I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Author: Sheila Morris

  • Humpty Dumpty


    Hello to those who read my essays and thank you for stopping by to take a look!   This piece is one I’ve written in the last few days, and I hope to post more this month than last, which turned out to be one.  Uno.  I can’t get The Red Man to shut up, but my own work is more difficult.   Go figure.

    HUMPTY DUMPTY

     

    Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

    Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,

    And all the King’s horses and all the King’s men

    Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

    —— Old English Nursery Rhyme

     

                I noticed the red dried blood and purple bruising on the top of her left hand as she sat with both hands folded in the large brown leather recliner that was her assigned seat in the den and wondered what in the world had happened.   This semi-conscious frail woman with wispy uncombed snow white hair slouched down in a chair that swallowed her…with her feet up in their usual elevated position.  Her green sweat suit pants and bright flowered cotton blouse she wore today didn’t belong to her, but they were clean and looked comfortable enough.  She sat on a white pad to prevent accidents to the leather chair.  She was dozing when I came through the door and didn’t stir when I bent to kiss her unwrinkled forehead.   She looked up at me and smiled and then closed her eyes again.   My mother wasn’t interested in talking today.

                Her caregiver Kathy sat across from me on the well-worn sofa and noticed my glance at Mom’s hands.   Kathy was a tall woman and big-boned as we used to say when describing a woman her size.  She had just stepped out of the shower when I arrived for my visit and her hair was wet and pulled back from her not unattractive face.   She had a great smile and genuineness I liked.  

                “Has your mother always been a scratcher or is this something new?” she asked.   “Most of the time when we struggle to get her to take a shower she scratches Norma or me.   I’ve got a new one right here.”   She pointed to a fresh scratch on her hand.   “Yesterday Selma thought she was scratching me but instead she scratched herself so hard on her own hand she made it bleed and then pulled off the band aid I put on it.  It looks worse than it is, though.”

                The idea of my mother being a “scratcher” was like a foreign movie without subtitles.  Difficult to comprehend, yet I knew it was true.  I’d heard a nurse say the same thing in her hospital room a few weeks ago to the young aide who was to give Mom a bath in her bed.  “Be careful, she’s a scratcher,” the nurse said.   I had almost fainted.  My mother, the prim and proper little woman who taught second grade in a public school for twenty-five years and played the piano in Southern Baptist churches for more than fifty years, was a scratcher.   It’s a world gone mad.

                “No, it’s not new,” I said.   “I’m not sure how long she’s been doing it, but I know it happened at least once during her hospital stay several weeks ago.  I’m so sorry she does it to you, but I can tell you it’s completely out of character for her.”

                “Oh, no, don’t worry.  I totally understand.  We’ve seen most everything with our Alzheimer folks,” Kathy said.

                I had entrusted the care of my mother six weeks ago to the two sisters, Kathy and Norma, who lived in the country twenty-two miles from my home in Montgomery, Texas.   Their brick house was an unassuming ranch style with a beautiful swimming pool screened and covered like the ones I had seen in Florida.  This made sense when I found they grew up in the Melbourne area.  The sisters came highly recommended to me by a friend whose father lived with them for seven years before he died last year.   My friend said her family had chosen them from several options and never regretted the choice.

                Mom lived in a Memory Care Unit for the past four years in a large assisted-living residential community in southwest Houston.   The setting was relatively plush and her unit housed twenty patients.   The cost rose every year she was there and was now almost $6,000 a month for her care for moderate to severe dementia and the related deterioration of her physical capacities.  Incontinence and lack of ability to walk without a walker were major changes in her condition in recent years.   Her world was sustained by her routine and the familiar surroundings of her private small apartment that defined it.   Locked entrances and exits set her boundaries and she adjusted to this world with an acceptance bordering on relief from the necessity of trying to preserve an identity she had long forgotten.   When I visited her in the Memory Care Unit, I typically found her in good spirits and checking her watch to see what she was supposed to do next.   Was it time for a meal?  Should she be in the dining room?   Did she need to go to the living room for a movie or exercise class or Wheel of Fortune or Bingo?   Were they going out for ice cream?   Someone had a plan, and my mother loved a plan.

                God bless long-term care insurance and the benefits it provided that covered the last four years of my mother’s stay in Houston.   Unfortunately, her benefit period ended this fall and economic realities made change unavoidable.   Her move to the house in the country was an answer for one problem but generated a host of others.   On the day I drove her to her new home, the conversation was dramatic foreshadowing of the days to come.

