The International House of Band-Aids

While on vacation in Temecula, California, we ate lunch, tasted wine at vineyards and shopped on the cobblestone streets of Old Town. Babe and I toasted each other with thimbles full of very young red wine while the entire northeast coast schlepped around in knee-deep snow.

Driving back to our daughter's house, a severe headache hit me and worsened with each bump in the road. Every throb sent rejection signals to my stomach for what it had been subjected to for the past four hours. By the time we got home, I was sick enough to beg Babe to call 911.

Remember what your mother told you about wearing good underwear in case you’re in a wreck? Here's a new one: "Wear good underwear in case you are loaded onto a gurney by four young, uncoordinated medics. You don't want to be sporting a raggedy ass bra." Mine was a bra on which I had cleverly sewed two shabby shoulder pads.

Down the steps and into the ambulance we flew, four paramedics, and me in my raggedy bra and tacky shoulder pads. I looked down to see that I was half naked. "Babe!” I cried. “How could you let me expose myself to God and everybody in Los Angeles?"

Holding my head in my hands, I tried not to scream each time we hit a pothole. The driver was either paid by the hour or he had a little drug business in the front seat. It took thirty minutes to drive five freaking miles. My guess was drugs: nothing else made sense.

Once in the ER, I was put on a gurney made out of a tree stump and told not to move.

Every now and then a doctor with a thick foreign accent would stick his nose into my cubicle. "Zo zowwy. Much beezy tonight. Code blues ebbywares. Be back in few meenits."

To which I quickly responded, "An aspirin, an aspirin! My Queendom for an aspirin!" Babe didn’t hear me. He was too busy pacing a ditch in the floor. After a while, another foreign speaking medical person popped in to say, "We do CAT scan

now." Before I could think to reason why, he whisked me off, bumpity-bump, to a room where I became the brunt of some serious blonde jokes.

I figured the medic must have been an East Indian Buddhist because he asked me the same question over and over. "Zen? Zen?" 

I would reply, "No, E-PIS-CO-PA-LIAN." 

Later, I found out he was trynig to find out WHEN had I injured my head.

The medic whirled the CAT Scan thingie around my head ad nauseum. Begging for mercy, I was bumped back to the cubicle where, by that time, Babe appeared to be pacing on his knees. Either that or my brain was gone and the East Indian Buddhist fellow missed seeing it in the CAT scan.

At the sixth hour of my E.R. adventure, the sweet talking Dr. Obi bin Doolittle came in and popped me with a slug shot of morphine that in a scant second had me believing I had sprouted wings and could actually use them. As I prepared for take-off, the good doctor ignored my raggedy don’t wear-in-case-you’re-in-an-accident undies, and slam-dunked a needle into my rear end.

"Now ve muus kep you obernight so ve kon vach you."

"Why? What's wrong with me?" I could no longer feel my nose and my eyes were jumping like I’d just spent the night in Starbucks. Yikes. I wasn’t supposed to die of terminal headache.

I tried to focus on the doc's face, but it was tough since my eyes were boogieing at their first prom. I said, "Hey, Doc, thank you but no thank you. You have fixed me up all better and, like ol’ James Brown, I'm feeling good! Head no ache, stomach no throw up. Me go home now." When in Rome ...

As it turned out, my dreaded demise was a migraine brought on by an allergic reaction to nitrates in the thimbles full of wine I had chug-a-lugged. The determined doctor wanted to make sure I didn't become a morphine monkey junkie on his watch, so my tush stayed planted in a real hospital bed for the rest of the night where every thirty minutes, a young nurse sobered me up long enough to take my blood pressure and my temperature.

The nurse spoke more Spanish than English, which made me fear I had crossed over the border at one point during my stay at the International House of Band-Aids. The only person I could understand was Wanda Cloud, an African American nurse who, thank you Jesus, hailed from the Deep South where I was born and raised. We hi-fived in the same language.

