Orphaned

It was 10 years ago today. My mother was in the hospital, they weren’t quite sure exactly what the problem was and they were taking her hither and yon for this test and that. I had spoken to her the night before and she seemed great, hopeful that she would get out in a day or two. In between that time and the time I started calling her room the next day, she obviously took a turn for the worst. When I could not reach her in her room I did not freak, as she was often out for various treatments…or maybe experiments, heck, who knows. A few hours later, I began to get concerned and that bitter taste of impending doom crept into the back of my mouth. One of her tests was going to coming back with very bad findings. I knew in my heart that something was wrong and I started making mental notes on what must be done, I would have to talk her into living with me and the girls and she’d not be able to live alone.


It was about 3:00 when I got the call at work. “Your mother has taken a turn for the worst; we’d like you to come in.” Its straight shot up 61 in Robinsonville to Shelby Drive then over to Elvis Presley Blvd and up to Methodist Hospital, but that was the longest drive of my life. All sorts of scenarios played in my head, but you know, I knew she had died. I called X2 for comfort, but he had none for me, in those days we had not become divorced friends yet. I remember sitting on 61, near old home town, and this car full of young black guys with Bolivar County plates, were looking at my car and laughing and pointing, who knows why, but I specifically remember thinking, my mother is dead and you’re laughing at my car, ain’t life grand?


I came to the intensive care waiting room and was met by the stereotypical stout nurse who whisked me into a waiting room and told me in a no-nonsense, not at all comforting manner that my mother was dead. I had just been diagnosed with a panic condition and I mentioned that, as I could feel the surge rising in my throat, she informed me there would be none of that and to let her know when I was ready to see my mother. And she left the room. I was alone, but thank God, I had a cell phone, cos the phone in the little room was local only. I did what any woman does in a crisis, I started making phone calls. Auntie Virg, out in Arizona. Norma; Mama’s cousin and next door neighbor, RonDan, day care, Donna Reed Flintstone, Geener, I don’t know who I called when what I told them, I only remember the lady at Day Care saying, “Don’t go in to see her alone.” I can’t remember who I put in charge of getting Mel, but it wasn’t X2.


DoodCuz and RonDan got there first. They both exceeded 6 feet in height and they towered over me and smothered me against them, it was like a cloud of what families are made of, closeness, love, despair, grief, disbelieve, support and kindness. Mama’s weird friend Barbra was there, Norma came in as we took that dreaded walk to the icu pod that housed her. Norma intercepted me in a bear hug. Her coat smelled of mothballs and I almost gagged.


You remember things like this in a jumble later on. We walked into the icu room, I think I may have been leaning on DoodCuz. Dot lay there as asleep. They had removed her dentures (Where are those? Do I have them?) Her mouth hung open, as if enjoying a particularly satisfying nap. I sat in a chair, looking at my dead mother, it was so unreal, she looked as if she’d wake at any moment. It looked like she was breathing. RonDan, who was a nurse by trade, touched my mother. “Her skin is so soft,” she said. I stayed in my chair. “She’s not dead”, I said, “she’s breathing.” DoodCuz suggested it was time we leave, and we did.


That was the last time I saw her, as we are the cremation types. She wanted her ashes spread near the old homestead in Attala County, between the property that had been her grandfather’s and the property of her childhood bestie who had always lived next door. She wanted said childhood bestie to do the honors; she did not want me involved at all. Seems she died while we were at loose ends, her and me. The last time I saw her alive, she was argumentative and critical, of me, Auntie Virg, and Chris as well. She wanted Chris to stay in the hospital with her, but Chris was too young to sit at the hospital overnight, she had no experience what so ever in the care of an ill person and besides all that, she just did not want to stay the night in the hospital. I did not make her stay and that sealed my fate as far as my mother felt about me, I believe. Had she lived, we probably would have gotten through it, but as it is, her life ended before we could make up. So, she was miffed with me the last few days of her life. That’s how she was, always miffed at someone, usually Auntie Virg, or me.


It was more than a year after that she began to visit us. Auntie Virg had moved back to Mississippi by then, she was spending the weekend at the apartment. I woke in the wee hours to make water, as the old folks say, and as I sat there sleepily, I thought I heard my mother cough. Now when you hear someone cough who has been dead over a year, you tend to jerk to attention. Then, I smelled coffee brewing. Dot always got up in the night and stayed up a bit, and almost nightly she drank coffee. Coffee did not keep her awake. As I made my way back to bed, I still smelled coffee, but pooh poohede it off to my imagination. Chris came in my room the next morning and asked had I made coffee the night before. Oh course, my answer of “No, why?” was accompanied by an icy cold finger on my spine. Chris had found a coffee mug sitting on the counter with a little brown coffee in the bottom of it and a spoon lay across the top the way Dot always did it.

