I'll Call It Like I See It (with humorous tendencies)

by sheila morris

Humor Me

  • My First Taste of Texas

    My First Taste of Texas


    In 1983 Ed Bruce and Ronnie Rogers co-wrote the lyrics to a song Ed later recorded – one that became a Top 10 Country Hit and is now a classic I hear regularly on my Legends radio and tv stations.

    “…My first taste of Texas still lingers in my heart and on my tongue…” ends each chorus.

    While the words are really a love song for a girl with blue eyes and golden hair,  they remind me today of my feelings as I leave Texas for the second time in my life.  My first taste of Texas…I can’t even remember because I was born there on an Easter Sunday sixty-eight years ago this month.  My date of birth – the 21st. of April – is also San Jacinto Day and for a Texan it’s a day of commemoration for Sam Houston’s defeat of the Mexican General Santa Anna which liberated the territory and led to the establishment of the Republic of Texas.

    I left Texas the first time in 1968 to do what many young people in the late 1960s wanted  to do: get out-of-town, get away from family and home and become my own person.  I wanted to be independent.  That seems strange nowadays in a time when young people appear to be more interested in staying put and hanging out in groups of friends and remaining close to their parents and discovering their brave new worlds on a computer screen.  What a difference a couple of generations make.

    I never planned to be away from Texas for more than forty years when I left the first time, but then that’s how life is sometimes.  The vicissitudes of life, as my daddy used to call those circumstances which altered our courses and over which we had little control, intervened and I didn’t return to my home state until 2010.  Sweet new home Carolina.

    I call these last four years in Montgomery, Texas, the Second Chance Years and they were years of redemption and reconciliation for me, but they came with a high price tag.  I was as prepared and ready for the deaths of my Old Ones as we can ever be, but I was unprepared for the aftermath and the wounds that wouldn’t heal.  I felt like I had been hit by a Mack truck.

    Every spring, though, I had the wildflowers that made the landscape in southeast Texas spectacular.  The bluebonnets were not so plentiful as I remembered them to be sixty years ago, but what they were –  were “cherse”as Spencer Tracy said about Katherine Hepburn in the movie Pat and Mike.  “There ain’t much meat on her, but what there is – is cherse.”  The bluebonnets brought color to my soul as surely as they painted the brown pastures struggling to turn green.

    And to add to my good fortune, I had three wild young boys who lived down the street from me and typically visited with the expectation of a full cookie jar in my kitchen.  It was impossible to picture a bleak future in the midst of the effervescence of inquisitive little boys who wanted to know Why about everything and oh yes, by the way, can I have another cookie please.

    Listening to the conversations of a classroom full of four-year-olds on Grandparents Day restored my faith in the possibilities of a world where people actually liked each other and resolved their problems with friendly negotiations or, at least, peaceful hostilities.   Watching a five-year-old boy learning to ride a bike without training wheels for the first time was almost as magical a moment for me as it was for him.  Little wheels keep on rolling.

    Wheels do, indeed, continue to roll, and I find myself saying goodbye to Texas again in 2014.  The Second Chance Years are relocating to South Carolina where they have more work to do, but my second taste of Texas will linger in my heart and on my tongue.

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

    My daddy and me in the driveway of my family’s home in Rosenberg, Texas, with the super cool 1968 Buick Skylark that I bought with money from my first job after college. This is the car I used to make my getaway the first time I left Texas. New addition to my original post in April, 2014. The little boy I watched learning to ride his bike without training wheels will be 18 years old next month, leaving Texas, off to college. Time doesn’t need wheels – it flies.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • prop me up beside the jukebox when I die

    prop me up beside the jukebox when I die


    This piece was published first in March, 2014, and describes a few of my weird thoughts on the last visit to a favorite Mexican restaurant with my Worsham Street family in Texas before our “bi-stateual” (South Carolina -Texas) four-year odyssey came to a close.