                “Mom, don’t you think it’s beautiful to be in the country like this?” I asked her as we rode along in my pickup truck.

                “Yes, it’s beautiful all right, but I wouldn’t want to live out here,” she replied.

                Indeed, she did not go gently into that good night, as the poet Dylan Thomas described.   When we arrived at her new home, she had forgotten the hamburger and fries I’d bribed her with at lunch to improve her mood.   She reluctantly sat down in the den with her two new compatriots, Anne and Virginia.   Anne had mild to moderate dementia and was in her early eighties, I would learn later.   She was an attractive frail woman with pulmonary issues and needed frequent breathing treatments.   Virginia was eighty-nine and proud of it and was in a better mental and physical state than either Mom or Anne.   She forgot words but generally followed conversation threads and understood contexts.  She was the only one of the three women who didn’t need a walker.    I liked the two women immediately and hoped Mom would, too.

                “I don’t understand why I have to be here, and I don’t think it’s right for you to bring me  without telling me we were coming to stay,” Mom said to me when we sat down on the sofa in the den.   Anne and Virginia each sat in large recliners facing the sofa and listened to our conversation.    Lack of privacy was a new challenge in the intimate den, I thought.

                “Well, they did the same thing to me,” Anne said to Mom.   “My daughter Beverly and her husband just brought me in here one day and left.”

                “Me, too,” Virginia chimed in.   “But I like it now and I’m glad you’re moving in.   You can have the other big chair.   I hope we don’t get anybody else because we only have three big chairs.”

                And so began the next chapter in my mother’s battle with the devils of her own mind and body.   Within ten days, as we began the process of changing to local doctors and pharmacies for her medications, she developed a severe urinary tract infection, which is not uncommon for women of her age and physical state.   But she required treatment in the community hospital for a week and after I brought her home from that stay, she hasn’t been the same.   She says little and doesn’t eat solid food.   The sisters feed her a liquid diet through a contraption that looks like an oversized eye dropper to me.   She’s had company in the hospital and in her new home – visits from nephews, cousins, other family members and even a visit from her former pastor.   She greets everyone with a smile and says a practiced thank you for coming.  The level of recognition appears to be distant with no connection to the present. 

                Her main question for me in the hospital as she lay attached to tubes of all sorts day after day was, “How long are you going to be in the hospital?  I didn’t know you were sick.”   I told her I didn’t know how long but I was glad she was there with me.    

                Did she have the uti before she moved?   Probably.   Would she have been so sick if she hadn’t moved?  Maybe not.  The mind and body work strangely in tandem, I’ve observed, and my mother is seemingly lost without her old planned life in the Memory Care Unit.   Hopefully, time will allow her to find a new routine that will offer her the comfort of consistency.   Her world is like the world of Humpty Dumpty, however.   All the King’s horses and all the King’s men won’t be able to put Humpty together again as he once was.  The fall has been too great.

  • ‘Tis The Season


    Ok, I am clearly all over the board in this blog and have mixed new essays with excerpts from the book that was the ulterior motive for beginning  Essays with Humor in general and I’ll Call It Like I See It specifically.   The good news is one of my August posts has been published in a literary ezine called bioStories!   I’ve added the link to my blogroll here and hope that you will visit the site – it’s a very interesting concept, the stories are compelling and the editor was very encouraging to me.   I’d like to do the same for him.

    Since I find it impossible to develop a semi-schedule of writing for my posts here, I decided to forge ahead with my Thanksgiving essay a bit early this morning.   (My alter ego, The Red Man, has no trouble with his Rants and Raves and refuses to shut up which may partially explain my struggles here.)  

    I’ll miss Thanksgiving in Fingerville, South Carolina this year due to the vicissitudes of life, as my daddy used to say, but it will be with me wherever I am.

