Reunion Weekend Recap

Sorry for the delay, folks. Yesterday, I took the day off to recuperate from my weekend, and by "recuperate" I mean run 5 million errands while the Geej was in school. My day off freakin' wore me out. Oh well, here we go...

Thursday

Mom, Geej and I left for Dallas around 10am. I hate packing, so I waited to pack myself and Geej until the morning of. And guess what I managed to forget: my entire bag of toiletries. Yep. Toothbrush. Razor. Deodorant. All of it. I did grab my makeup bag, but still, I forgot everything else. Thank God for Walgreen's "travel size" section is all I can say. Got to my aunt and uncle's house ("Nanny and Papa" to the Geej) at around 2pm. Got Mom and Geej all settled with Papa, then took off for Mr. Wonderful's mom's house. Nanny and Papa live in the northeast Dallas suburbs, Mr. Wonderful's mom and stepdad (Dixie and Jim) live the the northwest Dallas/Ft. Worth suburbs. In other words, it was a 45 mile drive from one house to the other, and I was still in D/FW. Fucking crazy sprawl... Anyhoo, got to Dixie's house with little difficulty. They live in a restored farm house in (what was once) the country on five beautiful acres. They're surrounded by large homes on large chunks of lovely land and lots and lots of horses. Mr. W. and his boys greeted me, and Dixie and Jim were awesome hosts. We all had dinner together and just hung out. It was laid back and nice. Mr. W. and I spent some time with our senior annual, refreshing ourselves with the names and faces of the people in our class and ended up crashing pretty early.

Friday

Got up and got on the road at around 10:30. We decided to take the "back roads" to Longview--through Greenville and McKinney and a bunch of tiny towns. The highlight of the trip, had to be lunch. We had looked on the map, and hoped to find something decent in either Lone Oak or Emory (both super tiny blips on the map). When I saw a little dinner with a parking lot full of what looked like work trucks in Emory, I made a quick turn in. We'd both been talking about how we were hoping to have some good catfish while we were in East Texas, and when we walked in to the Y'all Come Back Cafe, the first thing I saw was a picture of a catfish on the front of the menus. BINGO! And then the 50 yr. old waitress with the dyed jet black pony tail and painted on eyebrows asked us "Sweet or Unsweet?" after we both ordered iced tea. JACKPOT! This was one of those places where everyone knows each other and warmly chats with one another. The guy with his back to us here is Mr. Harlan. Pretty much everyone in the restaurant stopped by to chat with him at some point. The Friday special? Catfish, of course.

We continued on our journey, and rolled into Longview later that afternoon. After a couple of stops to visit Mr. W.'s brother and my friend Lisa, her husband, and her sweet new baby boy, Henry, we headed to Mr. W's dad's house on the lake outside of town. Rested for a bit, then got ready for the evening's activities. Headed back into town and met friends at a Tex-Mex restaurant for dinner and drinks. Of course, I was the only woman there NOT wearing a "Pine Tree High School, 1987" tank top and sporting a blue and gold boa (no, I'm not kidding), but somehow I didn't feel too bad about it. I told them they were about one step away from being in the Red Hat Society, but really, they all looked pretty cute (because they've all got rockin' bods).

After supper, we went to the tailgate party at the game. The weather was perfect, and seeing old friends and attending a football game was pretty nostalgic. NOTHING about the whole experience has changed...except for maybe the majorette and flag corps uniforms are more Vegas-y than they used to be and all of the high school kids look like freakin' babies. This was a Big Game for the mighty Pirates. And when the school you're rooting for is Pine Tree High School, you get into the spirit by decorating your vehicle with...well, pine trees. Sadly, the Pirates didn't prevail, but we had fun nonetheless.

After halftime, most of my classmates who'd been at the game, made their way to the Oil Bowl bowling alley. The lanes we had reserved were, conveniently, right in front of the SMOKY bar. Not much bowling actually happened, but lots of drinking and chatting did. It was pretty damn fun. We ended up staying until about 1am before heading back out to Mr. W's dad's house. By the time we left, the temperature outside had dropped to 62 degrees. It was a perfect hint of fall.

Saturday

Woke up to a BEAUTIFUL day. Still nice and cool outside. Sunny and not humid. So we took a ride around the lake in this: Mr. Wonderful's dad's new convertible. SO much fun. It really is gorgeous up there, and the lake is surrounded by curvy, hilly roads bordered by tall trees. So pretty. After that, we headed in to town for lunch. We took our "dress clothes" with us because we were planning on sneaking in to the fancy shmancy reunion party that night (even though we hadn't paid). Ended up going to Mr. Wonderful's sister-in-law's parent's house (are you still with me?) for the afternoon. They were having a big family get-together/cook out thing complete with plenty of cold beer, washer tossing, domino playing, and football watching. It was really fun. After we left there, we went to the brother/sister-in-law's house and had sandwiches. This was about the time we really needed to start getting ready if we were actually going to go to the fancy shmancy thing, but we just couldn't rally. We were tired and knew we had a long day staring us in the face on Sunday, so we ended up just hanging out with the family and then heading back to the dad's lakehouse at around 11:30pm. Lame? Yeah, pretty much.

