I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Humor

  • Takin’ Any Comfort That I Can


    I’ve been too long in the wind, too long in the rain,

    Takin’ any comfort that I can.

    Lookin’ back and longin’ for the freedom of my chains

    and lying in your loving arms again.

    ——  Kris Kristofferson

    For the past few days I’ve been haunted by these lyrics and of course I couldn’t remember the third line exactly so I researched the words on the infallible source of all information: my computer.   It knows everything and I am always curious about HOW it knows everything but then I accept its wisdom and move on.  For example, I discovered that Kris Kristofferson wrote the song and recorded it with Rita Coolidge.  I wasn’t surprised really because Kris is a wonderful lyricist and sang with a number of women through the years.   I was totally surprised, though, at the list of artists who had recorded the Loving Arms ballad.   Olivia Newton-John.  Dobie Gray.  Glen Campbell.  Mr. Presley himself.  Kenny Rogers.   And more recently, the Dixie Chicks.  I was also stunned to learn that I can send the tune to my cell phone as a ringtone.   I’ll pass on that opportunity for now.

    I digress.  It’s common for the words of a country music song to occupy my mind for  several days.  I like country music.  I listen to country music when I’m driving around in my old Dodge Dakota pickup by myself.  When I’m in Texas, I typically leave the kitchen radio set to the country legends station in Houston and turn the radio on as soon as I get up in the morning– right before I pop the top of my first Diet Coke of the day.   I turn it off late in the evening and the little click the radio makes is my own version of Taps.

    I digress further.  I tried today to reflect on the words and why I had the song in my head in a kind of loop.   I’ve been too long in the wind, too long in the rain.   Over and over again I sing it.   Sometimes I even sing out loud, but mostly it’s inside.   Were those the lines that mattered?   Was that the secret code?   Nope.  No more suspense.  No more digression.   The key word is comfort.   Takin’ any comfort that I can.  I love the word Comfort.  You can have your words Solace and Console and Ease and Reassure if you want to.   Give me Comfort.   Seriously, give me comfort.  Give us all comfort.

    Blessed are those that mourn, for they shall be comforted.  I’m not too sure about this beatitude, but I’ll let it slide because I’d like to believe it.   All of us who mourn shall be comforted.  Our frontage road of grief will slowly merge into the passing lanes of optimism and hope if we are willing to pay the toll required to enter.  We pay a price for the passing lanes that make our travels easier as we watch our grief fade away in the rear-view mirror, IF we are fortunate enough to have the resources within ourselves to cover the costs.

    Obviously I have recently been on vacation in the northeastern part of the United States where I spent too much time and money on tollways.

    And now I know the third line of the song perfectly.  Lookin’ back and longin’ for the freedom of my chains.  What a great line it is, too, but that’s a subject for another story and I’ll let you ponder it on your own  while I say good night and take my comfort in two loving arms again.

    P.S. This was originally posted last August, and I find myself once again preoccupied with the need for comfort after the loss last week of my aunt who was one of the most important women in my life.  She was the last intimate connection to a generation in my family that represented the best of my childhood recollections and yet became a close friend in my adult years.  I was lucky – really lucky – to spend more time with her in the last year than I had been with her in the previous forty.  We had a good time together.  We laughed a lot.

    Mostly, though, I will miss her love of my writing.  She wanted to read every word I wrote and always said it was wonderful.  Each time one of my stories failed to win the money prize, she said it would happen next time.  She believed in me and my stories and loved me unconditionally.   It is difficult to say goodbye.  Instead, I will say good night to my favorite aunt from her favorite niece.

  • Sidetracked


    Yes,  I have totally gone off the tracks with my Songs of the Show Boat series.   I will get back to the songs because I enjoy the memories they evoke, but I researched a couple of blackface vaudevillians who were regulars on the radio show and I was uncomfortable about these two characters of Molasses and January and their connection to De Camptown Races by Stephen Foster.   The thing is I remembered “talent” shows in the small rural East Texas town where I grew up and recalled the popular blackface performers in the school auditorium and then I cringed and then I was horrified and then I gave up on trying to write about these two guys entirely.   Call me a coward.

    Never underestimate the heart of a champion is a phrase I heard this week from an NBC Olympic commentator, but for the rest of us mortals the struggle for courage is ongoing and asks us to stand up not once, not twice, not every four years – but each time we encounter prejudice and wrongdoing in any form for as long as we live.   The insidious nature of wrongs against each other requires our constant vigilance lest we give in to letting the voices of hate rant and rave around us without a word of protest.

    Faith, focus, finish.   These words are the training mantra for Manteo Mitchell from Cullowhee, North Carolina who broke his leg while running in the first leg of the men’s 4×400 meter relay preliminaries today in London.  He continued to run for the half a lap he had to finish after he felt the break.   I found this to be a remarkable effort regardless of how we define faith, but how do we sustain our focus and finish a race that lasts a lifetime instead of a lap?

