a week. I studied music in high school, sang tenor in the choir and then graduate work to become a minister of music at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary from 1969-1971. Unfortunately, my voice teacher advised me to return to my original career path with my CPA certificate and undergraduate business degree from UT in Austin. There was no place for me in Southern Baptist Churches, she said.(Meanwhile, Cynthia Clawson graduated from another Baptist College, Howard Payne University, in 1970 and won the Arthur Godfrey Talent Show on TV her senior year of college. She was off and running on her impressive musical career.)
    7. K.T. Oslin signed her first major contract in 1986 at 45 years of age. In April, 1987, RCA produced a song Oslin had penned herself, 80s Ladies, which became a major hit. The song won the Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance and Song of the Year at the Country Music Association Awards. Oslin became the first female to win Song of the Year recognition.
    8. Cynthia Clawson married Ragan Courtney in 1973. They had collaborated on the religious musical Celebrate Life in the early 1970s when she recorded the songs that became the inspiration for renewed interest in gospel music for youth choirs across the country. In Addition to her Grammy Award in 1981 for Best Gospel Performance, she has received numerous other accolades in the genre. In 1985, Clawson’s rendition of the hymn Softly and Tenderly became part of the soundtrack of the Academy Award winning movie A Trip to Bountiful. I married Pretty as soon as I legally could in 2016 after living with her for fifteen years. K.T. Oslin never married.
    9. On December 21, 2020, K.T. Oslin died from Covid-19 with underlying causes of Parkinson’s and heart disease. She was living in an assisted-living facility in Nashville, Tennessee, where she had lived when her Parkinson’s dictated the move. She was buried in Woodlawn Memorial Park next to another country music legend, Tammy Wynette.
    10. Cynthia Clawson’s dad was a Baptist preacher known as “Brother Tom” Clawson. He died November 3, 2015, at the age of 91 from natural causes in his home in Conroe, Texas.

    80s Ladies by K.T. Oslin

    We were three little girls from school
    One was pretty, one was smart
    And one was a borderline fool
    Well, she’s still good lookin’
    That woman hadn’t slipped a bit
    The smart one used her head
    She made her fortune
    And me, I cross the border every chance I get

    We were the girls of the 50’s
    Stoned rock and rollers in the 60’s
    And more than our names got changed
    As the 70’s slipped on by
    Now we’re 80’s ladies
    There ain’t been much these ladies ain’t tried

    We’ve been educated
    We got liberated

    And had complicating matters with men
    Oh, we’ve said “I do”
    And we’ve signed “I don’t”
    And we’ve sworn we’d never do that again
    Oh, we burned our bras
    And we burned our dinners
    And we burned our candles at both ends
    And we’ve had some children
    Who look just like the way we did back then

    Oh, but we’re all grown up now
    All grown up
    But none of us could tell you quite how

    We were the girls of the 50’s
    Stoned rock and rollers in the 60’s
    Honey, more than our names got changed
    As the 70’s slipped on by
    Now we’re 80’s ladies
    There ain’t been much these ladies ain’t tried

    80s Ladies is one of my favorite songs, written by one of my favorite singer-songwriters, and I wanted to say I am thankful for her music that spoke powerfully to me in the years leading me to the 1990s revolution beginning with the 1993 March on Washington that was my personal introduction to activism in my queer community. Cynthia Clawson carried me musically through my gospel music experiences in the 1970s. I listen to both of these women faithfully on my playlist as long as Alexa lets me.

    I encourage you to look up old YouTube videos, or try to catch an interview like the one I’m including below. K.T. had quadruple bypass surgery in 1995. King asked her about it when he interviewed her in 1996.

    Larry King Interview on CNN with K.T. Oslin

    No, I was really close to it. I just started feeling terrible. I mean, when you hindsight and look back, you can see your steady decline of energy over a period of years. But last summer was the thing. I’d get out there and try to mow this little lawn that’s about the size of this table. And I’d get about half way through it, and oh my chest would be hurting. And I’d go, girlfriend, you are just really out of shape. And it got worse, and worse. And finally the third time I mowed the lawn in the summer, I just got about two feet done, and I said that’s it. There is something really wrong.

