I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

storytelling for truth lovers

  • The Special Music


     

    033

     Backwoods Baptist Church

    Order of Service

    Typical Sunday, 1950s

    Call to Worship                                                                          Reverend Jones

    “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks I Stand”                                             P. 156

    Bible Verses                                                                              Reverend Jones

    “There is Power in the Blood”                                                          P. 232

    “Beneath the Cross of Jesus”                                                            P. 311

    Offertory Prayer                                                                        Reverend Jones

    Offertory           “Great is Thy Faithfulness”                    Organ and Piano Duet

    Special Music                                                                     To Be Announced

    The Sermon                                                                                 Reverend Jones

    Invitation           “Just As I Am”                                                       P. 268

    Benediction                                                                                  Reverend Jones

    The congregational singing was enthusiastically lusty in the hymn singing led by the male member of the church who had the loudest voice in the days before “paid” ministers of music performed that job.  In my Southern Baptist Church in the backwoods of rural southeast Texas, that man was my daddy. He led the singing with gusto and could carry a tune with the best of them.  No hand waving was necessary for him. He just reared back and sang, and the sixty or so people in the little church sang with him.

     Reverend Jones was always sincere in his prayers but took way too much time in his sermons so I busied myself with unwrapping pieces of Wrigley’s Spearmint or Doublemint Chewing Gum that my grandmother wisely provided for me.  I can still smell those gum aromas today and never see the white or green wrappers without thinking of Reverend Jones’s distaste for sin.

    My mom played the piano or organ while my dad led the singing, so the preparation for the music on Sunday morning and evening was a major part of our lives. Some people might say my family provided the entertainment portion of the church services every Sunday, and Reverend Jones was the spiritual provider. I’d probably say just the opposite.

    The highlight of every service was the Special Music.  Whatever restlessness and whispers and other noises in the pews that took place in the early part of the service were quieted by the Offertory instrumental music. When my mom hit the last note of that song – whatever it was – a hush took over the sanctuary and everyone waited in suspense for the solo or duet or trio or quartet that sang the Special Music that would set the stage for the sermon. It was great theater, like the finale in a musical before the final curtain falls.

    Since my mom accompanied whoever sang, she practiced with them on Wednesday nights after prayer meeting and Daddy and I had to stay late to wait for her.  It was like we belonged to a special club that held a regular meeting on Wednesday nights, but instead of a secret handshake, we knew a secret song. I loved those practice times and all the people who sang.

    My favorite, though – and everyone has a different favorite – was the quartet singing. The quartets were sometimes mixed with two women and two men and sometimes were all men.  “Just a Little Talk with Jesus” was a toe-tapping hand-clapping rousing harmony  that made me want to jump with joy while “Sweet Beulah Land” was a haunting melody that evoked powerful images of sadness and loss. Sopranos, altos, tenors and basses…we had them all on Wednesday nights.

    My daddy led the singing for many years in the next larger church they belonged to when we moved, but he retired from that volunteer position when the church hired a minister of music.  Luckily, he was happy singing in the choir after that.

     My mother played the piano and/or organ for sixty-five years in the churches she belonged to and saw ministers of music come and go while she kept playing the beautiful Offertories and accompanying the Special Music. She was never happier than when I enrolled in a Southern Baptist Seminary to study church music and then became a minister of music in my adult years. She loved to play for me when I visited her church and often asked me to become the Special Music for her church on Sunday. We practiced on Wednesday night.

    My church-going days ended more than thirty years ago and most of my musical family is gone with them, but I still remember them and the little church where we sang with great love and true affection. Talk about special – with my apologies to Jesus, I’d much rather be able to sit down and have a little talk with them tonight.

     

  • Blame it on the Bossa Nova


    My apologies to Barry Man and Cynthia Weil who wrote the Bossa Nova song and Eydie Gorme who made it popular.  In the middle of the night my dog Chelsea woke me to let her out.  Unfortunately, my ambien was more exhausted than I was, and I began to think about this song.  One thing led to another, and then here I am…please sing along to Bossa Nova melody:

     

    I was in a trance when they caught my eye

    Makin’ yellow balls fairly seem to fly

     From within my trance, watchin’ highs and lows

    And soon I knew I’d never let them go

    Blame it on Australian Open with its magic spell
    Blame it on Australian Open that they played so well
    Oh, it all began with just one little trance
    But then it ended up a big romance
    Blame it on Australian Open
    From deuce to love.

    (Now was it the moon?)
    No, no, Australian Open
    (Or the stars above?)
    No, no, Australian Open
    (Now was it the tune?)
    Yeah, yeah, Australian Open

    [Instrumental]

    Now I’m sad to say I’m without TV
    And I’m hooked on crack and spelling bees
    And when my wife asks how it came about
    I’m gonna say to her without a doubt

    Blame it on Australian Open with its magic spell
    Blame it on Australian Open that they played so well
    Oh, it all began with just one little trance
    But then it ended up a big romance
    Blame it on Australian Open
    From deuce to love.