    SEASONS GREETINGS FROM FINGERVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINA

     

                Today is a day of giving thanks.  We cleverly named it Thanksgiving Day and have celebrated it for more than four hundred years in the United States.  I was surprised to learn that this tradition was actually introduced to the U.S. in 1565 by Spaniards in St. Augustine, Florida.  This newsflash made me feel a little better about the Texas Thanksgiving Day weather of my youth.  My elementary school textbooks portrayed pouty Pilgrims wearing ridiculously tall hats, oversized belt buckles, and heavy coats—all in black.  They invariably stood in deep white snow and appeared to be near freezing.  I recall being embarrassed at our lack of proper cold temperatures for Thanksgiving in rural east Texas.  If snow was good enough for the Pilgrims, it should have been good enough for us.  It makes me happy, then, to think that this holiday really began as a fiesta in Florida with lots of warmth and sunshine and people who knew how to party.  I have visions of tortilla soup, cheese enchiladas, and key lime pie.  (I’m not sure how we made the leap to turkey from tortillas or pumpkin pie from key lime, but that’s a question for another day.)

                Thanksgiving is still my favorite holiday because it is the most resistant to crass commercialism.  Halloween and Christmas have become impostors that pave the path to New Year’s Eve, but Thanksgiving remains the holiday for celebrating family and friends.  It is the lull between two storms that blow powerful winds of spending and of buying more of what we don’t need in larger quantities.

                When I was a child, Halloween was a night for wearing a costume made by my grandmother and walking with my friends to trick-or-treat in our little town.  We each carried small paper sacks to collect the few pieces of candy offered by our neighbors.  The highlight of the evening was the home that gave away homemade popcorn balls that were the size of tennis balls and had the rich aroma of freshly popped corn mixed with the white Karo syrup that held it together.  They tasted as good as they smelled.

    Sixty years later, I am astonished to see bags and more bags of Halloween candy in grocery stores.  I’m talking about bags.  I’m talking about the biggest bags you can imagine.  I’m talking about bags of every color with every kind of candy known to the human species.  Some of the bags are so big that they are difficult to carry.  Enormous bags.  Enough candy to last for years.  Take several, will you?  I’m drowning in Halloween candy.

    And I’m talking about decorations, too.  When did Halloween require stringing orange lights and black bats outside your house?  When did it get out of control?  Last year I stood with a large group of my neighbors who were mesmerized by the elaborate decorations of a house in our neighborhood.  The entire front yard was filled with ghosts in an array of positions and the ability to become animated when activated.  Our neighbor started the display regularly every night for two hours and did this for several weeks.  On his cue, the ghosts in the bluegrass band played country music and hymns as the other figures performed by popping up from behind bushes to frighten the children.  Seriously, hymns.  Hymns for Halloween.  Oh, yes, and yet another ghost repeatedly beat the head of one that tried to rise from a coffin.  People came from far and near to watch.  Halloween is officially an Event.  Put a special note on your calendar that October 31 is an important day in our lives.  We party.

    But, on November 1, watch out.  Clear the aisles.  Christmas candy—bags galore—has miraculously supplanted the Halloween candy, which is now half price.  Christmas decorations appear out of nowhere to signal the retail onslaught of the season.  If you think you’re seeing red, you’re probably right, because red is the signature color for this time of the year.  Red Santas, red stockings, red wrapping paper, red cards, red candy canes, red ribbons, red blinking lights—everywhere you look, you’re seeing red with a splash of green or gold or white for emphasis.  It’s time to buy.  A gong has sounded, and no payments will be due on anything until next year.  Thank goodness.  Because we won’t be able to afford them this year.  We must decorate.  We need to get out our trimmings to make sure they’re blinking properly, and, of course, we’ll need to buy some new ones, too.  The season demands it.  Something old.  Something new, nothing borrowed, nothing blue.  Mostly something new.  Definitely something red.

    The march is on, and good cheer has a price.  Merry gentlemen, God doesn’t rest ye.  O Holy Night, you’re not really silent.  As a matter of fact, you’re all about the noise of cars and planes and people in a hurry to get somewhere.  It’s time to travel, and the highways and airports are hubbubs of activity.  We are rocking around the Christmas tree.  Every creature is stirring on the night before, during, and after Christmas.  Hallelujah.  Let’s make it a chorus.

    Sandwiched between Halloween and Christmas is the poor relation, Thanksgiving.  On this lesser holiday, I am thankful for the memories of my family and our life before cell phones interrupted us while we feasted at the tables of my grandmothers.  I am thankful for a grandmother who got up in the wee hours of the morning to put a turkey in a large cooker that was used only twice a year.  I can still smell the aroma that permeated our whole house by the time we got up on Thanksgiving morning.  The turkey was on its way to perfection.  I am grateful to that grandmother for working ten hours a day, six days a week so that we would have a roof over our heads and food to eat.  I feel her love today as I felt it then, but now I know how fortunate I was to have her in my life—and I also know that not everyone is so lucky.

