I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Personal

  • Hurricane Matthew – Shake, Rattle and Roll


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    And stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

     

  • The Race is On – And the Winner Loses All


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

    Heartaches are going to the inside.

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

    The race is on and it looks like Heartaches.

    And the winner loses all.

    written by Don Rollins 

    immortalized by George Jones

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

  • Texas Beer Joints – and the Undecided


    When I was a little tomboy growing up in southeast Texas, I had dreams of one day – sometime somewhere – being able to go to a beer joint. My family was Southern Baptist and the very mention of an adult alcoholic beverage would send my mother into horrible face contortions and very loud condemnations of beer and beer drinkers. Beer joints were the epitome of evil. Naturally her hyperbole aroused my curiosity.

    My mother’s aunts, my grandmother’s German sisters, worshiped at the Church of the Blessed Beer Joint, however, and I loved to listen to their tales when they came from Bright Lights, Big City Houston to visit us in No Lights, Tiny Town Richards. They were a personal trip for me…and a glimpse of possibilities for me down the road.

    The road did bring me to my share of beer joints in my adult life, although I confess I never shared the same enthusiasm for them as my Aunt Dessie and Aunt Selma did. Most of the ones I went to when I got old enough were drab, dingy, smoke-filled rooms with a jukebox, a few old tables and a bar with stools too tall for me to belly up to easily. I loved the jukebox more than the taste of the Lone Star beer.

    As the fickle finger of fate would have it, Teresa and I moved back to Texas in 2010 and bought a home on Worsham Street in Montgomery, Texas – only 18 miles from Richards. We drove many times to visit my family in the Fairview Cemetery outside of Richards and on one of those drives up Highway 105  I discovered the Texas beer joint of my childhood dreams in the little town of Dobbin. Some dreams really do come true!

    023

    We stopped for the burgers and bbq

    021

    020

    Best burgers EVER

    007

    We waited in the bar which the owner Bobby Holder built himself – took him three years to finish – perfection

    014

    A little something for everyone

    012

    Thirst quencher

    017

    Old family pictures on ancient organ

    016

    Bobby as a little boy

    022

    All in all, Holder’s had delicious food, and had I been younger, I would have come back for the night life…or maybe not. My Texas beer joint dreams had come true without the first sip of a Lone Star.

    And finally, here’s a wall hanging at Holder’s that I thought of yesterday after the presidential debate on Monday night. I talked to my friend Carmen about the debate, and she said many of her friends weren’t going to vote this year…or were undecided…

    011

    And there you have it.

     

  • Yikes! The Presidential Debates are Coming! RUDE – Call Security!


    The campaign slogan for one of the Presidential candidates in the debate that night was It’s experience that counts to which the other candidate responded  I’m not satisfied with the way things are… I think we can do a better job.

    “A good record is never to stand on, but sometimes it can be used to build on,” said the older man with skin so white he looked pasty to the television viewing audience.

    “I want to say these are the years when the tide came in for America – not when it rolled out,” said the cool confident handsome younger man.

    I was fourteen years old in September, 1960 when the first presidential debates aired on television and radio by the only three networks operating at the time: NBC, CBS and ABC. I’d like to say I have fond memories of the debate – or really any memories of the debate – but I must have filed them in a safe place where they are currently unavailable for recall so after watching Bon Qui Qui at the King Burger again today for the umpteenth time because that youtube video guarantees me a good laugh, I inexplicably clicked on the video of the initial Kennedy/Nixon presidential debate.

    Now why would I connect Bon Qui Qui to presidential debates…who knows…perhaps because her hilarious Rude – call Security lines from that routine jump-started my brain to the  images I’m already dreading of the first debate of the 2016 presidential campaign which is coming up in prime time Monday night. My approach/avoidance nerves are already jangling at the prospect of a forum that will be less than inspirational. Rude – call security.  Play nice, please.

    Richard Nixon was the Republican Vice President of the United States when he decided to run for President the first time in 1960.  He had served under President Dwight Eisenhower for seven and a half years and his campaign slogan was It’s Experience That Counts. In the course of the first debate that evening in September, 1960  he touted his contributions to the Eisenhower administration and powerfully argued their two terms in office had been successful ones for the nation.

    John Fitzgerald Kennedy was a Senator from Massachusetts when he entered the presidential race in 1960 and the televised debate was a huge opportunity to introduce himself to a country that didn’t really know much about him other than his religion was Catholic and he was very young. In his first eight minutes of television time, he defined himself as the candidate of change with a skilled oratorical style reminiscent of a Baptist revival preacher about to give an altar call.

    Following Senator Kennedy’s passionate I’m not satisfied rhetoric in his opening remarks, Nixon agreed that both candidates wanted to see the country moving forward but their disagreement was in the means to make that happen. One of the biggest disagreements was the role of the federal government in dealing with issues such as  farming supplements, health care for an aging population, balanced budgets,  income taxes, labor unions and a host of other problems. Nixon implied the Democrats looked to the federal government for too many answers. “I don’t believe in big government, but I do believe in effective government action,” Senator Kennedy argued.

    The first debate was supposedly on domestic issues, but both candidates linked domestic problems to foreign affairs.  Senator Kennedy’s boogeymen were Soviet Premier Khrushchev and the Chinese Communists, and his warning If the United States fail, then the whole cause of freedom fails was a strong statement advocating global leadership for America.

    Unfortunately for Vice President Nixon, the television cameras were not kind to him. While the radio listeners subsequently declared Nixon to be the winner of the first debate, television viewers gave the nod to Kennedy.  One historian said that Nixon had hurt his knee getting out of a taxi before going  into the debate and was in a great deal of pain throughout the debate which probably didn’t help his onstage look.

