I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

storytelling for truth lovers

  • Happy 4th of July from St. Helena Island, SC

    Happy 4th of July from St. Helena Island, SC


    4th of July Celebration at Texaco Station on St. Helena Island, SC in 1939

    photographer Wolcott – Library of Congress

    Their ancestors from places now known as Spain, France, England, Central and West Africa among others were enslaved laborers on St. Helena Island, South Carolina alongside Indigenous Americans from the early sixteenth century through the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 through a Civil War begun in cannon fire on Fort Sumter, South Carolina a hundred nautical miles north of their island in 1861 when Union forces set up occupation on St. Helena and freed all slaves working on plantations.

    The Declaration of Independence celebrated that 4th. of July at the Texaco filling station on St. Helena in 1939 is the same one we celebrate in 2023 for the hope, the promises that begin with the words “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

    The poet Maya Angelou said when she gets up every morning, she doesn’t think those people in the past are gone and forgotten, but when she gets up, she says everybody come with me.

    **************************

    Happy 4th. of July! Everybody come with us.

  • Two Women on Faith and Hope (from I’ll Call It Like I See It)

    Two Women on Faith and Hope (from I’ll Call It Like I See It)


    “I know Papa has gone to heaven, and that is where I want to meet him. The Old Devil gets a hold of me sometime. I slap him off—and pray harder for the Lord to help me be a better Christian. I realize more that I need the Lord every day, and I want to love the Lord more and try to serve Him better. He alone can take away these heartaches of mine. I want to have more faith in Him. I have been so burdened, and I want to be happy. Serving God and living for Him is the only plan.” (excerpt from a letter written by my fifty-six-year-old maternal grandmother to a sister following the death of their father in 1954)

    My maternal grandmother’s belief that faith was the sole solution to the multitude of problems she faced throughout her life beginning with her husband’s accidental death that left her penniless with four children to raise during the Great Depression, a belief she expressed in the above letter to her sister, reflected her daily approach to “have more faith” that included a ritual of reading Bible passages while she sat at our small kitchen table and I lay in the darkness watching her from the next room, wishing she wouldn’t get up so early. But there she would be, struggling with her third-grade reading level to look for godly guidance in the ungodly hours before dawn. I want to be happy, she said, and God was her only plan.

    Shockingly, my paternal grandmother glossed over the deeper issues of faith in favor of a focus on hope. The Bible says there are three things that last forever: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of them is love. This grandmother wasn’t concerned with the intricacies of faith nor did she overtly exhibit love toward others outside her immediate family, but she attended the same Southern Baptist church faithfully every Sunday. Her hope was for humor, however. Her belief was that in every Sunday church service she could find something or someone or, preferably both, she could use to entertain her family at the dinner table later. The poor preacher was irreverently skewered on a regular basis; no one was sacred at that table. She was a woman in charge of her home, family and most of the conversations that took place within both.

    This was the faith of my grandmothers. The church was the teacher for one, the Bible the textbook for both, and the interpretations ranged from the holy to the inadvertently profane. I listened and watched these women for as long as they lived and throughout my childhood absorbed their diverse values that blended with the Sunday School teachings and preaching of the Southern Baptist churches my family attended. I learned to sift the messages and keep the ones that appeared to lessen my likelihood of going to hell in an afterlife.

    My maternal grandmother’s duel with the Devil evokes strong feelings for me, but they are feelings of sadness for her inability to achieve that higher level of trust she desperately wanted, the trust that would bring her happiness. Her faith never could be quite good enough, and I refuse to believe in a god that inspires fear and irrational guilt. As for my dad’s mother, her irreverence gave me permission to begin to overcome feelings of shame when I faced the puzzles of sexual identity that were my life. My life has involved many choices, but my being lesbian was not one of them. My paternal grandmother had a unique relationship with her God, but her words and sense of humor helped free me from the somber sermons of damnation in my youth and encouraged me to think for myself. I wonder if she knew.