     My daddy used to tell me it was pointless to compare my life to someone else’s.  He said  I could always find someone who had more than I did, or look in another direction to discover someone who had less.  My daddy was a wise man.  Today, I count my many blessings, and, as the hymn says, I name them one by one.  For the father who insisted the whole earth was my territory and who tried to show me as much of that world as he could, I am thankful.  For the mother who wrestled her own demons as she tried to accept her daughter’s differences but never quit loving that daughter, I am thankful. For the partner who knows me inside and out and loves me for who I am, I am thankful.

    I celebrated last Thanksgiving with my partner Teresa’s family.  We drove from our home in Columbia to the First Baptist Church of Fingerville in the upstate of South Carolina where she is from.  (No kidding.  The town’s real name is Fingerville.)  This wonderful extended family from her mother’s side gathers in the fellowship hall of the church every year to eat an evening meal and to remind each other that family differences don’t necessarily mean family disconnections.  Although politics and religion are divisive issues and shelved as topics of conversation during the gathering, the gossip surrounding the activities of children and grandchildren are fair game.  The aunts and uncles who are older now speak volumes without words, and the simplicity and sameness of the party suggest a time long ago and far away.  In the midst of a truly southern meal, our souls were nourished.

    Three different kinds of cornbread dressing went well with either the turkey or ham.  Several dishes of creamed corn, sweet potato casseroles, green beans, black-eyed peas, fruit salads, and green salads completely filled the main tables in the fellowship hall of the church.  A second large table was reserved for the desserts that included pumpkin and pecan pies, coconut cake, lemon pound cake, and an assortment of Krispy Kreme donuts.  Drinks were available in the kitchen that was adjacent to the dining area of the fellowship hall.  Sweet and unsweet iced tea and coffee provided the right amount of caffeine to make sure everyone stayed awake during the ride home.  It was a feast, and an exact replica of the meals I had in Texas for Thanksgiving.  No wonder Teresa and I were happy—our families shared the same recipes!  I miss the ones in my family who are gone, but I’m fortunate to have another one that welcomes me to their table.

    Whether it was the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock or the Spaniards in Florida or some other group yet to be recognized, I salute this day of giving thanks.  It’s a meaningful one for me and suits my tendency to ponder.  For those of you who prefer the orange lights of Halloween and the white lights of Christmas, I wish you joy and strands that are easy to untangle.  I also fervently pray to the Gods of All Holidays that Thanksgiving candy and Thanksgiving outdoor decorations are hereby permanently prohibited.  Amen.

  • Answer: 300 Million Dollars A Day


    Question:  How much does the United States spend on the War in Afghanistan?

    Sigh.   If only I’d been watching Jeopardy instead of 60 Minutes last night.   If only The Good Wife hadn’t moved to Sunday nights for the new fall season in 2011.   If only the football game on CBS had ended on time so I wouldn’t have gotten started watching 60 Minutes because I wanted to know when The Good Wife would actually be coming on later.   If only I’d remembered my New Year’s Resolution to avoid TV news shows at all costs.  

    But no, I wasn’t watching Jeopardy.  Instead,  I got hooked on a segment of the  60 Minutes  Sunday evening news program commemorating the anniversary of the ten-year War in Afghanistan and an interview with the two men responsible for its, ahem, conclusion.   As if. 

    So the interview goes by swimmingly with numbers rolling off the tongues of men who look stern and tired and unhappy to be where they are, including the interviewer.   Number of American lives lost so far?   1,800.   One thousand eight hundred men and women no longer with us or their families and friends.   1,800.   Gone.  Immense, immeasurable, staggering loss.

    Number of dollars spent so far?   Half a trillion.   I don’t even know how many zeroes to put in half a trillion.   I’ll call it a gazillion and I’ll break it down into smaller numbers so we can all relate to it.   Let’s see.   That would be about two billion dollars a week or 300 million dollars a day.   Oh, okay.   That’s easier to understand.   If we put this in Powerball lottery terms, we’re spending 20 Powerball lotteries of 15 million dollars each on a daily basis in a country that hates us on a war that will never be over and wonder why we have an uncontrollable federal deficit.   Seriously.   As my daddy used to say, the inmates are running the asylum.

    Oh, and the two men responsible for bringing this war to a successful conclusion?    The same team that helped to end the insurgency in Iraq.   I kid you not.