I'm Not An Actress But I Play One On TV

I was hoping that by this juncture in my life that I would be an actress who had a fascinating career and now took roles that had interesting parts for me. My home address would be Malibu California. Out my backdoor, out my sliding stained glass doors that lead out to the pool and to the ocean and beach. On my Italian marble mantle in my luxurious all white sunken living room, would be my Oscar, surrounded by framed photographs of me and my husband, John Travolta.



As it turns out, that didn’t happen. Can’t imagine where I took that wrong turn in my career path, but I am not a famous actress. Oh well, I may not live 87 feet from the Pacific Ocean, but I do live in a town that has a body of water in its name and I live close to a famous river.


I started my career of minor careers at a little place called Oilfield Exchange. It had the distinction of being the oldest answering service in Lafayette. We also ran Western Union in Lafayette. I started out on grave shift, 11pm to 7am. Started out? They wouldn’t let me off it, which resulted in my employment at Answering Service of Lafayette. After they hooked me in by promising no grave, they flattered me into working it and I was too naïve to even negotiate a raise out of it. After not being able to break free I bounced over to A&M. Oilfield Exchange courted me back there, that reconciliation was an abomination and finally I found myself at Telephone Answering Bureau.


They were reluctant to hire me at TAB; I had worked so many places in the short time between May 78 and Feb 80. I was a good operator, but I was young, wild and a little full of myself. I made rash decisions, I was immature, my mouth wrote checks my ass couldn’t cash. I was sort of insufferable; I don’t know how anyone stood me. I had a hard time standing me.





I have an excuse, I was hungover. This is Oilfeild Exchange.



I found a niche at TAB. It was the largest answering service in Louisiana, with 16 switchboards. We answered phones for many types of businesses, but the main thing was oilfield service companies and the city medical community. Yes, if you could work board 3 and 4, the Doctor’s Boards, you were the shit around there, and guess who was THE Shiz-it, of course, Young Adult Vi. If you could work those boards, you were fast and accurate, had a good memory, a rapport with doctors who are generally grumpy oldish curmudgeonly men, but some are bright young things that are usually pleasant. The Oil boards operators were just as fast, but the doctors boards were crazy. The people on the other ends of the Oil Board’s cords were easy going, possibly half inebriated men, jaded by their oilfield experience, jauntily flirting with the operator, Boards 3 and 4 operators dealt with frantic mothers of newborns, brusque nurses from various intensive care rooms around the city or tired overworked doctors. It was extremely nerve wracking and I had a prescription for a mild tranquilizer that I took when things got too overwhelming. A pissed off doctor will yell at you like a hysterical bridezilla if you mess up. Some, not all, but those that would were a pain in the ba donkey donk. Toward the end of the shift, as sick babies finally slept and tired doctors were able to finish rounds, the boards cooled down and you could wind down a little before getting off for the night.

These pics are from 2 different locations of A&M

I met so many women that influenced me in different ways in those years. I say women, as it was almost exclusively women. Crusty old broads, sassy but sage black women, women in relationships with married men and young women discovering the freedom of being an adult with none of the responsibilities, girls like me. Uptight women, married women who looked over their spectacles in loud disgust over young pot smoking blue jean wearing beatniks. Women who hated men, women who loved men, any man, all men, as many men as possible. Divorcees, single mothers, women who had no children, but had tiny lap dogs that were eternal babies. Women who smoked too much, women who drank, women who needed a drink and women who drove others to drink.

With this age of internet in your pocket digital pictures phones the size of compacts age we live in, the answering services I worked for have to be nothing like they were in that heyday at the end of the oilfield boom. We answered a phone, reached the person on call at a number they’d left, or perhaps we’d beeped them on a device that send our voices over. “Call your answering service”. It was before Caller ID and Call Forwarding. It was before answering machines. We did have touch tone key pads on our switchboards, we weren’t cave women. Only Oilfield Exchange had rotary dial switchboards.