    And I had the classic chest pain running down the arm. And I thought, oh, it’s your heart, don’t think about it. I just didn’t want to think about that. And so we tested it, and yes I had sky-high blood pressure, sky-high cholesterol. I was just falling apart. And so, tested me, we did the angiogram. And they said, they got very quiet. Everybody was chatting, love your album, love your song, love everything. And then the pictures came up on the screen, and they all got quiet. And I thought, oh my God. They said, well we’re going to do the operation. I said, when? They said, tomorrow. So, bam, you make out wills, you’re crying, weeping.

    ********************

    RIP, K.T. I hope you’re singing with the angels.

  • Land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave

    Land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave


    The future is now!

  • Mike, mike, mike, mike, mike – what day is it? Hump Day? No! Election Day tomorrow November 3rd!

    Mike, mike, mike, mike, mike – what day is it? Hump Day? No! Election Day tomorrow November 3rd!


    I laugh every time I see the Geico commercial with the camel who is happier on a Wednesday than any other day because it’s “Hump Day” – I love that camel parading through the white collar office in an attempt to get someone who will celebrate with him (or her, I’m not confident of camel genders).

    Camel with “MIDTERM ELECTIONS VOTING TODAY” sign outside “COMMUNITY CENTER” polling station; signs read “VOTE HERE,” “POLLING STATION,” “VOTING,” “MIDTERMS,” and “ELECT.”

    MIKE, MIKE, MIKE, MIKE, MIKE – WHAT DAY IS TOMORROW!

    Election Day!! VOTE!!

    P.S. I know I promised no political talk, but Midterm Elections very important…so forgive me.

  • Who Was She?

    Who Was She?


    Born in 1903 into a childhood that was a blur of hard work on a farm in Walker County, Texas. Her daily chores included helping her mother with three older brothers and one older sister, then taking care of a new baby sister and much later, another brother. Kitchen work with wood stove for cooking, bringing water from their well, scrubbing floors, washing clothes outside on wash boards, hanging clothes out to dry on long clothes lines with clothes pins, no indoor plumbing, learning to read, write, and do arithmetic in a one-room school house when she was allowed to go for the lessons.

    Social activities included getting dressed up with the rest of her family and going to church in a horse and buggy driven by her father. Her mother sat erect next to her father and seemed to have an imperious air which she told her children came from her side of their family.

    Married at fifteen to a neighboring “older” guy of twenty years. One of her brothers had married his sister. Years later one of her sisters married a different brother. Both families had farmed the land of Walker County, Texas, for two generations in the neighboring farm lands. Their children became good friends and eventually married to escape the challenges of farm life only to discover the reality of life without the safety net of the farm.

    She moved several times with her new husband who wasn’t inclined to do farm work. He worked for a while at the largest employer in their part of Texas: the State Prison farms and jails. Her husband carried a pistol for the time that he was a prison guard. She didn’t like that for a lot of reasons, but the biggest one was she didn’t want one of her children to get hurt. She had a daughter when she was eighteen years old, a son when she was nineteen years old, and another son when she was twenty-one years old. She found that having three children of her own so close together made her more sympathetic for her mother’s assignment of tasks when she lived at home as a child.

    Her younger son also married at a very young age when he returned from serving in the Army Air Corps in WWII. He was twenty years of age, and his bride was eighteen. They had their only child when his wife was nineteen, and he was twenty-one. They were too young, but what could she say?

    She was my grandmother, Betha Day Robinson Morris. She was born on October 23, 1903. Tomorrow she would have been 123 years old; however, she died from heart complications on May 28, 1983.