    I will not watch TV news shows.   I will not watch TV news shows.   I will not watch TV news shows.   Maybe if I don’t watch them, the news will vanish Without a Trace, which is what I prefer to watch along with The Good Wife.

  • My Rich People’s Eye


    Here’s another essay just finished and hot off the presses…comments?

    MY RICH PEOPLE’S EYE

     

                The surest method I’ve found for beginning a new nonfiction work is to start writing fiction again.   When I speak about writing, albeit infrequently these days,  on panels or in workshops or in my friend’s writing classes at the University of South Carolina, someone always asks me why don’t you write fiction, with the less than subtle implication that fiction must surely be every writer’s dream and the most compelling of all literary art forms.   You know who you are, short story writers and novelists-to-be and fiction reading enthusiasts everywhere.   I applaud you.   I salute you for your loyalty to the genre.   Unfortunately, I find it impossible to join your ranks – yet.   I’ve tried.   God knows I’ve tried.   This week I dusted off my trusty Cowgirls at the Roundup short story a/k/a historical romance a/k/a blistering lesbian passion novella a/k/a my version of Beethoven’s Unfinished Symphony.   When I woke this morning, eager to resume my writing about lesbian cowgirls in Texas in the early 1900s, I lay in bed a few minutes too long.

                I have a game I sometimes play by myself in bed.  Aha – see?  I could maybe turn this into a sexual story about women’s libido in their sixties and all the women who read this will be immediately captivated by the topic and wait with panting breath because they want to know if there is sex after sixty.    And possibly a few of the men, too, although the men are fairly confident there is.   Good news, or bad news, depending on your sexual appetite, I can assure you the sexual self lives on.   However, that game isn’t what I’m playing by myself in bed today.  No, the game I’m talking about is the difference in how we view our world.   I call the game My Rich People’s Eye.

                My game started simply and it’s been such fun I play it over and over again.  But first, the back story that led to the creation of the game.   I feel like Milton Bradley must have felt when he developed The Checkered Game of Life and other equally entertaining board games.   Exhilarated with the creative process.   Practically giddy.    You see, earlier this year I had scheduled cataract surgeries in both my eyes.   Yes, yes, I know.   This is what old people talk about all the time.   Their health… blah, blah, blah.  I can remember when I used to say why do old people always talk about their health?   This was when I was under fifty.   Now that I’m sixty-five, I totally get it.   But, I digress.

                When I made my initial visit to the ophthalmologist who was to perform the typically routine surgeries, he mentioned I had a choice for my new lens.   The Medicare lens which I qualified for would cost me approximately $200 per eye and would correct my nearsightedness roughly 80 – 90% within a few weeks following the surgery and he could almost guarantee I wouldn’t need to wear eyeglasses except for reading and close work like computer work, which by the way in case you’re wondering, was my only form of work.   So far, so good.  There was, however, a super deluxe eye treatment available which Medicare didn’t cover and the cost of that eye lens was approximately $2,000 per eye but  it offered all sorts of advantages with top-notch reading vision as well as distance correction.  In other words, it was The Bomb.   I quickly told my doctor I would take the Medicare eye since my current budget wouldn’t allow the additional expense.   No problem, he said, and made the notation in my chart.   My first surgery was scheduled for June 23rd on my right eye and July 5th. on my left one.

                At some point not long after my initial visit with the Eye Doctor with two kinds of eyes for the choosing, I was discussing this interesting dynamic of my perception of the Medicare Eye versus the Rich People’s Eye with a close friend of mine and out of the blue my friend told me she wanted to give me the Rich People’s Eye for my birthday.   I was astonished, touched, and, frankly, overwhelmed by her generosity but told her I couldn’t accept her largesse.   She countered with the irrefutable argument that it was her gift to offer and she would be disappointed if I rejected it.   So there you are.   In one of those quirks of fate and vicissitudes of life, as my daddy used to say, I called the Eye Doctor’s office and signed up for the Rich People’s Eye.

                Everyone who knew I was having the cataract surgery had a story to share about how uneventful it would be.   Nothing to it.   Outpatient surgery in the morning and return the next day for the doctor to do the follow-up review of his work.   What could be easier?   Indeed, the procedure went just like that for me.   I went in to the eye center on a Tuesday morning and came home with my Rich People’s Eye by noon.   The first thing I noticed was the difference in color and that’s when my game began.   The game goes like this:   I close my left eye and open my right Rich People’s Eye.  I went upstairs to my office when my friend brought me home and the room looked so bright and the gray walls seemed to be a different color if I closed my left eye. Magic!!   My right eye now sees life in vivid bright colors and my vision is nearly the same in that eye as it is for people who don’t have to wear glasses.

