I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Humor

  • 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.

  • Big Money, Vanna


    Who let the money out of the bag?   Oh, you mean who let the cat out of the bag.   No, I mean who let the money out of the big ol’ US Guvmint Bag?   Ah, how much money are we talkin’ bout, Willis?   Gobs and gobs?

    Oh, yeah.   We’re talkin’ gobs and gobs and gazillions of gobs.   We’re talkin’ so much we don’t even know how many zeroes to put after it.   As a financial person in a former life, I should never read articles about money.   As a social justice activist and relative pacifist, I should rarely read articles about wars or health care.   And I should never ever EVER read an article that contains extensive information about government spending in the past fifty years.   Step away from the computer, O Person Who Reads With Forked Mind.

    For example, today I read that the Wall Street Bailout cost us $4.76 trillion dollars of which $1.54 trillion is floating around loose somewhere with no repayment in sight.   Zing went the strings of my wallet – and yours, too.  Coincidentally, or as luck would have it,  two nights ago I watched the movie Too Big to Fail and I advise against watching it unless you have a strong stomach.   The plot traces the origins of the economic disaster that began in 2008 and continues to plague our country today.   Snow White has two new Wall Street Dwarfs named Greedy and Thiefy and they run the Big Money, Vanna.

    Can I buy a vowel?   Indeed, and you can buy a couple of wars while you’re at it.   The smartest vowel to buy is an “A’ which is found in the words IrAq and AfghAnistAn.   Wow –  that’s cost you $122 billion dollars per year since 2001 and by the way we haven’t stopped spending and we didn’t count people cost, either.   Ouch…that A was expensive.

    Can I buy a Happy Vowel now because the “A” brought a frown to the unflappable Pat Sajak and the entire Audience, too.    Let’s see.  Yes, you may buy an “I” for the eIsenhower Interstate hIghway system that was built from 1956 to 1991 for  $484 billion and counting.   The Good News is  this vowel has generated $6 in revenue for every $1 in cost so that should make you happy as you drive merrily along your favorite Interstate Highway.  Yippee – this game is fun.   Big wheels keep on rollin’ and spinnin’, too.

    Okay.   One last spin of your big ol’ US Guvmint Bag Wheel…oops!      BANKRUPT.

    Don’t you just hate it when that happens?

  • Post Cards From The Heart – Lucia Leaves Home. The End.


    First comes love, then comes marriage.  Then comes Luke and Bessie pushing a baby carriage.   Lucia Catherine was the occupant of this particular baby carriage and she was the only child of their marriage.  Expectations for a Luke, Jr., turned happily into a Lucia somewhere between 1908 and 1916, the date of the first post card addressed to Miss Lucia Moore in our collection.

    Date Unknown

    Aunt Sadie give me this to send to your baby. This is me and Little Snookie on front. 

    from G (?)

    Date Unknown

    To Lucia Moore from Dorothy Parker

    December 21, 1922 

    I hope Old Santa will be good to you this Xmas and that you have a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year,  Allen & M.M.

    November 24, 1919

    Dear Little Lucia Catherine, I rec’d your pictures yesterday and they are as sweet and pretty as can be.  I am sure you are a fine little girl and your Mother and Papa are awfully proud you came to live with them.  My little Edna Mae is on the Mexican border with her Papa & Mother.  I’ll send her the picture and know she will think it is sweet.  Tell Mother I’ll write her a letter some day.    Miss Florence

    Among the cards kept by Bessie was a Thanksgiving post card sent from China, Texas in 1919 to her daughter Lucia.  The handwriting was tiny so all the words could fit the reverse of the holiday card, but Bessie recognized immediately the precise distinctive script of her special friend Florence.   After thirteen years of sporadic correspondence via the penny cards, Bessie would have known that writing even if the card had been unsigned.  China, Texas sounded a world away from Atlanta, Georgia.   Would she ever see her friend again?  If not, she wanted Florence to see pictures of Lucia.   Everyone said Lucia looked just like Bessie had looked when she was a little girl and Florence had told Bessie many years ago how beautiful she was.

    Miss Florence hadn’t married evidently and Bessie thought it was good she had a neice she loved.   Tell Mother I’ll write her a letter some day was a lifetime away from Florence’s  Will write you soon message to Bessie  in 1907 and Bessie understood the different destinies their lives had followed with a touch of…what?   Regret?   Relief?   Remorse?   Did she even know herself?

    The End As Of Today

    For the faithful readers who have followed the odyssey of the Moore family for almost three months now on the blog, I thank you for your patience as I took this blip on my personal radar writing screen for an experiment with historical fiction.   When my partner Teresa brought the picture post card album home from an estate sale at the end of February this year, I was fascinated with the pictures from the turn-of-the-century (twentieth, that is!) cards but had not a clue about the treasures I’d find in the words.  For me, words are worth a thousand pictures and these have not disappointed.   I wish I could share more of them with you, but I have literally hundreds of post cards and fear I have become too attached to them.

