Me and Damn Yankees

I was born and raised in Texas. I am afraid of scary movies, do not read horror books and believe the only good to be found in celebrating Halloween is candy that I did not have to buy. Being such a scaredy cat was instilled in me when I was very young. I didn’t know what a Yankee was but I was always hearing family and neighbors talk about damning them. Damn was a serious word that little kids learned, very quickly, not to repeat.  I tried using it once, and I have to tell you, one little chaw on Lifebouy soap will burn your tongue and gums for a week and cause you to poot bubbles if you should eat red beans for dinner. In Texas we eat a lot of red beans.

I once heard an older cousin say that the scariest sight in Texas is a Yankee pulling a U-Haul trailer. I was almost thirty years old before I found out that Texas has a law forbidding this practice. Punishment is doled out to Yankee women by teasing their hair and spraying it with so much hair spray they cannot comb it out – they have to wait for it to fall out.  We punish Yankee men by taking away the black socks they wear with their sandals. To make sure they understand how serious we are about having Yankees in Texas, we force a lot of red beans on them and make them eat calf fries. We don’t tell what calf fries are until they are through eating. We also offer them home grown pickles, known more commonly around here as jalapenos. Don’t mess with Texas is more than just a catchy phrase; it’s a serious learning experience.

In my early working years I worked for a manufacturing plant. I started out in accounting and, by accident, ended up in the sales department as a customer service rep. My job was to keep the customer happy by making sure their parts delivered on time and by being a ‘buffer’ between them and the sales people. I always refused to work the East Coast; it was full of the damn Yankees I grew up fearing. I was given a choice one year of taking the East Coast or else. I, very reluctantly, took the East Coast. I was a nervous wreck waiting for that first call. "Wherethehellaremyparts whichhadbetterbeonmydockfirstthingtomorrowmorning,orelse!” I replied, “What? I think we have a bad connection,” and hung up. A person really can sweat bullets. How was I going to do my job if I could not even understand what a Yankee was saying? Damn. My only way out was to be perfectly honest with a Yankee caller. The next time the phone rang I answered and heard the same question, which I interrupted, slowly, with, “Whoa, I am sooo sorry, but I cannot listen this fast. Please slow down.”   There was silence on the other end of the line. It worked. It seems that Yankees have difficulty speaking slowly and listening slow is even harder. Spin some Texan on them and you can put one in a coma. ‘Ah reckon that.ya’ll’s parts were on that UPS truck that tumped over just this side of Macon. Or was it Altanta? Nooo, I am recollecting that it might have been Greensboro, buuuut, if you will kindly give me a few minutes to mosey over to our shipping department, which is waaay at the back of our building, to get the tracking number, I will sashay right back to let ya’ll know if the truck caught fire, too.’ Phone silence. I had unlocked the secret of talking to a Yankee!

Believe it or not, I became fast friends with most of my Yankee contacts. One of them was a no nonsense woman who wore high heels and mink to the office; she was well into her sixties. She invited me to visit New York and to go to the theater. I was not sure if I was ready for New York, yet, or ever. She asked me if I had a fur coat. I told her that I had a brown corduroy car coat with a squirrel collar and she never asked me to visit again. I loved her, though, and eventually did get to meet her when I finally did make it to New York. On my visit I was taken to a genuine NY deli for lunch by our sales rep and one of my favorite customers. They ordered for me. What arrived at the table was about two pounds of the most unappetizing mound of mess that I had ever laid eyes upon. To wash it down was celery soda. Celery soda actually tastes like celery with a fizz kick. I did not understand a reason for celery soda and I did not want to touch the two pound mound of what I was told was chicken liver pate. I honestly told them that I had scraped something off of my shoes before I got on the plane that looked more delectable. I ate a lot of bread and drank my celery soda. When I returned to my office, safely in Texas, my email was overloaded with hundreds of chicken liver pate recipes. Huh, Yankee humor.

I would not trade anything for my experience with real Yankees; it actually perfected my drawl. I never could figure out, though, why they could not pronounce the ‘R’ in the middle of my name, but instead added it at the end; they said Mawtar.

You may not mess with Texas, but the Yankees have a way of coming back and haunting you. It’s a fact…Ted Kennedy was on the news, again, just this morning.

