I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Tag: sears catalog kit houses

  • celebrating Black History Month with Pearl Harris

    celebrating Black History Month with Pearl Harris


    In the tiny Sears Roebuck kit house I grew up in, boundaries were both invisible and highly visible. The home was owned by my maternal grandmother and shared with two of my mother’s adult brothers in addition to my daddy, mother and me. The home was crowded. When I think back on it, I don’t know how we all managed to eat and sleep there – not to mention the scheduling of everyone’s turn in the single bathroom which barely had space to turn around to close the door after entering. That room was tight, and boundaries were tightly defined.

    While the home itself was small, the lot on which it sat was large, a corner lot with an unattached garage (with an attached outhouse that may help explain the bathroom scheduling inside) behind the house. Beyond the garage a small pond which we called a tank in rural Texas lay quietly in an “in-town” pasture that had no fences. My back yard was spacious, vast in a small child’s mind, unique in comparison to the other small frame houses sitting on the few dirt roads that connected them.

    Although the tank wasn’t very big, the fish and frog population that lived there mysteriously thrived, encouraging our relatives from the bigger cities of Houston, Dallas, Rosenberg, et.al., to make regular fishing trips to our place “in the country.” They came with their poles, rods, reels, live and artificial bait to try to land Ol’ Biggie, the name my Uncle Toby gave to the wiser large perch and catfish that proved elusive most of the time. During those early years I preferred running around the banks of the tank with my cousins to dropping a line with a squiggly worm in the water.

    At random times, though, I made an exception to enjoy the company of a full-bodied black woman named Pearl who walked across another invisible line to come fishing in our tank. One paved road we called main street distinctly divided black and white people in my community in those days in the late 1940s and early 1950s;  that street should have been painted blood red. Pearl lived in an area of town on one side of the street I knew simply as The Quarters. I would be much older when I realized the name referenced slave quarters that still separated her world from mine.

    Pearl told me the best stories about all the fish she had caught in the hottest fishing holes around the county. I believed every word she said because I trusted the deep rich voice that spoke. Pearl and my grandmother were good friends who visited together whenever she got ready to leave with her bucket full of fish. Pearl had the best luck catching perch in our tank – never very large – but she bragged that the little ones were better to fry anyway. Made sense to me. My mother also adored Pearl which surprised me since Mama didn’t adore anyone including herself.

    Pearl Harris was the first black person in my life. She was warm, affectionate, funny and always kind to me. I have no idea how she came to be friends with my grandmother. I suspect they met in the general store in town where my grandmother clerked. Whatever the circumstance, I felt their friendship was authentic. They were easy with each other. I now know Pearl’s walk across the invisible racial divide to our fishing tank was not only brave but necessary to put food on the table for her family. My grandmother could relate to that need, too.

    Wanda Sykes says in her Netflix comedy routine that I’ve watched at least four times now, seriously, at least four, that all white people need to have at least one black person who is their friend. Wanda thinks that friendship just might be a starting point to heal the racial divide that is at the center of income inequality and a host of other problems in our country. From a little girl growing up in a Texas town big enough for only one general store but large enough to contain two worlds separated by skin colors of black and white, I say I couldn’t agree more, Wanda. Bravo.

    RIP Pearl Harris (1893 – 1957).

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

    You may remember this post from last year. I will remember Pearl for a lifetime.

    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated, get boosted and please stay tuned.

  • celebrating Black History Month with Pearl


    In the tiny Sears Roebuck kit house I grew up in, boundaries were both invisible and highly visible. The home was owned by my maternal grandmother and shared with two of my mother’s adult brothers in addition to my daddy, mother and me. The home was crowded. When I think back on it, I don’t know how we all managed to eat and sleep there – not to mention the scheduling of everyone’s turn in the single bathroom which barely had space to turn around to close the door after entering. That room was tight, and boundaries were tightly defined.

    While the home itself was small, the lot on which it sat was large, a corner lot with an unattached garage (with an attached outhouse that may help explain the bathroom scheduling inside) behind the house. Beyond the garage a small pond which we called a tank in rural Texas lay quietly in an “in-town” pasture that had no fences. My back yard was spacious, vast in a small child’s mind, unique in comparison to the other small frame houses sitting on the few dirt roads that connected them.

    Although the tank wasn’t very big, the fish and frog population that lived there mysteriously thrived, encouraging our relatives from the bigger cities of Houston, Dallas, Rosenberg, et.al., to make regular fishing trips to our place “in the country.” They came with their poles, rods, reels, live and artificial bait to try to land Ol’ Biggie, the name my Uncle Toby gave to the wiser large perch and catfish that proved elusive most of the time. During those early years I preferred running around the banks of the tank with my cousins to dropping a line with a squiggly worm in the water.

    At random times, though, I made an exception to enjoy the company of a full-bodied black woman named Pearl who walked across another invisible line to come fishing in our tank. One paved road we called main street distinctly divided black and white people in my community in those days in the late 1940s and early 1950s;  that street should have been painted blood red. Pearl lived in an area of town on one side of the street I knew simply as The Quarters. I would be much older when I realized the name referenced slave quarters that still separated her world from mine.

