I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Tag: texas storytellers

  • Ma, please tell the three eggs story again

    Ma, please tell the three eggs story again


    Bring a child up with the gift of laughter, and when she is old she will not depart from it. The three eggs story always made me laugh when my grandmother told it, and it still makes me smile. Enjoy.

    My paternal grandmother was called Ma by me and her four other grandchildren. We called her that so much even my grandfather changed from her given name Betha to calling her Ma. Ma was a wonderful storyteller who saved her best material for the small round table in her kitchen. Her audience usually consisted of me and my grandfather who, of course, became known as Pa.

    One of my favorite “Ma” stories involved my grandfather’s brother Ebb and his wife Carrie. They lived in Hearne, Texas which was roughly 50 miles from our little town of Richards where my grandfather had a barbershop with one chair. Ma wasn’t very fond of Ebb because he drove all the way from Hearne to have Pa cut his hair for free, and he usually brought his mischievous little twin boys Phil and Bill. Phil and Bill also received the family discount rate of “free,” and this irritated Ma.

    They’re nothing but freeloaders, George, Ma would say to my grandfather after every visit. But that’s not the story. This is.

    The Methodist preacher asked Ebb and Carrie late Saturday afternoon if they would mind to put up Sunday morning’s visiting preacher at their house that Saturday night. Well this put them into a tizzy because Carrie told Ebb the house wasn’t straight and they didn’t have anything for breakfast on Sunday morning. But being the good Methodists they were, they determined to welcome the preacher and give him a place to stay.

    Before the preacher came to the house, Carrie called the bad little four-year-old twins Phil and Bill to the kitchen to tell them they were having company and she didn’t have enough food for breakfast the next morning.. They only had three eggs left so she wanted them to be sure they said no when she asked them if they wanted an egg for breakfast.

    Ebb had them practice the routine Saturday afternoon. Phil, do you want an egg for breakfast?  No, Daddy. Bill, do you want an egg for breakfast?  No, Daddy.

    The next morning came, and  the preacher sat at the kitchen table for breakfast with Ebb and the twins while Carrie was making the food. Phil, do you want an egg for breakfast? Carrie asked. No, Mama, Phil replied.

    Bill, do you want an egg for breakfast? Carrie asked to which Bill answered “me bweve me want fwee eggs.”

    And then Ma would laugh uproariously at the thought of the expression on Ebb and Carrie’s face when Bill asked for three eggs. Ma loved nothing better than capitalizing on the misfortune of others – especially if they were the part of Pa’s family that didn’t pay for their haircuts.

    Honestly, Ma told the three eggs story on Ebb and Carrie for many years, and I laughed appropriately at the punch line every time she told it. So did my grandfather because he thought Ma was the funniest person who ever walked the face of the earth. I think the secret to their 65 years together was the laughter they shared at the little round kitchen table every day. He would tell who came to the barbershop that day, and Ma would be off and running on her monologue. Ma was a sit-down comic as opposed to a stand-up one.

    As for me, I miss those lunches – both the food and the conversations, the love and humor. What I wouldn’t give to hear Ma tell the three eggs story again today.

    Ma and Pa

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

    Slava Ukraini. For all the children everywhere.

  • between hell and hackeydam


    As if the Covid-19 pandemic wasn’t enough, apparently the weather has also turned against us. I hear the wind howling in the trees tonight outside my window – with the possibility of tornadoes on the way according to the weather forecasters. I feel like we are caught between hell and hackeydam, a place most undesirable. I first introduced the phrase and the man who shared it with me to my followers eight years ago, but the story will be new for some. Whether you remember him or not, Bubba Sage should give you a smile. 

    Once upon a time not long ago and certainly not far away a great Texas storyteller held forth on a Sunday afternoon as his audience gathered around a small dining room table, and it  was my good luck to be there for the performance. He was the last guest to arrive for the barbecue luncheon but proved to be quite the addition to a little band of friends and family who gathered for a traditional birthday celebration for my cousin Martin at his brother Dennis’s home outside Navasota.

