Archive for the 'Texas' Category

What Goes Around

November 12, 2007 | Texas, Thank You Notes

One day, about 25 years ago, not too long after I had moved to Texas from the mid-west, I went to the grocery store to get a few necessities.  I was about 22-years-old.  I aspired to be dirt poor. To say that I was struggling would be an understatement.

Into my cart, I put the very few carefully chosen things I could afford – a small carton of milk, a loaf of day old bread, off-brand toothpaste and a small box of feminine products.  I put my groceries onto the conveyer and watched the cashier ring up each item, making sure she hadn’t rung up anything for one penny more than it cost.  I don’t remember what the total was.  I do remember reaching into my purse for my checkbook and not finding it. And then realizing I had left it at home.  I remember the sensation of disbelief and then panic wash down my spine like lighter fluid.

I began scrounging through my purse looking for enough money to cover my groceries, although I don’t know why.  I was as likely to have a kangaroo in my purse as I was to have enough cash to pay for my groceries.

As I was frantically digging through my purse willing money to materialize, I felt the spark of life begin to flicker and wane.  That little spark that I had been tenderly protecting for months, that spark that had burned just bright enough to beat back the loneliness and kept me convinced that I could make it in Texas, that little spark that was going to prove to all those people back home that they were wrong about me – that little spark was all but out.

It had been a hard, hard year and for some reason the missing checkbook seemed like a big bucket of water aimed right at my spark.  I was trying so very hard to be a grown up and I was failing.  I felt like crumpling into a heap onto the grocery store floor and crying my eyes out.

I looked at the cashier and tried to work up the nerve to tell her that I had no money, that I would have to come back for my stuff. She looked at me with her arms folded across her chest and her eyebrows raised expectantly, as though she had seen this before.

Then the lady in line behind me handed the cashier $10.

“It would bless me to do this small thing for you,” she said to me. “Please. Allow me.  This money means nothing to me.”

She looked into my face for consent.  Her expression was hopeful and happy. She nodded her head yes.

I sighed and hung my head in shame.  And then I nodded agreement.  I was grateful. I was embarrassed.  If I had allowed my voice into my throat at that moment, I would have begun sobbing uncontrollably.  With big fat tears threatening to spill, I simply smiled at her and mouthed the words thank you.

After I composed myself and collected my bag of groceries, I offered to mail her a check but she waved me off, telling me to keep my chin up and have a nice day.

Recently, when I was in the grocery store, that memory came flooding back.  It was early in the day when the only shoppers in the store are the AARP mafia and a few other moms.  I got the things I needed and then got in line behind a young gal.  I watched her methodically put each item on the conveyer, carefully checking the price, doing math in her head.

After her purchases were rung up, she counted out her cash to the cashier.  And then she looked at the total and counted it again. Something wasn’t right.  And then she began rummaging through her purse.  “Oh no,” she said, “I thought I had another $10 in my purse.” She kept rummaging while at the same time glancing back at her groceries to see what she could put back.

I recognized the look of panic on her face. I saw in her that her spark and her spirit had been tested.  I reached into my purse and handed the cashier $10.

“Please,” I said, “It would bless me if you will allow me to do this for you.”

“Oh no,” she said, “I couldn’t.”

“Please,” I persisted.  “I must.”

And it was true. It was as if I had no choice in the matter. I had to.

“Well thank you,” she said.  “I don’t know what to say.  It’s been really hard…” and then her voice trailed off.

“I understand,” I said. And I did understand.

She gathered up her bags and then turned and smiled at me. She thanked me again.

“Have a nice…” Then I stopped.

Have a nice day didn’t seem fitting.

”Have a nice life,” I said.

“I will,” she said, “You too.”

I am having a nice life.  When you grow up to to be the lady in the grocery store who is lucky enough to get to pay it forward once in a while, that’s a nice life.

God Bless Texas And It’s Big Ol’ Weird Heart

June 6, 2007 | Mildly Amusing, Photo Essays, Texas

Photo Temporarily Unavailable

It’s true. I love my adopted home state of 26 years, yes I do, but I am not blind to the fact that we may have cornered the market on weird.

