Tag: memories

Of no relevance whatsoever

I have long looked for photos of a house my family lived in when I was growing up. It lingers in my memory as my favorite of all our homes (there were many: Army family), and that’s why I used it as the model for the Boone home in A Coventry Christmas.

While going through some of my mother’s photos, I found two of the house. The summer shot was taken using a Polaroid Swinger–after the picture developed, it had to be coated with some kind of protective liquid film. (Shut up; I’m 35.) Either too much of the liquid or not enough of the liquid apparently yellowed the picture over time.

The winter shot, taken with a mystery camera, is better, but I apologize in advance to my readers who are snow-weary.

The house was two stories, though we only used the first floor, and there was a basement that I never even saw. (I don’t like dark, damp underground places.) The rocks were hand-picked from fields by the original owner (a dentist) and his hired man. The dental office, also covered with rocks, was to the left as you faced the house. I believe his son, who leased us the house, was either a dentist or a doctor, but the dental practice had long been closed by the time we moved in, though all the old dental instruments were still inside. (We managed to find keys to take us inside many of the forbidden places on the property.)

There was a lot of acreage, much of it forested or overgrown, and it was heaven for a child to explore. Hummingbirds hovered outside my bedroom window. Bees hummed inside the walls in the back of the house. We even had a friendly ghost (and maybe an unfriendly one, too, which made my sister not quite as fond of the house as I was).

Anyway, I changed the Boone property into a veterinary practice, leveled the trees (sorry, Todd) for the clinic and large animal treatment facilities, and made it all several decades older. The Boone house will always exist within the pages of my novel. The real house was torn down, the trees felled, the many flowering shrubs and wildflowers vanquished, and a Quincy’s steakhouse built on the property. Now there’s a motel on the site–my sister and I stayed there a few years ago and THEY, unlike the upscale hotels that house me in larger cities, HAD FREE INTERNET.

I’d rather the house was still there…

Photo Friday, No. 86

Current Photo Friday theme: Surreal


Sometimes I think the eye focuses on one small thing because it can’t bear to perceive a larger horror.

Last year I toured Houston’s Holocaust Museum with Tom, Rhonda, and Tay. I took a photo of this bit of earth from the Dachau concentration camp. My mother visited that camp when she was pregnant with me. It changed her, and ultimately, it was part of shaping who I am. While I stared at and photographed this, I felt dizzy and disconnected from myself–in a word, surreal.

Of birthdays and other things

Hey, Timmy, here’s your sign:

Yes, today is the birthday of my writing partner, Timmy. Note: That is NOT the same person as Tim/Timothy, who does not want to be called Timmy. EVER.

Timmy probably actually prefers Timothy, as well, but I’ve been 35 too long to change that habit now.

March 4 is a big day in my life, because it’s also That Old Woman’s birthday and my agent’s birthday. This evening, I’ll be taking That Old Woman some chocolate cupcakes. Anybody want to come with me?

When I was in New Orleans recently, I saw that birthday sign on the side of a non-working streetcar and shot it for the express purpose of wishing Timmy a happy birthday with it. I wish I could be with you, Timmy, celebrating your birthday in your new home, but I’m sure that Paul and your many friends will celebrate in style.

Now, about this streetcar thing… I remember how excited Greg was when the St. Charles streetcar began running again. Although I’ve driven down St. Charles into the Garden District on other trips to New Orleans, I never rode the streetcar. Since Lynne and I had limited time before we needed to leave the city, we decided to jump on, ride it to the end of the line, then catch one coming back.

I can’t recommend this enough. I’ve always loved seeing those rattling old cars; this was my first opportunity to ride one. Riding the entire length of the St. Charles line ($1.25–exact change, please–the machine takes dollar bills and quarters) is a good way to get a glimpse of the beautiful Garden District. You also see Loyola, Tulane, and Audubon Park. You can hop off to explore, or go to the end of the line, where you’ll be asked to exit the car and pay another $1.25 for the return trip.

Instead, Lynne and I exited and headed for a place she’d heard about, the Camellia Grill.

A little backstory here…

In our youth, Lynne managed and cooked at a small restaurant with a grill and food prep stations completely visible to the public. I hung out in the restaurant so much, talking to old friends and making new ones, that even though I had two teaching jobs at the time, I also did a little waitressing there. Lynne and I both have tons of memories from that place, so grills hold a special place in our hearts.

The Camellia Grill wasn’t affected physically by Katrina or the levee failure, but it had apparently been struggling for a while prior to the hurricane. The loss of tourists and New Orleans residents probably wouldn’t have helped matters, so the restaurant didn’t reopen. Some people said it was for the best, since the owners hadn’t been reinvesting to improve the place. Others were sad about its apparent demise; all of this was summed up better on the blog The Third Battle of New Orleans, which posted the following photos of former patrons expressing their disappointment:


Photo permission pending from The Third Battle of New Orleans.

Happily, after being closed for twenty months, the Camellia Grill was bought by a new owner who gutted the grill area and rebuilt it and replaced the countertops, but otherwise pretty much left a good thing alone. Apparently, there is often a line to get in, but Lynne and I stopped in for coffee and chocolate pecan pie between the lunch and dinner crowds. We wished we hadn’t already eaten when we watched the burgers travel from a sizzling grill to the customers next to us, who said that yes, they were as delicious as they looked.

I liked the pie. The coffee was good. And I loved feeling nostalgic about old times with friends while sitting on a stool at the counter and watching the cooks.