    I should’ve known I was in for a treat when Carroll “Bubba” Sage announced his presence with an entrance worthy of royalty. This very large man with a closely trimmed grey beard moved into the kitchen as the screen door slammed behind him. He balanced a homemade German chocolate cake in a single layer aluminum cake  pan as he came in, and I felt the energy in the little house went up a notch. When he retrieved a package of coffee he’d also brought and declared he never went anywhere without his own Dunkin’ Donuts coffee because he couldn’t possibly drink anything else with his cake, my antenna was up and ready for the ride.

    What a ride it was. Bubba grew up as the younger child of parents who owned and operated what was affectionately known by its patrons in the 1950s as a beer joint. He was born and raised in Navasota which was, and is sixty years later, a small town in Grimes County, Texas, a county that was dry back in those days so his folks opened their establishment across the Brazos River in Washington County which was wet. Dry county equals no adult beverages allowed. Wet county means go for it.

    In addition to serving beer, the best barbecue and hamburgers in the state made the place standing room only for a long time, according to Bubba’s stories. I know barbecue like that from years of chasing brisket in Texas hole-in-the-wall restaurants and could visualize the scene as Bubba’s daddy cooked the barbecue outside behind the tavern on a long open pit built out of bricks with a crusty black grill to put the meat on. I swear I could smell the aroma, or maybe that was my cousin’s chickens and sausage cooking outside in a smoker for our lunch.

    And my, oh my, talk about entertainment. The Sage Place had music on the weekends when Bubba’s daddy played the fiddle in the band. As Alabama sings, if you’re gonna play in Texas, you gotta have a fiddler in the band. The women’s petticoats swirled to the fast music and then swayed to the slow tunes as they danced the Two-Step. The female patrons particularly liked the little boy who was always there and let him wear their costume jewelry sometimes when they saw him eyeing it with lust in his eyes. He was in heaven.

    The young boy grew up to become one of the teenagers that puffed the magic dragon in the middle of the Brazos River at a place he and his friends appropriately dubbed Smokey Point. They also created a theater of sorts at Smokey Point where Bubba developed a reputation as the Star of the Brazos. I was mesmerized by this big man’s recitations at our dining table. He took me totally by surprise when he began quoting a section of Young Goodman Brown, an obscure short story by the nineteenth century novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne. I could picture him standing on the rocks at Smokey Point as the Brazos River flowed past the theatrics this young teenager performed.

    As all good storytellers do, Bubba threw in a few words to grab his listeners’ attention and he grabbed mine when he said, “I’ve had  close calls – been caught between hell and hackeydam more times than I like to remember.” Excuse me I said as I interrupted him.  But what does that mean and how do you spell it? Bubba laughed and said it was like being between a rock and a hard place but for some reason his family used this phrase instead.  (He added he had no idea how to spell it so I’ve spelled it phonetically here and will now use it as if I created it.)

    The lunch was delicious. Bubba’s German chocolate cake was the best I ever tasted which  includes both of my grandmothers’ efforts so that’s high praise. I stayed to play dominoes after we ate and then began to say my goodbyes when the game was over. As I cut a piece of cake to take with me, Bubba made one final rendition in the kitchen. He recited portions of “The Hill”  from Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology which ends with the line, “… all, all are sleeping on the hill…”

    Honestly, does it get any better than that?

    view from my cousins Dennis and Martin’s place 

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

    Stay safe, stay sane and stay tuned.

     

  • sally and chance – an unusual love story


    This is an excerpt from a post first published here in September, 2011 and later included in the 2013 Texas Folklore Society Anthology titled Cowboys, Cops, Killers and Ghosts. A little longer than my usual posts, but I hope you’ll take time to read and enjoy.

    The frame shop was empty except for Sally and her husband Bill. The first thing I noticed about this woman was her hair. She had big hair, as we used to say when we described my Aunt Thelma’s signature beehive hairdo. Sally’s suspiciously colored reddish blonde white hair was swept up and back and appeared to be longer than it probably was. Regardless, it was big and suited the woman who greeted us with a smile the same size as her hair. I tried to figure out Sally’s age and guessed her to be in her early seventies.