    Lordy, Lordy.  I think I’ve just seen the green weenie, as my paternal grandmother used to say when she saw something so inexplicable she was at a loss for descriptive words. For example, if the  preacher at the Richards Baptist Church had stood up in the pulpit on a Sunday morning and said the title of his sermon was  Sin Was a Good Thing, my grandmother would say she’d seen the green weenie. Of course, he never would have said that in a million years, but if he had…

    Tonight I went to my favorite TexMex restaurant, The Big Sombrero, with my neighbors here on Worsham Street. I rank it very high on my all-time favorite Mexican restaurant list – definitely in the top five. I was one of the first patrons when it opened two years ago and have been a regular customer ever since.

    My friend Lisa and I arrived before the rest of our group and stood at the front counter which displayed the pecan pralines and other candies that were potential desserts in the event you weren’t stuffed when you finished your meal and got up to leave. I have yet to buy the first dessert.

    While we waited for the servers to set up a table for our party of five adults and three children, I saw something on the wall that I’d never noticed before. It looked like a flat-screen tv that nobody could see because it was in a wall facing the front door. But it wasn’t a tv. Guess what it was?

    It was a Do It Yourself touch screen digital jukebox. Are you kidding me?  Apparently not. I walked over to get a closer look and saw that the screen displayed songs and recording artists in an array of categories that boggled my mind. The screen looked like the DIY airline check-in system these days except the result wasn’t a boarding pass.

    I remember when the cost of buying five plays on the jukebox in a restaurant or Dairy Queen or honky-tonk of ill repute was 25 cents. Put in a quarter, and pick your five tunes. Uh, oh. The DIY digital jukebox required paper money or accepted plastic cards if you were fresh out of cash. That’s right. Forget about quarters and other coins. I never figured out tonight how much I had to pay to play, but that’s okay because I didn’t recognize any of the tunes anyway.

    I’ve always loved a jukebox and wasted many quarters to hear my favorite songs. Mark Chesnutt must be a fan, too, because he’s had two country music hits about them. Brother Jukebox, Sister Wine was one of them and Bubba Shot the Jukebox Last Night was another. Country classics for sure. If you haven’t heard them, I’m certain there’s a YouTube video somewhere in cyberspace that won’t cost you a penny to hear.

    But my favorite jukebox theme song is Joe Diffie’s Prop Me Up Beside the Jukebox If I Die, Lord, I wanna go to heaven but I don’t wanna go tonight. Fill my boots up with sand, put a stiff drink in my hand and prop me up beside the jukebox if I die.

    As I stood before the DIY digital jukebox tonight, I wondered how in the world anybody could be propped up against this flat wall if they died, and that’s when I realized I’d seen the green weenie. It’s a digital world gone mad.

  • She Was Hotter than a Two Dollar Pistol

    She Was Hotter than a Two Dollar Pistol


    007

    Maggie the Cat in famous lingerie

    The stuff that dreams are made of

    My love affair with Elizabeth Taylor has lasted longer than any of my real-life relationships and all of her eight marriages.  Liz and I go way back.

    We started in 1956 with Giant which I got to see because my mother heard it was a historical movie about West Texas oil.  I was ten years old at the time she took me to see it at the Miller’s Theater in Navasota, and I decided right then and there if this was how history looked, I was all about yesterday.  I fell in love with the heroine who was married to Rock Hudson but wild for James Dean.  She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.

    The following year Raintree County was released, and it was then and is today one of my most favorite silver screen experiences with this Golden Age of Hollywood icon.  She was “hotter than a two dollar pistol and the fastest thing around…” as George Jones sang twenty years later.  For two and a half hours, I lusted after Liz who played Susanna the Hottie southern belle who stole Johnny Shawnessy from boring whiny Nell.  I never understood why two women would be in love with Montgomery Clift anyway, but I certainly knew why he was taken with Liz.

    001

    “Look at the birdie, look at the tree…my gal’s the prettiest in the whole county.”

    from Raintree County

    Elizabeth Taylor and Eva Marie Saint on the set of Raintree County

    I’ve seen that movie countless times with its Gone With the Wind wannabes and celebrated flaws, but I truly don’t care.  For some of her fans, Liz will be remembered as Maggie the Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in the sexy slip or Catherine in the white bathing suit in Suddenly, Last Summer or the scandalous affairs with co-stars Eddie Fisher and Richard Burton on the sets of Butterfield 8 and Cleopatra, respectively.  Others will see her as the child star in National Velvet and the Lassie movies or the deranged middle-aged Martha in 1966 in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  for which she won her second Oscar.