    Pearl told me the best stories about all the fish she had caught in the hottest fishing holes around the county. I believed every word she said because I trusted the deep rich voice that spoke. Pearl and my grandmother were good friends who visited together whenever she got ready to leave with her bucket full of fish. Pearl had the best luck catching perch in our tank – never very large – but she bragged that the little ones were better to fry anyway. Made sense to me. My mother also adored Pearl which surprised me since Mama didn’t adore anyone including herself.

    Pearl Harris was the first black person in my life. She was warm, affectionate, funny and always kind to me. I have no idea how she came to be friends with my grandmother. I suspect they met in the general store in town where my grandmother clerked. Whatever the circumstance, I felt their friendship was authentic. They were easy with each other. I now know Pearl’s walk across the invisible racial divide to our fishing tank was not only brave but necessary to put food on the table for her family. My grandmother could relate to that need, too.

    Wanda Sykes says in her Netflix comedy routine that I’ve watched at least four times now, seriously, at least four, that all white people need to have at least one black person who is their friend. Wanda thinks that friendship just might be a starting point to heal the racial divide that is at the center of income inequality and a host of other problems in our country. From a little girl growing up in a Texas town big enough for only one general store but large enough to contain two worlds separated by skin colors of black and white, I say I couldn’t agree more, Wanda. Bravo.

    RIP Pearl Harris (1893 – 1957).

    Stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Laughs at Her Own Jokes


    I have an amazing ability to entertain myself. I believe it comes from being raised as an only child in a very small town before daycare, pre-school and kindergarten. My first organized social group was the first grade, so I had years of toddling around by myself followed by  standing alone during recess for the better part of my first grade year, according to my mother who never lied about things like that… plus she had a bird’s-eye view of the school playground from her kitchen window so why would anyone doubt her.

    One of the tools I learned to use to connect to other kids was humor. When I was growing up in the 1950s in the somewhat unorthodox household of my maternal grandmother, her two adult sons who were 20th. century pioneers  in the 21st. century phenomenon of grown children who refuse to allow their parents to become empty-nesters; my mother and dad, my dog Rex and me, laughter was the sound heard most often at any time of the day or night in the little Sears Catalog kit house we called home in Richards, Texas.

    My daddy was funny. My grandmother was a practical joker and always had a scheme that was designed to end in a good laugh at somebody’s expense. One of my uncles owned a metal detector and spent every day looking for General Santa Ana’s buried gold bullion in Grimes County and the surrounding Texas countryside because he had bought infallible maps that were better than a modern-day GPS for locating them. Needless to say, he was a daily inspiration for comedy.

    My paternal grandmother, who lived just down a small hill from where I lived with my other grandmother, was a true Texas storyteller with an amazing gift for mimicry. She could mock anyone in town –  or really anywhere –  if she knew them or was kin to them. She loved to laugh at her own jokes and improvisations. Sitting with her and my grandfather at the little round table in her kitchen was a recipe for laughing so hard tears rolled down our cheeks.

    With such a heritage it’s no wonder I became a storyteller myself and slowly recognized the transformative power of humor. As a young teenager, I couldn’t articulate what the gift was, but I had an inkling of how the ability to make someone laugh was a universal connection for me to them. People liked me when I told stories that made them smile, and I also laughed at my own jokes with them…just like my grandmother had done.

    Fifty years later I began to write and incorporated humor in my writing.  It wasn’t  an effort to be funny – I never took classes to be funny. As a matter of fact, I didn’t know until recently that there were classes to teach techniques for comedy in writing.  However,  on my Facebook profile I listed my job as “essayist with humorist tendencies.” Since I’m a lesbian, I thought that was a witty play on words.

    Two months ago I had an interesting voicemail from a woman who publishes trade magazines here in Columbia.  She was looking for a “local humorist” to write something funny for an upcoming new publication she planned to launch this summer, and someone had given her my name. She researched my Facebook page and my blogs and determined I was funny so would I write something for her new publication. She would pay me for my contribution. I called her back, and we struck a deal for a short short of 500 words. I had an April 30th. deadline.

    This became an important learning exercise for me. For starters, I had never been paid to be amusing, and I found I couldn’t think of one funny thing to write about. I panicked. I talked to Teresa who gave me several ideas which I tried to use – but failed to be able to make them work. I stared at my blank computer screen for several days and totally understood for the first time what writer’s block was all about. I freaked out.

    Finally, FINALLY I wrote not one, but two, new pieces within her word count and sent them off with my permission to use either one or neither and I would try again. Luckily, she liked both pieces and picked one for the upcoming issue. She and her staff thought both of them were funny. Thank God.  Turns out humor can be a serious business.

    I continue to be the only child who has the ability to entertain herself. Blogging gives me instant gratification for my storytelling humorist tendencies, and I love sending my words into cyberspace with the hope someone will identify with them and connect to me.