    As you can see, I’ve watched too many Games of the XXX Olympiad for the last two weeks and the stories of the athletes inspire me and always remind me of the power of humans to overcome incredible adversity to go for the gold.   The theater for us won’t be as spectacular as the London games.   As a matter of fact, we may be at the grocery store or tailgating with friends before a football game this fall or maybe choosing a place to go for a chikin’ sandwich.  Regardless, it’s our chance to make a difference that is as game-changing as the gold medal is for the athletes who win in London this summer.   Game on.

  • Songs Of The Show Boat – Oh My Darling Clementine


    “Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine, you are lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry Clementine.”

    A radio favorite on the Maxwell House Show Boat in the 1930s, Oh My Darling Clementine is attributed to one Percy Montrose (1884) but this American western folk ballad had questionable origins and a variety of lyrics.  The Show Boat Four, a male quartet  plus piano, had a soloist sing each of the four verses they used in their arrangement with the quartet chiming in with harmony on the chorus.

    The Show Boat Four

    The male quartet complete with appropriate Maxwell House coffee cups included from left to right Randolph (Tubby) Weyant, Harold R. “Scrappy” Lambert, Leonard Stokes and Bob Moody.  At the piano is Kenneth Christie who also handled arrangements for the four.  According to Songs of the Show Boat – A Collection of Favorite Songs That Never Grow Old, Tubby Weyant was first tenor and began his career as a soloist in a New York church.   Scrappy Lambert was second tenor and started his musical professional efforts by organizing his own jazz orchestra while he was attending Rutgers University.   Leonard Stokes was the baritone in the group and worked his way through the University of Missouri as a singing instructor.  The bass, Bob Moody, graduated from “Pathe ‘shorts’ to concert appearances.”   Ken Christie got started by playing tuba in a high school band.   Blow, baby, blow.   The most popular of the four, Scrappy Lambert,  was a backup singer for many orchestras of the 1920s and 30s and was one of the most prolific vocalists of that time according to radio historian David Lobosco.

    In a cavern in a canyon, excavating for a mine, Dwelt a miner, forty-nin-er, and his daughter Clementine.

    I definitely knew the chorus of My Darling Clementine and could sing it without skipping a word or note even though I missed the Show Boat quartet’s radio rendition.  On the other hand,  verse one I’d need a little help from my friends to be sure of the lyrics, but I would have recognized them without a doubt.   Frankly, the other three verses of Clementine floored me.

          Light she was and like a fairy and her shoes were number nine,  herring boxes without topses, sandals were for Clementine.  (Verse 2)

    Drove she ducklings to the water, ev’ry morning just at nine, hit her head a-gainst a splinter, fell into the foaming brine.  (Verse 3)

    Ruby lips above the water. blowing bubbles soft and fine.  Alas for me, I was no swimmer, so I lost my Clementine.  (Verse 4)

    Somehow in my mind the chorus and verse one conjured up images of a loved one lost.   I could go with a father who lost his daughter, I think, but my instinct was to just sing the chorus and in my own romantic storytelling I pictured a sweetheart separated forever from her one true love.   You are lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry Clementine.   Think poor man’s version of the final scene in Casablanca.   Here’s looking at you, Clementine.

    At any rate, in the Show Boat song Clementine was not a dainty heroine.   She wore size nine sandals.  I put that in the category of too much information.  Also,  I don’t know how anyone could make sandals out of herring boxes, but then as the old saying goes Necessity is the mother of invention.  Score Clementine high on the creativity scale and also off the charts on kindness for hustling the little ducklings down to the water every morning.   And then deduct points for going too close to the water when she clearly can’t swim.   She hits her head against a splinter which must be the biggest splinter in the world because it knocks her into the water and we see in verse four that she drowns for lack of a lifeguard.   I have to say I never learned these verses.

    The good news is the legend of Clementine lived on.  Luckily, alternative lyrics were created and the mystique of her melody became the theme song in the sound track of John Ford’s 1946 classic western My Darling Clementine starring Linda Darnell in the title role.   No mention was made of her shoe size or any ducklings in the film.

    In the rock ‘n roll years of the 1950s and 60s Bobby Darin and Jan and Dean created their own Clementine tunes and more recently in the 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Kate Winslet’s name is Clementine and she isn’t happy about it.

    I have gone over the deep end and must come back so I will close with this alternative stanza I found among the ruins of countless verses never sung by The Show Boat Four (plus piano).

    Now you kids may learn the moral of this little tale of mine, Artificial respiration would have saved my Clementine.

  • Looking For Simpler Times In Simpler Times


    Songs of the Show Boat

    Copyright 1935, G.F.Corp.

