When I was a little girl growing up in the 1950s in the small town of Richards, Texas, (pop. 500 counting dogs and chickens according to my granddaddy) the summers were hot, and entertainment depended on my imagination unless my fifty-something-year-old grandmother I called Ma intervened to drive us to someplace exotic like Crabbs Prairie, an even smaller community than Richards, where her people lived. My relatively young grandmother loved to drive, and I loved to ridewhile she regaled me with her stories about family and friends – the rides were always too short.
Pardon the summertime interruption with this favorite story of mine from my days growing up in Texas. Yesterday was my grandfather the barber’s birthday. He was born July 29, 1898, and died in October, 1987. To me and my Morris first cousins, he was the best man we ever knew.
my grandfather, George Patton Morris, holding me in 1946
“George, here comes Sheila for her shave,” said Old Man Tom Grissom, who was already in his favorite spot in the barbershop by the time I got there.
Ma, my grandmother who had been married to Barber George Morris for over forty years, said Tom Grissom ought to pay rent for all the time he spent sitting on that bench in the shop. Pa, my grandfather the barber, just laughed like he always did. He’d be charging rent to a lot of old men if he ever got started on that. The barbershop was a thriving business on Main Street in Richards, Texas. Main Street was the only paved street in Richards (Pop. 440), and Pa was the sole barber in the area. People drove from all over Grimes County to his out-of-the-way shop with one barber’s chair that was bought in the 1920s when he first opened. Waiting patrons and gossipy old men sat on two wooden benches.
Past the benches was a shoeshine stand that Pa used when somebody wanted shiny boots. Along the wall behind the barber’s chair were a long mirror and two shelves that held the glass display boxes. One of the boxes housed gleaming scissors, combs, and brushes for haircuts. The other held shaving mugs, razors, and Old Spice bottles for the shaves. Everything was spotless.
Pa was happy to see me. “Hey, sugar. You here for your shave?” he asked.
“I sure am, Barber Morris,” I replied in my most grownup customer voice. It was the summer after my second grade in school, and I loved to come to the barbershop. Sometimes I brought my play knife and sat on the porch outside the shop and whittled with the old men who lolled there for hours just talking and whittling. Other times, I had business with my grandfather.
Like today. Pa got out the little booster seat and put it in the barber’s chair so I could climb up on it. I was too small to sit in the chair without it.
“How about a haircut with your shave? That pretty blonde hair is getting too long for this summer heat,” he said.
“No, thanks, Pa. Mama always tells me when to get my hair cut,” I said. “Just a shave today.”
Old Man Tom Grissom nodded at this. “I sure wouldn’t be cutting that blonde hair without Selma knowing,” he said. “She’s mighty particular about things.”
“I appreciate your advice, Tom,” Pa said with a trace of annoyance. “But Sheila Rae and I are just having a conversation for fun. Nothing serious.”
Pa listened as Tom Grissom talked and talked and talked some more about delivering the mail that morning. Being the Richards rural-route carrier was hazardous, to hear him tell it: cows in the road to drive around, barking dogs chasing armadillos right in front of him. This was hard work, and then you had the heat! Why, he couldn’t keep his khaki uniform dry from all that sweat. Yes, sir, this was no job for the faint-hearted. And on and on.
Meanwhile, Pa had placed the thin white sheet over me and leaned the chair back just far enough to start to work. He lathered up the shaving cream in his mug with the brush and dabbed it on my face. I loved the smell of the shaving cream. He let that soak while he took the razor strop attached to the chair and swished it up and down slowly and methodically to get it just right. It didn’t matter to me that he was using the side without the blade. It made the same swishing noise.
Then he took the bladeless side of the razor and gave me the best shave ever. He was very careful to get every part of my face. He even pinched my nose so that he got the part between my mouth and nose just so. Pa was an artist with his razor and scissors. He put a warm wet white cotton laundered towel over my face and rubbed off the last of the shaving cream. It felt so clean. Finally, he took the Old Spice After-Shave and gave it a good shake, rubbed it on his hands, and then on my face and neck. Nothing beats the aroma of Old Spice.
Old Man Tom Grissom said, “Well, that ought to do you for a week or so, won’t it?”
“Yes,” I said. “Probably so. We’ll see.”
Pa gave me the worn yellow hand mirror that he gave to all his customers to inspect his handiwork. I studied my face thoughtfully.