Sunday

Got up early, and got on the road to Dallas by 9:15am. Drove back to Nanny and Papa's house. Not only were my mom, aunt and uncle, and The Geej there, but also my cousin, her husband, and her daughter, and my OTHER cousin and her husband. Poor Mr. Wonderful, being thrown in to the family fire like that. Got Mom and The Geej loaded up in the car with us, then headed to Dixie and Jim's house. Got there, and loaded everyone in to two cars, and headed to lunch--all eight of us. Had catfish (again...come ON! I was on vacation!), and then said our goodbyes and Mom, The Geej and I headed back to Austin while Mr. W and his boys headed back to Dixie and Jim's to spend one more night and day before heading back to Colorado.

Whew. I think I put about a jillion miles on my car this weekend. But I had a lot of fun. Some items of note:

• For the most part, my female classmates are looking a lot better than the males. Lots of hair loss and puffiness going on among the men.
• No one seemed surprised in the least that Mr. W. and I are a couple.
• There's a skanky area between Longview and the lake where Mr. W's dad lives called "Whisky Bend." It's literally a bend in the highway that's chock full of liquor stores and skeezy clubs on both sides of the road. I happened to notice in our travels to and fro that there is a club called "Streakers Gentleman's Club" and next door to it, "Club B.J." I wish I were kidding.
• I saw "Meth Watch" signs on the city limits signs going into an east Texas town. It was hanging there like it's a point of civic pride or something. Wow.
• Longview has a really high number of pimped out "Fast and Furious" type vehicles per capita.
• Mr. W's stepdad Jim is a super nice guy. He's one of those great older Texan dudes with a substantial belly on him. So of course the Geej asked him, "Do you have a baby in your tummy? Can I touch it?" after we had just lunched with them. God, I wanted to fall through the asphalt.

Okay, that's all I got. I'm sorry there wasn't more drama, scandal, and gossip than that. All in all, it was a pretty tame weekend with LOTS of time spent in the car.

Can't post. Too tired.

The full 20 year reunion recap post will come tomorrow.

For now, there's this:

BTW: The Pirates' undefeated season ended on Friday. The Henderson Lions whooped 'em.

Photo analysis.

About a month ago, I got a card in the mail from my stepsister* that had some low quality copied photos of my dad that she'd found in her stacks of old photos. I was very happy to get the pictures because, as someone who contributed half of my DNA and was around until I was 33 years old, I really don't have a great number of photos--or anything else, for that matter--to remind me of my dad. He HATED the camera, and physically winced when he got his picture taken. He was just one of those people...

So, anyway, the photos are not so great, and they're mostly late 70s photos of my dad with her mom (with whom he'd had the affair that had broken up my parent's marriage...but that's for another time). But there's this one of the two of us, taken on my 8th birthday:

There are so many things about this photo that upset me.

(You can't see it, but...) My birthday cake is sitting on the dinette right in front of us. It has 8 candles on it that haven't been lit yet. Clearly, someone baked it for me, because it's on a foil covered piece of cardboard. I'm gonna guess it was my dad's girlfriend. Anyway, I can't tell if this photo is taken first thing in the morning or later in the evening. I'm in my Holly Hobby night shirt, and my dad's clearly drunk, and really and hating life, so it could be either.

I AM loving the "Eye of God" yarn thing hanging in the background. Note to any scene designers of movies set in the South in the late 70s: You should TOTALLY have at least one of these ugly yarn fuckers hanging in a room where a pivotal scene happens. You're welcome. I only expect a mention in the credits.

My dad had the Eye of God in this photo, along with one in the "living area" (which was basically just the wall opposite of this wall), and another one above his bed. I should probably also mention that this was his post-divorce apartment, located in one of the only "singles-only" complexes in Longview at the time. It was on the south side of town, which was pretty damn sketchy. But that apparently didn't concern him much when it came to my leaving for hours at a time to ride my bicycle. Alone.

His apartment was right by the complex pool, which I thought was cool. The post-divorce apartment that Mom and I were living in at the time was quite a hike from the pool. But at least there, I had my own room. At Daddy's I had to sleep in his king-sized bed and endure his epic, whisky-induced snoring. Ugh.

Anyhoo, every other weekend, when I went to visit Daddy, the complex was full of other "weekend kids." We used to play in the pool, comparing notes while our parents got hammered with one another while listening to The Eagles, Willie Nelson, and Linda Ronstadt : "Yeah, I only come ever other weekend, but next month I have to come three weekends because my mom's having surgery." "My mommy's new boyfriend smells like pickles and hugs me way too hard. Hey! Watch me do a cannonball!" You know, uplifting shit that children under ten SHOULD be talking about.

