REYNOLDS WRITER

WHEN KENNEDY WAS MY HERO

2009-04-25T11:32:00.008-03:00

by Randy Reynolds

I learned in church, in 1960, that if Kennedy got elected President, Pope John would tell him how to run America and that Kennedy would obey because he believed the pope was infallible. I also learned the pope was Catholic and that Catholics believed in drinking beer and doing the Shimmy-She-Wobble with other men’s wives; they drank real wine in their communions and paid a fee to get their sins absolved, (which seemed far-fetched but, hey, wine makes people do funny things.) Their priests preached in another language, Latin, which if it was a sin, probably meant I was sinning, too, for singing What A Friend We Have In Jesus in Cherokee (which I learned from my second grade teacher Miss Robinson in Cooper Heights, Georgia.)

I also discovered, from listening to older boys who talked about forbidden things while smoking in the bamboo patch behind the church, that Catholics had big families because they didn’t believe in contraception, whatever that was. If not believing in that big word caused big families, then my parents didn’t believe in it, either, because we had the biggest family in our church. I was humiliated, in those days, to be one of six children because I thought that meant that my mother and daddy had “done it” six times. SIX TIMES! As if they couldn’t control themselves. I prayed for God to save them from each other and my prayers were answered, because after baby number six (Renee) Mother never got pregnant again.

But back to Kennedy. When he gave his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles, our embarrassingly large family (by now relocated to Covington, Louisiana,) huddled around the TV in my sister Ronda’s bedroom, a narrow little add-on room at the very back of the house where we kept the television out of sight of church members, some of whom did not believe the preacher should have a TV.

This secluded TV room would be the first part of the house destroyed in a midnight fire about a month later; Daddy would snatch Ronda from her little bed just before the walls caved in.

Kennedy and that fire were how the 60’s started for us, but I don’t think the two things were related unless the fire was God’s punishment for how I felt about Kennedy. For it was in that soon-to-burn bedroom, watching the flickering image of the young senator on a black-and-white TV with a coat-hanger for rabbit ears, that I betrayed my faith and started hoping he would win.
....... ..............
He was young and handsome; there was passion in his voice; and his eloquence inspired me beyond anything I had ever experienced in my eleven years. I didn’t say anything aloud about liking Kennedy and I didn’t have a vote, of course, but I prayed for God to help him win. And that prayer, like the one that my parents stop “doing it,” was answered. (Prayers really seemed to work back then.)

Kennedy inspired people to serve their country, inspired us to go to the moon, inspired ambitious boys Bill Clinton's age (and mine) to want to be president some day; inspired us beyond all rhyme or reason.

Well, not beyond all "rhyme." Here's a verse from a poem I wrote in the days when I daydreamed about being the next John F. Kennedy:

I want world acclaim at thirty,
The White House five years later.
I’ll be the world’s greatest man
Or maybe even greater!

Laughable? Sure; but it's evidence of how feel giddily and inexplicably self-confident Kennedy made me feel about myself as well as my country.

And I never had that feeling again until the advent of Barack Obama.

Being slightly more mature now than I was at eleven, I don’t have illusions of following in this new president's footsteps. And I haven’t written any poems about him, (thank God!) But he makes me feel, as Kennedy did, that I--and my country--can do anything.

FORTY CONDOMS

2009-03-07T11:41:00.003-04:00

by Randy Reynolds

I parked my bike against the service station wall near the door to the Colored bathroom and jammed both hands into my pockets so that my forty quarters wouldn’t jangle as I made my way inside the station to the White bathrooms. One of the Holden boys, with an air hose in his hand, scowled at me as I passed the pumps. I felt a rush of superiority: he would be stuck there all day gassing cars and airing tires while I would be free—free and unsupervised, with forty condoms in my pockets.

I sauntered past Miz Holden at the register where a man in a hurry was handing over some money.

Miz Holden, as soon as she saw me, said, “It’s occupied, honey.”

How did she know I was headed to the bathroom? Was I that obvious? My face burned with shame and I wanted to bolt, but the man with the wallet in his hand was closer to the door than I was. What if he blocked it while Miz Holden called the police and they came and found the forty quarters and knew what I was going to use them for and that I was a pervert? While I rotted in jail, my daddy would preach against me like he preached against Elvis. He would use me as an example of someone headed straight to Hell despite having been raised up right, in a Godly household where prayers were said and the Bible was read and the rod was not spared and every child was required to attend every service at the little church on the wrong side of the tracks where God spoke through my Daddy to let us know that the end was near and He was coming back to get us soon.

I felt trapped. The back of my neck grew hot. My pulse throbbed in my ears. I began to see white, as if about to faint.