Eight hours and four thousand dollars later, I was discharged, albeit reeling from the staggering cost of my overnight confinement, which almost caused another migraine. Armed with Ibuprofens and a good martini, I could have suffered at the Ritz-Carlton and it would have been a lot cheaper. But then, I couldn't have checked out of the Ritz fluent in seven different languages!

A Woman's Tears

I was only four or five-years-old, but I remember the day Mama cried like her heart would break. 

I had seen her get mad at Daddy or at my brother, and many times at me. When this happened, she never used the four letter “S” word and she never cried. Instead, she would yell SHITE! I grew up thinking that particular non-word was an expletive. 

Apart from the strangeness of seeing her cry that day, there was something I sensed but was too young to understand at the time.

“Mama, what’s wrong? Why are you crying?”

Gazing at her only daughter who still smiled with baby teeth, more tears fell followed by a ragged intake of breath.

I crawled into her lap, reached up and wiped her wet cheek. She squeezed me so hard I thought my ribs would break. I let her hold me close, intuiting even in my naiveté that it was what she needed.

It was after supper while she visited in the living room with Daddy’s sister that I overheard the reason behind Mama’s tears. My aunt was young, unmarried and in training to be a nurse. She and Mama were about the same age and were close friends.

Daddy was in training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia at the time. My parents had scrimped and saved in order for him to realize his dream of becoming not just a policeman like his father, but a detective. There was very little money coming in, but they were young and willing to make the needed sacrifices.

Mama’s life before she married Daddy had been a sad one. She was forced to quit high school at sixteen when her mother died with Typhoid Fever; the family needed her to help with the other children. The time was 1930, only a year after the Crash. There was no money; there were no jobs. Mama grew vegetables, raised chickens and milked the one cow they owned. While helping the family survive, my mother built up a strong work ethic.

It was tragic that her education had to be cut short when she was so bright, creative and eager to learn, but she never let it stop her; she kept her mind open to new ideas and possibilites.

So when Daddy set out to make his dream come true, Mama asked Mrs. Willie Berry for a job as a waitress at Berry’s On the Hill, a popular restaurant located not far from our house. Mama might not have been educated, but she knew how to serve food. And with Daddy gone, there were bills to be paid.

Mrs. Berry, a gentle, kind woman, hugged her. “You are a godsend! Not thirty minutes ago one of my waitresses up and quit. You can take her place.”

So why had Mama cried like her heart would break?

On Saturday night, she put on her new uniform, got my aunt to babysit and then struck out on foot for the restaurant. It was the first paying job she had ever had and she was proud of herself.

Wearing a big smile, she walked over to the table of eight already seated in the large dining room. The hungry customers were laughing and talking as she approached with her pad and pencil, ready to take their orders. 

Mama knew all of the women. All of them. Some were her neighbors, others were friends she had met at church or at Eastern Star meetings.

While telling my aunt what happened that night, she began to cry again.

“They looked down their noses at me,” Mama said. “It was like I was not a person anymore, not one of their friends. I was just a waitress.”

My aunt patted my mother on the hand.

Mama said, “I took their orders and when I turned to go back to the kitchen, they said hurtful things and laughed behind my back. I heard them. Why did they do that? It was honest work, wasn’t it? Cappy needed shoes and Boodie wanted a Scout uniform. I had no other way to buy them. What’s wrong with earning honest money?”

Back in my bed, I cried for my mother. At the time, I was ignorant of small-town living and too young to be aware of how mean and unkind women can be. I only knew that some people Mama thought were her friends had made her feel bad about herself for no good reason.

And knowing that, my heart broke for her.

If The Shoe Fits

My mother once ordered a pair of shoes from Fredericks of Hollywood. They were black velvet stilettos with cut-out toes and straps that snaked up her ankles.

Filling out a form from a catalog she snitched from her gynochologist’s waiting room, she then attached a note to Frederick’s. “Please deliver the package wrapped in plain brown paper.” After that, she crumpled the catalog into a baseball-size wad and set it on fire. I come by my craziness genetically.