“Well, how does it look to you?” he asked with a smile. “Time to pay up. That’ll be two bits for the shave. That’s with the favorite granddaughter discount.”
“Very good, Barber Morris. Much obliged.” I reached into my jeans pocket and brought out some play money coins and handed them to Pa.
Just about that time, Ma drove up and got out of her car. “George, what’s Sheila Rae doing in that chair?” she bristled.
Old Man Tom Grissom said, “Betha, Sheila Rae’s here for her shave.” Ma gave him a withering look and said, “Is your name George? Don’t you have any mail to deliver, or would that require removing yourself from that bench you warm every day?”
I got down from the barber’s chair and ran over to Ma and tried to reassure her that everything was all right. Ma looked at Pa and said this was just what she had been telling him the other night about encouraging me in all this foolishness.
“She shouldn’t be spending her summer hanging around this shop,” she said, looking accusingly at Pa, who said nothing.
“Ma, can I have a nickel to go get an ice cream cone at the drug store? Getting a shave makes me hungry.” Ma never said no to me, so I got my nickel and left. I walked across the street to Mr. McAfee’s drugstore and got my Blue Bell vanilla cone and headed home.
I saw Ma and Pa still in animated conversation at the shop.
Old Man Tom Grissom had gone home.
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Deep in the Heart: A Memoir of Love and Longing was published in 2007 when I was 61 years old. Much has changed in the past 18 years, but I continue to smile when I read this story of the little girl growing up in the 1950s in the tiny town of Richards, Texas. I can see her now walking the block on a red dirt road from the house where she lived to Main Street, not in any hurry but not dawdling like she did some time, on her way to town. Summertime meant no school, looking for things to do during the day for the only child whose few playmates might not be around, so her mother let her go to town to be entertained by her grandparents. Her mother’s mother worked in the general store as a clerk, so Sheila Rae could stop there for a hug and maybe a nickel for a candy bar unless her grandmother had customers in the store, or she could walk past the general store and the post office to the next small building that housed the barbershop owned by her grandfather on her daddy’s side. Someone once said to my father, “Glenn, you have such a happy child. She’s always smiling,” to which my daddy replied, “Why shouldn’t she be happy? Nobody ever tells her no.” When I wrote this book in 2007, I’m sure I didn’t fully understand what he meant by that remark. Now that my wife and I have two granddaughters, I totally get it.
In 2007 Red Letter Press published my first book Deep in the Heart: A Memoir of Love and Longing. The Vagina Dialogues was always one of my favorite stories in that collection. My mama was 19 years old when I was born. I loved her dearly, but that one day in a gynecologist’s office in Houston when I was 12 years old, well it’s summertime, it’s hot over here and there, and we could all use a chuckle…enjoy.
Glenn, I don’t know why you brought Sheila with us, Mama said again in her chilly tone. I really don’t think it’s a good idea to take our twelve-year- old daughter on this trip. Mama was sitting in her usual place in the front seat of the car in the middle next to Daddy.
She had on one of her nicest summer skirts with a starched white blouse and high heels. She had spent a long time fixing her short hair which was a recently altered shade of brown. She had dressed up for this visit to a new doctor in Houston who she had been referred to by our regular family doctor, Dr. Sanders.
I told you Selma, Daddy said mildly. She’ll be good company for me while you’re in with the gynecologist. Plus if you feel like it, we can go to a movie afterwards. No harm mixing in a little fun while we’re in Houston, is there?
Daddy looked very nice, although he hadn’t put on a tie. He wore a blue sports shirt and brown trousers nice enough to wear to work but no tie which was odd. He always wore a tie when he went to the school even in the summer when he was the only one working.
I guess not, she said. We do need to make a stop at the Bargain Gusher to look for school clothes, too. Neither one of us has a thing to wear to school this fall, and it starts in a few weeks. (Mama taught music in the elementary grades at the Richards public school where Daddy was the superintendent. I wished they both had different jobs.)
Oh no Mama, please, I said from the back seat. Not the Bargain Gusher today. I know you won’t feel like walking around in there when you’re so sick. Can’t we just go to the movies like Daddy says? I think it’s a western with Kirk Douglas. Please don’t make us go to that store.
Oh, for heaven’s sake. It’s not a torture chamber, she said. What in the world is wrong with you? She looked in the mirror to add more red lipstick.