    *********************

    “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews XI, 1)

               

  • Payday Someday – Part 2 (from Deep in the Heart)

    Payday Someday – Part 2 (from Deep in the Heart)


    Sunday School at the First Baptist Church of Richards was boring, as usual. But the Sunbeams class was interrupted by a surprise visit from the revival preacher himself. Our teacher, Miss Mary Foster, was obviously thrilled to have him single out our class for a personal visit. He was a short stocky man with a round face, black wavy hair, big smile for Miss Mary Foster as he stepped briskly into our room without knocking.

    Good morning, Miss Mary and children, he said. My name is Brother Hector Rodriquez and I am preaching your revival this week. I’m very happy to be bringing God’s Word to you. I came by to tell you that you must be very good in the services, listen carefully during my sermons because I’ve heard some of you are not saved yet. When he said that, he paused and looked intently at each of us as though he knew which ones were lost. His dark brown eyes smoldered, and his bronze skin seemed to radiate heat. I thought he looked like he was about to explode. His whole expression was disturbing and unsettling, but no one in the room moved. We had been struck by human lightning.

    I’m going to tell you about your sins and what you must do to keep from going to hell, he went on. I’m sure no one wants to go to hell, do they? Eight small heads in the tiny room shook back and forth because we had been taught about hell in Sunday School plus I had heard the word mentioned by my Uncle Toby at home when his walking canes got tangled. Brother Hector seemed satisfied that we would be excellent candidates for his persuasive powers. Very good, he said. I must leave you now to prepare myself to receive the Holy Spirit in time for my sermon. He turned away from us and left the room. I was relieved to see him go and silently promised to be nicer to Miss Mary Foster in the future. Give me boring Sunday School lessons over the intensity of revival preachers any day. I began to feel a sense of foreboding in my bones.

    The quartet from West Sandy was singing Just a Little Talk with Jesus with great conviction, and Charlie Taliaferro was playing the piano so fast for their accompaniment people said later they thought they saw smoke rising from the keys on the church piano. The church was packed with visitors from the Methodist Church that had canceled their services to come hear our revival preaching. I sat between my paternal grandparents Ma and Pa on their usual pew toward the middle of the small sanctuary as the special music ended and the deacons got up to collect the offering for the revival preacher. I surveyed the sanctuary to locate my family. Dude was sitting with Uncle Toby a couple of pews back. Uncle Marion had finished one of his cigarettes in the parking lot behind the church, slid in late like Mama predicted in the kitchen at our house that morning, and was in the very last row. Mama and Daddy were sitting in the front pew so they could get up when it was time for the invitation hymn that Daddy would lead after the preaching because Daddy had the loudest male voice in the church and Mama would play the organ with no pipes because that’s what she always did.

    Oh, and there was Miss Inez Wood and her son Warren in their usual spot halfway back. Miss Lonie Fulghum and Miss Edna Kelly were in their favorite pew under one of the six four-paddle black ceiling fans in the church. They claimed to have no tolerance for hot air which must have been another reason Mama thought they were odd. Scattered around the church were the Methodist visitors who didn’t know where they were supposed to sit since the Baptists were so particular about their favorite places.

    Brother Hector Rodriguez was about to take center stage in the pulpit. He looked very pumped up, almost like a prize fighter getting ready to spring from his corner of the ring. Evidently he expected this contest to be a fierce struggle. He was about to wrestle the devil, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. All of our souls were resting heavily on his shoulders. He took off his coat and placed it on the pulpit chair. He loosened his tie; I saw his starched white shirt already had sweat stains under the arms.

    Brothers and sisters, he began in a somber tone. The Holy Spirit has placed a message in my heart for you today. I call it Payday Someday. All of you are lost like sheep without a shepherd wandering in the wilderness of your own sins. If you don’t repent, I can promise you will have a day of reckoning with the Lord Almighty who is the great check-casher in the sky. He listed many of the sins he knew would be our downfall and reminded us of Adam and Eve’s Payday experience when they were banished from the Garden of Eden. He droned on and on with rhythmic intensity and increasing volume. He was definitely on a roll. I checked to see if Miss Inez Wood was awake and was disappointed to see that she was. No help for relief there.