Recently as we drove through East Texas on our way to Pa Palmer’s funeral, we saw this airplane on the side of the road. We thought at first that it was abondoned, which is odd enough, but then we saw the homeowner underneath the fuselage running the weedeater (if you look closely at the photo, you’ll see two tiny legs under the airplane) - which only begs more questions than it answers. Was someone living there? Was this the Taj Mahal of trailers? Why bother with the weedeater when a stick of dynomite would work better?

As we drove down the road, Antique Daddy and I had an interesting discussion where we considered different scenarios explaining how the airplane got there. All my theories involved a keg of beer and someone named Bubba saying, “Hey y’all! Watch this!”

Pa Palmer

May 15, 2007 | Antique Friends, GiGi and Poopah, Makes Me Sigh, Texas

Friday afternoon, Antique Daddy and Sean and I were on our way to celebrate Mother’s Day weekend with Memaw when we got the phone call. The father of one of our dearest friends had passed away unexpectedly.

Pa Palmer, as everyone called him, was 85-years-old. On Monday, we returned him to the sandy East Texas soil from whence he came.

Except that we all will miss him terribly, it is no tragedy really. Pa Palmer lived long and he lived well. He loved others and was loved in return. He lived by his faith and he died by his faith. In that there can be no tragedy.

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Pa Palmer was a mild and unassuming man with smiling eyes that turned downward at the corners. I remember the first time I met him. He was a greeter at a church I was visiting and he reached out to shake my hand as he handed me a bulletin. His hands were large and warm and soft and perfectly matched his face. As I got to know Pa Palmer, I learned that the only thing larger and warmer and softer than his hands was his heart.

Pa Palmer made his living working with his hands, but he made his life serving with his hands. Someone told the story of how one time when he was delivering a meal to a shut-in, he spied a rusty and broken fan in the trash. He took it home, fixed it and returned it the following week. A fan is a blessed thing to have in Texas. One time I mentioned in passing that a lamp I loved had quit working. Not long thereafter, he showed up at my house and fixed it. As I watched him sit at my kitchen table tinkering with mysterious lamp parts, there was an unmistakable light and glow about him that came from within. To do for others was a joy to him. But perhaps the memory most deeply etched in my mind is watching him pull his 4-year-old great granddaughter up into his lap and those large hands of his patiently and tenderly combing the tangles out of her wispy white angel hair.

As we filed past the coffin, I reached out and touched Pa Palmer’s hands for the last time, the hands that had touched so many lives in the past 85 years. They were not soft and warm this time, but hard and cold. He was not there. The spirit and and energy that had fueled his life’s work had flown away home.

Tears filled my eyes and overflowed. I patted his hand one last time. Farewell Pa Palmer. Until we meet again.

Dr. Texan

April 24, 2007 | Medical Mysteries, Mildly Amusing, Texas

When our health insurance changed a while back, one of the things I was required to do was select a General Practitioner. Prior to that, I never saw a GP. I have so many quirky medical issues that I employ an army of specialists and I have no need of a GP.

I took a lot of time selecting my GP. I thumbed through the insurance directory and narrowed down the list to doctors in my geographic area that claimed to speak English as their primary language. From the long list of two, I settled upon a doctor who was nearby and I put in a call to his office. “And it says here that the doctor speaks English, is that correct?” I ask the nurse. “Oh yes!” she says proudly, “He was born and raised right here in Texas.” And not one red flag went up, with or without a lone star.

Lest you think I have an attitude against foreign doctors, let me say here that my Ob/Gyn, to whom I pretty much owe my life and Sean’s life, is Iranian. And I do have difficulty understanding him sometimes, but he is so good, that I don’t care what he’s saying. I just trust him. After he leaves the room, sometimes I ask his nurse, “Now what did he say? Is it anything I really need to know? Do you think he noticed the Dr. Pepper on my legs?”

Nonetheless, communication is important to me and even though it was a doctor that I probably would never see beyond the initial visit, I wanted a doctor who spoke English with a degree of fluency. So I made an appointment for a complete physical.