Pickens, South Carolina

I was preparing to make a business trip to Pickens, South Carolina to the Singer plant for my company. I had been working with the purchasing agent there for several years and we had formed a close working relationship. The company I worked for made the trigger controls (the button you pushed) for Craftsman Power Tools. This Singer plant assembled the tools for Craftsman.  This is also the same plant that the Singer Sewing Machine Company opened in the 1920’s to assemble sewing machines in cabinets. Singer even purchased the railway lines after they became the biggest business the railway had in the state.  I was going to visit a place that had history written all over it and I was very excited.

I had my hair permed and bought the perfect dress just for this occasion. I would go by air part of the way, be picked up by a sales rep, and travel by car to Pickens. If you have ever had your hair permed you know how dicey the first week or so can be – especially in humidity. I had never been to South Carolina.

The sales rep picked me up and we stopped for a quick lunch. The car trip would take a little more than an hour for travel to Pickens. Somebody broke into our car, while we ate, by breaking out the entire passenger side window. It was a very humid day. When we arrived at the Singer plant the left side of my hair was still perfectly coiffed, but on the right side I looked like Albert Einstein. I tried to keep the left side of my hair turned toward the purchasing manager during our meeting, but it was very difficult since she was sitting on my right.

Being a history buff, I was ecstatic to be in an old Singer Sewing Machine plant. It was a low, sprawling red brick building. The actual manufacturing side of the building was the most fascinating. The flooring was made of railroad ties that had been placed end on end when the building was built. It was explained to us that the theory was of a cushion feeling to walk upon and that any oil could seep into the wood. The square ends of the ties had been smoothed down over the years, from employee traffic, but you could still make out the squares of the ends. The smell of history oozed from the oil soaked wood.  If I had closed my eyes I am sure I could have envisioned what it had been like during the booming Singer heyday. But I didn’t close my eyes and was very surprised to see robots assembling vacuum cleaners. The arm stretch on these machines was about fifteen feet and they moved from one part to the next as the robotic fingers fitted parts and screwed the vacuums together. The precision of the movements made the left side of me looking awestruck and the Albert Einstein side looking like I had been the one to program the precise robotic measurements.

I will never forget that trip for being able to stand in an American plant that was instrumental in changing the sewing world for millions of women. The robots made it feel exactly like stepping back to the future. I will also never forget that day for looking so chic and highly intelligent at the same time.

My Dad's New Truck

Did you ever do something in your youth that you still feel guilty about? I did.

In the summer of 1969 my Dad would let me drive his new maroon Chevy truck when he needed to drive his boom truck to a job site. I drove his new truck to Midway Park, in Euless, to watch some of the high school boys play baseball. As I attempted to park the truck I caught the squared, steel reinforced, bumper of an old green truck on the right side of where I was pulling in. It left a major seam down the passenger side of Dad’s truck. This was not a scratch, it was MAJOR damage. It did nothing to the bumper of the other truck. I was afraid to go home, but when I finally did it was way after dark and Dad had already gone to bed. I parked the truck in its usual spot which meant that Dad would not see anything but the driver side the next morning when he left for work.

I tossed and turned all night knowing that it was my last night alive. When I woke up and looked out the window I saw that the new truck was the one Dad had driven to work. I was sick with fear. I spent the last day of my life going through my treasures, clothes, shoes, and mementos to pass onto my friends. The agony of the day could not be measured – it was off the chart.. As afternoon moved into time for Dad to come home, I started to throw up.

I began to pray to God for forgiveness, even though it was not His truck. I also asked Him to give Dad the wisdom of a applying a quick death and not a long, drawn out tortuous one that included a lecture.

Dad arrived home. He slammed the front door. I heard him yelling something to Mom and he sure did sound pissed. Shortly after that Mom called me to dinner. What? They were going to feed me a last meal? With my luck it would be liver and onions, hominy, and cauliflower; I would just as soon get the death scene over without a dinner punishment, too.

I walked slowly into the dining room. Dad looked fiercely at me as I sat down and he growled, “Sis, you won’t be driving my truck for awhile.”

I just nodded my head and looked as sad as possible.

He went on to say, “Some asshole bashed in the right side of it on the job today. It has to go in the shop.”

That was the day that convinced me that praying really does work. Looking back on it I figure it was also a test from God to see if I would confess. I never was any good at tests. I waited another twenty five years to tell Dad about it…over the phone…he lived two hours away. The phone line mysteriously disconnected just as I heard, “Well, son of ……..”