    She will be remembered by many for her notorious marriages and divorces – all eight of them – think Debbie Reynolds, for example.  Then think Richard Burton and Cleopatra.  If you remember the hullabaloo from those torrid days, you must also remember the  Voting Rights Act of 1965…an act that the Supremes struck down this year.  But don’t get me started on that.

    Why Liz?  Why now, you ask?

    I visited a friend this week and saw the Cat on a Hot Tin Roof poster  (a poster he bought from me at one of our downsizing yard sales!) and was reminded of the time fifty years ago when I fell in love with Elizabeth Taylor and wrote her a fan letter and received a glossy 5 x 7 “autographed” photo of her from MGM.  Love, Liz, she signed.

    And I do.

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

    This piece was originally published in October, 2013, and I published it a second time for Women’s History Month in 2015. This week ” boring whiny Nell” (Eva Marie Saint) from Raintree County passed away at 102 years of age. I loved her with Cary Grant in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, but Liz remains one of the great loves of my life for the past seven decades. Thanks to my mother whose love of movies brought us some of our best times and my happiest memories.

  • Between Hell And Hackeydam

    Between Hell And Hackeydam


    I have made a pledge to myself to resurrect bits and pieces of my humorous tendencies through the years. I will put the activist to sleep for a while unless I just can’t help myself. I wrote this first piece in October, 2012. We had a second home in Texas from 2010-2014. One of my cousins had a birthday party and invited a true Texas storyteller and, well, you’ll see…

     

    Once upon a time not long ago and certainly not far away a great Texas storyteller held forth on a Sunday afternoon as his audience gathered around a small dining room table, and it  was my good luck to be there for the performance.  He was the last guest to arrive for the barbecue luncheon and proved to be quite the addition to a little band of friends and family who gathered for a traditional birthday celebration for my cousin Martin.

    I should’ve known I was in for a treat when Carroll “Bubba” Sage announced his presence with an entrance worthy of royalty.  This very large man with a closely trimmed grey beard moved into the kitchen as the screen door slammed behind him.  He balanced a homemade German chocolate cake in a single layer aluminum cake  pan as he came in, and the energy in the little house went up a notch.  When he retrieved a package of coffee he’d brought and declared he never went anywhere without his own Dunkin’ Donuts coffee because he couldn’t possibly drink anything else with his cake, my antenna was up and ready for the ride.

    And what a ride it was…Bubba grew up as the younger child of parents who owned and operated what was affectionately known by its patrons in the 1950s as a “beer joint.”  He was born and raised in Navasota which was, and is sixty years later, a small town in Grimes County, Texas, a county that was dry back in those days so his folks opened their establishment across the Brazos River in Washington County which was wet.

    Dry county equals no adult beverages allowed.  Wet county means go for it.  In addition to serving beer, the best barbecue and hamburgers in the state made the place standing room only for a long time, according to Bubba’s stories.  I know that barbecue from years of chasing brisket in Texas hole-in-the-wall restaurants and could visualize the scene as Bubba’s daddy cooked the barbecue outside behind the tavern on a long open pit built out of bricks with a crusty black grill to put the meat on.  I swear I could smell the aroma, or maybe that was my cousin’s chickens and sausage cooking outside in a smoker for our lunch.

    And my, oh my, talk about entertainment.  The Sage Place had music on the weekends and Bubba’s daddy played fiddle in the band.  As Alabama sings, if you’re gonna play in Texas, you gotta have a fiddler in the band.  The women’s petticoats swirled to the fast music and then swayed to the slow tunes as they danced the Two-Step.  The female patrons particularly liked the little boy who was always there and let him wear their costume jewelry sometimes when they saw him eyeing it with lust in his eyes.   He was in heaven.