I wonder what happened to all those ladies I worked with. I have been able to successfully find two or three over the web and they don’t seem to be caught up to the internet age yet. The lady who sat next to me whenever I was on board 4, as she always sat on board 8 ( For some unknown reason the boards on that side of the room were in order, left to right 10, 1 , 2, 3 , 4, 8, 5, 6 and 16. Missing numbers were on the other side of the room.) She reeked of perfume, I hated sitting next to her, perfume makes my throat close, in large doses. She wore so much to cover the gin, I guess. I wonder if she’s still living, but I guess she’d be near 90 if she is. The lady originally from Oklahoma who was a roly poly short woman who had diabetes and was not supposed to use salt. She loved salt, she wouldn’t give it up. She said she’d rather die happy that live a life of bland food. Where’s that girl that could pass for Sissy Spacek’s twin, who was blissfully pregnant with her boyfriend’s baby. Her boyfriend that was almost full blooded Indian, and was killed in a bar fight before the baby was born. They were so in love, such a striking couple, a small girlish woman and a tall dark man with long silky black hair. Where’s that woman who pinned all her hopes and wasted her youth on a married man who kept promising to leave his wife and begin a new life with her. He finally did leave his wife, to be with a third woman, who he cheated on his wife and his girlfriend with.


I worked at TAB until I moved back to MS in ’86. (1983 was Arizona year, I was able to walk with into the job I’d left) I did some growing up there. I learned about life through the eyes of others, you learn a lot about people and their pasts sitting next to them eight hours at a time, day after day.



Anyway, I really do have an Oscar on my mantle. All is not lost.

Happy Birthday, El

If there was ever a celebrity I was “raised on”, as we say in the South, it’s Elvis Presley.


My Aunt loved him from the moment she knew of his existence. Dot always claimed to not really care for him, but that was just her wanting to be contrary and different, as was her way. When you spend over $50 on a book about a dead guy, you like him.


The Cousins and I heard Elvis music from birth, there are probably thousands of kids that can make this claim. In the age before internet, before VCRs even, 8 tracks, what’s that? We listened to vinyl Elvis. The first movie I saw in a theater, rather than a drive-in, was an Elvis movie, Fun in Acapulco. It was in Opelousas LA, and I remember being shocked when we got out that it was still daylight outside. It was dark in the theater, and I was sure it was night time.

I’ve always joked that you couldn’t be in my family if you weren’t up on your Elvis facts. That’s not exactly true, but over the years we have picked up an intense amount of Elvis trivia. I won’t bore you with any here, cos chances are you know some on your own, or you totally do not care.

1973 was the year they showed Aloha from Hawaii on TV. In 1974 my aunt and grandmother got to see his concert at the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis. Needless to say, the Aloha from Hawaii had semi permanent possession of the turn table. We knew every word of that album, every breath, nuance, every mention of Kathy Westmoreland and the Sweet Inspirations. “I hope these pants don’t tear up, Baby.”


Then that sad day in August 77 when E expired, he was only 42. On the Lafayette stations and the newspaper let us know everything we needed or didn’t really need to know about the entire situation. I think it may have been the precursor the media blitz that consumes any newsworthy happenings these days.


Moving back to North Mississippi, which is inches from Memphis, in 86, we were settled in just in time for the big 10th anniversary of Elvis’ official leaving of the building. My mother, who didn’t like Elvis, as you’ll recall, taped all movies played, watched all live coverage. It was like nothing I’d ever seen; now we see this type of thing all the time.

When you encounter someone who has never been down this way, their first question about Memphis is about Elvis or Graceland or death week. Elvis Death Week, it’s embarrassing, you must roll your eyes all the way back into your head at the very mention of it. OMG the things people will do. You can’t fault the powers that be for going on with it, year after year. It’s a big money maker. In some twisted way, it keeps Memphis on the map, and you wanna always be on the map.


Okay, now forget all that and let’s concentrate on the man and his music.


Vi’s favorite Elvis song? I can’t pick just one. His gospel recordings are goose bump inducing. His Christmas album is awesome. Once Elvis did a cover of a song, even just goofing off, or a little live ditty, it became his. I can’t think of one cover I’ve ever heard El sing that didn’t blow the original away. He could sing as well in a live setting as with slick producing on a finished recording. Even singing in a language he didn’t speak, it’s as if he’s been singing that way all his life. He had the best backup singers. He couldn’t stay still, soul and emotion oozed out of every pore. Even as I am writing this, I am finding songs and performances on You Tube I was unaware existed that are awesome. Elvis movies, eh, I only care for the musical numbers.