Mama was paranoid that Mrs. Brewer, her next-door neighbor, might drop by, find the catalog lying around and tell everybody in town. And since our mailman delivered to the entire neighborhood, well ... you do the math.

Daddy had recently become a policeman, and he and Mama planned to attend their first Policeman’s Ball at the National Guard Armory. For two weeks after she placed the shoe order, Mama went to a local department store and sifted through dressy dresses in hopes of finding a match. She was naturally plump but had recently added a few more pounds. We hadn’t seen her in anything but navy blue or black since Dr. Cone told her to go on a diet, which she didn’t do.

The Policeman’s Ball was two nights away when she found the sleek black dress of her dreams: Size 14 with silver sequins trailing down the arms and wide seams that could be let out if she kept gaining. It was love at first sight.

She primped all afternoon on the day of the Ball. At five o’clock, I went to her room. “Mama, are you gonna fix us some supper or what? My stomach is growling.”

She cocked one eye at me, the other one remaining stuck between the vise-like grip of an eyelash curler. “I’m not cooking today. Heat up some fish sticks if you’re hungry.” She squeezed the curler over her other eye.

“Fish sticks? Mama, I’m starving.”

She gave me the parent stare she had made a point of perfecting before I was born. “Eat some potato chips if you’re that hungry.”

My brother and I were feeding fish sticks to the cat when Her Majesty swooped down the stairs in a pretty good imitation of Loretta Young. There was no resemblance to the woman who had driven us to school that morning.

My brother’s eyes got big as Coke bottoms. “Holy Cow,” he exclaimed. It was a good thing he didn’t say his usual Holy something else. It would have landed us both in the bathroom trying not to swallow a mouthful of Ivory Soap.

Mama looked so glamorous that we could only stare. It was the first lesson I was to learn from my mother’s interpretation of urban renewal.

Her smile was wide and her teeth sparkled in contrast to the bright red lipstick she wore. “Do I look okay?” She was fishing for a compliment and we responded with the adulation she’d hoped for. She preened at the foot of the stairs while we gawked, and then Daddy made his entrance. One glance at him and Mama’s big smile turned into a scowl so fast it was like she’d done a magic trick.

“Harold,” she gasped. “White socks? What on earth were you thinking?”

Daddy, decked out in a black tuxedo rented for half-price at Penny’s, looked at his feet. The pants were an inch too short, but except for his poor choice of socks, I thought he looked like a movie star.

“What’s wrong with white socks,” he asked. “They match my shirt.”

I thought Mama might swoon. Her eyes rolled and she heaved a dramatic sigh. “Go put on some black socks right now, Harold, and hurry up or we’ll be late.”

Daddy pinned an orchid corsage on her shoulder strap, and then they strolled out the door. Mama took baby steps as though walking on ice in her new shoes and Daddy’s steadying hand never left her waist. They were young and happy, like kids going to their first prom.

The next day, Mama rewrapped her shoes in plain brown paper and took pains to hide the Frederick’s logo. She then placed them up high on a shelf in her closet where they would never again dazzle the eyes of her children or dance till dawn with the love of her life.

Long after I was grown, she admitted to having blisters, bunions and swollen feet the day following that enchanted evening. She smiled at me in a secretive way and added, “If the shoe fits, it’s probably orthopedic.”

Hot Diggity Dawg!

We hold these truths to be self evident: every mother’s spaghetti tastes better than anybody else’s, and every hometown has a hot dog dive serving up the best hot dogs on the planet.

No argument on the spaghetti issue, although honestly? MY mama's spaghetti can beat YOUR mama's spaghetti. Also, the Dairy-O hot dogs in Orangeburg, South Carolina, really ARE the best anywhere.

It’s only natural for folks to claim their hometown eatery to be better than anybody else’s because being loyal to hot dogs, apple pie and barbeque is the American way. Nowhere is that more true than south of the GnatLine.