    The young boy grew up and became one of the teenagers that puffed the Magic Dragon in the middle of the Brazos River at a place he and his friends appropriately dubbed Smokey Point.  They also created a theater of sorts at Smokey Point and Bubba developed a reputation as the Star of the Brazos.  I was mesmerized by this big man’s recitations at our dining table.  He took me totally by surprise when he began quoting a section of Young Goodman Brown, an obscure short story by the nineteenth century novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne.   I could picture him at Smokey Point as the Brazos River flowed past the dramatics.

    As all good storytellers do, Bubba threw in a few words and phrases to grab his listeners’ attention and he grabbed mine when he said, “I’ve had  close calls and been caught between hell and hackeydam more times than I like to remember.”

    Excuse me I said as I interrupted him.  But what does that mean and how do you spell it?   Bubba laughed and said it was like being between a rock and a hard place and a phrase his family used but that he had no idea how to spell it so I’ve spelled it phonetically and will now use it as if I’d thought it up myself.

    The lunch was delicious.  Bubba’s German chocolate cake was the best I ever tasted and that includes both of my grandmothers’ efforts so that’s high praise.  I stayed to play dominos after we ate and then began to say my goodbyes and thanks for the day when the game was over.  As I cut a piece of cake to take with me, Bubba made one final rendition in the kitchen.  He recited portions of “The Hill”  from Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology which ends with the line, “… all, all are sleeping on the hill…”

    Honestly, does it get any better than that?

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    Fun Fact: I was born in Grimes Memorial Hospital in Navasota, Texas, in 1946.

  • Grandparents Day Moments with Ella and Molly

    Grandparents Day Moments with Ella and Molly


    Our older granddaughter Ella will be seven years old on October 1st. and began the first grade at her school three weeks ago. Remember that Kindergarten graduation picture from May?

    Ella and her younger sister Molly in May of 2026

    (proud Naynay and Nana hovering)

    Although I requested a pause from Alexa on their growth, she seemed to misunderstand what I wanted because their school is back in session. The girls are excited to see old friends, new teachers, and celebrate Grandparents Day with doting family members. They are moving up and on far too quickly to suit me. Sigh.

    Ella busy making a tree for us as grandparents Nana, Gigi, and Jon observe – the first grade was full of fun!

    Learning was in the air!

    Molly’s grandparents visited her classroom, too, and her first cousin Caleb was in the same class with her this year. Molly pointed out that Caleb sat at the red table while she sat at the blue one because they weren’t allowed to sit together. Hm. Wonder why?

    While we visited, the teachers said the children could leave to spend the day with their grandparents if they wanted to. Both of ours jumped on that bit of good news.

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    Ella was “starving” so we went for an early lunch to one of their favorite places, D’s Wings. The reviews were mixed for the meal of mozzarella cheese sticks, chocolate milk, and maybe two bites of chicken fingers. Ella sat next to me across the booth from Nana and Molly. While Nana decided on the food, Ella took my cell phone, texted a strange combination of words to her mother, and took this picture of Molly’s lack of interest in my fascinating table repartee.

    Note: Nana’s Princess Tiara that Molly shared with her following a brief detour to a toy store before lunch.

    The girls were thrilled to play on the outdoor activities in front of the restaurant – much more fun than the food!

    Ella reached the summit and wanted to experience the freedom of accomplishment while she gazed at the city from her climb. Naynay hovered with trepidation as Molly started to climb like her sister.

    Molly reached the top with Nana’s help. She proclaimed she could see the whole world from her spot. She also asked me to be sure to take her picture while she stood at the summit. I did – again with trepidation.

    Note: Nana still wearing Molly’s Princess Tiara.

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

    We gave the girls the choice of going back to school or coming to our house for the afternoon. Case closed. Ella and Molly came to our home and played happily with their art supplies we keep ready for them. Sadly, Nana had to go to work in her Antique Empire at 3 o’clock – we took the girls home with promises to see them again soon.

    Grandparents Day got an A+ from everyone involved.

    P.S. Ella’s impressions of Naynay and Molly on Grandparents Day.

    The End.