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

by sheila morris

For any who want more, complete list of all posts by month since 2011
  • yesterday when I was young

    yesterday when I was young


    This morning I woke with Roy Clark’s version of “Yesterday When I Was Young” playing in a loop in my head, I think possibly because Pretty and I volunteered to help at a memorial tennis tournament yesterday for a good friend’s daughter whose song would be Today When I Was Young, when I was brave, when I was fierce, I died too soon in 2022 at the age of 36. As the song played over and over in my head, I began to wonder about the singer and songwriter.

    Roy Clark, the singer whose version I remember best, was born in 1933 in Meherrin, Virginia and died on November 15, 2018 in Tulsa, Oklahoma six weeks following the songwriter Charles Aznavour’s death in the south of France. Clark was the son of a laborer on the railroad and in the sawmills of Virginia while Aznavour was born in Paris in 1924 to parents who had escaped the Armenian genocide. I was struck by the random coincidence of their deaths, the musical connection between two giants in their respective professions.

    Two men from widely disparate origins and musical backgrounds, yet their music met in 1969 when Clark recorded “Yesterday When I Was Young” that was written and sung by Aznavour as “Hier Encore” (yesterday again) in 1964. Doreen St. Felix wrote a tribute to Aznavour in The New Yorker on October 23, 2018 while the Ken Burns Country Music Documentary that premiered in 2019 on PBS included excerpts from Clark’s biography.

    “On October 1st, Charles Aznavour, the world’s last and greatest troubadour, was found dead in the bath at his home in the small village of Mouriès, in southern France. He was ninety-four. Aznavour’s career spanned nearly eighty years, at least a thousand songs, three hundred albums, dozens of tours, and many, many films. His music, animated by an earthy interest in what addles and excites the common man, had a revolutionizing impact on French pop, extending its lifetime well past its mid-century golden age, and its influence well beyond the borders of Aznavour’s nation. Logically, his death should not have been a shock. Age must do its ravishing, even to those who have acquired the sheen of the immortal.” (Doreen St. Felix)

    “…The following year [1963], Roy Clark had his first hit – Bill Anderson’s “The Tips of My Fingers” – and in 1969, his song “Yesterday When I Was Young” became a hit on both the pop and country music charts. In the decades that followed, he would place more than 50 songs on the country charts, including nine Top 10s. It was also in 1969 that Roy received a call from Jim Halsey about hosting a new television show, based loosely on the hit variety show Laugh In, but swapping out youth culture for country music, rural one-liners, and blackout comedy. At its peak, Hee Haw reached 30 million viewers weekly and Clark became an ambassador for country music…” (Ken Burns)

    Yesterday, when I was young the taste of life was sweet like rain upon my tongue. I teased at life as if it were a foolish game the way an evening breeze would tease a candle flame. The thousand dreams I dreamed, the splendid things I planned, I always built to last on weak and shifting sand. I lived by night and shunned the naked light of day and only now I see how the years have run away. Yesterday, when I was young there were so many songs that waited to be sung. So many wild pleasures that lay in store for me and so much pain my dazzled eyes refused to see. I ran so fast that time and youth at last ran out. I never stopped to think what life was all about and every conversation that I can recall concerns itself with me and nothing else at all.

    Unlike the lyrics in this song, I do stop to think what life was all about, a personal luxury at the statistical life expectancy age for women in the United States of 77.28 years which is my age today. I can identify with these lyrics, with its universal themes of how the years run away, the wild pleasures mixed in with the dazzling pain, teasing at life, dreams that won’t ever be realized – all compressed into memory makers. But I had a reminder yesterday that my age is a gift, unmerited favor, grace that should be celebrated every day.

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

    Each of you is a part of my gift of life – I am thankful for you. Rest in peace, KK.

  • You Can’t Paint a Sunset (from The Short Side of Time)

    You Can’t Paint a Sunset (from The Short Side of Time)


    I took a late evening walk down Old Plantersville Road tonight just as the sun was setting. I rounded the curve by the trailer park and walked past the wide open pastures on both sides of the road where the view of a Texas sunset was spectacular. Tonight’s colors of pinks, blues and reds were particularly beautiful; I picked a good spot about halfway to the railroad track to behold the sight.

