My Mom the Georgia Peach

Myrtice Etta Smith was lent to the earth on October 30, 1925. A high-energy Georgia hardwood lumberman and a sweeter than molasses country girl were her parents. Her mother died at twenty-six leaving Myrtice and her two little sisters to be raised by her grandparents on a Georgia farm while her father searched the forest for fine furniture hardwoods to harvest and sell.

Myrtice lived her life like it was going out of style. Before the darks days of her sprit-killing dementia, everyone who met her, were blown away by her high-body motor that drove her to achieve almost impossible tasks.

Some people are born with a nervous twitch or a foot taping to the sound of a mystery drum in their head. Myrtice’s entire body and soul were aroused forward by the sound of a Fourth of July marching band.

She was Valedictorian of her high school class, an avid reader and wanted to be a writer someday but settled instead to go to beauty school to become a hairdresser for the time being. Her novel would have to wait; she had money to make and places to see.

Her favorite book and movie was “Gone With The Wind.” She would joke to her son Mike on many occasions, “that Scarlett O’Hara almost had it right…but she was a little too nice!” Then she would laugh at her own joke until tears filled her eyes. She loved to smile and raise other people’s spirits…she was the queen of good times.

Like the mother Grizzly Bear protecting her cubs, she worked her butt off searching for food and shelter for her two little boys. Myrtice had to leave her boys with a grandmother to watch while she worked her hair styling trade late into the day to pay her bills.

She perfected her skills, winning contests and was chosen to be the royal stylist for the Queen of Thailand on her visit to Hollywood.

She liked to rescue people from bad things, but her choice of men was almost her undoing, most had trouble with alcohol. Myrtice was going to reform them…but not to sobriety but to sensibility. Like most southerners she knew, who were church going folks, but enjoyed an occasional mint julep or taste of brown whiskey.

Clyde Cannon was out fighting the war and proposed to her in a letter…how could she refuse? So she didn’t. She felt trapped by Clyde’s family and even though loved him she didn’t really know him. Myrtice ran off to California with her baby son to find herself and get away from the pressure of the Cannon family.

She found her way in California, but for years made countless trips back to Georgia to see her grandparents, sisters, aunts, uncles and a horde of cousins, first, second and twice removed, as she would say.

Myrtice was not the typical chocolate cookie-baking grandmother of storybook lore. The cars she drove fit her personality. Starting with a Fifty-Six Studebaker Skylark, she flew hell-bent down highway eighty back and forth between Southern California and Georgia. Next came a list of sport cars, most notably a Datsun Black 240 Z she would pilot her grandsons to and from her home overlooking the pier in San Clemente, California. She adored her son Patrick’s, Lisa, Adam and Heather. As for Michael’s children, she played golf with Ryan, took Kirk and Kevin on trips to the beach. Myrtice saw a little of her self in Michelle and wanted her to have her wedding ring.

My mom was stern and demanding at times. After she would give me a switching on my bare legs for my bull-headed antics, a lot of times she would hold me in her arms and cry with me and whisper in my ears, “Mikie please forgive me…this hurts me more than you…I love you.”

On April 29, 2010, at 84, she went back to God’s farmhouse in heaven.

My mom wasn’t just okay she was the best!!!

Somewhere east of Missoula

Popeye’s bark startled me as I prepared my twenty-foot Gradywhite sport fishing boat for a weekend trip to our beach cabin on Cypress Island.

The blind in one eye harbor seal stared his good eye at me, while begging for any handout of marine scraps. My grandkids loved to see the sideshow antics of the water dwelling creature every time they came down to Lovric’s Marina where our boat is moored. I shrugged, shaking my head to the seal, as I had nothing edible for her, until I spotted a bucket of squid lying in the back of our friend’s, Mark and Mary, commercial crab-fishing boat tied up in the adjourning slip.

I slipped on the wet dock as I stepped forward to toss a chunk of smelly calamari to Popeye. Slimy squid ink plastered the side of my boat where my errant seafood throw had bounced off before falling to the splashing seal seizing her prize.

I cleaned off the squid ink from the fiberglass, which was covering the manufacture’s name on the boat, GRADYWHITE. I flashed back to my saga to buy this boat and four of her sisters. More than that…a promise I made to me…unfulfilled until now.

Gradywhites are the Cadillac of small sport fishing boats and not cheap. They are manufactured in South Carolina and twenty years ago only new ones where available in the Pacific Northwest. I could not afford a new one and formed a plan to have one and make some extra money as well. I knew that when people on the east coast retired to Florida. The men would buy a new boat they always wanted and a pickup truck to pull it around. The wives outlived their husbands, ending up with a boat and pickup truck they didn’t want. Enter me.

Over the next fifteen years I would fly back to Florida twice, North Carolina, Illinois and finally Kansas. Each time I would find the boats in the Boat Trader Magazine, make a deal with the owners and buy a used pickup to pull them back to Washington State. When I got home I would sell the pickup for a profit, use the boat for a year before usually selling the “in demand hot boat,” for over twice what I paid.

In June of 1998 I was on my third trip home. Each trip was four days of fourteen hours behind the steering wheel pulling a boat trailer on a dozen different Interstate highways. I was following the Blackfoot River in Southern Montana on Interstate ninety. My body was crying out for a respite, but it was only midday and I had many more miles to cover.

My heart started to ache; I had accomplished so many things in my life that most people could only imagine, but my thoughts where of my wife and kids. I dwelled on all the stuff that seemed to make them unhappy. As I drove, I watched the fast running river splashing its way through rocky gorges, hell-bent on reaching the sea still hundreds of miles away. That’s how people live their lives, oblivious to the present conditions around them and speeding towards an unknown goal.

I prayed for the next several hours asking god to intervene in my loved ones lives; to stop the bickering, stop complaining, stop sweating the small stuff. Then the light went on. God would help me, but first I needed to help myself. I decided to put away my macho attitude of the past and be the peacemaker in my family…at all costs.

After a dozen years without telling anyone, I’ll now ask my wife and kids how am I doing?

The Reality of Reality

As the psychologist sitting across the desk from me was debriefing me on the results of the four hours of I Q and psyche testing I had completed early that morning, I thought, “here I go again…another fine mess I’ve jumped into.” I had not just sought out this new adventure; I had been on a ten-year odyssey to achieve it.

I’ve been a high-risk taker my whole adult life; while racing dune buggies the thousand-mile length of the unforgiving Baja Mexico peninsula, making full-hardy investments and being an electrical contractor working with dangerous high-voltage wiring. My loving wife Suzanne will ask, “aren’t you ever going to act your age?” Which I reply, tongue in cheek, “if it wasn’t for calendars and mirrors how old would anyone really be?”

The attractive lady PHD in her late forties looked up from the paperwork and smiled at me. “Your Wonderlic score was high…interesting your career choice…you could have done my job,” she said. After the blush left my face I said, “not good a crazy testing other crazies.” She smiled again. “For all the bad things you have overcome in the past…it’s amazing on your positive outlook.”

To me life is an adventurous journey. My only goal in life is to have another goal. All humans are pyramid builders. First you build your foundation. For lucky people that base level would be your family and your God. The next levels are for your experiences and friends. How you fit the pieces together is the key. Some people putty their blocks together with mortar of lies and deceit, making the joints weak and destined to fail. Smart people hew the surface of each stone surface (friend, experience) to mirror the one next to it, making mortar or glue unnecessary.

On my pyramid there can never be a capstone.
I’m always looking for the next BIG THING.
Life is a rush!