I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Slice of Life

  • 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.

  • The Tahoe Ten

    The Tahoe Ten


    The Tahoe Ten: East meets West for four days of fun and frivolity

    at beautiful Lake Tahoe

    (l. to r.) Debra, Pretty, me, Audrey, Jo Ann, Angie, Chris, Joan, Nekki, Francie

    Last week our friends Nekki and Francie placed Pretty and me on another American Airlines jet for our second (remember our first trip was to France) 2023 vacation requiring air travel thanks to their miles generosity – this time flying across the country from South Carolina to the California/Nevada border in Lake Tahoe where we met our old California friends Audrey and Debra we hadn’t seen in more than a dozen years, made new California friends Joan, Angie, Chris and Jo Ann we hoped we didn’t have to wait another twelve years to see again. I have christened us The Tahoe Ten.

    sign in kitchen in our lovely rental home – ok, this made me nervous

    Joan (packing necessities) arranged this fabulous trip for us!

    Francie had a tendency to supervise while Jo Ann remained cheerful, always helpful

    Angie admires Debra’s parasol for boating excursion on Lake Tahoe

    All Aboard!!

    Meanwhile, back on land…

    nighttime fun and games included Trivial Pursuit and shooting pool

    South Carolina Slo and California Chris big winners for very long game of 8-ball

    Pretty and me with Lake Tahoe and Sierra Mountains in background…

    on an unforgettable drive to Fallen Leaf Lake

    Audrey at Fallen Leaf post office

    (before our next stop at Harrah’s later that afternoon)

    special thanks to Jo Ann and Chris for poker education!

    sadly, Nekki’s luggage made trip to Phoenix instead of Sacramento

    (so she was seen wearing Pretty’s night gown)

    she and Francie were all smiles when Nekki’s luggage finally arrived

    all good things have to come to an end, but as Joan found out at the airport…

    Francie the OG Prankster can’t let a trip go by without somthing to remember her for

    As my mother used to say, this will be a Memory Maker, and I couldn’t have said it better myself. Thankfully no bears came through the kitchen window in our lovely mountain house, but we couldn’t leave without hugging the one that greeted us as we said farewell to The Tahoe Ten. If laughter was any indication, our trip was also a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10. We loved being with everyone – both old and new friends. East met West with great success!

  • in case you missed it

    in case you missed it


    On Thursday, August 03, 2023 ABC News (and every other news organization in the world) reported that former President Donald J. Trump has been indicted in the special counsel’s investigation into his alleged plot to overthrow the 2020 election. Trump has been charged by Special Counsel Jack Smith with four counts: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding and conspiracy against rights.

    “Despite having lost, the defendant was determined to remain in power. So for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and the defendant knew that they were false,” the indictment said.

    I’m no mathematician, but my count is two years and nearly seven months for the indictment to be filed against Trump since the Insurrection on January 06, 2021. What have those busy bees at the Justice Department been up to during that considerable amount of time for this indictment to be issued? Hm. Let’s see. For one thing they’ve been tallying the actual losses to the buildings and grounds as well as costs to the City of Washington Police as of October 14, 2022: $2,881,360.20 per the 30-month report filed by the US Department of Justice.

    This report goes on to say “More than 1,069 defendants have been charged across all 50 states and the District of Columbia… Approximately 561 federal defendants have had their cases adjudicated and received sentences for their criminal activity on Jan. 6. Approximately 335 have been sentenced to periods of incarceration. Approximately 119 defendants have been sentenced to a period of home detention, including approximately 19 who also were sentenced to a period of incarceration.”

    And yet, the person who was in my mind the instigator of the coup attempt to overthrow our democracy on January 06, 2021 has been playing golf and allegedly showing classified documents from his presidency to random guests at his estate in Mar-a-lago in Palm Beach, Florida for the past thirty months. The level of difficulty to indict a former president must be mind-boggling while charging social media influencer Kai Cenat with inciting a riot and unlawful assembly in Union Square in New York City on Friday August 4th., just one day after Trump’s arraignment on criminal charges, took fewer than twenty-four hours. Apples to oranges, you say? Most assuredly, but the wheels of justice moved at warp speed against Cenat while similar wheels must have spun out of control for Trump’s criminal behavior to be charged.

    I feel a sense of relief for Trump’s day of reckoning, his own judgment day to be on somebody’s calendar somewhere. Big wheel of justice keep on turning, please, but kick it into high gear. This guy is running for re-election in 2024.

  • 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.