Then the bathroom door opened and a man stepped out and I caught a glimpse, through the open door, of the condom machine. Which made the back of my neck grow hotter still. My skin tingled, my heart felt weird. So did the pit of my stomach. I let go the quarters in my pockets and they jingled embarrassingly as I rushed into the bathroom and locked the door behind me.

Whew!

I turned to the vending machine bolted to the wall at eye-level. SOLD FOR PREVENTION OF DISEASE ONLY. RIBBED FOR HER PLEASURE. I didn’t know precisely what these things meant, but just reading them took my breath away.

SHE’LL LOVE THE DAZZLING COLORS. Sweat rolled down my face and stung my eyes as I thought of her—whoever she was destined to be—loving the dazzling color. Would she say, I don’t like that color, put on the pink one ? Would she be disappointed that the ribbed ones came in only one color and the colored ones weren’t ribbed?

Despite my pockets full of quarters, I felt obliged to break into the machine because there was no use spending money on something I could get for free. I was good at manipulating the candy machine at school into dispensing free candy bars, but no such luck with the condom dispenser. I stuck my twelve-year-old fingers as far up the slot as I could, but couldn’t find the magic trigger. Its inventors had seen me coming.

At the greasy sink, I turned the water on full blast and left it running to disguise the noise of quarters going into the machine, the handle turning and condoms tumbling out. I prayed to God that He would not let anyone hear what I was doing, and that He would forgive me for buying condoms.

After a half hour in the bathroom, I walked out with defiant nonchalance on my face, my eyebrows arched as if to show that nothing important was going on in my head, that it was just an ordinary day and my pockets weren’t bulging with forty condom boxes and my mouth wasn’t dry and my lips weren’t trembly. Avoiding eye contact with Miz Holden, I looked at the gas station ceiling. I ran my fingers over a tire display. I even tried to whistle a little tune because I had heard somewhere that a guilty man can’t whistle…

…and it must have been true because I couldn’t whistle a lick.

THE HOKEY-POKEY, THE SHIMMY-SHE-WOBBLE AND OTHER SINS

2009-01-28T21:05:00.014-04:00

by Randy Reynolds

I was terrified when my first grade teacher, Miss Lokey called me to the front of the class with a group of my fellow first-graders (in Adel, Georgia) and announced that we were going to do a new dance: the Hokey-Pokey.

I raised my hand and said, "No, ma'am, I can't dance."

"I'll teach you," said big old Miss Lokey.

I can still remember how violently my heart throbbed as I protested, "I don't want to because dancing is a sin."

"This kind of dancing is okay," she said. "God allows the Hokey-Pokey."

I learned the Hokey-Pokey that day, trembling all the way, more than half expecting hell to open up and swallow me. That evening I confessed to Mom and Dad that I had danced the Hokey-Pokey, quickly adding that God had told Miss Lokey that it was all right. (My first experience with God sending messages through someone other than my dad, the preacher.)

My mom said, "It's all right, honey. I don't think God really objects to the Hokey-Pokey."

Dad said, "It's not like doing the Shimmy-She-Wobble with another man's wife."

My first-grade heart had no designs on anybody's wife, but I never forgot how exotic that Shimmy-She-Wobble sounded and I always wanted to see some woman do it. I've never seen a reference to it in an encyclopedia or in the newspapers of that era (the 1950's) although the papers covered and condemned everything related to rock'n'roll. I suspect my daddy may have made up that dance just to evoke the image of something nasty on the dance floor to preach against. (He preached against Elvis, too, and told us kids we had to choose between Elvis and Jesus and time was running out... but that's another story, explored more fully in THE ELVIS SYNDROME which will soon be available.)

Finding out that one dance wasn't as bad as another in God's eyes was the first time I realized that the teachings of our church were not absolute; they were subject to change.

Next came movies.

Miss Lokey said, "All right, boys and go-wee-ulls"--(this was South Georgia and she turned girls into a three-syllable word)--"...boys and go-wee-ulls, we are going to see a movie about polio."

My hand shot up.

"Yes, Randy?"

"I can't watch movies."

"Why not?"

"Because it's a sin."

"Polio movies are okay," said Miss Lokey. "God said it's all right to watch polio movies. He wants you to know why we have to take those old polio shots."

I was nothing if not gullible. If God had told Miss Lokey that polio movies were okay, I would go ahead and watch it with the rest of the class. But it confused me a little. My church said No Dancing, but the Hokey-Pokey was okay. It said No Movies, but polio movies were fine.

I was worried about these exceptions and others that came up later: our preachers preached against Television then changed their minds. They preached against women wearing rings, but made exceptions for wedding rings, engagement rings and class rings, and the next thing I knew even Mickey Mouse rings and mood rings were legalized. Talk about depravity!