                So I can still play the game four months later because I never got even the Medicare left eye.   The evil gods of herpes zoster, or shingles as they are more commonly known, struck a mighty blow against my Rich People’s Eye two days following the routine cataract surgery and the battle was on.   Since I was familiar with these enemies from previous wars in the same eye, I wasn’t too surprised at their appearance but I was most assuredly unprepared for their ferocity.   It has taken four months, three doctors, two French hens and a partridge in a pear tree to send these evil gods away.   I can only now begin to contemplate a new Medicare left eye.

                In the interim, I play my game with no winners or losers because I have no actual opponents.   It’s simply me and my view of the world.  This morning while I played the game and lay in bed with my dog snoring quietly beside me, my mind drifted to how people see the world and then you know how the mind takes these strange curves like a good baseball pitcher throws?   Well, I thought of the activists who are engaged in a political movement known as Occupy Wall Street.  Hundreds of people are protesting their frustration with the disparity in assets and liabilities in the population of the United States by moving into and settling in the Wall Street financial district in New York City in a peaceful statement of dissatisfaction with the status quo.  It is a movement spreading to other cities in other states, and my mind made a connection to my Rich People’s Eye proposal versus my Medicare Eye option.   Wasn’t this really the heart of the problems in our world in a microcosmic view?   Game on.  

                 We in the United States are now beginning to experience the financial hardships not seen in our country since The Great Depression.   Our financial institutions that manipulate the markets which move world economies have a Rich People’s Eye and tunnel vision marked by greed and self-centeredness.   Hedge funds, smedge funds – they’re like casinos.   The House always wins.   Gone are the days when workers are valued for the quality of their work and not their abilities to take short cuts.  The amazing prosperity and wealth generated by some of the Baby Boomers in the Post-World War II Era of technological advances and innovations in communications have been the gold standard by which all nations measure their own achievements.   Are we as good as the Americans?   Are we better than the Americans?   Why aren’t we rich like the Americans?   And even if we have as much money as the Americans, why are they so cool and hip?   Thank God we still rank first in one category according to a survey published on AOL this week.  We are very cool.

                Now we see China and India and the Middle Eastern countries controlling much of the wealth Americans have created because we have sold our collective souls to the company stores as Tennessee Ernie Ford so aptly sang in the classic country lyrics for Sixteen Tons.  “You load sixteen tons and what do you get/ Another day older and deeper in debt/ St.Peter don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go/ I owe my soul to the company store.”    Or in our case to Bank of America or Citigroup or Chase or Goldman Sachs or Beijing or Saudi Arabia or Kabul, et.al.   We are adrift in a sea of debt and the waves crash relentlessly against our shores without relief.

                Whew.   I need to play a different game.   My Rich People’s Eye has put me in a world of hurt and led to pondering and mulling over and ruminating to beat the band.   Truth seems to be stranger than fiction and much more stressful.   Let’s see.   Where did I put that Cowgirls at the Roundup manuscript?

                 

  • Sallie and Chance – An Unusual Love Story


    Ok, so I promised to include new material not in I’ll Call It Like I See It – yet!   Here’s a fresh story hot off the presses…hope you enjoy.

     

    SALLY AND CHANCE – AN UNUSUAL LOVE STORY

     

                If you spend time in a small town in Texas, you can be pretty sure you’ll meet a storyteller or two and be thoroughly entertained with gossipy tales about town politics and politicians or a hurricane that blew through a few years ago or the high school football team that won state or the best game the Aggies and Longhorns ever played or whatever happened to the Cowboys anyway when an Arkansas boy named Jerry Jones bought them or why did the Houston Oilers have to move to Tennessee?   Most likely you’ll find out who has the best chicken fried steak and hamburgers in town and the name of the newest Mexican food restaurant that’s run by authentic Hispanics and not one of those dagnabit chains.   The number one topic in every small town in southeast Texas in the summer of 2011 for sure, however, has been the drought, as in no rain.   Not a drop for weeks.   Record triple-digit temperatures for days and no rain to cool off anything or anybody.   And so on.  My listening ear was almost on autopilot and I could nod my head at appropriate intervals and tsk! tsk! about the weather with the best of them.