    (Now was it the moon?)
    No, no, Australian Open
    (Or the stars above?)
    No, no, Australian Open
    (Now was it the tune? )
    Yeah, yeah, Australian Open

    (from deuce to love)

    (Now was it the moon?)
    No, no, Australian Open
    (Or the stars above ?)

    [Fade]

    And Fade is what I need to do…deliver me from insomnia…it clearly doesn’t bode well for my creativity.

    P.S. The reference to hooked on “crack” refers to Trivia Crack, that insanely addictive game that I play now along with my “spelling bees” (Words with Friends).  I really need to get a life – or just wait for Roland Garros.

  • She’s An Eagle When She Flies


    Dolly Parton was born January 19, 1946 which means she turned sixty-nine this week.  Unbelievable.  From the time she became famous when she teamed up with Porter Wagoner on his television show in 1967, Dolly has been a permanent presence in the musical minds of the Baby Boomer generation in this country and around the globe.  She is the definition of a legend in her own time; a woman who for the past fifty years has been a songwriter, entertainer, musician, singer, actor, business entrepreneur and philanthropist. She has received more awards and honors than she can shake a stick at and is a bona fide survivor of the vicissitudes of life, as my daddy used to say when he described transitional life events that had no apparent rhyme or reason.

    She was born in Sevier County, Tennessee and was the fourth of twelve children in a family that was, in her words, “dirt poor.”  Her story is the classic American dream that offers a pot of gold to the pilgrim brave enough to travel through a kaleidoscope of colors in a very long rainbow that requires dedication, persistence and talent to reach the end.

    She has sung duets with a multitude of singers including Linda Rondstadt, EmmyLou Harris, Queen Latifah, Shania Twain, Kenny Rogers, Chet Atkins – but not Elvis Presley who she refused to let cover her “I Will Always Love You” because he wanted half the publishing rights.  Whoa, Dolly…no duet with Elvis, but along came Whitney Houston and Bodyguard and Dolly will always love that business decision.

    Good business decisions allowed her to establish the Dollywood Foundation which has a subsidiary called the Imagination Library that distributes one book per month to children who are enrolled in the program from their birth to kindergarten.  According to Wikipedia, this is an average of 700,000 books monthly across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia.  Her commitment to literacy is a fraction of an amazing legacy.

    I saw Dolly Parton in person many years ago when she was touring with Kenny Rogers and their hit “Islands in the Stream,” and she was all I hoped she’d be.  She was funny, full of herself – but connected to her audience and sang her heart out.  So many songs of hers are favorites, but the Number One Hit on my personal Billboard goes to  “Eagle when She Flies.”  It’s an oldie, but a goodie.

    She’s been there, God knows she’s been there

    She has seen and done it all…

    She’s a sparrow when she’s broken

    But she’s an eagle when she flies.

    YouTube videos of Dolly’s songs are everywhere, but this one is too good…

    A belated happy birthday wish to you, Miss Dolly…you’re an eagle in my eyes.

  • X Marks the Spot


    Last week I found a journal that I wrote in February, 1992, twenty-three years ago next month.  This is how it began:

    I have always wanted to be an artist.  You know, the kind that paints beautiful pictures with oils or pastels or watercolors.  A picture is worth a thousand words.  I totally agree.

    Alas, I have never managed to connect eye to hand to brush properly.  So here we are – with a thousand words.  Give or take a few.

    You see, I wanted to paint a picture of a particular person in a certain place at a given time. I wanted to capture a feeling in an expression or gesture.  I wanted to fix a point and say, here it is.  “X” marks the spot.  However, that is not to be.

    I must do the best I can with what I have.  And words are what I know.  I have written introductions to tons of unfinished books!   This may be, yet, another one.

    Be patient.  Be understanding.  Be kind.  I don’t take criticism well.

    It just occurs to me I spent my formative years in a rather insignificant period of history.  I grew up in the fifties, part of the post-war Baby Boom in this country.  My parents were married in May, 1945.  I was born promptly eleven months later.  Oldest, middle, and baby rolled into only.

    The town where I grew up was a small town in East Texas.  How small is small?  Johnny Carson fans ask.  Population 500 – counting dogs and chickens we would laughingly say.  Or proudly say…depending on who asked.

    Richards, Texas, didn’t rate a dot on most maps of Texas.  I found that out later when I moved away and tried to show my friends where I came from.  We had one general store where my mother’s mother worked as a clerk.  We had two filling stations: Batey’s Phillp 66 and Lenorman’s Mobil.  Each was at one end of Main Street.

