I've been spending some time thinking. Pondering. Trying to figure out what my final curtain call should be. I just turned a year older. It's the first birthday that I've really given any thought to the rest of my life, what to do with the remaining years. Just live, I guess.
I'm the kind of guy that needs a goal to achieve. Once I've achieved it, I need another one. Not in a hurry but rather a smooth and upward transition. Kinda like those hot cars that had four on the floor and burned rubber at every shifting gear.
While I'm exploring my options, I've decided to write some more. Hence, this offering.
As I look around, there doesn't seem to be very much romance in life anymore. There's a thousand reasons for it. No sense in bringing them up. We all live close by one another. We really are all in this together.
We just moved into our new home. It's an older antebellum that's gonna need a ton of TLC. It reminds me, a lot, of my grandmother Miz Lena's home over in Middle Tennessee. I lived with my grandparents, off and on, growing up back in the '50s.
Jana, my wife, had our TVs converted to Roku. Don't ask me what that means. I haven't a clue. All I know is that it works off the internet and doesn't require cable boxes. The remote control is about the size of a money clip. If it weren't for Jana knowing a few basic things about all this new technology, we'd know nothing at all.
Our house has a back-porch screen door that's strung tight. Every time it closes, it makes a whack noise. Just like the screen door Grand Mom had out on her back porch.
For whatever reason, Miz Lena was sentimentally attached to that screen door. It could have been her wanting to keep something from her beloved farm. After all, she'd put her heart and soul into the farm for years.
When we left the farm and moved into town, she had her hired hand Ole Tom unscrew the screen door and bring it with us. She had it installed on her back porch.
A few years later, when she built her dream home just across the road, at Miz Lena's instruction Ole Tom removed it again and placed it on her new house's kitchen door.
Yesterday, I stepped out back, and the screen door slammed shut. It took me back to my childhood years living with my grandparents. There was, indeed, a romance to those times. Maybe more innocent times.
Not long after we were all moved in, Miz Lena decided that she was gonna buy a brand new TV. I remember the coolish autumn day that two big-bellied fellows grunted it up the breezeway and into the front door.
They collected their breath and pushed it up the hall and through the den door, manhandled it and placed it catawampus into Grand Mom's assigned corner. It was a Motorola. In my opinion, it was the best piece of furniture in the house.
We got three channels. That's all there was. ABC, CBS and NBC. I'm pretty sure that all three of them signed off at midnight. They'd play "The Star-Spangled Banner" with a video of our flag flapping, and then it was lights out. A test pattern was all you'd see until the following day's broadcast.
Aside from Lawrence Welk, Liberace and Billy Graham, Miz Lena was all tied up into the soap operas. She'd tell me, "Looka here, they's no talkin' while my show's on. Unless the house is burnin' down, you just hold it till they run a commercial."
I wasn't crazy about the content of her soaps - men and women fooling around on each other, adults yelling at other adults, and that organ. I lived with that nonsense the whole time my parents were married, minus the organ music.
I can still hear the TV show's narrator's voice. "Will Eileen find out that her adopted child is really her best friend, Penny's illegitimate son, Ronald. That Ronald's father is none other than Eileen's husband, Frank. We'll be right back to 'As the World Turns.'" Then they'd break to a laundry detergent commercial.
During commercial break, Miz Lena would pick up the phone and call her sister, Inez. Or vice versa. They both watched the show religiously.
Miz Lena would look around the room, cup her hand around the phone and in a muffled voice, say, "Well, I guess I don't have to tell yuh who Penny reminds me of." She was almost always speaking of whom my grandmother used to call my "non-blood" Aunt Fran, Miz Lena's youngest brother's wife.
I normally wouldn't have stuck around, were it not for the fact that Grand Mom allowed me to change the channels for her. She made it seem like it was a special privilege. Those were the days before remote controls were invented.
Sometimes, Miz Lena watched "Queen for a Day," hosted by a fellow out of New York with slicked-back hair and a moustache. His name was Jack Bailey. Two or three women would come on the show and give their hard-luck stories and their need for a refrigerator or a washing machine.
The studio audience, by way of an applause meter, would determine which lady was the most in need. Nine times out of ten, Grand Mom agreed with the audience. Every so often, Miz Lena's eyes got a little watery.
Aside from other shows, like "The Loretta Young Show," "The Ann Sothern Show," Ted Mack's "Original Amateur Hour," "Name That Tune" and "I Love Lucy," there were several memorable commercials.
One of my favorites was the watch commercial. It would always start out, "Good evening, this is John Cameron Swayze reporting for Timex. We're going to drop this Timex watch out of this high-flying airplane."
It would hit the ground, and some guy would retrieve it and hustle it back to Mr. Swayze. They'd do a closeup of the watch's face, and the second hand was, miraculously, still working. Mr. Swayze would look into the camera and say, "Timex. It takes a licking and keeps on ticking."
Some of Miz Lena's favorite shows were not my first pick. As far as I was concerned, Mitch Miller didn't know any good songs. Jimmy Durante was old, and I didn't get Phil Silvers' humor. Still, TV was something special. Whatever was on the tube was better than dealing with real life.
These days, there's more real life drama than we ever watched on TV back then. The other night, I was up late and caught part of a rerun of one of those oldie goldies. I watched a few minutes of it, then changed the channel with my itty-bitty remote control.
I chuckled a little bit. I remembered when there was no remote-control gizmo and what a big deal I thought it was that Miz Lena allowed me to change channels for her. She really laid it on thick about how responsible I was.
Years later, Grand Dad told me that when I wasn't around, he was her privileged channel changer.
Email Bill Stamps at bill_stamps@aol.com. His books "Miz Lena" and "Southern Folks" are available on Amazon.