My kids have only ever held Elvis in medium esteem. Oh sure they like a few of his songs, who couldn't like some of them. A couple of weeks ago, the afternoon DJ on 98.1 here in Memphis was playing an Elvis song, probably a Christmas song, a couple of weeks ago was Christmas time. Anyway, it might have been part of her daily “Relationship Roulette” game, because she was talking to a younger listener and she was telling him he would have to get a little older before he could appreciate Elvis. Chris said, “You know, that’s true, Mama. I used to think Elvis was stupid, I’ve always liked some of his songs, but I could never get into him the way you do, but lately …..” Then the subject changed, you know how conversations progress. Maybe Mel can grow into her inner Elvis, too. After she gets over the screamo, death metal, makes Gwar look like The Jonas Brothers music (?) genre phase.

Here is the official Elvis.com website.

I am going to leave you with this with this performance from the ’68 Come Back Special that says it all.

">

Ring It In and Bring It On

Midnight. 1/1/1977. I am standing at an open window in an apartment on the not quite, but just almost, seedy side of Lafayette. There was a bar across the street. We had no phone. If you had to make an emergency phone call, you had to go to the pay phone in the bar. I was 16, but that didn’t matter. It was Louisiana, back when the legal age was 18. I was a busty big girl at 16, I had no trouble passing for 18.

I was alone at midnight 1/1/77. I was very sad and in a morose mood. It had been a bad year, 1976, or a t least it ended badly. Evil Ann took our possessions and claimed them for her own and had us kicked out of the house we shared on a little side street in Broussard. We spend a couple of weeks in the Acadian Motel before moving in with one of Dot’s offshore/drinking buddies. Sybil was a floozy, Dotty West look alike, rode hard put up wet kinda gal. Living also in the two bedroom apartment was Sybil’s “Can’t commit to being a lesbian, I just like to say I am one” daughter and her ex-beauty queen daughter who could turn anything into an accessory. She was like the MacGyver of the Suzanne Sugarbaker set.

I was alone at the apartment, I had the bedroom window open and I stared out into the night. I could see the back of a pretty nice neighborhood. It was as if the houses were turning their backs on the low rent apartments and bars, shunning us like pissed off Amish people.

It was cold that night, I remember the fog of my breath when I exhaled. 1976 had seen me displaced, living out of Comeaux’s district, my mother had to drive me to school every day in a Ford that had no heater and would shimmy if you topped speed 35. The first round of firecrackers heralded in 1977, from the neighborhood. So 1976 had left the building, Thank You! The last few months had been so dark and unsettling that I could feel tears of relief pooling in my eye sockets.

From the right of me, in that neighborhood, a lone trumpet played Taps. I cried freely, it was such a high lonesome sound, so like my mood that it seemed providence had brought us together. The night was so calm and clear, no wind, everything completely still. Father Time ’76 crept away on tired old feet while Baby New Year ’77 crept in on unbruised dimpled knees.
New Years Eve has always had a sore spot with me, I always ended up alone, greeting the year with Dick Clark. Once married, I swore I’d never be alone New Years Ever again. Once back in Mississippi, I've never spent NYE alone.

From NYE 87-95, the New Years Party was at my house, it was muh thang. The ringing in of 1995 was to be our last shindig, there was a planned mutiny and I jumped ship before it could happen.
Now it’s not so important I be with someone at New Years minute. Long ago and fat away is the time I had a sweetheart to smooch at midnight. I’ve even slept through it a couple of years. I’m always a little sad at year’s end, an old friend passing. I’m always hopeful that the New Year will bring happiness.

Auld Lang Syne, the international "New Year" song, always makes me a little misty. The melody is haunting and beautiful and the words true. Happy New year to you and keep your old aquaintances close to your heart. Also, keep your heart open, you never know when a new friend is going to walk in.

Merry Christmas Y'all

It’s summed up best, I think, by Sir Paul McCartney. “Simply having a wonderful Christmas time.”

I had remarked, on everyone’s new favorite mode of communication, Facebook, or fb to the more seasoned hip readers, such as myself….ahem, that it was going a be a slim Christmas in the Vi house. A gal’fran commented that sometimes those are the best and that is the truth.


We ending up with not a big stack of loot, but a meaningful one, as there were no “standard last minute gifts”, but each reflected something we love. Those gifts give both ways. To the receiver, a new view of a cherish icon. I received a paperweight with a drawing of the Eiffel Tower under a glass dome. If you find yourself on my side of the bullpen, stop by my cubicle and I’ll show it to you. To the giver, the gift of knowing your choice and the story that goes along with how it came to you is something that will be remembered and told and retold. How the Eiffel Tower thing you had planned on getting because the giftee said back in August that she loved it, was sold at Kirkland’s and you found an even better gift at Pier One, and it was hiding under a display table. Something drew your eyes there, and there it sat. “Bonjour, I am over here.”