The walls of the exam room in which I waited were lined with professionally taken pictures of Dr. Texan on his ranch, Dr. Texan and his children in a field of bluebonnets, Dr. Texan standing next to a longhorn steer. As I’m looking at the beautiful photos, I’m thinking this is great! A genuine US citizen!

About that time, Dr. Texan knocks on the door and comes in.

“Howdythayerleetlemissyimdoctorafixintotakealeedlelookieyahoodoggy. Okiedokie?”

“Um yes! Or hi? Did you say hi? No, my name is not Missy. You want to fix whaa? Did you just say hoo doggy?”

It was Dr. Suel Forrester from SNL.  He checked my blood pressure, listened to my heart and whacked my knee with a rubber mallot. He checked here for a lump, there for a lump, everywhere a lump lump. He talked the entire time. And I understood not one word. And then he left.

And then I turned to the nurse and asked, “Now what did he say? Is there anything I really need to know?”

Nothing To Complain About

January 17, 2007 | Family Stories, Reruns and Leftovers, Texas

After three months of freezing weather, too much cookie dough and entirely too much plenty of togetherness at the House of Antique, I am feeling the urge to complain. I am not a winter person. It seeps into my bones and settles into my soul. Like a chest cold. (Correction: Someone just mentioned that it hasn’t been three months, just three days. Sorry. My bad.) Ironically it was just this time last year I was feeling the same way. After I dislodged my nose from my navel I wrote the following post.

Ode To Granny McKee

Dear Granny McKee,

You had long passed away by the time I married into your family, but I feel like I know you from the stories your children and grandchildren like to tell of you. Now that I have a child of my own, it is all the more that I admire you.

On those days when I’m exhausted from the constant struggle of trying to shape one pint-sized caveman into a civilized human being and I’m up to my eyeballs in self-pity, I try to imagine what your life was like living out on the North Texas prairie in the early years of the century with seven children. It is then that I sober up and laugh at the absurdity of my mistaken notion of hardship.

Sometimes I feel put upon to have to make yet another trip to the store (in my nice car and with my bottomless credit card) to buy disposable diapers and wipes to manage the never-ending cycle of diapers. Then I think of you with your two sets of twins less than three years apart. No indoor plumbing and no electricity — nothing but a bucket of water from the well and a scrub board. I know you could tell me a thing or two about never-ending diapers.

Then there are times I imagine myself a martyr because I occasionally sacrifice the few hours of free time I have in a week to lend someone a hand. But then I recall my mother-in-law telling me how as a little girl she would hear you leave the house in the middle of the night to go deliver a baby or care for someone who was sick or to sit up with the dead, as they did in those days. I guess the fact that I no longer have time to sit down and read a novel anymore doesn’t really qualify as a sacrifice, does it?

You would probably find it ridiculous that I groan about having to go to the grocery store when everything on your table was put there after a season of planting, tending, harvesting, peeling, chopping and cooking. And when the Texas skies were stingy with the rain, as they often are, then even all that work didn’t yield enough to feed nine mouths sufficiently. Your children like to tell of how never a Sunday passed that you didn’t invite the traveling preacher and his family home for Sunday dinner and then how afterwards you would send them on their way with a basket of leftovers. In spite of having to work so hard for so little, you shared what little you had, often at the expense of your own family.

And after you had raised all of your seven children and were at a point in your life when you could indulge your own desires, you raised your oldest grandson, who in my book is one of the finest men I know. Except for Sarah Lee pound cake in your later years, self-indulgence was something with which you were unfamiliar.

Thank you Granny McKee for the example of your noble life. I am so proud that my son shares in your heritage. I pray that he has inherited your steely spine and your heart for sacrifice and service.

Love,

Sean’s Mom

Texas Tough

January 16, 2007 | Texas

Texans are tough when it comes to the heat.

103 degrees for ten days in a row? We laugh at that. Ha! And then we order chips and salsa to eat outside on the patio. But get a little ice, a little wintry mix? We cower in our house and eat cookies. And our trees faint dead away.