    What’s odd about looking back on her life, I feel almost guilty for my indoor plumbing, taking showers when she never had anything except a small bath tub and a kitchen pot to run water in and then pour over her head. My washing machine and dryer. My dishwasher. Furniture. Television set that’s large enough for four of hers. Netflix, et. al. Cell phones v. sharing a party line with my maternal grandmother. Uber. Instacart. Don’t even mention the swimming pool and granddaughters’ playhouse in our back yard.

    She wrote me a letter every Monday morning when I moved away from my home town, come rain or shine, and I casually tossed them in the trash. What I wouldn’t give for them today. Mostly, I miss sitting at her small round table in the kitchen where we always ate every meal except on holidays. She would regale me and my grandfather with hilarious tales of gossip about her friends, family, neighbors, churchgoers, and customers from their small cleaning and pressing shop next to my grandfather’s barber shop in the little town of Richards, which was fewer than thirty miles from where she grew up.

    There are many Texas storytellers but none any better than my grandmother who sits on her steps between my grandfather and her daughter who is holding her granddaughter in the picture above. I love this family picture because my grandmother is smiling and looks so happy as she interacts with one of her grandsons. I learned to listen, and I learned to love words from this woman who had her flaws but whose living example instilled courage in me to discover who I became.

  • Fired Up – Ready to Write!

    Fired Up – Ready to Write!


    Buckle your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride…because today, for the first time in many moons, I am fired up, and ready to write. Here’s some background music.

    First, thank you to the countless readers who asked me to continue writing when I formally declared my retirement from cyberspace in July, a mere three months ago. Wait – I think I can count them after all – like maybe twenty or so originally, but then they overcame their emotions, and moved on. No judgment.

    I felt released, a sense of freedom from my self-imposed burden to manufacture interesting, eye-catching, occasionally witty, words of wisdom on a semi-regular routine. I believed that, after fifteen years of blogging, what did I really have to say? Surely my brain must be tired because my eyes weren’t doing their best work anymore.

    Grandparents Day caught me off guard, however, when I felt a compulsion to share that fun time with my friends in cyberspace in September. And then there were the losses of three women I have admired for their courage for as long as I’ve known about them: Dolly Parton, Gloria Steinem, and Harriet Hancock. I could not ignore their passing without writing a personal tribute.

    I was beginning to think the retirement ship had sailed. Still no real joy in my work – but more of a compulsion to react to life around me with the only creative tools in my toolbox: my words.

    The vicissitudes of life, as my daddy called those events which came to everyone and were beyond our control, were busily at work during the past three months involving the death of Pretty’s father’s wife which left her 93-year-old father alone in his home two hours away from us. Decisions, decisions, and extra care combined with extra travel required. A genuine vicissitude.

    Little girls loving sleepovers on the weekends at our home during the past three months are always a tonic for what ails us during the week. High energy, high focus a must. Pretty’s Antique Empire has a workaholic taskmaster. Guess who?

    There you have it. I woke up this morning with writing on my mind. I changed the name of my blog to I’ll Call It Like I Feel It because my eyes don’t see as well as they did fifteen years ago, but my feelings run deeper than ever. Frankly, I try not to watch the hullabaloo on the news as much as I once did.

    ****************************

    Today, October 20th., is my maternal grandmother’s birthday. She was born in 1898 and would be 128 years old if she had lived. She died on April 20, 1972. My parents and I lived with her until I was thirteen years old. She loved me to the moon and back, and I felt the same about her. She was a married mother with four children when she became a widowed single mom during the Great Depression. I can’t imagine her struggles all her life to survive, but I do feel the joy I gave her when I became her first grandchild in 1946. I know that because that’s what I feel for our granddaughters. Joy.

    And that’s why, as our four-year-old Molly is happy to say when she often offers answers to questions no one is asking.

    Bernice Louise Schlinke Boring (1898-1972)

    with her sons James Marion, Jr., Charles John, and Thomas Bruno

    at their home in Richards, Texas

    (my mother, Selma Louise Boring Morris, wasn’t born)