    The preacher moved on to higher ground. One of the sins that was most horrific to him was the sin of unnatural affection. My radar zoomed in at this, and I tuned back in to listen as he raved about men lying with men and women lying with women, or something like that. A vague feeling of unease and guilt began to spread through my seven-year-old brain. I glanced to see if anyone had changed their expressions. Did anybody know I was the person he was talking about. How had he figured out from Miss Mary’s Sunday School class all I could think about was that little Methodist girl Tinabeth?

    Something in his dark eyes had exposed my innermost longings. Now he knew my secret life. God help me if he told Mama. I was panicky, and I needed desperately to formulate a plan. Brother Hector warmed to his subject. This was a sin of the first magnitude that would result in the deepest pits of hell. (Excuse me, which level of hell was that?) He was sorry to be the one to tell us, but some of us were doomed. Payday Someday was today. Now. This very minute. He was shouting at us – his eyes were on fire. He was waving the Bible in his hands while his whole body shook. Sweat flowed down his face. He slammed his Bible on the pulpit lectern and closed it with a resounding thud. He shut his eyes and began to pray for our souls.

    After the prayer, he nodded to Daddy who stood and walked up the three short steps to the podium to lead the invitation hymn Just as I Am; Mama took her place at the organ without pipes to play softly for background music. Brother Hector Rodriguez made his pleas for us to renounce our transgressions and turn to the Lamb of God who made us all new creatures and forgave our sins. At his instruction, we all bowed our heads and closed our eyes as we sang the familiar words. Verse after verse. I could feel the tension and discomfort growing as the music slowed for the last verse. The Methodists were the most nervous since they had shorter songs in their hymnals. Clearly my grandmother had been right about the revival preacher. No one was leaving until a soul was saved.

    Finally, one of the boys in my Sunday School class walked down the aisle to say he was saved. It was seven-year-old Mike Jones, the brown son of our regular pastor whose wife was a Filipino woman he met in Hawaii during the war. Mike was crying and visibly shaken, but we all breathed a collective sigh of relief as the service came to a successful conclusion with the addition of a new name written down in glory. Hallelujah. Can I get an Amen?

    I avoided getting in the crush of people lining up to shake hands with Brother Rodriguez after the service. Everyone wanted to congratulate him on a wonderful beginning to the revival. As I eased my way through the crowd and out of the church, I was already feeling the first twinges of the stomach ache that would most assuredly prevent my coming back for the evening service. I knew I had to convince Dude to tell Mama I was too sick to go.

    ********************

    The writing instructor at Midlands Technical College asked her students in the fall of 2006 to write about a vivid memory we had from our childhoods – Payday Someday was the result of that assignment for me and inspired my first book Deep in the Heart: A Memoir of Love and Longing published in 2007, dedicated to Teresa, the little girl who said yes.

  • Payday Someday – Part 1 (from Deep in the Heart)

    Payday Someday – Part 1 (from Deep in the Heart)


    The first thought I had when I woke up was it must be Sunday because I could smell the fresh apple pie baking. My grandmother on my mother’s side, Dude, worked six days a week as a clerk at the general store in Richards from 7:30 to 6:00 with a half hour for lunch. On Sunday morning, she baked. The fragrance from the kitchen was deliciously sweet. My grandmother’s name was Louise, but I hadn’t been able to pronounce that when I was little, so I had called her Dude-ese, and then shortened it to Dude. It stuck.

    Daddy was already up, too. I could hear them talking in the kitchen. Dude called him her favorite son-in-law and used to say she thought he was coming around all those years to her house to play ball with her three boys… until the day he and Mama eloped.

    For as long as I could remember. Daddy and Mama and I had lived with her in her small white frame house with the pond in the back yard and the pink crape myrtles growing in the yard. She called it her country place, but it was on one of the several dirt streets that made up downtown Richards. She didn’t have a car, she couldn’t drive one if she did, so she walked the one block rain or shine to the general store every day of her life. Daddy adored Dude.

