I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

storytelling for truth lovers

  • A Soldier Writes Home – in 1918


    The handwriting on the letters has almost faded away and the yellowed paper and envelopes are so torn and fragile I’m afraid to open them for fear they’ll disintegrate.  The dates of the letters are in March and May of 1918, which I calculate to be ninety-five years ago this month.  They are three letters written by a young Marine serving “somewhere” in France in World War I to his mother who evidently thought they were worthy of saving.  On this Sunday afternoon my partner Teresa gave them to me as we cleaned out our Bodega to get ready for a garage sale.

    “I think you’ll like these,” she said, “especially since they’re a soldier writing home and tomorrow is Memorial Day.”  Occasionally on her adventures at yard sales she finds words for me to read – words that someone saved for a reason.  No longer wanted by family, they’re sometimes stuck inside the pages of books she buys or in a little box or even in a scrapbook tossed aside as unimportant.

    I don’t think the names are necessary but I will say that the mother lived in Indiana.  I’m glad she thought her son’s words were worthy of saving.  I believe they’re worthy of being read again.

    France,

    May 12, 1918

    Dearest Mother:

    Today is “Mother’s Day” – your day – and I wish I were home to spend the day with you.  Altho I cannot send you a big box of flowers I will endeavor to send a little flower that grows near me on a green hillside.

    I hope you are well and happy today.  Of course I realize how you feel about me being over here, the two battles you have to fight, that is, keeping up a brave front and smile when I know you feel bad about me.  Mother dear, I really am safe and the best news I get from home is that you are well and enjoying life.  I would rather hear that you enjoyed a good show, say once a week, than to hear that you had denied yourself one little thing to help the Cause along.  I sort of figure that you have done your bit, so please try to have a good time and remember that I don’t fare so bad.  It isn’t nearly so bad here as you all imagine.

    We eat, sleep, read magazines, letters and roam around and see everything going on.

    We aren’t getting any furloughs at present.  I mean my outfit, but maybe it won’t be long until we can go touring again.

    I’ll have many stories to tell you when I get back, and I’ll trade stories for some good pies & cakes – and any eats at all that you cook.  We move so much that I thought I’d have to throw away some pictures, but I’ve found a way.  We always find a way.  It seems a necessary part of a Marine to get along most any old place and get along well.

    I sent a list home of some things I want – and you may add on to that list a few pounds of homemade candy, preferably fudge.  I don’t care how old fudge gets, it is always the best tasting eats we ever get from back there.  I can buy French candy & chocolate at the Y.M.C. A. huts, so you see that we really don’t suffer for those things, but nevertheless some good old homemade candy is the stuff.

    I write you once a week, when possible, as an answer to Dad, Sis & your letters so they must not feel slighted, but this is your letter, and nearly every mother who has a son in France will get one too.

    Spring is coming in very beautiful, but the rain is so frequent here.  After a big rain the sun pops out with a blue sky and green hills – then everybody is happy.

    I tried to subscribe for one of the 3rd Liberty Loan Bonds but they aren’t selling them here.  I would like to have one of each issue.

    I have no kick coming about getting mail now as it is coming pretty regularly.  I’d appreciate some of those fried chickens you spoke about but I think I’ll wait until I come home.

    Well Mother dear, next Mother’s Day we will celebrate properly and have a good time.

    Love to Dad & Sis, and you…

    Your loving son,

    Buddie

    Tomorrow I’ll gratefully remember the soldiers who served and were wounded and even gave their lives on many battlefields in every corner of the world through the years on our behalf, but I’ll also see a young Marine writing home from “somewhere” in France almost a century ago asking his mother to send homemade fudge.

  • Short Side of Time


    The merry month of May has come and almost gone and alas, I find my strolls through the park have been far and few between as my cousin Martin is fond of saying.   Which is about as frequent as my posts have been on this blog lately.    Far and few between.

    If you follow Red’s Rants and Raves, you know our family is all together under one roof in South Carolina after a marathon twenty-hour drive from Texas earlier this month.   We had planned to spend a night on the road, but unfortunately the Road was battered by a pouring rain as we made our way through Alabama and Georgia where we normally stay the night.  Teresa thought it would be easier to drive it on in than stop and unload three dogs, ourselves and a few belongings into a La Quinta in the deluge.  I confess I voted against that idea and would have gladly shared my fluffy king-sized motel bed in Birmingham or some place sooner with wet dogs, but I was overruled since she was driving the night shift.