    As I watched the light colors quickly deepen into darker hues, I was reminded of my mom’s favorite saying about sunsets: “Well, you can’t paint a sunset.  It changes too fast.”  I couldn’t count the times I heard her repeat the sunset quote – and this was before her memory care days. I can only imagine a teacher must have made that remark in the one art class my mother took in her entire life. I wonder if her teacher would be stunned to know what an indelible impression she made on one of her students. If Mom found a phrase she liked, she clung to it.

    The next thought that came to me was we couldn’t walk off into sunsets either, and you can quote me.

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

    When I lived in Texas on Worsham Street from 2010 – 2014, I loved late afternoons as the sun began to signal day’s end while it slowly sank toward the western horizon. I often took a walk on a road one street behind our home called Old Plantersville Road because the best views of sunset were from the wide open spaces of the pastures along the road. This particular walk was in July, 2013 – I can still smile at my mother’s phrase, and I can still see those sunsets that took my breath away.

  • something old, something new – something special

    something old, something new – something special


    I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I doubt I deserved my friends. –Walt Whitman. This is a story about a friendship that lasted more than sixty years. My Aunt Lucille passed away ten years ago on March 21, 2013 – eight days after I  originally posted this piece about her and her friend Jan. 

    Yesterday I visited with my favorite Aunt Lucille who lives in Beaumont which is ninety-nine miles east of Montgomery on Texas Highway 105. I always look forward to my visits with her. Lucy refuses to give up her independent living apartment in a retirement community that offers assisted living and other higher levels of care for which she would qualify. Instead, she keeps her mind active with crossword puzzles and other word games in the daily newspaper. Her knowledge of current events acquired through the TV and conversations is as good as it gets. She pushes herself out of bed, showers, dresses and puts on makeup every day.

    My aunt Lucy will be ninety-three years old in May and has a list of ailments plus a personal pharmacy to treat them. A recent setback makes movement even more difficult for her, but she makes a determined effort to rejoin her friends at their reserved dinner table downstairs almost every evening. It’s a long walk from her apartment on the third floor to the lobby of the next building for meals. Trust me.

    Yesterday she told me one of her friends was coming by this afternoon for a visit. I recognized the name because she had talked about Jan for as long as I could remember so I decided to crash the party. She told me Jan was recovering from a stroke and her caregiver would be bringing her by. When Jan arrived promptly at two o’clock, Lucy got up from the sofa in the living room and pushed her walker toward Jan’s. When they met in the middle of the room, they both smiled and hugged each other with genuine joy on their faces. After introductions all round, we sat down to talk.

    Lucy and Jan met in 1953 when they both lived with their husbands in an apartment complex in Beaumont. They first talked when they were outdoors hanging clothes on the clothesline behind their apartment building. Both women were new to Beaumont – Jan’s daughter was born in the spring before Lucy’s was born in October that year. They were new mothers who quickly became new friends. Their husbands luckily liked each other, too which meant the couples got together often. Lucy’s husband Jay died in 1979 while Jan and her husband Otis shared a sixty-fifth wedding anniversary before his recent death.

    What struck me as I listened to them talk about their families, about what was going on in their lives now was how remarkable it must be to have a friendship that stretches across sixty years of change and challenges. Their bond survived everything life threw at them. Hot and cold seasons came and went for six decades, but their loyalty to each other never got too hot to go up in flames or too cold to freeze and wither away.

    In a separate happening this week I was reminded of friendships I’ve lost in the past years along with the pain that accompanies losing them. We are a mobile society; our moving parts rarely stay in the same place for very long. We change our homes, our jobs and the people in our lives that go with them. Sometimes we just change the people in our lives. For Lucy and Jan, however, the new became old over sixty years – but always remained special. Their story of friendship is a remarkable one I continue to salute today.

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

    Ten years after her death, I still miss my Aunt Lucille. Thankfully her daughter Melissa and I continue to maintain a family connection I cherish.

  • passing the torch at the beach

    passing the torch at the beach


    Let the word go forth from this time
    and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed
    to a new generation of Americans.”
    — John F. Kennedy, January 20, 1961, Inauguration Day

    (l. to r.) 3 year old Ella and her Nana, 5 year old Collins and her Kitty

    friends in the water

    friends on dry land

    Let’s blow this popsicle stand

    Grandma Camp at Folly Beach, South Carolina

    all photos courtesy of our designated photographer Nekki

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

    Slava Ukraini. For the children.