Y'all, it sucked in 1,000 different ways.

I'm not sure if you can tell from the body language in the photo above, but we're not all that comfortable with each other. I'm 8 and a girl. He's 35, and experiencing being a single male for the first time since he was 21. And it's 1979--which means it's post-pill and pre-AIDS. And he owns a "make your own cigarettes" machine he bought off T.V. that he uses to create primo joints to smoke, and a "make your own glasses" gadget he uses to make drinkware out of old liquor and beer bottles. All I ever eat as his apartment are Pop-Tarts and ramen noodles.

This one photo brings all of this back to me. It came to me in the mail, and has been in my head ever since.

I am still so mad at him. And I also miss him so much, it's flat out crazy.

*My step-sister is 20 years older than I am and is someone I never lived with, so I don't relate with her too much. And, since my dad's death, I connect with her even less. So it's really cool that she sent these to me. But I also can't help but wonder why she didn't just send me the ORIGINALS of MY DEAD FATHER. Fuck. Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth.

A year ago today...

...I was in the hospital, beginning a journey that, quite literally, nearly sucked the life out of me. At the time, I longed for the day when I would be able to look back on it and have it seem like a distant memory, and now here I am, able to do just that.

I am still somewhat phobic of hospitals, and I have at least a couple of dreams a month in which I'm institutionalized or in some sort of hospital environment where I can't escape and nobody I love knows I'm there. At least I don't wake from those disoriented and in the midst of a full-blown panic attack anymore.

Good health is truly a gift.

1972. Longview, Texas.

Hi, Internets. Thought you might find this little treasure from Karla May's Never-ending Collection of Crap from her Past interesting.

It's the text to an article--artfully crafted by one Jimmy Brown--from a 1972 edition of the Longview News-Journal. All of the crappy writing, crummy punctuation and other fuckups are Jimmy's, not mine. Apparently the News-Journal was lacking a copy editor when this story made the paper.

Turning out highly precision aircraft parts on a complex, incredibly difficult to operate turret lathe where tolerances are figured in thousands of an inch taxes any trained machinist's skill. But one Gladewater grandmother earns $3.89 an hour while putting in a five-day week at LTV's Gregg County Plant, located adjacent to the Gregg County Airport near here.

Mrs. Ruth Melton, who lives with her family at 607 N. Wood Street is described by her foreman, James C. [my dad--K.M.], as the equal of any male machinist in LTV's immaculate, air conditioned machine shop.

What's more, her male workmates give her the respect she has earned the hard way--by her ability to produce near flawless machined parts. This is no mean feat; each part is subject to stringent and exhaustive quality control inspection before acceptance.

Mrs. Melton, the mother of four including James, 20; Cathy, 18; Freddie, 14, and also seven year-old Angela also manages to keep house and assist her husband, James in his roofing business. The two eldest are married and have twice made her a grandmother.

She has worked for LTV for the past four years but learned her highly skilled trade in California. She has a total of some eight years experience as a machinist since she was first hired on as a trainee in a California shop. Al her experience she learned on the job. A Gladewater native and a 1950 Union Grove High School graduate, she says and her family enjoy living in her home town after some years in California.

But she enjoys her work even more. "I love my work," she says, "I get treated like a lady. LTV hired me when no one else would."

The huge Dallas-based firm which makes A-7 and S3-A submarine hunter aircraft for the Navy and other hardware for the space program has a program stressing equal opportunity. The Gregg County Plant employs about 145 machinists and other precision machine tool operators and turns out finished machined parts for several types of aircraft.

Mrs. Melton says she is never troubled by men looking down on her and her work.. [Yes, there were two periods at the end of that sentence in the printed version of this.--K.M.] She insists she is treated as a skilled worker on the job and has never experienced any male predjudice.

Her foreman agrees. "She works right along with the best of them," he said, adding that she reads complicated blueprints and "sets up" her lathe without any assistance.

She takes an extremely dim view of womens liberation movement, emphatically disclaiming any sympathy for the movement's aims.

Mrs. Melton, long active in her local union served as union recording secretary and lately was elected by fellow members as the only woman serving on the board of trustees.

Okay, so many things freak me out about this article.

1) This was written only 34 years ago, but this thing sounds like it was written in 1950. Right? I mean, this was during my lifetime. Crazy.

2) $3.89 an hour. Jesus Christ. AND she had to take care of the two kids were still living at home and I'm sure her husband as well. But does she support the Women's Lib movement? Oh no... Wow.

3) The condescending tone of this thing is just nauseating.

4) Can you believe all the personal stuff about her they put in there? Her address? Her family members' names and ages? I'm surprised it didn't include her phone number and weight in the article. It really WAS a different world back then...

5) It bugged the SHIT out of me that it constantly referred to her as "MRS. Ruth Melton" instead of just "Ruth Melton."

6) That's one of the few pictures I have of my dad without his 70s porn star moustache that he kept waaaaaaaaaaay after the 70s.