    One of the comforts of Worsham Street that I miss most in Casa de Canterbury is my kitchen radio that plays  Country Legends on a station from Houston.  I know, I know.  That is truly sad and pathetic on so many levels.   For some of you, the idea that I rely on classic country music for any reason is frightening and the thought that stories of 18-wheeler trucks rolling on down the line to Baton Rouge or knowing when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em on a train called the City of New Orleans or the Orange Blossom Special or the Wabash Cannonball  brings me comfort is not only strange but slightly off-center.  So be it.  I acknowledge my co-dependence on Garth Brooks and his cowboy crooning colleagues.

    Last year on one of my stays in Columbia I purchased a small transistor radio from Radio Shack.  I had a transistor radio for many years when I was a child and clearly remembered listening to Christmas Carols from another radio station in Houston on warm winter nights.  Surely with the technology of the 21st century and the number of radio broadcasts available I should be able to locate a classic country music station in South Carolina.  I searched my omniscient computer and easily found the station.  I tried, believe me I tried, to like the songs it played.  Let’s just say listening to Darius Rucker –  who I know to be the original Hootie of Hootie and the Blowfish since they got started in Columbia – singing “country” music wasn’t what I had in mind.  I like Darius Rucker and I like his new solo music, but he is not a Country Legend yet.

    In desperation this time I branched out and turned to a secondary source: the TV.  Since our son’s girlfriend sold AT&T U-Verse for the past seven months, we ditched Time Warner and signed on with her U-Verse plan.  I find the new remote to be incredibly complex and regularly confuse the buttons.  I have discovered, however, a Classic Country Music Choice channel and can locate it most of the time by myself.   Not only does this channel play the Country Legends, it goes a step further which is what TV has always done to radio.   One-upmanship or how seeing plus hearing trumps hearing only.

    While I listen to my favorites, facts about the song and/or the artist appear on the screen next to the name of the tune and the singer.   When I’m curious, I can stop what I’m doing and glance at the television and see the music I’m hearing.  Now I can be comforted and informed simultaneously.  For example, I’ve always known that Barbara Mandrell was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool, but I never knew she has a pilot’s license to fly airplanes.  I’ve sung along with Tanya Tucker forever to Delta Dawn because it’s one of the very few songs I know all the words to, but I didn’t know Tanya drives a hot pink Harley Davidson.  Not surprised – just didn’t know.

    Yesterday I heard John Conlee sing his Backside of Thirty, Short Side of Time classic and as I read the title on the TV screen, I wondered what John would think about the Backside of Sixty-five.  I can tell him the Short Side of Time makes the days pass far and few between quicker which is why I can’t seem to find myself when I need me.

  • Good Stuff or Babbling?


    “Yeah, I read your blog every time,” the younger woman sitting next to me said.  “Sometimes it’s good stuff and I print a copy of it and save it.  Other times, it’s just babbling.”

    I burst into laughter when she said that, but she wasn’t finished.  “What’s with all this country music?  Don’t you ever listen to anything other than country?  You need to branch out.”

    At this I protested, but she had another comment.  “I can tell with the first sentence if it’s a good day or if you’re out there rambling around in outer space.”

    Carmen is a beta follower for this blog, but of course I have no way of tracking whether she reads the entries or doesn’t so I was really pleased to hear that she does.  Carmen is the granddaughter of one of the four most important women in my life, Willie Flora, and I’ve known her since she was a little girl in elementary school.  I had her email address and invited her to follow along with me when I sent the original invitations.  She accepted and now here we were almost two years later chatting and eating brisket in a booth at Dozier’s Barbecue in Fulshear, Texas in the middle of a Saturday afternoon.

    She is a Reader.  A Follower.  And she had no reluctance to call it like she sees it.  I’d love to take credit for some of that bravado but I’m afraid she learned at the tables of two masters, her mother and her grandmother.  I’ve had a few lessons at those tables myself.