In Orangeburg back in the day, there were two hot dog dives, one with curb service and one without. The place on Broughton Street was truly famous for hot dogs served to you in your car. They were ugly dogs, but who cared? A Julius’s hot dog, even today, can resurrect saliva glands in a corpse.

In Babe’s Pennsylvania hometown, folks show up at Bailey’s when they crave a taste of yesterday. Nailed to the walls are hundreds of football, basketball and wrestling team pictures, some going back as far as the Forties. Bailey’s sells all manner of fast food, but their made-to-order hot dogs topped with a secret sauce, is what keeps people coming back for more.

Bailey’s puts out a pretty good dog, but … not as good as the ones served up at Orangeburg’s second most famous place:  the Dairy-O. It’s impossible for me to pass through the burg without stopping for one or two.

In Hendersonville it’s Hot Dog World, touted as one of the best restaurants in North Carolina. I know a fellow who, when on vacation in the mountains, heads for Hot Dog World before he unpacks his suitcase. There was even a couple that hosted their wedding reception at Hot Dog World. (I didn’t make that up.)

Close to Duke University in Durham, Pauly’s Dogs rule. Each one, created by Pauly himself, is named appropriately. The Southern Belle is the standard h.d. with mustard, catsup, onions and Pauly’s special sauce. Aunt Jamima is a breakfast hot dog topped with maple syrup, and Cap’t Crunch is topped with .. you guessed it. I don’t think there’s one named Fido.

St. Simons Island’s hot dog claim to fame is Hot Dog Alley. The owner set up his business on a corner fifteen years ago, a cart on wheels normally seen at flea markets. I call them Roach Coaches, but that’s just me. He eventually bought the building on that same corner next to an alley and voila! Hot Dog Alley was re-born. A pretty good dog, but not great. My opinion is obviously jaded due to past eating experiences at the Dairy-O in Orangeburg, SC.

Walterboro SC has Dairyland and my kids, raised in that small lowcountry town, claim it to be the very best. Ehhh …

When I was a student at USC in Columbia, SC, we used to go to the old Sears store in Five Points to gobble up the best slaw dog ever made. Sadly, the little annex hot dog joint hooked onto the big Sears building has been gone for more years than I can count. Only the memory of that special taste is left. But oh, what a fine memory it is.

I am currently on a quest to find where if there is a hot dog to equal the Dairy-O dog. Next week, I will go to Hendersonville and chow down on one at an appropriately named place: Piggies. I am told it is so good you can’t stop with just one. We’ll see.

In any case, as we approach the Fourth of July, America’s official National Hot Dog Day, why not stop for a moment and think about that special dive you knew as a kid, the one that floods you with memories of days gone by. By all means, stick to the July 4^th menu by cooking up a bunch of these puppies. Serve them to your kids and grandkids while telling them about that special place in your hometown that served the best hot dogs on the planet.

I double dog dare you to name one of them FIDO.

Woo Hoo!

I am sooooo excited! While in Macon, Georgia attending the National Society of Newspaper Columnist conference, I won a guest spot on CNN's Nancy Grace Show in an auction. She was very gracious to donate an interview, plus a CNN tour and one-on-one lunch with her.

I jumped like a frog with a pocket full of dollar bills at the chance to talk about my book, The Road to Hell is Seldom Seen on CNN 'cause my mama didn't raise stupid children. I won the bid and haven't slept since. Why? You would think I'd be wondering what to talk about and how to avoid being intimidated by Nancy Grace, but no. I lie awake thinking "I gotta lose weight. Gotta go on a crash diet!"

Proceeds from the auction, plus moneys gained from the NSNC silent auction, benefit the NSNC scholarship program given each year to a deserving student somewhere in the U.S. It is a win/win, especially for me this year. Our organization is intent on turning out responsible journalists and columnists and our scholarship fund, although not as large as we might like, does help with the cost of tuition. Lord knows, every little bit helps.

