LAWN TEA
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
WHAT'S IN A NAME?
Sunday, April 14, 2024
TOWANDA, WHERE WERE YOU?
A quite lengthy post this morning on Debbi's Front Porch led me to a lot of thinking, about a thing I remember from my childhood. There was a quite-influential woman in Memphis named Georgia Tann, whose leadership of the Child Welfare department was so iron-handed and illegal and downright cruel, though permitted blithely by whatever Powers-That-Were in that era, they made the news all over the world---especially the part about selling the pretty children to the likes of Joan Crawford and Lana Turner.
My answer from Debbi's comments page:
But I DID live the years of that unspeakable harridan---Georgia Tann, whose regular escapades were blatted on the Commercial Appeoal front page almost every morning at breakfast, and whose dreaded name uttered to us North Delta children could shudder you with cold and make you straighten up and fly right for quite a spell. Other kids had the Boogey Man and the Wampus Cat and even a semi-local Bell Witch to keep them on track; THEY were mere amateurs. That Memphis Witch was allowed to cruise the streets of poor neighborhoods, tempting the “pretty” children into her luxurious car, and they were gone---sold or bartered to families far away, and nobody would listen to the parents. She switched her expensive Goldsmith’s and Lowenstein’s skirts through any place she chose, and wrought havoc worse than the Four Horsemen.
She was unbelievable---what cogs in the Memphis Machine turned HER out and set her upon hapless parents of that era? Several of the au courant court-and-prison cases right now reflect the glossing-over of Powers-That-Be on the side of some stunningly cruel and incomprehensibly powerful folks who seem to have the ear and Permission of whatever board or authority governs in some places.
And I unwillingly confess kinship to one of those tiny-bit-of-authority-gone-berserk people: My Mother’s cousin, whose position in the Child Welfare office in her Mississippi county was the ruin of many families, for her word was seemingly law in all the cases. On Sunday visits home to her Mama, she’d regale the dinner-table with how she just COULDN’T decide, and maybe they could just all flip a coin "RIGHT NOW, and Y'all can witness it!" to see if the latest ‘case” kept or lost their children to The System. And woe to the ones who tried to report her to any authority---she also relished retelling those woebegone souls’ pleadings and threats, as she’d cut herself “just another little smitch ‘a that pie.”
Once, I heard her talk about it in person---my twelve-year-old self rebelled against the words so carelessly and triumphantly flipped into the after-dinner smoke: “ONE OF ‘EM---HE THOUGHT HE’D SASS ME, and EYE took his kids,” with a satisfied chin-lift and smile. However poor the family, or how dire the circumstance, that kind of smug enjoyment is shatteringly repulsive.
And in some crazy amalgam of Life and Literature, I’ve never forgotten a moment in that movie, “Stolen Babies,” when Georgia says to her new young social worker who is stunned by learning just how inhuman their System is, and has protested to her over lunch after a court date: “We’re gonna have some CAW-fee, and a little bite ‘a sumpn’ sweet, and then I’m gonna drive you HOAM. And you can THINK about things til Monday.”
That one sentence so reverberated with me, it has hung in the air for me to look back at for decades.
Boy, did this get me thinking today! I’m not one to flash unpleasant moments or events or people onto the screen---never have been, but some things just need some rock-kickin’ and some light of day---for folks to take notice and speak up.
TOWANDA!
Friday, March 8, 2024
PIANO MAN
I'd just had one of those "can't-be-but-is-it?" moments on seeing a slim passing gentleman disappearing down the hall in what I could have sworn was a Leisure Suit, and so I stood to peek out and gawk til he disappeared through the doors. The silhouette and the gait were so similar to those of a long-ago acquaintance of great musical acumen, but whose talents were spent in various small bars in and around several counties, stirring the smoke and hum of the rooms with old tunes and quite magical classical numbers over the years.
I just sat down and fumbled words into my even-then-geriatric phone---a silly poem---accidentally turning out to be a banal mono-rhyme all the way down, and outlining what I perceived to have been the life of such a quiet, perhaps unfulfilled soul. I gave him a youth from mere imagination, then other happenstance to bring him to what I knew for sure: He lived by his music, by a brandy-snifter paycheck earned in the dim recesses and dull hum of voices and his tunes. I DID know, as well, that his accomplishment at the keyboard earned him Sunday-morning-organist title at the Presbyterian church, and that the whole county gathered for the fabulous majesty of his Christmas and Easter programs.
I wanted to put that great experience into the poem, that thing that none of us could do, that burst of Glory in the music of those special Sundays, but I just left it alone, for I cannot find words to do it justice. I just know that I could live such a small life as his seemed, just for the great joy of the Knowing that I could call forth such Magic with my fingertips. I hope his heart was that full---just for the carrying around of all that Grace and that Cosmic Secret of spilling out the music.
PIANO MAN
Once he played, oh, he played, from the time he was ten,
For his Mama's Card Friends smoking Kents in the den,
They'd ask for "That Rainbow Thing," then, "Play it AGAIN!"
As the maid brought the Bridge Mix and sandwiches in.
He made hardly a ripple in the pond he was in,
Til a DUI got him five months in the Pen.
It took years to get back on the circuit again;
He'd have sold his own soul for a Holiday Inn.
There's been many an evening when no one came in,
And he played through his repertoire, Solo, again;
Til a lady on her fourth martini leaned in,
Leaving "Love That Red" lipstick all over his chin,
And his second-best pants saturated with gin.
Now he sits in the lounge with hair growing thin,
Still taking requests from the folks who walk in,
With his cigarette propped in an old Altoids tin,
He's as famous as he'll ever get, or Has Been.
Wednesday, February 14, 2024
TEN YEARS AGO
FROM OTHER, HAPPIER, MORE INTERESTING TIMES---TEN YEARS AGO, TODAY.💕
The table itself had quite a few holiday decorations and representations left over, with the Christmas dishes and holly goblets and a few red paper napkins and two square vases in red and silver.
There's a sweeping little light-up angel-in-a-cube, some pink candy canes and a pearly-pinky-tan Santa standing in Sweetpea’s Christmas tumbler.
My favorite cup, with some hot-pink paper napkins, chosen over turkeys and harvest-fruit for the Thanksgiving table, because “these will go.” And they kinda DID, because we used the Burgundy Plates. In the chair, there’s even a glimpse of the gaudy sandwich “platter” from our Un-Super Bowl party.
I hope YOUR Valentines Day is ROSY as well!
💕
Tuesday, January 30, 2024
BIDING TIME
Mrs. G. Derfwad Manor
-J.R.R Tolkien
It is the place at the centre of the compass from which every arrow radiates,
and where the heart is fixed.
It is a force that forever draws us back or lures us on.
For where the home is, there lies hope.
And a future waits.
And everything is possible.