    His pale skin was due to refusing any makeup, and he didn’t win points when he kept glancing at a clock on a wall in the room which made it appear that his eyes were shifty and he was unfocused on the topics. All in all, Richard Nixon had poor optics and poorer preparation for television.

    It wasn’t Nixon’s eyes or Kennedy’s delivery that struck me most about these debates of fifty-six years ago, however.  No, what gobsmacked me was how little the campaign themes have differed through the years but how much the style of the debates has taken a flying leap out of control to the dark side.  Experience versus change. That is still the language of today’s candidates, although the party roles are reversed from the 1960 campaign.

    I have watched presidential debates since 1976 with the same passion and critiques I usually reserve for the Grand Slam tennis tournaments. I don’t miss them, and ordinarily I would be ecstatic at the opportunity to watch the first female presidential candidate participate in the debate.  Yet, the debate style has gotten so off the grid from political issues to personal attacks I fear the worst. Most def…which leads me to a second Bon Qui Qui quote from her King Burger routine as a counter consultant for a major fast food chain: Have it your way, but don’t go crazy.

    Please, for all of our sake Monday night. Have it your way, but don’t go crazy… or we might have to say Rude – call Security and switch to Monday Night Football.

     

  • Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa – Let Drew James Come Over


    I don’t know about your situation, but I already have several well-documented (see my memoirs) relationship failures that had D-i-s-a-s-t-e-r written all over them before I ever willingly waded into the eye of a hurricane.  When I look back on these women and the circumstances surrounding our break-ups, I like to say to myself well yes, you were a mess and they were a mess and everything was so messy- but try to remember you were young. As if my being young was the rationale for selfish behavior that hurt the people I loved. Mea culpa, mea culpa…translates as through my fault…and it usually was.

    Mistakes have never been reserved for the young – it’s quite possible to make them in mid-life with the same vigor and recklessness we did when we were young. Repeating mistakes, developing patterns can be a breeze  to recognize and understand when you reflect on them forty years later sitting on a sofa in a therapist’s office. They weren’t hard to make at all when I focused on my pursuit of happiness with the fervor of a terrier that had a whiff of a delectable mole.

    When I was fifty-five years old, I began a new relationship with a woman I had known and admired for eight years. She was a good friend and a wonderful activist in the growing LGBT community in Columbia during the early 1990s. We had worked toward the same goals and shared the passion that all activists share for their causes. We also shared a love of sports – particularly the University of South Carolina Gamecocks who typically rewarded our dreams of glorious wins with crushing losses. In the midst of this passion for our teams and our causes, we eventually found a passion for each other.

    As the 21st century began, so did Teresa and I. We had both been in other long-term relationships that were winding down – our partners had also found fresh romantic interests with the new century. To her credit, T urged for a slower approach, to let things settle in before we settled down together. I remember making a grand dramatic gesture of tearing the months away from her calendar and telling her enough time had passed now. I was ready to move in with her. And so we did.

    One complication in our uncharted family beginning was T’s son Drew James. My previous three homes and the women who shared them with me had never included a partner with a child – much less a child who had just turned fifteen and was about to be exposed to a home life that would replace a young woman he adored  for nine years with an old woman he didn’t know well. It was a rocky start.

    We chose a home in an established subdivision I wasn’t familiar with, but T wanted to make sure we lived in the proper school district for Drew so he could maintain his high school friends and sports activities. He was the quarterback of the football team and a pitcher on the baseball team, and his mother wanted to be at every home game – but preferred to arrive after the start because her nerves were jangled watching him. I went with her to those games and finally convinced her to take a xanax to calm herself. My belief in the magic of pills is well-known, and T came to see the wisdom of one every now and then when the stress of having a son in competition was simply too much.

    I made many mistakes in the beginning in my eagerness to please T and my misguided attempts to be Drew’s friend.  The age difference between me and T was fourteen years, but the age difference between Drew and me was an eternity. We were both not what each other hoped we’d be, and my exasperation with teenage drama – yes, boys have drama, too – too often was a voice of frustration and anger and not the kind soothing one I imagined I’d have with a son. At times I wondered if I were the wicked stepmother.

    Yesterday my thirty-one-year-old step-son Drew James spoke at his paternal grandmother’s funeral. T and I were sitting with Drew’s mother-in-law Sissy who had a program and shared it with us. Drew hadn’t told his mother or me that he was taking part in the program so we were both surprised to see his name listed. And of course, his mother and I were worried.

    We needn’t have been. The tall handsome young man  who is our son spoke with tenderness and love and honesty about the grandmother who had given him refuge and a place under the stairs for  his toys in her home – a woman he obviously respected and appreciated for her constant support and loving care. How fortunate he was to have been so close to her from the time he had a memory until yesterday when he had to say goodbye. What a legacy she left for this grandson.

    Mea culpa, mea culpa – Red rover, Red rover – let Drew James come over.  And he has. We have met each other somewhere in the middle when he realized how much I loved his mother and when I understood how much she loved her son.  Drew and I became friends after years of altercations and sometimes even animosity. Both of us mellowed and discovered common ground – our love for Teresa. And that creates a bond which has been very good for us to find.

    Families today often come in mixed packages that aren’t very neatly wrapped… Drew’s father and his second wife  sitting on a bench together in the funeral parlor while his grandfather sat with his second wife sitting on a bench behind them at the funeral… two uncles and their ex-wives sitting with their children in the family section of the funeral home…the family united but with mixed emotions as the matriarch was laid to rest.

    Finally, to me, as Granny Selma used to say, I got to see some of my mistakes weren’t forever ones. Drew James stood upright yesterday and talked about his family with love and deep affection. I know he wasn’t talking about me, but I feel included and thrilled to know that my pursuit of happiness became a part of his.

    It’s an early Thanksgiving gift for me.