I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Tag: city of new orleans

  • the woman that changed my musical life


    From 2010 – 2014 Pretty and I were bi-stateual. For reasons involving my family, we bought a house on a picturesque street in a small town near the even smaller town where I grew up. We kept our home in South Carolina and spent four years chasing each other across a thousand miles of interstates between the two homes in an old Dodge Dakota pickup full of five dogs and us. Whew.

    One of the comforts of our Worsham Street house in Texas I have missed most in South Carolina was my kitchen radio that played  Country Legends music on a station from Houston.  The radio had been left to us by the previous owners and was mounted above the stove in the kitchen. It was tuned by a silver knob that moved the AM and FM stations from one to another. Five buttons were available for saving favorites, but I only used the one FM station for the Country Legends, and that music played on every day. I know, I know. That is truly sad and pathetic on so many levels. For four years I turned the radio on first thing in the morning when I popped the top of my first Diet Coke can of the day and turned it off at the end of the day before retiring. My version of Taps.

    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 that 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.

    I purchased a small transistor radio from Radio Shack shortly after the Texas odyssey was over and the kitchen radio was no more. I had a transistor radio for many years when I was a child growing up in rural Grimes County, Texas 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  his solo music, but he is not a Country Legend yet.

    In desperation I began to explore the TV U-verse possibilities several years after Pretty and I left the Country Legends station in Houston. I was pleasantly surprised to locate a true Country Classics station via the medium I had trusted for more than sixty years. Duh. 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 to see the music I hear.  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 had 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.

    Alexa, shuffle my music, please. Which playlist, she asks. Songs I love, I reply. And here I sit today happily tip tapping computer keys while Alexa breaks out Hard Candy Christmas by Dolly Parton. Our friends Nekki and Francie gave us an Alexa last year in an effort to bring Pretty and me musically into the 21st century – Alexa is the woman who has changed my life. When I want to hear a song, all I have to do is ask Alexa who has allowed me to collect my favorites on a playlist which she can randomly shuffle forever. It’s a musical miracle. Alexa is so very clever she can even tell me who’s singing if I ask her. Honestly, she is what I would have invented if I’d only known how to.

    Music for me during the pandemic has been a healer of wounds, a balm in Gilead, an inspiration for the future with the Chicks’ March, March. But for the delight of all delights, when Alexa plays Abba’s Mama Mia, our granddaughter Ella begins to boogie on down with Pretty and me. We introduced her to Abba months ago – she has never looked back. Her smiles, squeals, bouncing body in perfect time with the music are the perfect tonic to chase the Covid blues away.

    I’ll be just fine and dandy, thank you very much, Dolly. I won’t let sorrow get me way down. We may all  barely be getting through tomorrow these last months, but still we won’t let sorrow bring us way down. We’ll go on together, regardless of time and distance. March, march.

    Stay safe, stay sane and stay tuned.

     

  • notes of two native daughters, a granddaughter and a daughter-in-law

    notes of two native daughters, a granddaughter and a daughter-in-law


    The unremarkable tourist riverboat we were on had two main decks with different musicians and singers blaring away on each one, smiling cocktail waitresses bringing drinks with exotic names and a view of the Alabama river that was spectacular as we glided along for almost two hours on the second day of our Civil Rights self-guided tour. Willie’s daughter Leora and I opted for a booth on the lower deck while Pretty and Willie’s granddaughter Carmen climbed the steps to the upper level. We took the late afternoon cruise – we all needed a little rest and relaxation to try to add a little levity to a day filled with a roller coaster of emotions in Montgomery, Alabama.

    Leora and I ordered drinks and loudly sang along with the partygoers on the lower deck. We cut up, as we like to say in the south. Pretty and Carmen stayed away from the liquor drinks (and us!), which may explain how they could climb the steps, but they said later the music upstairs was equally fine. I’m thinking they cut up, too, but probably a little more restrained.

    Pretty, Leora, Camen and me

    This past week Pretty and I had an extraordinary opportunity to make a pilgrimage with the daughter and granddaughter of Willie Meta Flora whose 45-year relationship with my mother was featured in my Mother’s Day post on the photo finish (May 11th). It is now six years since my mother Selma and their mother/grandmother Willie have been gone. We have visited them twice in their Texas home during that time period but keep in touch with them – guess where? – on social media and texting.

    We had arranged to meet them at our favorite restaurant in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. Chickin’ on the Bayou’s fried shrimp baskets are to die for, and Pretty always visits the little shop next door.

    We really weren’t planning a stop in New Orleans this trip, but an inadvertent travel tip from one of Pretty’s “connections” sent us right into the middle of Bourbon Street that first afternoon. Carmen and I sampled beignets in a little bakery where we stopped, and I was delighted with the French pastries. Carmen, on the other hand, said she preferred the Texas version. Following this detour, Pretty drove us across the Lake Ponchartrain Causeway at sunset toward our stop for the night in Biloxi, Mississippi. The sunset was breathtaking as the majestic yellow ball disappeared into the water.

    The stop in Biloxi was quite the adventure since only one room with two double beds was available at the motel…not exactly what any of us had pictured, but oh well, we were exhausted and the slumber party ended almost as quickly as it began. Turn out the lights, the party’s over.

    The next day we packed the car and headed toward Alabama.

    new Alabama Welcome Center has amazing sculptures

    The heart of our civil rights tour began in Selma, Alabama that afternoon.

    the Edmund Pettus Bridge where Selma march began

    The highlight of the day for all of us was our visit to the Edmund Pettus Bridge where the first Selma march to Montgomery began on what is now known as Bloody Sunday,  March 7, 1965. The name is attached to that day because of the brutality of the Alabama state troopers and local police in beating the marchers with billy clubs and using tear gas to disperse the crowd. More than fifty out of approximately 600 people assembled were hospitalized after that first attempt to march to Montgomery from Selma.

    Two days later the leaders organized another attempt to cross the bridge and again were forced to retreat. Finally, a third attempt was begun on March 21st., and with the protection of federal troops, the marchers successfully completed the 54-mile walk to the state capitol in Montgomery on March 25, 1965. Let me repeat that: the march was 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery.

    Why subject yourself to the hostility, hatred, brutality and pure misery of walking 54 miles along the Jefferson Davis Highway? Congressman John Lewis, one of those hospitalized on Bloody Sunday, had this to say in his book Across That Bridge:

    During the Civil Rights Movement, our struggle was not about politics. It was about seeing a philosophy made manifest in our society that recognized the inextricable connection we have to each other. These ideals represent what is eternally real and they are still true today, though they have receded from the forefront of American imagination…

    But we must accept one central truth as participants in a democracy: Freedom is not a state, it is an act. It is not some enchanted garden perched high on a distant plateau where we can finally sit down and rest. Freedom is the continuous action we all must take, and each generation must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society. The work of love, peace, and justice will always be necessary, until their realism and their imperative takes hold of our imagination, crowds out any dream of hatred or revenge, and fills up our  existence with their power.”

    memorial honoring Congressman Lewis far left

    our little group reads about Selma March at Edmund Pettus Bridge

    And then we rode in an air-conditioned car the 54 miles to Montgomery, checked into our nicely cooled motel rooms and broke the solemnity of the day with an evening of cards and leftover ribs from Hancock’s Barbecue, the little family-owned place in Selma with ribs as good as those she had in Texas, Leora said with surprise.

    Thank goodness for that night of rest and laughter. The next day in Montgomery was a difficult one.

    Stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • 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.