    Where’s the revival preacher from? Dude asked Daddy as she sipped her morning coffee.

    Bedias, I think, Daddy said. They say he’ll be able to keep Miss Inez Wood awake.

    That’ll take some strong preaching, Dude said. He’ll have to keep the volume cranked up the whole time or she’ll snore right through it.

    Charlie Taliaferro has gotten up a men’s quartet for the special music this morning, Daddy added. Somebody said they were from West Sandy and did a lot of singing at the conventions on Sunday afternoons over there at Union Grove Baptist. That should be a good start to get the preacher going.

    Daddy led the singing, and Mama played the organ during the regular services at the Richards Baptist Church. But the revival music had to be exceptionally good, since the preacher was from out of town. Revivals were major happenings when you lived in a town the size of Richards, Texas. Although the official town sign said Pop. 440, my granddaddy said that included dogs and chickens. Richards was bordered by the Sam Houston National Forest and buried deep in the piney woods of east Texas. Any stranger passing through town was usually lost.

    My Uncle Marion was waking up now. When he was here, he slept in a twin bed at a right angle to the small double bed that Dude and I shared in our tiny room that was separated from the kitchen by an accordion plastic door. You really couldn’t call it a bedroom, except that it did hold two beds. It was mostly windows dividing the beds from the rest of the back porch.There was barely enough room for the dresser that held my grandmother’s Pond’s Cold Cream and makeup.

    Uncle Marion was a fortune hunter in the true sense of the word. He went around the Texas countryside with metal detectors, looking for gold that had been deposited by Santa Ana or somebody. Between expeditions, he worked construction just long enough to collect unemployment so that he could come back home and look for gold. He was my favorite uncle. He knew the names of all the stars we could see from our windows at night.

    Might as well roll out, he said, yawning. He looked to see if I was awake. Revival talk’s heating up and there’s no rest for the wicked, he added with a smile.

    Okay, I said, climbing out of bed. Plus, Dude’s apple pie was calling my name.

    Look what the dog drug in that the cat wouldn’t have, Daddy said as Uncle Marion pushed back the plastic accordion door. I didn’t know you were here.

    Yeah, I got in late. We didn’t get paid until dark, and then it took a while to get here. Everybody was asleep when I got in last night, Uncle Marion said. He wasn’t fully alert yet and began trying to find his wire rimmed eyeglasses.

    Morning, sweetheart, Daddy said to me. How’s my best girl?

    Good, I said and looked at Dude. Can I have some pie?

    She smiled as she cut me a piece and then put a little dab of butter on top. As it melted, she sprinkled extra sugar over it. She put it on the table in front of me and gave me a hug. Just for you at breakfast, she said as my Uncle Marion gave me a sideways look letting me know how lucky I was.

    I’m fixing bacon and eggs and toast for the rest of you. No one’s going hungry. We’ll all need our strength for church today. They say this preacher really has the Spirit and won’t quit until somebody’s saved, Dude said as she gave my Uncle Marion a glance.

    The Lord works in mysterious ways, Daddy said. And some ways take longer than others.

    We all laughed at that. I thought Daddy was so funny. Just then, Mama came in and said hey to everyone. Mama wasn’t a morning person, she liked to say. Looking at her eldest brother she asked, Out of work again?

    Hey Sis, he said, ignoring her question. You look like you could use a cup of coffee.

    He got up and poured her a cup. She was about to sit down when Dude told her to go wake Uncle Toby for breakfast. He was always the last to get up. Maybe it was because it was such a struggle for him. He had been born with cerebral palsy. He had been able to walk pretty well when he was younger and had even worked for a few years on an assembly line for a big oil company in Houston, living there with Dude’s brother’s family. Last year a doctor had convinced him and Dude that he could be cured with an operation, but it had gone all wrong. So now he was back home in Richards living with us. Dude and Mama waited on him hand and foot. Every day he sat for hours listening to his radio on the Back to the Bible Broadcast. He worked crossword puzzles while he listened. Maybe the revival preacher could explain the connection between God and those puzzles. Maybe not.