    My friend Carol who drove me to Tomball from Montgomery told me to go first with my items before she slipped away to browse through the shop. I put a few pictures on the counter top in front of Sally who sat down and reached for her measuring tape. But then, she seemed to lose interest in the job ahead of her and launched into a monologue about the heat this summer. Sally interspersed her stories with getting down to the framing business at hand, periodically producing a frame for me to consider along with mats of various colors and textures.

    I glanced around the shop while she worked and remarked that I thought the pictures in her shop were great; I loved Texana.  She stopped measuring and her eyes lit up with the excitement of discovering a kindred spirit. She asked me if I had noticed the pictures at the front near the cash register. I hadn’t.

    “Well, I want you to go take a look at them right now,” Sally said. “They’re pictures of me and Chance, the love of my life. Go on. Have a look.”

    I obediently followed her instructions and walked over to see two 8 x 10 glossy photos hanging on the wall next to the check-out counter. One was a black-and-white photo of a younger Sally in a western outfit with three not unattractive cowboys posing with her.   They stood next to a large Brahman bull. I tried to pick out which cowboy was Chance.   The other photo was in color. Again, it was a younger version of Sally in a rodeo outfit with her arm around the same bull. I walked back to Sally and told her I thought the pictures were great but wondered which one was Chance.

    “Chance is the Brahman bull,” she said and pronounced it bray-man. I had always called it brah-man.

    “Wasn’t he beautiful?” Sally asked in a reverent tone. I must have looked surprised because she chuckled as if she and I now shared a wonderful secret: Chance the bull was the love of her life. I waited for the whole story.

    “I got him at an auction when he was ten years old,” she said. “My husband at the time, not Bill, said I ought not to take a chance on him but I looked right into that bull’s eyes and we had a connection. A real connection. It was love at first sight. So we got him, and I named him Chance. I had him for more than eleven years. That bull was the sweetest and gentlest animal I ever knew; I’ve had dogs meaner than him. I used to ride him in rodeos and the parades for the rodeos since he never minded the noise and fuss people made over him as long as I was with him. He was oblivious to everyone but me. It was love at first sight all right, and he loved me as much as I loved him for as long as he lived. I’ve never felt the pure love I felt from that bull from any person in my life including my husbands, children and grandchildren.”

    She took a breath and continued.   I didn’t dare interrupt her.

    “He got to be so popular in Texas that Letterman’s people called and asked us to come to New York to be on The Late Night Show. So we put Chance in his trailer and off we went to New York City to be on television. The deal was supposed to be David Letterman was going to climb up and sit on Chance in front of his live audience. Of course I would be standing right there with him. Well, honey, you should’ve seen those New York City folks’ faces when I walked Chance through the TV studio. I was never prouder of my big guy because he didn’t pay them any mind at all.”

    “Really?” I exclaimed.  “Did David Letterman climb up on your bull?

    “I’m just getting to that,” Sally replied as she warmed to the storytelling.  “I was waiting in the little room before we were to go on, watching the commercials at the break when I felt someone standing behind me. You know how you can tell when somebody’s behind you.”  I nodded, and she went on.

    “Well, it was David Letterman in the flesh,” Sally said.  “I must have looked kinda funny at him because he said, ‘Listen, lady, are you going to make sure nothing happens to me with that bull of yours?’  So I said, ‘Mr. Letterman, as long as I’m with Chance, you’re as safe as if you were in your own mother’s arms.’ He smiled and said that was good enough for him.   But the funniest thing was when we went on the air, he chickened out at the last minute and wouldn’t get close to Chance. But, then, the audience took over and made such a production that he ended up getting on him for about a second. He couldn’t believe how gentle my Chance was but he wasn’t interested in pushing his luck, let me tell you.” Sally laughed and stopped talking. She began to fidget with the mats for my pictures.

    “Wow,” I said. “That was some story. You and Chance were TV stars. Amazing. Whatever happened to him?”

    “Oh, he died an old man’s death,” Sally said. “Peaceful as he could be, but it nearly broke my heart. I cried for days when I lost that bull. But, I’ll tell you something about Chance.   Some of those professors over at Texas A&M took skin cells from my big fellow –  they cloned him. Yessiree, they cloned him and called him Chance II. First successful cloning of a Brahman anywhere.”

    “You’re kidding,” I exclaimed. “Did you ever go see him?  Was he just like your Chance?”