I hate that store, I said. None of the other kids go there to get their clothes. It looks like an Army Surplus store. I was going into the seventh grade in the fall and was beginning to see the clothes I wore weren’t like those the other kids wore. My grandmother Ma, on my daddy’s side of the family, made most of my school clothes. The only other clothes I owned came from the high fashion department of the Bargain Gusher.
Not a flattering selection there for a girl who pictured herself as tall and thin, an almost teenage girl who was in reality short and chunky. Difficult to reconcile sizes in the Bargain Gusher, for example.
Your friends don’t have school teachers for parents either, Daddy said. Money doesn’t grow on trees, you know.
A penny saved is a penny earned, I said. And an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Pretty is as pretty does, Mama said and smiled. The tension in the car was over; we were off and running with one of our best road trip games we called reciting sayings.
Let every tub stand on its own bottom, Daddy said. We all laughed at this one. It was his favorite, and he never failed to mention it when we played the game.
The countryside was beautiful as we drove the 90 miles from Richards to Houston to take Mama to the gynecologist. It was a hot, humid summer day in Texas. We kept the windows rolled down to try to keep a breeze blowing through our ‘58 Chevy, but the air blowing in was warm and sticky.
We had passed the Grimes/Montgomery County line a few miles outside Richards as we entered the Sam Houston National Forest. The pine trees got thicker on the winding two lane road. I recognized the farmhouses where some of my friends lived and thought how lucky they were to live in the country.
Not that living in town was all that cosmopolitan. With a population of 440 including dogs and chickens as my granddaddy used to say, and no stoplight or even a stop sign, it wasn’t a bustling urban metropolis.
But Daddy had a small ranch off this road, and I hoped someday we would build a house on it, actually move out there. I knew Daddy really wanted to, but Mama said it was bad enough to live in a town with dirt streets without moving to a cow pasture. That was pretty much the end of that.
He and I went out there a lot, though. Usually my granddaddy Pa went with us because the cows belonged to Pa and me which meant we took care of them. They were fine in the summer when they had good grass and water. Winters were hard. We had to make sure there was plenty of hay to feed them.
We played the alphabet sign game when we ran out of sayings, looking for letters for the rest of the trip to Houston. There weren’t many signs on these back roads so we’d go a long way between letters. As we got closer to Houston, the signage increased and Daddy called “Z” when he saw the zoo billboard.
Daddy, you always win, I said. I was still on “W.” Both of you were ahead of me, Mama said. I can’t keep up with y’all. How do I know y’all don’t cheat?
Selma, we wouldn’t do that. You just have your mind on other things; that’s all. A little while later he added, We should be at the doctor’s office in a few minutes. I think we take a right at the next light.
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Daddy drove up to the office and parked. The three of us got out of the car, went inside and while Mama signed in, Daddy and I sat down in the waiting room.
Several other women sat reading the women’s magazines provided on a big coffee table in the middle of the room. Everyone was sitting quietly waiting for their names to be called. No one was talking, so we didn’t either.
Daddy and I each picked up a differentmagazine from the coffee table. He started reading The Ladies Home Journal while I selected Reader’s Digest because their stories were shorter. They were both dated a couple of months before but were not too old to be interesting.
Mama was filling out paperwork because she was a new patient. When she finished, she took it back to the unsmiling nurse at the front desk. One by one the women were called to go back to see the doctor. As fast as one would go back, another one would sign in. The waiting room was always full, but remained quiet.
Finally, they called Mama’s name. Daddy and I were glad because we were running out of magazines.
Mama had been gone for a few minutes when we heard this loud voice drifting down the hallway into the waiting room. Daddy and I looked at each other as we recognized the voice belonged to Mama. Her regular speaking tone was loud – she didn’t have an inside voice. When she was nervous, the volume was earsplitting. She must have been very nervous today.
Well doctor, we heard clearly. I’ve been having this problem all summer. It seems like nothing I try helps.There was a lull in the conversation as the doctor murmured some response. The ladies in the waiting room who had looked up and around when they heard Mama speak went back to their magazines.
Yes, I’ve tried the vinegar douche several times, we heard her say. The ladies around us perked up again. Daddy and I tried to look like we hadn’t heard her this time. Unfazed. Disinterested. That was us.
(What is a douche, I wondered, as more low undertones came from the exam rooms in the back of the office.)
So you think I have a fungus in my vagina? Mama’s voice rose to the loudest level yet as every woman in the waiting room focused their attention on Daddy and me.
That’s it, Daddy said and turned to me as he threw his Ladies Home Journal on the coffee table in front of us.