  • You Don’t Have to Break Up to Wallow (from Four Ticket Ride)

    You Don’t Have to Break Up to Wallow (from Four Ticket Ride)


    Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life made its Netflix debut over the Thanksgiving weekend with much fanfare, hoopla and hype as the three leading actresses appeared on every talk show under the sun to promote the four-part mini-series that was supposed to be a panacea for the yearnings of a major contingent of followers who wanted more from the Gilmore women of Stars Hollow and Hartford. The original American TV comedy series ran for seven seasons from 2000 to 2007, was apparently quite popular, and still missed by many.

    Pretty and I were not Gilmore Girls watchers in those first runs; perhaps because we were younger, our relationship was newer, our social life was busier, we were watching Frasier re-runs… or something else I can’t remember. Whatever the reasons, we missed it the first time around. But since we are now seasoned Netflix subscribers and recently finished the gazillion-episode BBC series Doc Martin  and needed a new diversion, we decided to give the Gilmore Girls a whirl.

    We recently started with the first season and are now prepared to spend the rest of our lives watching Loralei and Rory get daily coffee fixes at Luke’s coffee shop because each of the early years had at least a hundred episodes per season. Luckily, we found ourselves growing fond of the characters as we usually do when the writing is good and the actors as good as the script.

    For example, in one of the first season’s episodes this week I was disappointed when teenage Rory’s first true love, Dean the grocery store bag boy, dumped her. Such a cute, sweet boy – young love blossomed, bloomed, bleeped, fizzled, done. And on their three-month anniversary, too. Sigh. What to do? Talk to Mom.

    Mom’s (Lorelei’s) advice to her teenage daughter was priceless: wallow. That’s right. Wallow. Stay in your pajamas all day while you eat pizza and ice cream…don’t put on makeup…don’t shave your legs…sit in a dark room watching old movies like Love Story, An Affair to Remember, Ishtar, Old Yeller and have a good cry. Wallow the day away.

    What’s really amazing about this advice is I’ve been wallowing minus the crying part and old movies for years without realizing it; my wallowing has nothing at all to do with my love life. I was born to wallow, and then I had a relapse when I had a real job that required getting out of bed, applying Clinique makeup every morning after my shower, spending a fortune on perms and color to give my straight-as-a-board graying hair curls and blondeness,  getting dressed in appropriate business attire, commuting long distances to an office where I sat in front of a computer screen looking at numbers all day while agonizing over the financial decisions my clients were wrestling with…all in all, a relapse that lasted 40 years.

    But now, I have reclaimed my roots (the silver ones, too), and I wallow almost each day. Some days I never get out of my pajamas, my toothpaste gets more use than my bath soap, I gave up shaving my legs for Lent and didn’t resurrect it for Easter, I only wear makeup for date nights, and my straight short white hair qualifies for the “man’s haircut rate” with my hair stylist.  The longest commute I have is from my upstairs office to the kitchen downstairs. Life is good.

    Writing is the perfect career for wallowing. If Pretty asks me what I’ve been doing when she comes home from surveying her antique empire and finds me still in my pajamas, I can say Oh, I’ve been writing all day – which could or could not be exactly true. Unless you count watching In the Heat of the Night as research. (Ishtar, no thanks.)

    Today is New Year’s Eve, the last day of 2016, the day when many of us will be making our resolutions for 2017. I have started my list with the same one I’ve started with for the past 40 years: I need to lose 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35 pounds this year. My, how time flies.

    Hm. I never get past that first one.

    If you are making your list and checking it twice, add a day to wallow once a month. You don’t need to break up a relationship to do it – simply indulge and wallow. Indulge. Wallow. Enjoy.

    Pretty and I wish you a Happy New Year from our home at Casa de Canterbury to yours wherever you are in cyberspace around the world – stay safe, and we’ll look forward to having you hang with us in 2017!

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

    In 2017 Pretty and I moved from our two-story Casa de Canterbury in downtown Columbia across the Gervais Street Bridge over the Congaree River to our one-story Casa de Cardinal in West Columbia, fifteen minutes away. Happily, many of our friends in cyberspace made the move with us. And yes, to answer your question, I do still wallow but in the intervening years I read something about the importance of getting dressed every day even if you work from home, so I have given up wallowing in pajamas. The good news is it’s possible to wallow in street clothes. In April of 2021 when I turned 75 years old I finally followed through on a Birthday Eve resolution to lose 50 pounds and have kept it off for two years. In July of 2023 it’s kinda fun to think about New Year’s Eve temperatures and using the oppressive heat as an excuse to wallow. Give it a whirl.