Naked, Sweaty, Heavy Breathing...

It has been a long time since I was laying naked on my back, feet in the air, heart beating rapidly, heavy breathing, sweat gathering on my brow, not knowing what to expect next, and hoping not to be left hanging for too much longer.

Yep, I leaned too far back in the recliner and it turned me upside down. Only a death grip on the arms kept me from rolling ass over ears across the room.  It was the longest 10 minutes of my life as I slowly slid backwards out of the chair and across the carpet. 

I need to find a dress with the back scooped low. When you are my age and have rug burns on your back you want to show them off.  When people ask about it, or raise an eyebrow at me, I’m just gonna smile.

Oh...and I've also changed the name of my Lazy Boy to Rafael...just in case anyone asks who rocked my world.

The Bird

Eighteen years ago, the company that I worked for won a prestigious vendor award from one of our largest customers. The sales manager told me that I would be flying to Chicago, with him, to attend the award ceremony and accept the award; we would be gone for two days.  He also told me that I would have to do ‘carry on’ luggage because he did not check his bags and neither would I. Crap! I did not travel much and two days with only carry on luggage was pretty much out of my ‘style’ and comfort zone. I thought about it for 24 hours and advised him that I would do the carry on luggage but I would be wearing four layers of clothing, which included my gown and robe, and my hair would be in curlers when we boarded the plane. He gave me on of those ‘deer in headlights’ looks, but did not say anything.

Being the color coordinated fashion diva that I was, I had a problem; shoes. We were going to make a few sales calls and to make a good first impression I would need heels that perfectly matched my dress. For later in the day, when my feet began to hurt, I would need a lower stacked heel, color coordinated, for when the first impression reached more of a screw-this-my-feet-hurt-and-you-are-not-worth-this-pain level. In the case of sightseeing I would need a pair of perfectly coordinated flats. Two days would require six pair of shoes, two changes of clothing, nightgown and robe, hair curlers and various beauty paraphernalia. Crap.

I went shopping and bought a hanging suit bag, with a narrow flat bottom, and practiced packing for three days. I discovered that if I carefully put one shoe inside another I could place my hair curlers in the last shoe and stagger the shoes across the bottom of the bag. I could then roll my underwear, pantyhose and breakable beauty paraphernalia in my gown and robe and place this on top of the shoes. On top of the robe and gown I could place my remaining beauty supplies, stored in several gallon zip-lock freezer bags, a book, a few snacks, and have just enough room for my change of clothes if I did not place them on hangers. I could press any wrinkles out in my hotel room. The only problem was that this carry on weighed close to 80 pounds, but it was still a hanging bag, and could be placed in the enclosure for hanging bags, just inside the airplane door, as I boarded.

I dragged that bag, carefully because it did not have wheels, through DFW to my boarding gate. I could not find my sales manager and once the plane took off I assumed he had missed the plane. Dammit! I could have checked a suitcase!  Upon arrival in Chicago, a rep office member met me at the arrival gate and informed me that the sales manager had suddenly changed his flight to the night before. Son of a…! He must have really thought I was serious about the four layers of clothes and wearing my hair curlers. I could have checked a suitcase! I was a little pissed, but on the bright side, I had successfully packed everything I needed in a hanging bag and still had half an inch of room to spare!

We went to the awards dinner on our second evening in Chicago, and accepted the award which was a statue of an eagle, wings extended, mounted on a large wooden base. I was very proud of it until I was told I would have to pack it in my carry on for my return trip the next morning. The sales manager was going to stay another day and make a few additional sales calls. Well, hell! I could have checked TWO suitcases!  I spent that night packing, and repacking, that hanging bag from hell, until I could get that ugly trophy situated in a manner that it would not break a wing. I ended up with one pair of shoes in my purse and I wore my gown under my dress.

When the eagle, and I, landed at DFW, I drove directly to the office to drop it off. When I pulled it out of my bag it was wearing a pair of my underwear over its head with the wings sticking out of the leg holes. I almost left the underwear on it when I placed it on a cabinet where it would immediately be seen as our co-workers arrived to work. Instead, I rubbed that pair of two day old underwear all over that damned eagle so that it would be nice and shiny when the sales manager showed it off. 

I guess you can say, in my own personal way, I gave the bird to the sales manager.