Whistle, sing, hum – anything you can do to make a racket in here, he ordered. I had no idea what a vagina was or how sick you had to be to have a fungus in it, but the look of panic on Daddy’s face made me realize this was no time to ask questions. I started whistling as loud as I could.
Daddy was humming When the Roll is Called Up Yonder and tapping his feet. He led the music at the Richards Baptist Church, so naturally he would pick a hymn to hum.
The ladies around us in the room were now staring at us with nothing short of amazement. The unsmiling nurse at the desk was flabbergasted at the commotion in the otherwise sedate atmosphere. All hell had broken loose in the form of nervous laughter at the Houston gynecologist’s usually quiet office when my daddy started humming and I started whistling.
Well, we need to get a breath of fresh air, Daddy said to me when he finished his song. Let’s go outside to wait for your mother. We both got up and strolled nonchalantly out the door. When we got outside, we could hear the howls of laughter from the women inside in the waiting room.
Daddy smiled ruefully at me when he heard the merriment we created, told me he wasn’t in much of a mood for the movies after all, but how about we stop at Shipley’s on the way home to get us each a donut? The Bargain Gusher idea was also done for the day, thank goodness.
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This story still makes me smile when I think of that day with my parents who were in their early thirties, the day we made the trip to the gynecologist in the big city of Houston. No one laughed on the ninety-miles trip home that day, but we did each get a donut from Shipley’s.
P.S. My daddy was born on October 1st. in 1925 and died on June 30, 1976. Just 51 years old, he died from colon cancer during America’s Bicentennial celebration of 200 years since the Declaration of Independence was signed. I remember his funeral on July 2nd., particularly the American flag draped on his coffin to honor his service as a navigator in the Army Air Corps during WWII.
Morris family photo in Richards, Texas – Daddy in his nicest Sunday suit and tie standing on far right – my grandfather Pa set the standard for wearing ties, seated far left
On Thursday, March 27th., Pretty and I lost our beloved Texas dog Spike – not totally unexpectedly because he was old for a big dog, yet somewhat of a surprise because he had been in a slow decline for a long while before suddenly finding movement almost impossible Thursday morning. He told me and Pretty he was ready to go with his soulful big brown eyes. That afternoon an angel of mercy came to our home to help ease his passing. Our family has lost a cornerstonethat cannot be replaced.
In January, 2022, I published the “Spike Story.”
When my cousin Martin saw Spike for the first time he said, “Sheila, that ain’t nothing but a cur dog. Plain as day.”
That was in the spring of 2012, the year my two mothers died within two weeks of each other. I was a motherless child by any definition at the end of April, the month Spike appeared on Worsham Street in Texas as a motherless cur dog which according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition, and my cousin Martin, meant he was a mongrel or inferior dog – surly or cowardly.
When that cur dog showed up on Worsham Street in front of our house, Pretty and I had four other dogs: Annie, Red, Chelsea and Ollie. I tried to convince my neighbors across the street to keep him, but both of them had cats as well as dogs plus jobs that required their daily presence. I was a stay at home writer. My neighbor Lisa and I tried to find his owner for several days but finally realized someone had dumped him in our neighborhood so he belonged to Worsham Street. I called Pretty to talk to her about him – she was working and living most of the time in South Carolina while I had been in Texas to take care of my mother – and since we split the four dogs into two separate households – what was one more?
At first Spike was skittish around Red, Annie and me. He preferred to stay in the yard, but one night the rains came; I saw him sitting on the back porch looking at Red and me on the bed through the sliding glass door which I got up to open for him. He came inside that rainy night – never to be an outside dog again.
Spike sound asleep with his buddy Redon our sofa in Texas
(spring, 2012)
Red was quick to besurly – Spike not somuch
Spike seemed to understand that he was the low dog in the pack. Red was the alpha male because that’s how terriers roll. Smallest in size – but Red was the recognized “star.” Annie was a big dog like Spike but much older. She allowed Red to lead as long as she approved of his leadership, but don’t ever cross her. Spike learned to avoid her, but he loved Red. Red adored Annie. Typical love triangle similar to humans. Am I right?
The math Pretty and I had originally calculated worked well when we were in different homes but changed dramatically when we were together in South Carolina. Then we knew we had five dogs. Looking back to those years I’m not sure how we managed but we loved them all.