I sincerely thank Nancy Grace for her generosity and look forward to discussing my book with her. Something tells me she is going to LOVE how it ends.

Isn't life full of wonderful surprises? We never know what is waiting for us just ahead.

Who Was That Masked Man?

“When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it by reducing it to the question, ‘How would the Lone Ranger handle this?’“

A few weeks ago, I asked Mr. Breedlove, a professional photographer I’ve known all of my life, to restore and enlarge an old photo of Mama and Daddy. Today, he stands before me having just handed over the results of his meticulous work. He is preening and grinning like Miss Texas.

“It’s beautiful,” I exclaim before slipping on my reading glasses to look at it in more detail. I gasp. “Mr. Breedlove? Who is that man?”

“Why, it’s your daddy.” He peers over my shoulder. “Isn’t it?”

I shake my head. “Mr. Breedlove, I don’t know who that is. I always thought it was Daddy because of the hat but now that it’s enlarged, I see that it’s not. I’ve never laid eyes on that man.”

I continue to stare at the beautifully restored, hand-colored portrait of what I had previously believed was Mama and Daddy. “He looks almost like a cowboy.”

 “Let me see!” Mr. Breedlove snatches the photo from my hands. I’m too confused to get all huffy over his blatant rudeness. Holding the 10 x 12 enlargement out as far as his arms will stretch, Mr. Breedlove stares at it. When his mouth drops open, he looks like he’s witnessing the Second Coming.

“As I live and breathe,” he mutters in a tone akin to a prayer. “It’s the Lone Ranger.”

 My turn to snatch the photo. My mother was beautiful, still turning heads way past her 70th birthday. Daddy looked good too, but where Mama was photogenic, Daddy couldn’t take a good picture to save his soul. I quit looking at him in photos long ago, preferring to remember him in the flesh rather than a possum in the middle of the road.

Maybe that’s why I never looked hard at the stranger standing next to my mother until Mr. Breedlove enlarged the photo. The original was small, badly wrinkled and yellowed with age. I blink a time or two before peering again at the photo. “Holy Cow! I can’t believe I never noticed this.”

Mr. Breedlove jumps like a frog in a Mark Twain tale. “What? Is there somebody else? Is it Tonto?”

“Calm down, Mr. B.,” I say quietly. “Before you call the National Enquirer, you need to seriously chill. Nobody in this photo is famous. It’s not the Lone Ranger or Tonto and it's not Roy or Hopalong, either.”

 “Then why did you yell ‘Holy Cow?’ You made my blood pressure soar.” God help me if Mr. B. has a stroke.

“Sorry I yelled. Take a look at the man’s eyes. They are hooded with dark circles underneath. It makes him look like he’s wearing a mask.”

“It’s him I tell you!” Mr. Breedlove jerks the photo from me again and studies it as though it’s a silver bullet. This yanking back and forth is making me dizzy. Mr. B. shakes his head like a wet dog.

“That mask is very significant, if you ask me.”

My first thought is that he’s got to be kidding. My second is that Mr. B. doesn’t know how to kid. I smile as though he’s making a lick of sense, then I slap my forehead and feign a Eureka! “It’s coming back to me. Now I know who that man is!”

“You do? Is he a cowboy from the other side?”

Mr. B is starting to scare me. Somebody needs to tell him to ease up on caffeine and late-night TV.

“The other side? Naaah.” I reach over and gently take the photo from his trembling hands. “It’s Uncle Mac, my mother’s step-brother! I didn’t recognize him because I only met him once when I was little. He lived on an oilrig and didn’t like people and only came to see us two or three times. Shoot! I forgot all about him.”

Mr. Breedlove looks as though I’ve snatched away his one reason for living. He purses his lips, raises an eyebrow and sniffs. “Was it necessary to lead me on like that, missy? I’m a professional and I don’t like being the butt of one of your jokes.”