And that is just what happened to what Sean calls his favorite tree.

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He asked me when I’m going to put it back.

I had to tell him that only God can make a tree.

But I can make cookies! And when the going gets tough, or cold as the case may be, the tough bake cookies.

Don’t Mess With Texas Y’all

January 13, 2007 | Mildly Amusing, Texas

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Texas…

October 27, 2006 | Mildly Amusing, Texas

where pants
rhymes with saints.

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Fire Ants

March 7, 2006 | Sometimes Tart, Texas

The ides of March are upon us. Technically, it is still winter, but yesterday, it was 85 degrees. I wore flip flops, shorts and a tank top as Sean and I set off into the neighborhood to goof off. Wearing shorts in March might sound like a good thing, but there is a price to be paid for it in fire ants.As we walked towards the pond, the late afternoon sun made lacy shadows that shimmered and danced on the sidewalk under the canopy of trees. We stopped to admire the shadows and observe a parade of ants frantically marching to and fro in the crack. Squatting catcher-style, we watched them furiously shoving past one another, each one desperate to complete some invisible task. Sean held me back with one hand in a protective manner and waved the other hand over the army of ants to indicate danger. “Ants,” he said looking up at me solemnly. Then he repeated what he has heard us say over and over, “Ants bite. Don’t touch.” The sting of a fire ant bite is unfortunately something with which all Texans become all too familiar all too soon. And it seems each year they get bigger and meaner.

With no cold weather this winter to freeze off their fire-y little behinds, the fire ants have been hanging out all winter in their subterranean dens of iniquity pumping iron, drinking protein drinks and making fun of humans.

Which brings me to a new marketing slogan I have for our northern neighbors:Canada! No fire ants here!

When it’s 85 in March, you know it’s going to be a long summer.

Southern Boy

February 2, 2006 | Texas, Use Your Words

I thought Sean was developing a speech impediment but it turns out it’s just a southern accent.

Sean: “Aah ayuht awll mah deenor Mommy. Can aaah hayuve aahce cuhweem?”

Antique Daddy: I think he said “I ate all my dinner Mommy. Can I have ice cream?”

Antique Mommy: We may have to move. To Canada.

Ode to Granny McKee

January 31, 2006 | Family Stories, Texas

Dear Granny McKee,

You had long passed away by the time I married into your family, but I feel like I know you from the stories your children and grandchildren like to tell of you. Now that I have a child of my own, it is all the more that I admire you.

On those days when I’m exhausted from the constant struggle of trying to shape one pint-sized caveman into a civilized human being and I’m up to my eyeballs in self-pity, I try to imagine what your life was like living out on the North Texas prairie in the early years of the century with seven children. It is then that I sober up and laugh at the absurdity of my mistaken notion of hardship.

Sometimes I feel put upon to have to make yet another trip to the store (in my nice car and with my bottomless credit card) to buy disposable diapers and wipes and diaper genie refills to manage the never-ending cycle of diapers. Then I think of you with your two sets of twins less than three years apart. No indoor plumbing and no electricity — nothing but a bucket of water from the well and a scrub board. I know you could tell me a thing or two about never-ending diapers.

Then there are times I imagine myself a martyr because I occasionally sacrifice the few hours of free time I have in a week to lend someone a hand. But then I recall my mother-in-law telling me how as a little girl she would hear you leave the house in the middle of the night to go deliver a baby or care for someone who was sick or to sit up with the dead, as they did in those days. I guess the fact that I no longer have time to sit down and read a novel anymore doesn’t really qualify as a sacrifice, does it?

You would probably find it ridiculous that I groan about having to go to the grocery store when everything on your table was put there after a season of planting, tending, harvesting, peeling, chopping and cooking. And when the Texas skies were stingy with the rain, as they often are, then even all that work didn’t yield enough to feed nine mouths sufficiently. Your children like to tell of how never a Sunday passed that you didn’t invite the traveling preacher and his family home for Sunday dinner and then how afterwards you would send them on their way with a basket of leftovers. In spite of having to work so hard for so little, you shared what little you had, often at the expense of your own family.