If you like looking at beautiful old houses, I’ll put the rest of my St. Charles Avenue photos behind a cut. There are also a couple of pictures of trees still full of Mardi Gras beads. Please note that the white dot you see in the sky in some of the photos isn’t an early moonrise, but the reflection of the streetcar’s interior light on the window I was looking through to shoot photos.

Enjoy!

Pork Chop Blues: or, the post wherein I try to weave together disparate moments of my life

This post was inspired by Marika and her commenters complaining about songs that repeat nonsensical syllables, such as the Police’s “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da” (I hope I punctuated that correctly) and Journey’s “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’.” My own contribution was “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye,” by a band that made up its name, Steam, because the members were appalled that this song became their lone hit single.

Because this post was inspired by Marika, who often has user pics of herself as an adorable child, I opted for a new user pic, a twelve-year-old Becky at Lynne’s house for the first time. I’m not actually smoking that cigarette. In an attempt to pretend that I was one of the cool kids (I was giddy at being INSIDE the house of a girl who’d sneered at me and mocked me the year before because I was such a prissy little failure as an athlete in such respected sports as three-legged races), I grabbed one of Lynne’s daddy’s Camels when she or somebody went to snap a photo of me. Not too many years later, Lynne and I would be sucking at Benson & Hedges Menthols like there was no tomorrow, prompting a raid on my room by That Old Woman, who was at the time That Menopausal Woman, and a stern letter from my father from around the world in Korea.

But I digress.

After reading Marika’s post, I was trying to come up with one song that I hoped never to hear again–when I flashed on grilled pork chops. The answer was clear.

My cousin had a vacation cottage in Mexico Beach, Florida, which my parents sometimes used. One year, my sister Debby and her kids went with them, and my first husband, who may have been only a boyfriend at that time, and I decided to join them all. On the night in question, my parents grilled pork chops for dinner.

My love for pork chops is legendary, perhaps as much because of the way I eat them as that I, a girl who squeals over the adorability factor of baby pigs, will eat them at all. I’m sad to say that as long as I’m among family and close friends, I go after those things like a stray dog. A pork chop bone is CLEAN when I finish it. CSI: Green Acres wouldn’t be able to get a trace of tissue off those bones.

So we ate our grilled pork chops, then the rest of the family sat back to enjoy their post-dinner cigarettes. (These were the days before the government would break into your home and arrest you for smoking.) While they smoked, I twitched. My parents, in that way of parents, had convinced themselves that the Benson & Hedges Menthols had been a phase. In a way, they were right. My sister left the table and returned with my secret stash of Merit Menthols and set them in front of me. That Lucky Strike Chain-smoking Woman shook her head, while my father looked mournful, sighed his trademark sigh, and said, “I thought I’d have ONE child who didn’t smoke,” just before he inhaled his Vantage.

Later, Debby, the Boyfriend, and I went to the Miracle Strip in Panama City, and after a glass of wine and a ride on some screechy metal something that was an OSHA incident waiting to happen, I started feeling bad. REALLY bad. Lie down in the back seat of the car and beg my Creator to let me die bad.

It was the longest trip of my life, that ride back to Casa Tobacco. And it was made worse by Leon Russell moaning from the radio. I don’t know the song. But I remember that it went something like this:

My baby left me
My baby left me
I said my baby left me
Oh my baby left me
She went and left me
My baby left me
She was my baby
And you know she left me
I can’t believe
My baby left me
Yeah she left me
Oh she left me

At which point I was shrieking from the back seat, “Get over it, you whiny bastard, MOVE ON!”

And Leon replied:

So I got the blues
Yeah I got the blues
I said I got the blues
The blues, the blues, the blues
I got the baby left me blues
Because my baby left me
She left me
My baby left me
Oh she left me
Did you know my baby left me
Oh my baby left me…

It wasn’t the shame of being exposed as a closet smoker. It wasn’t the glass of wine or the Tilt A Whatever. Leon Fucking Russell made me throw up all night long, and I haven’t eaten grilled pork chops since. Lest any jig-dancing pigs or PETA members feel they have cause to rejoice, my ban does not extend to fried or baked pork chops.

Once and future design

This image in Mark G. Harris’s LJ from one of those thirty-seven Star Wars movies:

made me think of photos I snapped in New Orleans at this restaurant on St. Charles:

When we walked in, there was only one other patron, but others began to arrive after we were seated. The restaurant had a feeling of good will, including smiles bestowed on a young mother when she came in with a baby carriage filled with snoozing infant. The food was nothing spectacular or exotic, just a good meal with excellent service. I had catfish fillets with fries, and Lynne had red beans and rice, which she doused liberally with Louisiana Hot Sauce.

What I most loved was the interior of the restaurant, which is where that Star Wars image comes into play.

Excerpts and covers from novels (particularly those of James Lee Burke) that mention The Pearl were framed and hung throughout the restaurant, which is VERY cool to me.

And this wall near the entrance reminded me of Phillip Godbee sketching on the walls of his New York apartment before he left for Mississippi in Three Fortunes in One Cookie.

Acts of Kindness

In 1997, I took a six-week temp job that turned into eighteen months. The women that I met there were some of the most fun, nicest women I ever worked with, and it’s where I met Denece, who remains a close friend and someone I respect very much.

Another of the women I worked with was Lana, and one April day I found this little gift from her sitting on my desk:

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