    Good morning, Sweet Papa T.B. la Tobe, said Daddy as Toby made his ponderous way into the kitchen. Daddy loved to tease him with his childhood nicknames.

    Morning, all of you good neighbors, said Uncle Toby. Brother Marion, when did you get in?

    He got in late, and he’s out of work again, I said. I had finished my pie.

    That’s right, Uncle Marion said. Made it just in time for the start of the revival. Think I’ll head downtown to the drug store and see if it’s open before church. Toby, I’ll be back in time to get dressed and drive you and Mother to church.

    He stood up and took his dishes to the sink. You’ll be late for Sunday School, Mama told him. I don’t see why you always have to go to the drug store before church.

    Mama, you know he goes to get cigarettes and never makes it back in time to go to Sunday School, I said, stating the obvious.

    You don’t have a dog in this fight, Sheila Rae, Daddy said. Leave it alone.

    Yes, I know all about your Uncle Marion, Mama said with a shake of her head.

    He gave me a quick wink as he walked out whistling. And I saw that, she said to his back.

    The rest of the time before church everyone was taking turns in the tiny bathroom beside the kitchen that was so small you had to make a decision about what you needed to do before you went in because you couldn’t turn around once you were in there, but I didn’t want to complain because I hated to go to the two-holer outhouse next to the garage. We shared that with a wasp’s nest, and none of the wasps liked us. When everyone finished getting dressed in Sunday clothes, Mama decided Uncle Toby would ride to church with us because he didn’t want to miss Sunday School. Mama said he shouldn’t have to wait for a brother who was more interested in smoking cigarettes than learning scriptures.

    Daddy helped Toby get in the back seat of our ’52 Chevy. I sat between Daddy and Mama in the front. We drove up the hill to pick up Miss Edna Kelly and her sister, Miss Lonie Fulghum. We picked them up every Sunday. Daddy helped them get situated in the back seat with Toby.

    Thank you, Glenn, Miss Lonie said. You’re such a gentleman. Good morning everybody, and a happy revival Sunday to you all.

    Miss Lonie was always cheerful and smiling like that. Everybody at the church liked her. Miss Edna was just the opposite. Never said much and frowned a lot. They didn’t look anything alike, either. They had moved to Richards a long time ago, and nobody knew anything about their people. They said they were from Alabama and that Miss Edna’s husband had died in the war. That’s why they had different last names.

    Mama said it was odd.

    The car conversation was all about the excitement of the revival as we drove the short distance to the church.

    *******************

    Please stay tuned for the rest of the story.

  • the American dream for me was survival (from Not Quite the Same)

    the American dream for me was survival (from Not Quite the Same)


    In the middle of losing my job at Geneva Construction and starting a totally new position at Blaney Baptist Church in Elgin, a crisis developed with my family in Texas. My dad who was my best friend my entire life, my biggest booster in every possible way, was diagnosed with colon cancer in August of 1974; and the prognosis wasn’t good. He had several surgeries, radiation, and chemotherapy during the next two years while my mother taught second grade in a Lamar Consolidated elementary school in Rosenberg, a suburb of Houston. She needed help getting him to treatments and hospital stays at M.D. Anderson Hospital which meant part of her teacher’s salary had to be used to fly me regularly to Texas from South Carolina to be with him.

    When he felt well enough after his first surgery, he and I talked in his hospital room while we watched Richard Nixon leaving Washington on the television there. My dad reminded me once again as he had done too many times that he blamed me for Nixon’s election in 1968 since his only offspring cast her first vote in a presidential election for a Republican. He and my grandparents were horrified at my confession of such a mistake and made me promise to not repeat what they considered to be a major political failure in my upbringing. On that fateful August day a disgraced and defiant Nixon flashed his famous “V” for victory salute before he entered Air Force One for his final trip as President. Nixon’s behavior revealed during the Watergate hearings had been profoundly disappointing to my father whose loyalty to the Democratic Party was overshadowed by his love of the country he served in the Army Air Corps in World War II.