I received the gift of appreciation. Economic circumstances have led me to be that lady that gives baked gifts. I’ve always heard that those were the best gifts, but I wasn’t sure I believed it. It certainly requires a lot of work, even if it is cheaper, by the time you add man hours, its value rises. Of course, the giftee doesn’t see that part; they see and experience yummy goodness (hopefully). I took Friday, Christmas Eve, off from work to prepare the buffet that preceded our gift exchange. The house filled with savory aromas, background noise provided by Turner Classic Movies with their Christmas movie line up. Mel and Sk8rBoi did whatever housekeeping chore I asked of them, and Mel never even complained or whined, that was a gift in itself. I’m proud to say my cooking endeavors were met with oohs and aahs and what Dr Frederic Frankenstein would refer to as “yummy sounds”.




Christmas is a magic time. Forgiveness comes easier; the kid in you comes out to play with all other kids that come out at Christmas time. In the sitting around and hanging out that comes after the gift blitz, we reminisce about crazy things we’ve done, how we found the perfect gift. We enjoy a second trip to the eats, maybe have a cocktail. Laugh, love and wonder at the things we learn about each other.




As I was helping Mel put her new down mattress topper on her bed, I noticed a quarter on the floor. “I’ve been practicing with that,” she said and took it from me. She began to roll the quarter through her fingers, clumsily, cos she’s still perfecting her moves, but it’s something I can’t do, would never have even thought of trying. I was amazed; it was an extra little Christmas surprise. This morning, waiting for X2 to pick her up, she told me how she had been practicing for three days as she rolled it over her fingers. Her Dad came in and began explaining how it is done. He’s an explainer, you know. Ask him the time, he tells you how to make a watch. Turns out, when he was Mel’s age, he also taught himself this trick. I’m always astonished at the things we inherit. This isn’t the first time Mel has exhibited X2’s phenomenal ability to self teach. This is a gift he passes onto his daughter through DNA. My gift to her is to the ability to make people laugh and the love of words. Mel’s gift to us? Showing us the younger version of ourselves with renewed hope and promise.





Christmas 1995, I received the greatest gift ever. News that I was with child. I found out Dec 23 that Mel was on her way. Very apropos, too, as I had prayed for this miracle and news of it came to me as we commemorate that most important birth.

Boast of Christmas Past

Well, friends and neighbors, the Yule Tide Season is in full swing. This Christmas is going to be small, materially, but we’ll do all right.

The tradition in my family has always been to open presents on Christmas Eve night. When we were kids, DoodCuz, DrCuz, Kat and I, we quickly ate our light supper, hot dogs usually, then sat in front of the TV in the den until the grownups decided that it was “time”. Many times, we’d hold the present with our name on it that most intrigued us, loving it before we even knew what it was. I remember reading the words “Head to Toe” through the paper on a present, and I went crazy trying to imagine what it could be. That was 1971. You couldn’t just type “Head to Toe” in a search engine, you had to sit there and wonder.

Most years we were able to successfully beg to one just one present Christmas Eve Eve. “Head to Toe” ended up being a Dawn doll with three wigs, short to long, hence head to toe. Dawn was a tiny Barbie-ish doll.

After presents had been exchanged, we played with our new toys for a bit, the grownups would gather round the table and play cards or a board game. Once 9:00 came we four kids piled up in Auntie Virg and UncaHoney’s king size bed. The adults continued their games, enjoyed a few cocktails and waited for Santa.

After Santa had arrived, we were woken out of hard achieved slumber to see what Santa Claus had left. It would be like 4am. We’d run out to the den and find our individual stack of loot. The adults stayed up, made sure we saw all the stuff, including stockings, and at some point slipped away to bed without our notice. When the sun peeked into the windows, with her rosy pink glow, we sacked out on the couch, or floor, our new favorite toy sleeping beside us.

Later, we would awake to Dot, Auntie Virg and Mama Lou in the kitchen, our Christmas meal prepared as if our late grandfather were supervising. Everything his recipe and the manner in which he would have made it. My mother worked to peel oranges slices, riding them of their filmy skin. Next she would chop pecan finely, pecans from Auntie Virg’s pecan orchard that conveniently came with the house. Auntie Virg was bravely chopping peppers and onions and cabbage for the hot slaw. Mama Lou attached pineapple slices to a Ham, them plunked cherries in the center of them. DOT made the potato salad, and it was good.