Spike, Redand black lab Chelsea in back yard on Canterbury Road
Spike fell in love with Chelsea on his first trip to South Carolina in 2012; it was a feeling that stayed with him as long as she lived – a feeling that remained with him forever after she died in March, 2016. To this day he whined or barked when he saw a big black dog walking by on our street from his perch on the couch in our living room on Cardinal Drive.
Spike at homeon our patioat Casa de Canterburyin July, 2012
Spike and Chelsea on my grandparents’ bedin September, 2014
my grandparents would be horrified if they knew
One by one Spike’s pack succumbed to illness and old age, and he became the sole survivor in the spring of 2016. Pretty and I promised each other we would shower him with affection, treats, walks, to give him the attention he hadn’t experienced as the interloper of the original four. We tried for months to lavish him with our love – perhaps partially to assuage our own grief. What happened surprised both of us. Spike’s grieving was as real as ours, and he didn’t like being an “only” dog. He missed his pack.
Enter Charly in the summer of 2016. Charly was twice rescued: once by Pawmetto Lifeline and then by Pretty, Spike and me.
Spike and Charly in ourliving room – 2019
when you can’t be withthe one you love,honey, love the one you’re with
Now we have another little old man about the same size as Red, but Carl and Spike aren’t buddies, though – neither is Carport Kitty who definitely dislikes our three dogs. That’s okay. Charly runs interference between Spike and Carl who has learned the importance of pretending CK doesn’t exist. Spike has a pack again. Pretty and I love them all.
Spike on his walk –January 11, 2022
By the way, cur dogs are really a wonderful breed of “hard-working treeing hounds” with traits that include being devoted to their people, protective of their environment and fabulous additions to families.
So to my cousin Martin I say thank goodness Spike ain’t nothing but a cur dog. Pretty and I wouldn’t have him be anything else.
Some day the silver cord will break, And I no more as now shall sing; But oh, the joy when I shall wake Within the palace of the King!
(Refrain) And I shall see Him face to face, And tell the story—-Saved by grace; And I shall see Him face to face, And tell the story—-Saved by grace.
The lyricist who wrote these words to what became one of the most recognized sacred songs ever, Fanny J. Crosby, was a leading writer of gospel hymn texts from the mid-19th. century through the early 20th. century. In addition to the thousands of hymns that she has written (about eight thousand poems in all), many of which have not been set to music, she has published four volumes of verses. (Hymnology Archive) Saved by Grace was never intended to be published as a song by Crosby.
Fanny Crosby’s Life Story, by Herself (1903)
“It eventually came to public notice by accident. It was during a conference that Fanny attended at Northfield, Massachusetts. During the meeting, the great evangelist, Dwight Moody, asked if Fanny would give a personal testimony to the audience. Not wanting to draw attention to herself, she almost declined, but finally got up to speak. Mrs. Crosby shared, ‘There is one hymn I have written which has never been published. I call it my soul’s poem. Sometimes when I am troubled, I repeat it to myself, for it brings comfort to my heart.’ She then closed her remarks by reciting the words which had never been heard before in public, ‘Saved By Grace’.” (Hymn History: Saved by Grace, May 18, 2022; Micah Hendry)
Did I mention Fanny Crosby was blind from birth? I thought not, but many times throughout her life she said her lack of sight brought her joy and contributed to her ability to write poems, lyrics, two autobiographies. “If perfect earthly sight were offered me tomorrow I would not accept it. I might not have sung hymns to the praise of God if I had been distracted by the beautiful and interesting things about me.” (Wikipedia)
When I selected songs from The Baptist Hymnal for worship services in the two churches I served when I came to South Carolina in the early 1970s, many of the songs I chose were written by Fanny J. Crosby. I remember wondering about this woman whose words I sang every Sunday, but those were the times pre-Google and endless rabbit holes. Curiosity didn’t kill this cat who was too lazy to follow up with my own research.
My sacred music memories have dimmed in the fifty years since I served as a minister of music in those two Southern Baptist congregations. Church music was my silver cord that connected me to that spark of divinity within myself, but that cord was shattered by the mendacity of church leaders whose voices drowned out our shared humanity.
Today I salute a woman whose words offered hope for a better hereafter while encouraging help for the here and now through her rescue mission actions, a woman whose life reflected overcoming overwhelming obstacles from the time she was born until her death at age 94.
And I shall see Him face to face, And tell the story—-Saved by grace.
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Fun fact from a rabbit hole: Bing Crosby was one of her relatives that shared her musical talents. Who knew?
I'll Call It Like I See It 
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