And after you had raised all of your seven children and were at a point in your life when you could indulge your own desires, you raised your oldest grandson, who in my book is one of the finest men I know. Except for Sarah Lee pound cake in your later years, self-indulgence was something with which you were unfamiliar.

Thank you Granny McKee for the example of your noble life. I am so proud that my son shares in your heritage. I pray that he has inherited your steely spine and your heart for sacrifice and service.

Love,

Sean’s Mom

I Love A Parade - Once Every Five Years

January 16, 2006 | Sometimes Tart, Texas

 There’s an old song that starts out “I love’a parade!” Well, I don’t. Parades, fireworks and the state fair all fall into the same category for me under the heading “Been There Done That.” If I see a parade once every five years, I’m good.

Saturday morning there was a parage at the annual stock show and rodeo. And since I’d seen a parade in the last five years, I wasn’t all that thrilled about going. But Antique Daddy and the boy love that kind of thing and I’m a go-along-get-along kind of gal, so I went. It was a sunny and cool morning, and if you had to go to a parade, it was a great day for it.

Parades in some parts of the country might mean floats and balloons and clowns and that Macy’s kind of thing. In Texas, parade means horses. Lots and lots of horses.

So it wasn’t surprising that first up were the horses. And it was kind of fun the first 25 or so horses. Sean called out “Vilver!” to every horse that passed. Vilver - or Wilbur - is the name of Godmother Gigi’s miniature horse and therefore every horse in the universe is named Wilbur. Ooooh! A spotted horse! (Vilver!) Oh how cute — sparkles on her spotted butt. Oops. Make that his butt. OK Mr. Horse, we get it, you’re a he. Now put that thing away. Oh, and a bow in his tail. No wonder he looks humiliated. Oh. Gosh. Wasn’t expecting that. I didn’t know horses ate bran muffins. So much for the bow.

Oh look. A brown horse. (Vilver!) And a black horse. (Vilver!) And a brown and black horse. (Vilver! Vilver!) And a white horse. And a gray horse. And a white and gray horse. And a big horse. And a little horse. And a very little horse. Old men on horses, old ladies on horses, fat old ladies on horses. Poor horses! Ladies in ruffled dresses on horses, prom queens on horses, Cowboys for Christ on horses, bankers and realtors on horses. Even Chihuahuas on horses. (Vilver! Vilver! Vilver!) I think I’ve just written a Dr. Suess book.

45 minutes and 1,472 bran-muffin-eating horses later, I’m wondering if there are any horses in the state of Texas that are not in downtown Ft. Worth and where did I put my surgical mask? Sean is no longer calling Vilver! to every horse, but picking gum off the sidewalk and I’m thinking of joining him.

Next up, a middle school marching band. No wait. That’s a high school marching band. Well, maybe not marching. Apparently they aren’t too thrilled about being here. I guess if I were marching behind the horses I’d wear that expression too. And a surgical mask. And boots. Or maybe I’d duck out and pick gum off the sidewalk instead.

And then there were more horses and that was the end of the parade.

That oughta’ do me for another five.

Photo: temporarily unavailable.

The Hostess with the Leastest

January 12, 2006 | Antique Friends, Sometimes Tart, Texas

We had visitors right after Christmas – a family of four from California. They stop by for a few days about once a year and we always look forward to their visit. They are smart and interesting people with kids they have home-schooled into smart and interesting teenagers. We are always hoping that maybe some of that smart and interesting will rub off on us by proximity, so we ask them to stay with us whenever they are in town. And they always do, which makes me think they might be faking that smart thing.

The challenge for us, in hosting our friends, is this: They are from the Bay Area. And that is a problem in that there are so many great sites to see and restaurants and things to do in the Bay Area that our sites seem a little rinky-dink by comparison. Let’s see – they took us to Golden Gate Park and we took them to the Trinity River park area (no link had pictures which I think says all you need to know). River is probably an overstatement — trickle would be a more apt description. The Trinity River is the reason why Dallas and Ft. Worth exist, which proves it doesn’t take all that much. Think about it, you can probably start your own metroplex.