After dinner, the food was left out for grazing. Christmas afternoon and night was a big munch/play/munch/play kinda thing. No VCRs and video games them, we had toys to play with and fight over. FAO Schwartz South was going on there and we disappeared until we thought of all the good food still prime for nibbling.

And speaking of no VCRs, if you missed the broadcast of Rudolph, Frosty and Charlie Brown, you didn’t get another chance to see if for 12 months. Back in those days, the TV Guide was the most important magazine in the house.

Schoolhouse Minuet

Did you know that December 10th is the date Mississippi reentered the union after the civil war? I only know, not because I’m a Mississippian, but because on December 10, 1971 I enrolled into Duncan Academy and the 6th grade class was having a Happy Birthday Mississippi party.

It was a sweet little school, the kind Francie Nolan gets to go to in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Grades 1-6, it was a stately old building, one long hallway through the middle, a auditorium with a stage and a library no bigger than a bedroom. The classes were small; there may have been 15 in the 6th grade class, including me. The desks were wooden, bolted to the floor, the desk top attached to the seat in front of it, think A Christmas Story, we even had a hole for ink wells. There was a cloak room and a radiator. It was very quaint.

Duncan Academy was a private school, right on old highway 61 (it was the only 61 then) at Duncan Miss, a little burg between Cleveland and Clarksdale. Smack in the middle of the Mississippi Delta. The last time I remember seeing the building was on a trip from Lafayette to Eudora back in the mid eighties, at that time it was a nursing home. The old gym was now a ramshackle structure, the old lunchroom not visible from the road, but probably was still in use. I think there may be a school on that site, I hope some of old building was renovated. I love old buildings.

The children who went here were the children of cotton planters, managers of cotton farms, and white cotton farm laborers children. Then there was Me, Dot and I lived with Auntie Virg and UncaHoney after the Hardy years came to a screeching halt. I was at the bottom of the social hierarchy, the poor relation.

I was forced to play girls basketball, I sucked, the most athletic thing I can do is sit on the couch and cheer the Saints or Cowboys on. We studied Mississippi history. That’s a bloody history, most of the material had to do with the Civil War. I don’t think Mississippi History taught these days concentrates so much on that, in fact I think it’s kinda glanced over. We took a overnight field trip to Jackson and met the Guv (see blog post “Picnic”)

The other big happening that year was the school play. When I say School Play, I mean ever’body. We sixth graders were the real stars, we had all the speaking parts. It was about a little country school putting on a school play, ah, art imitates life imitates art. Each class came up to “practice” their song for the “play”. My cousin, DoodCuz was in 3rd grade, and his class’s number was “You Get a Line, I’ll Get a Pole”. We had to wear Hillbilly clothes, cut off blue jeans and ropes for belts. We talked “country” (as if our real voices weren’t).

It was on a Tuesday night, I believe, and in the days before VCRs and such, Auntie Virg missed her favorite TV show, Sonny and Cher, to see our performance. I sat on stage right, all the way to the end, right in front of the audience, I looked at the footlights to keep from looking out at the audience. I didn't want to mess up like I had in the third grade. I was supposed to keep eyes straight at the audience, being part of a Christmas tree, wrapped in crepe paper, sitting on the steps leading up to the stage. But I turned and watched the play and the teacher leaned over and smacked my shoulder with a ruler, in front of everyone.

I remember standing at the black board in that 6th grade classroom, a fellow class mate making fun of the way I wrote an uppercase "D". I was the scapegoat in that small class. Later I would lash out at one of the girls I considered most hateful to me. My mother told me years later I had caused the girl's mother to have a nervous breakdown. I don't know if that's true, but I sincerely hope that it is not. That might not be a story for another time, it shows an ugly side of me.

We lived with Auntie Virg and UncaHoney through the winter and in spring Dot got us an apartment in Merigold, Mississippi. We only got one channel, Channel 6 out of Greenville/Greenwood. I spent a lot of time listening to the radio. There was no FM then, not in this area. I listened to WHBQ out of Memphis. Popular songs of the day were "Brandy", "Vincent", Jackson 5 and Osmond songs. "Doctor My Eyes" "A Horse With No Name". I remember my bedroom in that little apartment when I hear those songs. I am instantly transported back to a lonely 11 year old reading Tiger Beat and 16 and Rona Barrett's Hollywood magazines.

What ever happened to Rona Barrett, anyway?