    In the year 1931 the United States was experiencing one of the most painful economic downturns of its relatively young history.   The Great Depression as it came to be known by economists and politicians and academics was in full ramped-up destruction mode in a period of high unemployment with as many as one in four people out of work, continuous bickering among the country’s leadership to determine the best road to recovery and a flood  of fear among the general population that money was not safe anywhere since they witnessed the failure of 2,294 banks in that particular year.   Alas, no bailouts.   The European credit structure collapsed, and the American Federal Reserve raised interest rates in an effort to stop the large whooshing sound of Europe’s loans, investments in the U. S. economy and gold  in the U.S. banks being sucked back across The Pond.   Rising interest rates meant a larger cycle of despair for individuals and small businesses, and things went from bad to worse.   Could anyone save the day, or at least make the day more tolerable?

    A new hero rode bravely on the waves of air to produce sounds for the struggling masses and it was fondly known as Radio.   For family entertainment and fun on the cheap, radio was the way to go.  RCA and CBS and NBC were born and became household names through the creative genius of the men who founded the companies.   The evolution of radio programming was swift and the dynamics ever changing.   Popularity fades as often as the wind changes its course, and the innovators in the business began to know their audience and what they wanted.

    The Maxwell House Show Boat premiered in 1931 as a Thursday night prime time NBC radio show and was a big hit for the coffee company and the network.  From 1933 – 1935 it was the most popular show on the air.   The secret to its succeessful run?   Elizabeth McLeod writes about the show in her article Radio’s Forgotten Years – Tuning Thru the Great Depression.   “The entire tone of the program was redolent of cotton blossoms and magnolia, having little to do with the grit and grime of Depression America…the Show Boat rode a river of sentimentality in a Depression Era version of nostalgia for simpler times of the Old South…”

    Captain Henry, Himself

    Frank McIntyre was a famous Broadway star

    and the skipper of the Show Boat

     In the Word from Captain Henry which was the foreward of the Songs of the Show Boat he revealed how he envisioned the collection of songs for the book.   “You know, there’s somethin’ about the old river that makes you want to sing.   It sings a song itself, you see, all th’ time…an’ the folks who live along its banks are singin’ all th’ time too, mostly.   So we’ve been a-collectin’ this list of the favorite tunes they sing, and one day Lanny said, ‘Captain Henry, why don’t we have these songs printed, and make it possible for our friends who listen in every week to have them?’  And so–here they are!   They’re our favorites, and, I reckon, they’re the favorites of most every one.  They’re comin’ to you with th’ best wishes of all of us aboard the Maxwell House Show Boat.”

    And now they are coming to you with my best wishes along with Captain Henry and the rest of his gang.  Music was an important part of my childhood and I remember my mother playing an old black upright piano with yellow keys  in our living room as my daddy and I sang while my grandmother was the audience.    I never heard Captain Henry or the radio variety show he made famous, but I do know these songs Daddy and I sang with gusto while Mama played as only she could.  My mom was an extraordinary piano player who could make those old yellow keys sparkle.   Maybe she did hear Captain Henry on the radio when she was a little girl because she taught me most of these songs which I can still sing – but with much less gusto.

    Stay tuned…

  • Click And Clink – Happy New Year!!


    Open a bottle of your favorite champagne and get out your most festive flutes and share a toast with me today wherever you are.   To my cyber space followers/friends from the beaches of South Carolina to the rural parts of Way East Texas to my bi-stateual bases in Columbia, South Carolina and Montgomery, Texas to faraway places like San Francisco, California to Rogers, Arkansas to Warsaw, Indiana to Karachi, Pakistan to somewhere in France because your primary language is French but you didn’t list a town so I don’t really know where you are –  to not too terribly faraway places like College Station, San Leon and Richmond, Texas – here’s looking at all of you and thanks for looking at my words with me for the past year.   I’m clinking you right now with my own personal glass of champagne.

    I took a trip down memory lane this morning and decided to make an Author’s Choice of my favorite posts from the past twelve months we’ve been together.   If you’d like to pick your own, I’d love to hear from you to get a reader’s perspective.   Click and Pick, we’ll call it.  Click on Archives and Pick a favorite.  Surprise me…here goes my list:

    March 09, 2012  Post Cards From The Heart – Bessie and Florence?

    Febuary 14. 2012  The Photo Finish

    January 17, 2012   I Shoulda Been A Cowboy

    January 24, 2012   Old Plantersville Road

    August 25, 2011   It’s Only Paper – Confessions Of A Financial Advisor

    September 26, 2011   Sallie and Chance – An Unusual Love Story

    December 16, 2011   Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh – A Christmas Story for the 21st Century

    When I checked out at the local grocery store this morning, the young African American woman who was the checker said with a trace of sarcasm, “Hmmm….bread, bacon and bubbly…now that’s a nice combination for you.”  And I laughed with her as I imagined her picturing me frying the bacon for a BLT and then popping the cork on the beautiful inexpensive bottle of champagne to go with my sandwich.  I’m sure  she was entertained for a few minutes.

    So Happy New Year!  We’re off to a roaring start because my book I’ll Call It Like I See It – A Lesbian Speaks Out will be available October 1st!!!   Details will be posted as we get closer to the publication date…

    Thank you so much to all of you who have followed my happenings, musings, reflections and downright opinionating.   I’m clinking you again.