Women cutting their hair was a sin, women in jeans or shorts or sleeveless blouses was a sin, wearing makeup was a sin...then all those things changed and they weren't sins anymore. It made me wonder whether the church was right the first time...or were they right to change?

It was a sin for people to go to worldly places of amusement like ballgames, fairs, bowling alleys, skating rinks, concerts, school events where there'd be dancing and restaurants where beer was served. The only thing left for teenage couples to do on a date night, other than go to church or sit in the living room with her parents, was to go park by the river and "watch the submarine races."

That was a sin, too, but I figured it would get overturned someday like all the others and I wanted to be ahead of the curve.

Sneak Preview: “THE ELVIS SYNDROME”

2009-01-24T20:29:00.013-04:00

copyright © 2009 Randy Reynolds

Attendance boomed and collection plates overflowed at my daddy's church in the sleepy South Georgia town of Bainbridge in the latter half of the 1950's because change was in the air and church people were terrified. They wanted God to help them make sense of it all, to tell them why everything had to change, and so—speaking through my Daddy--He did.

A fiery young orator with the dubious distinction of resembling Elvis Presley, Daddy preached that "Godless communism, rock'n'roll and the civil rights movement" were all part of the same phenomenon, vaguely predicted in Revelations. He preached that we would experience ever more terrifying changes until the very end, at which time Jesus would return to pick up the good people (meaning those who got "saved" at our church.) Everyone else would be out of luck. Left behind.

The good news, according to Daddy, was that almost all the prophecies had been fulfilled, so the end was very near; we were already in the last days; maybe even the final minutes. At this point the pianist would sob while playing a haunting melody and Daddy would shout, "God is in this room!"

The fear would be palpable as Daddy convinced his congregation to open their hearts to God and their wallets to the ushers who, not withstanding the imminent end of time, never failed to pass the collection plates.

Sputnik, the U-2 incident, Soviet threats, Brown v. Board of Education and girls throwing their panties at Elvis were all supposed to mark the last days. My daddy and the evangelists he invited to our church proved in sermon after sermon that these were signs of the rapture.

On a summer Sunday night in the 1950's, thunder shook our little church and lightning caused a power outage. The evangelist said we could be witnessing the return of Jesus to pick up the saved and if we wanted to be among that number we'd better get to the altar right now, which caused a stampede in the aisles. Afterward, when the terror was over and the lights were back on and I still wasn't sure if the apocalypse had happened or not, I was called upon to stand and state that I was "saved" (at least until my next sin, after which I would have to repent again or be condemned to hell.)

By the early 60’s my dad was pastoring a church in Louisiana called Shepherd’s Fold, where the sweet, gentle lady who taught the Junior Boys Sunday School class convinced us that she knew the exact year the world would end. And when that year arrived, I developed the nervous habit of snorting air—sucking three or four breaths loudly through my nose before exhaling, a sound that drove away all my friends. I couldn’t blame them for avoiding me, but the snorting was beyond my control. It was the only way I could breathe that year.

For an entire year of recesses, I spent my time alone on the playground or in the gym reading library books and snorting for air, waiting for the world to end.

“Why don’t you go play with the other boys?” asked a kindly teacher.

“I like to read,” I said.

Instead of paying attention in class, I trembled and snorted and read library books hidden inside my textbook covers. (The 136 books I read that year, according to a list I kept, may have been a better learning experience than the missed schoolwork.)

When the year ended but the world didn’t, I had a lot of catching up to do. A lot of catching up.

(Which you can read about in The Elvis Syndrome…coming soon.)

THE ACORN TRICK

2009-01-15T23:20:00.007-04:00

By Randy Reynolds

Male birds have flashy plumage to strut in front of potential mates. Male tropical fish have their bright colors. Boy lions have that big mane and a substantial size advantage over the females they want to impress. Human males, however, don’t have these built-in attention-getters. We have to invent our own ways to get girls to notice us.

For me at age 12, that was no problem. I had my acorn trick.

I’d like to think there was more to me than just my ability to put an acorn in my nose and make it come out my mouth, but I’m not sure. I’m the guy who threw the coke bottle across a crowded gym on a dare; the one who raced horses bareback on the highway; me, I’m the boy who didn’t mind a good fistfight as long as the right girl was watching. I’m the one who cut a girl’s initials into my wrist. Never mind that I was afraid to take a polio shot, I’d slice her initials deep and ragged, trying not to hit a vein, and she’d be impressed and horrified with the blood and later with the scab and she’d smile at me and I’d dream about her, and then she’d lose interest and I’d have to wait for the scab to go away before I could do the same thing for another girl. This delay between wrist carvings put a serious crimp in my girl-chasing, so I thought of something quicker and less bloody to make the girls notice me: the acorn trick.