                And then I met Sally, and no my name isn’t Harry, but Sally woke me up with a real Texas love story.   Good storytellers can appear in the strangest places and most unexpected times, and this one was no exception.  

                My friend Carol and I drove over to Tomball, a small town between our home town of Montgomery and Houston, the giant behemoth of a city forty miles southeast of us.   We both took items to be framed because Carol said she knew the best frame shop in the county and it was in Tomball.   She knew the woman and her husband who ran the shop and vowed they were the best framers in the business.   Well, that was good enough for me.   Carol was a reliable resource for all things artsy craftsy antiquey and anything in between.

                When we entered the little shop, I saw it was an art gallery as well as a frame shop but wasn’t surprised because many retail stores combine the two, particularly in a town the size of Tomball with its population of 9,089.   I could also see right away I would love the unpretentious shop because much of the art displayed on the walls and scattered about on easels was Texana.   You know what I mean.  Cowboys and cows, boots and spurs, horses, Indian chiefs – all the nostalgic western images that made Texans, both native and transplanted, believe they remembered who they were.   You either got it and liked it or didn’t get it and made fun of it.   I got it.

                The shop was empty except for Sally and her husband Bill.   The first thing I noticed about this woman was her hair.   She had big hair, as we used to say when we described my Aunt Thelma’s signature beehive hairdo or the coiffures of the women who attended the Pentecostal Holiness Church.   Sally’s suspiciously colored reddish blonde white hair was swept up and back and appeared to be longer than it probably was.   Regardless, it was big and suited the woman who greeted us with a smile the same size as her hair.   She exchanged pleasantries with Carol who introduced me to Sally and Bill and explained our mission.   We had brought our assortment of pictures and posters and prints in with us and Sally escorted us to the back of the shop where we could lay them out to be measured and matched with mats and frames.   Bill disappeared into his work room.

                Carol told me to go first with my things and I began to put a few pictures on the counter top in front of Sally who sat down and reached for her measuring tape.   But then, she seemed to lose interest in the job ahead of her and launched into a monologue about the heat this summer.   And could we believe it?   Lightning struck her air conditioning unit at her house earlier this week and she and Bill had been without cool air for two days and nights.   The first night they turned on all the fans they could find and toughed it out but last night she had looked at Bill around 8:30 and told him they had to go spend the night in a motel because she couldn’t stand the heat.   Now Sally wasn’t a small woman and I could empathize with her need for cool air and found myself caught up in the drama of spending the night in the Comfort Inn to flee the hot humid natural air of a house struck by lightning.  

                Sally embellished the story with disclosures of her being a member of the Tomball Volunteer Fire Department and some ancillary marshall’s role with the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department that allowed her and Bill to drive a county vehicle.   I settled in for the long haul when I recognized Sally was the genuine article: a good ol’ gal Texas storyteller.   I noticed Carol slipped away to browse through the shop.   She evidently had heard some of these stories before.

                Sally interspersed her stories with getting down to the framing business at hand and periodically produced a frame for me to consider along with mats of various colors and textures.   I remarked that I thought the pictures in her shop were great and that I loved Texana.   She stopped measuring and her eyes lit up with the excitement of discovering a kindred spirit.   She asked me if I had noticed the pictures at the front near the cash register.   I hadn’t.

                “Well, I want you to go take a look at them right now,” Sally said.   “They’re pictures of me and Chance, the love of my life.   Go on.   Have a look.”

                I obediently followed her instructions and walked over to see the two 8 x 10 glossy photos hanging on the wall next to the check-out counter.   One was a black-and-white photo of a younger Sally in a western outfit with three not unattractive cowboys posing with her.   They stood next to a large Brahman bull.   I tried to pick out the one who was Chance.   The other photo was in color.   Again, it was a younger version of Sally in a rodeo outfit with her arm around the same bull.   I walked back to Sally and told her I thought the pictures were great and wondered which one was Chance.

                “Chance is the Brahman bull,” she said and pronounced it bray-man.   I had always called it brah-man.   “Wasn’t he beautiful?”  Sally asked in a reverent tone.   I’m sure I looked surprised and she chuckled as if she and I now shared a wonderful secret.   Chance the Bull was the love of her life.  I waited for the whole story. 

