I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Month: October 2016

  • Hurricane Matthew – Shake, Rattle and Roll


    Yesterday I had three unexpected phone calls from Texas  – one from my cousin Gaylen who lives in Houston, one from my sister Leora who lives in Rosenberg and one from my cousin Frances who lives in Willis. I also had a rare text from my good friend Carol who is one of the Little Women of Worsham Street in Montgomery and another text from a close  childhood friend Tinabeth who still lives in Richards where I grew up plus an email from another of my oldest Richards friends, Warren, who now lives in Arkansas.  All of them were worried about our safety at Casa de Canterbury as weather channels across the country focused on the path of Hurricane Matthew which was churning up the Caribbean wreaking destruction in Haiti and moving north toward the USA with projections for a path that would put it along our South Carolina coast Friday and Saturday. I imagine we weren’t the only ones contacted by family and friends.

    Our local TV news channels echoed the national weather bureaus with their models of Matthew’s trajectory and our governor declared a state of emergency with evacuation of the low-lying coastal areas. Interstate 26, the main highway leading out of Charleston, became so congested traffic crawled and stood still for hours. At 3:00 o’clock yesterday afternoon, the I-26 lanes moving into Charleston were re-routed so that they became outbound lanes to accommodate the heavy flow. An estimated 1.1 million people will leave the coastal areas headed north to Columbia and beyond to ride out the storm on higher ground.

    Early yesterday morning – early being a relative term – let’s say about 9 o’clock, I went to the grocery store to get our necessities: sweet ‘n low, bread, water, chips and toilet paper. The parking lot of the Kroger was packed. The carts were scarce so I knew the race was on. No problem finding sweet ‘n low. Evidently we were the only household requiring artificial sweeteners in an emergency. Bread, chips and toilet paper were more difficult but still available – water OUT. That ship had sailed. Shelves empty. Case closed.

    Not to be outdone I left the Kroger and drove down to the CVS drug store on the corner and saw more cars in the parking lot than usual but luckily they still had a dwindling supply of water. I bought two packs of bottled water but while I was waiting to be checked out, I spied the candy bar sale of buy one, get second one for a quarter. I picked up four Mounds bars and told Shirley the counter check-out lady I was now prepared for whatever the hurricane brought.

    I replaced the batteries in our four flashlights and have a lighter at the ready for our candles. I surveyed our front porch and brought in the cushions from the rocking chairs. I feel I have forgotten to do something major here at the casa, but I can’t remember what it is at the moment. If anyone has a recommendation, please comment.

    Hurricane season for us on the Atlantic Coast is from June 1st – November 30th., but don’t hold us to that schedule. Hurricanes are like babies – they can be later or earlier than planned. Most of them are harmless, but sometimes we have a Big One, a real Doozie, and then an estimated 12 million people along the Atlantic Coast are at risk for loss of life and possessions. That is apparently our situation this week as Hurricane Matthew is bearing down; and the elements are ready to shake, rattle and roll over us.

    Thanks to our family and friends for checking in with us. It makes us feel loved and reminds me that storms occur in all of our lives every day  – often we have our own personal hurricanes that have nothing to do with the weather. A phone call, a text, an email or God forbid – an actual visit – just might be the kindness that helps someone weather their storm. Be prepared.

    And stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

     

  • The Race is On – And the Winner Loses All


    Well the race is on and here comes Pride at the backstretch,

    Heartaches are going to the inside.

    My tears are holding back, they’re trying not to fall…

    The race is on and it looks like Heartaches.

    And the winner loses all.

    written by Don Rollins 

    immortalized by George Jones

    In May, 1964 I graduated from Columbia High School in West Columbia, Texas. There were eighty-seven other seniors in my graduating class that year. Two weeks later I was standing in registration lines in a gymnasium at the University of Texas in Austin to enroll for summer school as a freshman along with 19,000 other students. The dorm I moved into had seven floors – with elevators, thank goodness – and was huge to me. No wonder – I looked up the size today and it had 69,754 sq ft. The home I came from was a tiny cottage of maybe 1,200 sq. ft. that my parents rented from the people who owned the grocery story we lived behind. To paraphrase one of my grandmother’s favorite sayings, I was country come to town when I moved to Austin, and I felt it.

    Three months later in September, 1964,  a fellow Texan named George Jones released his hit single The Race is On. Supposedly the song was one of his personal favorites and one that he usually sang in concerts. He definitely tried to sing it at a concert I attended on the UT campus in the spring of my first full year (1965) but as I recall George was under the influence of alcohol and forgot the lyrics of that song and several others before making an early exit. No Show Jones was an appropriate nickname for him that night, but I really didn’t care because I was also under the influence for the first time ever in my nineteen years.

    The two friends who invited me to go with them to the concert had brought a bottle of scotch to mix with Seven-up. They poured my drinks with a heavy hand, and No Show Sheila walked back to her room on the third floor of the 69, 754 sq. ft. – dormitory…and threw up. I never drank scotch again.

    Thirty-six days from today until the election of 2016 on November 8th.; I heard that on the news this morning, and I have to say that seems like a long, long time to me. When I was a teenager, I couldn’t wait until I turned twenty-one. I thought that day would never get there. Starting on my sixteenth birthday, I counted each birthday in relation to that twenty-first. The wait was painfully slow. After the momentous twenty-first birthday, however, the years picked up speed; and the race has been on toward an unknown finish line at the speed of light…

    Until this election year when time has apparently stood still. The race has been on to the White House and the houses of Congress for the past two years with primary debates, billboards running rampant throughout the landscape of our cities and interstates, thousands of television and radio and cyberspace commercials approved by the people who are promoting themselves and unending polarization of the country that has a divided view of its direction. Yes, my friends, the race is on.

    Please forgive me, spirit of George Jones, for my transgression of making your love song into a political one. In this 2016 race for the White House I have seen Pride at the backstretch and Heartaches going to the inside and have had to hold back my own tears. I could weep for the absurdity of this race with its personal punches and counter-punches. I could weep for a nation so divided that I wonder if our house will stand. The race is on alright, and I feel Heartaches as it heads into the last days. My fear is that the winner loses all.

    It’s old Blue Monday for me, and I’m thinking about one of my favorite country music artists and his songs. George may be gone, but the race is still on.

    I’m voting early and often, as Lyndon Johnson used to ask us to do in Texas. I urge you to join me.