    Good stuff or babbling?   A new bar is raised.  To print or not to print?  That’s the question.

  • If I Could Turn Back Time — I Wouldn’t


    April is National Poetry Month for Canada.  I am a poet of sorts – sorta not a very good one.  However, I found this  effort tucked away in a folder that I had cleverly labeled “Original Writings”  at some point in my life.  This poem is untitled.  Maybe it’s not even a poem.  Oh, well.  Forgive me, Canada.

    There are some things that I am.

    I am glad that I am a woman born in this particular time.

    I am grateful for the opportunities that I have had in my life to choose my own spaces, my own career, my own roles in life.

    I am fortunate.

    I am also concerned about the future.

    I am worried that my struggles and the struggles of women before me are going to reappear unnecessarily.

    I am angry at the thought of having to fight battles again that I thought had already been won.

    I am tired of a political climate that threatens my survival as a real person in a world that is as much mine as it is anyone’s.

    There are many things that I am not.

    I am not going to pretend that there are no problems.

    I am not going to hope that things will work out without my help.

    I am not going to depend on someone else to speak up for me anymore.

    I am not going to quit.

    The poem is undated, but it was typed with several typos on a real typewriter on plain white typing paper that is now yellowed with age.  The tone indicates the time period during the efforts to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment so that would be forty years ago.  I like it not because of the quality of the writing  but because I like the young woman  in her twenties who wrote it, and I like to think she followed through on her promise not to quit.

    Social justice issues were struggles which often required courage and tenacity  on small battlefields in churches and offices and at dinner tables and cocktail parties and family reunions.  Consciousness raising in the days before Will and Grace was a thankless task in everyday conversations at work and play.  The light at the end of the tunnel appeared to be  the proverbial oncoming train.

    But the times did change.  I wept as I added my partner’s name to my company benefits paperwork for the first time in 2003.  I was sitting in my new office by myself and was overwhelmed by the enormity of the moment.    Domestic partner benefits.  I was fifty-seven years old and the light at the end of the tunnel wasn’t a train.

    So today I celebrate National Poetry Month with my friends in Canada and remind myself that, unlike Cher, if I could turn back time — I wouldn’t.

  • Ships That Don’t Come In


    “To those who stand on empty shores and spit against the wind
    and those who wait forever for ships that don’t come in.”

    Joe Diffie recorded these words written by Paul Nelson and Dave Gibson in 1992 and I hear them several times a week on my favorite country legends radio station. Each time I listen to them I am transported to the 1950s to vivid childhood memories of my maternal grandmother who told me all the things we would do when her ship came in. We would take wonderful trips from our little town in Grimes County, Texas to exotic far-away places like Maryland to visit her brother Arnold and his wife Amelia and California to visit her favorite sister Orrie in Los Angeles. We would stop at the See’s Candy store in Los Angeles and buy all the chocolates we could eat. We could travel whenever we wanted to because she wouldn’t have to clerk at Mr. Witt’s General Store any more. She would buy my mother a new piano and my dad a new car. She would buy me anything I wanted. Life would be good.

    I will be seven years younger this Sunday than she was when she was buried on my birthday in 1972 at the age of seventy-four. She believed her ship never came in, and I understand why. Much of her life she stood on empty shores and must have felt she was spitting against the wind. Powerless in the face of poverty and its constraints. Overwhelming loneliness when my mother and dad and I moved out of her home in 1958. Severe depression with sporadic primitive treatments and debilitating medications. Spitting against the wind.

    Yet for me, life with her was a ship that did come in. The love I felt from her was as steadfast as the love I feel from my dogs, and they adore me regardless of what I say or do. The fun we shared when I was growing up was worth far more than a trip to Maryland or California could ever bring. My time with her was priceless.

    Birthdays are an opportunity to celebrate another year under our belts which need to be notched a little looser these days. For those of us who choose to reflect, birthdays are a godsend. We can ponder and ponder the meaning of life and whether we think our life is well-lived. At my age I can also mull over my legacy. I’d like to think I have one.

    As for ships, well, I’ve had my share come into shores. Some have stayed longer than others and some are still with me, but all the ones that came in left their imprints in my sand. Life is good.