                “I got him at an auction when he was ten years old,” she said.   “My husband at the time, not Bill, said I ought not to take a chance on him but I looked right into that bull’s eyes and we had a connection.   A real connection.   It was love at first sight.   So we got him, and I named him Chance.   I had him for more than eleven years and that bull was the sweetest and gentlest animal I ever knew.   I’ve had dogs meaner than him.   I used to ride him in rodeos and the parades for the rodeos and he never minded the noise and fuss people made over him as long as I was with him.   He was oblivious to everyone but me.   It was love at first sight all right, and he loved me as much as I loved him for as long as he lived.   I’ve never felt the pure love I felt from that bull from any person in my life including my husbands and children and grandchildren.”

                She took a breath and continued.   I didn’t dare interrupt her.

                “He got to be so popular in Texas that Letterman’s people called and asked us to come to New York to be on The Late Night Show.   So we put Chance in his trailer and off we went to New York City to be on tv.   The deal was supposed to be David Letterman was going to climb up and sit on Chance in front of his live audience and of course I would be standing right there with him.   Well, honey, you should’ve seen those New York City folks’ faces when I walked Chance through the tv studio and I was never prouder of my big guy.   He didn’t pay them any mind at all.”

                “Really?” I exclaimed.   “Did David Letterman climb up on your bull?”

                “I’m just getting to that,” Sally replied as she warmed to the storytelling.   “I was waiting in the little room before we were to go on and watching the commercials at the break when I felt someone standing behind me.   You know how you can tell when somebody’s behind you.”

                I nodded, and she pressed on.

                “Well, it was David Letterman in the flesh,” Sally said.   “I must have looked kinda funny at him because he said, ‘Listen, lady, are you going to make sure nothing happens to me with that bull of yours?’  So I said, ‘Mr. Letterman, as long as I’m with Chance, you’re as safe as if you were in your own mother’s arms.’   He smiled and said that was good enough for him.   But the funniest thing was when we went on the air, he chickened out at the last minute and wouldn’t get close to Chance.   But, then, the audience took over and made such a production that he ended up getting on him for about a second.   He couldn’t believe how gentle my Chance was but he wasn’t interested in pushing his luck, let me tell you.”   Sally laughed and stopped talking.   She began to fidget with the mats for my pictures.

                “Wow,” I said.   “That was some story.   You and Chance were tv stars.   Amazing.   Whatever happened to him?”

                “Oh, he died an old man’s death,” Sally said.   “Peaceful as he could be, but it nearly broke my heart.   I cried for days when I lost that bull.   But, I’ll tell you something about Chance.   Some of those professors at A & M (Texas A & M University) took skin cells from my big fellow and they cloned him.   Yessiree, and they cloned him and called him Chance II.   First successful cloning of a Brahman anywhere.”

                “You’re kidding,” I exclaimed.   “Did you ever go see him?   Was he just like your Chance?”

                “I didn’t go for a long time,” Sally said.   “But my husband  finally convinced me to go  and yes, he looked exactly like my beloved Chance.   Exactly like him.   But you know what was different?   The eyes.   They were the same color as my Chance’s eyes but we had no bond.   No connection.   He let me pet him but I wouldn’t trust much more than that.   He didn’t have Chance’s soul.”   She took off her glasses and wiped a few tears from her eyes.   I was mesmerized by the story and pictured her trying in vain to recapture her lost love in an experimental lab at A & M.   So close – and yet so far away.

                Sally told me other stories that afternoon while I made my selections for frames and mats from her suggestions.   She had started riding wild bulls in rodeos when she was forty-one years old and had ridden for a year but retired when the broken bones and bruises became too much for her battered body.   I tried to figure out how old Sally was and guessed she was in her early seventies and wondered how many stories she could tell to her customers who were good listeners.   She finished with my items and gave me a total that was reasonable for the work she and Bill were going to do. And a bargain when you consider the storytelling was free.  I looked at the clock and realized we’d fiddled with my pictures for forty-five minutes.   Carol must be ready to kill me, I thought.

                Luckily, she wasn’t and I waited for her to pick out her mats and frames.   Sally stuck to her business, and Carol and I left a little while later.    On the way home I asked Carol if she’d heard Sally’s stories about Chance and she said she’d heard them before today but they were good ones so you didn’t mind overhearing them again.   I smiled and said I was already looking forward to my next trip to Tomball.   I was a sucker for a good love story and Sallie knew how to tell one.