    The estate sale took place at a home in Columbia and I tagged along with Teresa when she went for a second look.   The house was a modest one in an older middle-class neighborhood not very far from our own home.  I could have walked there if I’d wanted to – which I didn’t.   While Teresa chatted away with her friend Shelley who was in charge of the estate sale, I wandered through the house to see what I could find without spending any money – which I didn’t.   I found an old Bible in a bedroom and opened it to the family section.   From your father, Luke P. Moore  read the inscription.   At the time I didn’t realize how close I would be to Mr. Moore and his family through their post cards in the next few months.

    I asked Shelley that night if she knew anything about the family who was leaving this home.   She said she didn’t know much except that it was an elderly woman in her late nineties who was moving into a nursing home because she couldn’t live alone any longer.   Not an uncommon occurrence these days, I thought, as I met Teresa in the kitchen.   She was making her final rounds and asked Shelley to hold several items for her before the sale actually started the following day.

    I remember seeing a little navy blue magnet in the shape of a sailing ship on the refrigerator that night as I left the kitchen.   I wish now I’d paid the 25 cents for it.   A tiny white flag had the name Lucia on it.   Lucia Catherine Moon, daughter of Luke and Bessie, was leaving her home and most of her possessions behind, including her mother’s treasured post card album entitled Greetings from Jamestown.    That’s okay, though.   Teresa brought it home to me.

  • The Photo Finish


    In 1965 when I was a freshman in college my parents bought their first home ever in Rosenberg, Texas, after almost twenty years of marriage.   My dad was the assistant superintendent of the local school district and my mother taught second grade in one of the elementary schools in the district.   Since I wasn’t living with them, I’m not sure how the decision was made to hire someone to help with cleaning the bigger new house, but when I was home for spring break, my mom introduced me to Viola who was hired for that purpose.   When I returned to stay the summer with my folks, Viola was gone.

    I wasn’t sure what happened to Viola but was so self- absorbed I didn’t really care.   Early in the summer Mom informed me we would have a new woman who was coming to work for us and encouraged me to keep the stereo at a lower volume level on the lady’s first visit.   I was in a Diana Ross and the Supremes phase and preferred the speakers to vibrate as I sang along with Diana but I obligingly lowered the level for our new help.

    I needn’t have bothered.   Willie Meta Flora stepped into our house and lives and rocked all of us for more than forty-five years.   She became my mother’s truest friend and supported her through the deaths of her mother, brother and two husbands.   She nursed my grandmother and my dad and uncle during their respective battles with mental illness, colon cancer and cerebral palsy.   She watched over and protected and loved and cared for my family as she did her own.   In many ways, we became her second family and she chose to keep us.

    Willie and my mom shared a compulsion for honesty and directness that somehow worked to keep them close through the good times and the hard times in both of their lives.  They were stubborn strong women and butted heads occasionally, but most of all, they laughed together.   Willie’s sense of humor and quick wit kept Mom on her toes and at the top of her own game in their talks.   They also shared a deep love for the same man, my dad.   In her own way, Willie loved my dad as much as Mom did, and my father loved her and loved being with her right back.    His death broke both their hearts.

    Although Willie kept her own apartment, she and Mom basically lived together in the years following the death of Mom’s second husband.   Mom planned her days around the time near dusk when Willie would be there to spend the night with her.   Willie became her lifeline to maintaining her independence, and the two of them grew older and crankier as time passed.   Willie and I talked on the phone frequently and she began to tell me she was worried about Mom’s safety and getting lost when she drove around town.    I dismissed her fears and ignored the signs of dementia until Mom’s 80th birthday when it became apparent she had major problems in everyday living.

    Not long afterwards, I was forced to make a choice about my mother’s long term care needs and opted to move her to a Memory Care Unit in a facility in Houston which was a thousand miles from my home in South Carolina.   Why not move her closer to me?   A good question with a complicated answer that included my trying to keep her available to Willie and her family who could drive Willie to see Mom.    If my mother could choose between visiting with me or seeing Willie, there was no contest.   I would always come in second.

    Mom will be 85 next month and struggles with the ongoing physical and mental battles associated with Alzheimer’s in her ultimate race towards death.   This past fall I moved her again to a different residence that is still in Texas but much closer to my second home which is also now in Texas.   Alas, she’s two hours farther from Willie  and Willie has only been able to visit her once since her move.

    Willie will be 81 next month.   She and Mom have the same birthday month, and now they have the same disease.   We don’t talk on the phone any more because she can’t form words I can understand.   When I visited her yesterday, she didn’t recognize me and was uncomfortable with getting up out of her bed, just as Mom is sometimes when I go to see her.   Willie’s five daughters and three granddaughters are coping with the same problems I’ve faced with Mom – trying to keep her comfortable in a safe environment.   They have the additional complications of differences of opinion about Willie’s care and what the environment should be .   I decided being an only child has a few advantages.

    When I think of the strength of these two women and their determination to rise above their inauspicious beginnings in an era when women weren’t valued for their strong wills, I feel a sense of admiration and respect and gratitude for the examples they’ve been for me as they both loved me in different ways.   And I am struck by the similarity of their conditions in their last days.   Leora, one of Willie’s daughters, told me she thought Mom and Willie just might end their race toward death in a tie.   I’m thinking it will be a photo finish.

     

    P.S. Willie Meta Flora died April 14, 2012 and Selma Louise Meadows died April 25, 2012.