    I changed the subject by telling my father the company I worked for in South Carolina was going under, and I didn’t feel as confident as Nixon seemed to when he walked away from his job. I couldn’t pay my bills on fifty dollars a week from my new work at Blaney Baptist Church, but I didn’t want to start another job search.

    Well, you have this CPA certificate, don’t you? he asked. I nodded yes. Why don’t you open your own office, he continued. Do taxes, keep books for small businesses. You ought to know enough people like that by now, don’t you? Talk to the Mormons. They might have some ideas, he added.

    Why hadn’t I thought of that? If I had my own business, no one could tell me what I would be paid. I could be dull and boring if I wanted to because I would be the boss. Something clicked in my naive brain that had no idea what becoming an entrepreneur meant. I’ll do it, Dad, I said. I’ll give it a try.

    I know you can make it, my father replied. I always wanted to have my own business, he continued,  but I won’t have that chance now. So you go for it. Work hard. The sky’s the limit. He gave me his weak “V” for victory signal, smiled and went back to sleep.            

    Dad was right. I began my new business venture by contacting one of the two young men from Geneva Construction who remained in Columbia and in the Mormon church leadership. The Mormon community was loyal to each other’s businesses and equally loyal to a young Southern Baptist female CPA they learned to trust with their financial needs over the years in spite of her lack of interest in converting to their religion. I worked hard, and the CPA business began to grow with referrals from the Mormons along with recommendations by Flynn Harrell, the first business/financial officer of the South Carolina Baptist Convention. I met him through Janie’s work with the Convention, and he sent a number of Baptist ministers to me for tax preparation every year. I developed two diverse niche markets with one common religious thread at a time during the mid 1970s when advertising was considered to be not only unethical but also prohibited behavior for CPAs. My two years at Southwestern Seminary were plus factors in both markets, opening doors of opportunities I would never have had without them.

    I kept working in the little church in Elgin for two years and then was “called” to a larger church in Cayce across the river from Columbia. I was the part-time minister of music and youth at State Street Baptist Church as I had been at Blaney Baptist. The hours increased, but the pay jumped to a whopping $75. per week. The pastor, Earl Vaughn, was a dear sweet misguided man who dialed telephone time every Sunday morning in my little office behind the sanctuary to make sure the worship service started on the stroke of 11:00. We had two Sunday morning worship services – the first one started at 8:30, but he didn’t care if we were a few minutes late for the early bird service. Mr. Vaughn also had a small rental house down the street from the church, and he told me when I interviewed he would make Janie and me an offer we couldn’t refuse, which we didn’t; we moved from our apartment to a house we didn’t own, but I was used to that – my family and I had lived in rental houses in Texas during my teen years. While I encouraged my clients to invest in a home for tax purposes, I personally wasn’t concerned about real estate equity when I was thirty years old. The American dream for me was survival.

    Bigger churches meant more members. I discovered the more members on the roll at the church meant more people for the paid staff to please. My choir members and young people were great as they had been at Blaney Baptist, but church work was a chore I got paid to do with the internal politics to prove it. I had a revelation of an 11th Commandment: thou shalt not make a youth choir parent mad, especially one who was chairman of the Board of Deacons which functioned as a governing body for the church. I stayed at State Street for three years while my CPA business grew steadily.

    At the end of my third year at State Street I had to make a choice facing a new crossroads again without the counsel of my father who lost his battle with colon cancer in 1976. I felt I couldn’t continue to focus on the people and their needs in my church when the CPA business required more deadlines to meet. Another complication in the equation was that my partner Janie (who sang in my church choir at State Street) and I were splitting awkwardly to end a seven-year tumultuous relationship so I decided to leave church work to focus on additional services to my clients…and my new “straight” girlfriend.