    “I didn’t go for a long time,” Sally said. “But my husband at the time finally convinced me to go and yes, he looked exactly like my beloved Chance. Exactly like him. But you know what was different? The eyes. They were the same color as my Chance’s eyes but we had no bond. No connection. He let me pet him but I wouldn’t trust much more than that. He didn’t have Chance’s soul.” She took off her glasses and wiped a few tears from her eyes. I was mesmerized by the story and pictured her trying in vain to recapture her lost love in an experimental lab at A & M. So close – and yet so far away.

    Sally told me other stories that afternoon while I made my selections for frames and mats from her suggestions. She had started riding wild bulls in rodeos when she was forty-one years old and had ridden for a year but retired when the broken bones and bruises became too much for her battered body.  She finished with my items and gave me a total that was reasonable for the work she and Bill were going to do. And a bargain when you consider the storytelling was free. I looked at the clock and realized we’d fiddled with my pictures for forty-five minutes. Carol must be ready to kill me, I thought.

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

    Stay safe, stay well and stay tuned.

     

  • celebrating a Texas storyteller who was part of my history


    Bring a child up with the gift of laughter, and when she is old she will not depart from it. I posted this in March, 2018 during women’s history month.  Enjoy.

    My paternal grandmother was called Ma by me and her four other grandchildren. We called her that so much even my grandfather changed from her given name Betha to calling her Ma. Ma was a wonderful storyteller who saved her best material for the small round table in her kitchen. Her audience usually consisted of me and my grandfather who, of course, became known as Pa.

    One of my favorite “Ma” stories involved my grandfather’s brother Ebb and his wife Carrie. They lived in Hearne, Texas which was roughly 50 miles from our little town of Richards where my grandfather had a barbershop with one chair. Ma wasn’t very fond of Ebb because he drove all the way from Hearne to have Pa cut his hair for free, and he usually brought his horrible twin toddlers Phil and Bill. Phil and Bill also received the family discount rate of “free,” and this irritated Ma.

    They’re nothing but freeloaders, George, Ma would say to my grandfather after every visit. But that’s not the story. This is.

    The Methodist preacher asked Ebb and Carrie late Saturday afternoon if they would mind to put up Sunday morning’s visiting preacher at their house that Saturday night. Well this put them into a tizzy because Carrie told Ebb the house wasn’t straight and they didn’t have anything for breakfast on Sunday morning. But being the good Methodists they were, they determined to welcome the preacher and give him a place to stay.

    Before the preacher came to the house, Carrie called the bad little four-year-old twins Phil and Bill to the kitchen to tell them that they were having company and she didn’t have enough food for breakfast the next morning.. They only had three eggs left so she wanted them to be sure they said no when she asked them if they wanted an egg for breakfast.

    Ebb had them practice the routine Saturday afternoon.

    Phil, do you want an egg for breakfast?  No, Daddy.

    Bill, do you want an egg for breakfast?  No, Daddy.

    The next morning came and sure enough, the preacher was sitting down at breakfast with Ebb and the twins while Carrie was making the food.

    Phil, do you want an egg for breakfast? Carrie asked. No, mama, Phil replied.

    Bill, do you want an egg for breakfast? Carrie asked to which Bill replied Me bweve me have fwee eggs.

    And then Ma would laugh uproariously at the thought of the expression on Ebb and Carrie’s face when Bill asked for three eggs. Ma loved nothing better than capitalizing on the misfortune of others – especially if they were the part of Pa’s family that didn’t pay for their haircuts.

    Honestly, Ma told the three eggs story on Ebb and Carrie for many years, and I laughed appropriately at the punch line every time she told it. So did my grandfather because he thought Ma was the funniest person who ever walked the face of the earth. I think the secret to their 65 years together was the laughter they shared at the little round kitchen table every day. He would tell who came to the barbershop that day, and Ma would be off and running on her monologue. Ma was a sit-down comic as opposed to a stand-up one.

    As for me, I miss those lunches – both the food and the conversations, the love and humor. What I wouldn’t give to hear Ma tell the three eggs story again today. She was a very large part of my women’s history.

    Ma and Pa

    Stay tuned.