    Main Street was our only paved street.  No traffic light, of course.  We had Mr. McAfee’s drug store, my granddad’s barber shop and laundry, and a post office.  The Haynies had a grocery store and feed store.  We had a depot, but no trains stopped there anymore.  One passenger train went by every day – the Zephyr.  Periodically we had a cafe that was owned and operated by various townspeople at various times.  Mr. Bookman had a bank in Richards – briefly.  He died.  The bank folded.  I can’t remember which happened first.

    We had one school down the hill from our house.  Red brick.  Two-story.  Metal fire escapes from the second story, complete with bell.  I loved the bell – reminded me of pictures of the Liberty Bell.  Two grades per room and teacher.  Nine kids in my class.  My dad was school superintendent.  More about that later.

    Of course, there was another school: the “colored” school in the quarters.  I never went there.  

    We had two churches in town, the Baptist Church and the Methodist Church.  My family was Baptist for the most part, although there was little to distinguish the two.  The important thing was that we were not Catholic, as so many of my Polish friends at school were.  They all lived on farms and had to drive ten miles to a neighboring town for church.  As far as I knew, they never missed church.

    And fifteen years later, Deep in the Heart was finished…finally.  I took a few more than a thousand words, but once the dam broke, the words spilled out and over and continue to flow.

    “X” marks the spot.

  • …And Your So-Called Social Security…


    One of my favorite country singers and songwriters, Merle Haggard, wrote one of my favorite songs, Big City with lyrics that are much more meaningful to me in 2015 than they were in 1981 when I first heard them.

              “Gimme all I’ve got coming to me…

    and keep your retirement

    and your so-called Social Security.

    Big City, turn me loose and set me free.”

    Yep, in 1981 I was thirty-five years old and the owner of a very small CPA firm that had a growing clientele and low overhead.  How small was very small?  That would be one person: me.  I had been working full-time since 1967 and was in robust health – full of piss and vinegar – and had visions of acquiring great wealth through hard work and perseverance in America, the land of equal opportunity.  Retirement?  Social Security?  Bah, humbug.  Irrelevant and unimportant, but I paid my Social Security taxes right along with everyone else.

    Fast forward to 2008, the year I turned sixty-two.  My robust health became more of a pisser than vinegar, and I was forced to retire much earlier than I had planned – and long before acquiring great wealth.  I had worked for forty-one years in a variety of jobs with numbers as their primary common denominator and had made both good and bad career moves in those years.  I was moderately successful in the good years and financially challenged in the lean ones.

    Frank Sinatra sang about all the good and lean years and all the in-between years, and he could have been talking about my life as an entrepreneur.  Of course, he wasn’t, but still…

     Regardless of the triumphs and tragedies in my working life, I continued to pay my income taxes and Social Security taxes every year right along with everyone else and at age 62 I became disabled and began to receive my retirement benefits from the Social Security Administration.  At the end of each benefit year, the SSA sends me “Important Information” for the next year which typically includes my benefit amount, new rules and regulations, how to contact them if I have questions,  Medicare premiums, blah, blah, blah.

    At the end of 2013, I noticed a new bullet point:

    Benefits for Same-Sex Couples

    Due to a Supreme Court decision, we now are able to pay benefits to some

    same-sex couples.  We encourage people who think they may be eligible to apply now.

    It wasn’t a super-sized bullet point or anything like that.  As a matter of fact,  it was squeezed in between “How to Access my Social Security Online Services” and the “Affordable Care Act.”  If you blinked or skipped the info page to only look at “Your New Benefit Amount” which is probably what most people do, you would have missed it.  I read it with disbelief and amazement and a sense of immense satisfaction for the couples in places like Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut and California – a few of the eighteen  states and District of Columbia where marriage equality was a reality at the end of 2013.  The SSA would be making re-calculations on a host of benefits for affected American citizens.

    This year, at the end of last week, my “Important Information” arrived from the SSA.  Once again, squeezed in between “To Access my Social Security Online Services” and the “Affordable Care Act” was the following:

    Benefits for Same-Sex Couples

    We now are able to pay benefits to more same-sex couples.

    We encourage people to contact us to find out if they or their children are eligible for

    benefits or a different benefit amount.

    Indeed.  “More same-sex couples” refers to the increasing number of states with marriage equality at the end of 2014.  The total is up to 35 plus the District of Columbia, and my feelings of disbelief and amazement and immense satisfaction are combined with the joy and exhilaration that comes with residing in the 35th. state, my second home state of South Carolina.  Yee Haw – pigs are now flying over the Palmetto State Capitol, and there is a definite chill to the weather in hell these days.

    Because my prospects for acquiring great wealth look slimmer than my prospects for acquiring great weight, I’m afraid I can’t sing along with Merle who apparently didn’t want his Social Security.  I’m happy to have mine and to be on the receiving end of what I paid into for more than forty years – and even happier to know that my family will be accorded the same respect and fair treatment that every American family deserves.

    Thanks Merle, but gimme all I got coming to me including my so-called Social Security, and then Big City, turn me loose and set me free.