 Just wait till he reads the column I’m going to write.

“Now, Mr. Breedlove, you’ve known me for years. You can’t think I would do that, can you? I’m as shocked as you are to find Uncle Mac in that photo instead of Daddy.”

He is still grumbling so I lead him out to his car. If he’s going to pitch a fit, I’d just as soon not watch him do it. “Thanks again, Mr. B., for the beautiful restoration. I just wish Mama could’ve seen it. She’d have been pleased.”

I am talking to his taillights as he sticks his nose up in the air, directs his eyes to the road ahead and drives away in a huff. I wave goodbye. He does not wave back. I slam the front door, snatch up the picture and stare at it again.

Who in the heck is that masked man standing next to my mother? I don’t have a clue, OR an Uncle Mac.

Waking Up With Lady Liberty

At 4:30 a.m., my old legs climb the slightly wet steps up to the sixteenth deck of the ship. Is it really me doing this? I might still be dreaming; it’s what I’m normally doing at this hour.

But this is no ordinary day. It is the last one of a transatlantic crossing and much too short a visit to England, Ireland, Iceland and Newfound. I had hoped to spend more time in Ireland, birthplace of my great-grandfather, so the few hours on a bus touring the city of Dublin was not nearly enough. I am hell bent on a return visit.

On this particular morning as I make my way up to the open deck and worm my way over to the starboard side of the ship, I find myself as wide awake as the city that never sleeps. I greet the new day watching New York’s magnificent skyline kicking up her heels as high as a chorus line of Rockettes loaded to the hilt with sass and bling. “Just look at me,” it seems to say, “am I the most exciting city in the world or what?”

I have been to New York before, but never have I sailed into town at 4:30 in the morning hanging onto the side of a ship and wondering how my great-grandfather might have felt when first he glimpsed, as I am doing, the grand Lady Liberty herself.

Too bad he didn’t hear the story of how the statue came to be constructed from toe to crown and how it was transported from France to America. But I bet Great-grandpa wiped tears from his eyes while standing at a similar railing seeing The Lady for the first time shining the light of freedom on him.

What might he have been thinking? What would he have turned to his little brother and said, both of them scared out of their wits having recently fled the potato famine in Ireland?
“Look, lad, it’s the ol’ gurl hursef. Our noo mum. She’ll be tekkin’ caire of us naiw, she will.”

Little brother probably whimpered at the word mother, their own having been a victim of poverty and neglect, buried only months before. Perhaps he moved a wee bit closer to his big brother, the one who would be in charge once they set foot on American soil, the one who would find work however he could so that his charge would be fed, clothed and schooled proper in this, their new country.

My guess is they looked across the New York Harbor that day at the torch held high by The Lady and were warmed by her light just as I am today. They came with nothing, having left everything behind in the fallow potato fields of Ireland. In time, it would all be replaced with fulfilled dreams they made every night while becoming good Americans. Like so many immigrants throughout our history, prayers were answered and hopes were rewarded.

Many Americans will never have the opportunity as I did to look upon The Statue of Liberty at daybreak. Seeing her at least once should be a requirement for every citizen in this great country of ours, but one of the things that makes us great is that we don’t require things like that of our people. Is it any wonder that The Lady’s power often gets lost amid the information overload we are fed and must sift through day after day.

Lest we forget what she stands for, the poet Emma Lazarus summed it up nicely in her work engraved at the base of the Statue of Liberty.

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

The Lady lifted her lamp to a homeless, tempest-tossed Irish boy and his little brother and when she did, our country was made stronger. They became proud citizens and served their country. They would have been proud of their descendants, too: A symphony musician; NASA Engineer; lawyer; Episcopal priest; psychologist; writer; all good Americans.

There is nothing on earth big enough, strong enough or evil enough to diminish the spark of hope woven into the fiber of America's Statue of Liberty.

“Give me your tired, your poor…”