They have the rolling streets of San Francisco. We have Cow Town. (Be sure to scroll down to the bottom for a picture of a sleeping homeless person. And if that doesn’t make you want to visit, I don’t know what does.) It’s a struggle to think of a site we can take them to that is not known for someone being shot. I know. It’s Texas and that’s a toughie. Southfork? The Grassy Knoll? Anywhere in Dallas? But no matter what culturally enlightening freak-show shoot-out of a site we force on them, they are always gracious about it.

And it’s not just that the local sites we take them to are so… so um, (figure out your own word), it’s also that everything seems to curl up in ball and die or puke on us when we are trying so hard to make their visit enjoyable so they will come back. And we want them to come back because it’s not that many people we can trick into returning to the Antique House of Weird. 

For example last year when they visited, we had a week of tornado threats and the power went off every night. And then the shower broke. And the toilet backed up. And every restaurant we took them to, it was as if someone was standing at the door on the look-out for us and hollering into the back, “They’re coming! Quick find yesterday’s schmluckchiladas! Can you get those bad boys any closer to the heat lamp? Be sure to let them get good and cold before serving them. Who’s got the bugs? We need a bug for the water. Oh, and find the dirty glass with the lipstick. Anybody seen that?” It was as if we Googled “Worst Restaurants in D/FW” and made a to-do list.

But in spite of the adventure of misadventure that usually defines their stay at our house, they keep coming back. Which proves they really are friends. Either that or the hotels here are just that bad around here.

Pay It Forward

September 7, 2005 | Texas, Thank You Notes

So much has been written and said about Hurricane Katrina, that I hardly think I have anything more to offer on that topic in terms of how things went so horribly wrong and who is to blame. What I do have to say is how proud I am of my adopted home, the great state of Texas and the many Texans (naturalized or native) who have stepped up to the plate to care for the suffering. We are a big state with big hair, big hats, big ideas, occasionally big mouths, but most of all, big hearts. I am not surprised in the least by the outpouring of help because this was the same response I received when I moved here 24 years ago.

Way back in 1981, before many of my fellow mommy’s were even born, I moved to Dallas, Texas from the cornfields of the mid-west. I was 21-years-old and greener than the green beans my son lobs at me at the dinner table. I had been working for an insurance company and when an opening in the Dallas agency opened up, I jumped on it and transferred to Dallas. When I say transfer, I don’t want you to get the idea that they paid to move me and set me up. What I mean is that they said, hey, if you’re crazy enough to move to God-forsaken Texas, then we’ll pay you minimum wage when you get there.

When you’re 21, you are long on hope and dreams and short on wisdom and cash. So it seemed like a reasonable thing to do. I loaded up my Honda Civic with what little I had and set off to become a Texan. I vividly remember the January day I was packing all my worldly belongings into my little car. As I was carrying a box down the icy, snowy steps of my parent’s house, I slipped and slid all the way down on my back, bumping my head on each step until I finally came to rest completely under the car. I had figuratively and literally hit bottom. As I was lying there on the dirty snow looking up at the underside of my car, I knew I was doing the right thing.

After I arrived in Texas and got my apartment and paid my rent and my phone bill and utilities, I had exactly $8.43 for two-weeks. But I never felt more wealthy. Everyone I met extended kindness, encouragement and offers to help. And they meant it. A lady who worked for the company in the next office nearly every day would bring by a meal that she said was left over, which I kind of always doubted. “Nell, you mean to tell me this entire roasted chicken and corn casserole is leftover?” I’d ask. She’d wave both her hands like she was shooing away chickens and say, “It’ll just go to waste, honey, now you take it home and put it in the fridge.” I never went hungry thanks to kindness of Nell and many others like her.

I’ve been the recipient of Texas hospitality more times than I can remember in the past 24 years. I hope that maybe I’ve passed a little of that along to others somewhere along the way. Sometimes on the hardest, hottest, most miserable of Texas days, I’ll think back to that January day when I was laying under my car in my parent’s driveway and I remind myself that I did the right thing in coming here. These are my people and this is where I’m supposed to be.