Out on the playground at recess, when no one was looking, I jammed an acorn up my nose. Holding another acorn in my hand, I went up to a group of girls and said, “Have you ever seen anybody do this?” I waved my handheld acorn in front of their faces then put it into my mouth and pretended to swallow it. With one finger pushed against my empty nostril, I blew the acorn out the other.

They said “Ewww!” and “Yuck!” and other gratifying things and I smiled and reversed the trick: I put the same acorn back into my nose, pretended to swallow again and spit the original acorn out of my mouth.

My fame spread near and far, and I soon found myself performing this trick at every recess and lunch break and after school, and even after church. Other boys, not realizing that I was using two acorns, tried to imitate my trick, but all they did was hurt themselves.

I must have done my acorn routine a hundred times before it finally backfired in front of a couple of cute girls standing at the entrance to our sprawling pink-stucco school. (Why Lee Road School was pink, I don’t know; Mary Kay would have loved it.) Mary Alice and Mary Lee wanted to see the acorn trick. “Please, please, please!” they begged, jumping up and down like children waiting in line at the Haunted House exhibit at the parish fair. Never one to disappoint the ladies, I made a show of searching for the right acorn and slipped one into my mouth before turning to face them. With a flourish and a smile I shoved the other up my nose, went through the gagging motions, and spit the hidden one out of my mouth. They were disgusted with me, but fascinated, too—basically the same effect I would always have on girls.

But something went wrong. When I returned the mouth-acorn and tried to snort out the nose-acorn, nothing happened. The nose-acorn was gone. I made some lame excuse and hurried away, snorting and digging at my nose trying to expel or dig out the missing acorn.

For the next few days, I worried that the acorn might have been inhaled into my windpipe where it would smother me, or into my lungs, where it would take root and grow. But life moved on, I got a fulltime girlfriend, a really jealous one, carved her initials into my arm, and stopped trying to impress all the other girls with my respiratory skills.

A year later, in science class, I sneezed and an acorn flew out of my nose and landed a few inches from Miss Landry’s feet. She looked at it and shuddered, but kept right on with her lesson while I threw the bloody acorn into the trash.

Twenty years later, when I went back to Lee Road for a reunion of my Boy Scout Troop, my old friend Dennis Sharp, at that time the distinguished principal of Lee Road School, reminded us all of my special skill. “Randy could put an acorn in his mouth and make it come out his nose.”

I felt the time had come to own up to my dishonesty. “Not really,” I said. “It was a trick.”

“No it wasn’t,” said Dennis. “I saw it many times. I used to tell my friends about it at college. We tried and tried, but we couldn’t do it.”

I explained the trick, but he refused to believe it. “I saw it with my own eyes,” he said. “You put it in your mouth and it came out your nose. It was amazing.”

I did my best to confess, but Dennis wouldn’t buy it. He got so upset that he didn’t speak to me again during that whole reunion weekend and, for all I know, he and his friends still get together at school board meetings and put acorns in their mouths and try to make them come out their noses.

Obviously, I made a strong impression on those boys. I sometimes wonder if the girls remember it, too, dancing up and down with eagerness in front of the pink school as I did the thing no other boy could do.

STUBBORN AS A MULE: THE SISTER WHO WOULDN'T LET ME GIVE UP

2009-01-10T17:57:00.011-04:00

by Randy Reynolds

When the sugarcane is harvested from the fields around my daughter’s subdivision in Lafayette, Louisiana, thousands of field mice scurry across the road to take shelter within the hollow walls of homes like hers—cheaply built houses that sell for low monthly payments that might get even lower, according to the banker, because of the “adjustable rate mortgage.” (The mortgage banker said this with a straight face.)

The mice weren’t the only ones seeking refuge there on a certain October night three years ago: my wife Sherry and I were homeless, too. When we moved into our daughter’s un-insulated carport to live among the mice, we had no net worth--nothing left but an ancient van and a bed; and a secret weapon named Ramonda (the third of my four younger sisters.)

Sherry and I had highly successful careers in radio. I hosted a top-rated morning show and managed several stations. Sherry was a record-setting salesperson. Then the radio industry was deregulated. Ownership rules were loosened and an elite few companies bought up thousands of stations, consolidating, automating and firing thousands of employees like Sherry and me. (The layoffs helped them show their Wall Street backers an immediate profit.)

The new owner of our station fired us with a phone call late at night. “Our financial model does not include paying your salary, so don’t come to work tomorrow” said this Harvard MBA. “And tell your wife she’s fired, too.”

The month after we lost our health insurance, Sherry had a heart attack and things went downhill from there. We lost our house, our furniture, everything. That’s where my little sister, the one who's as stubborn as a mule, stepped in.

As our luck went from bad to worse, Ramonda told us to “look up,” be hopeful, our ship was going to come in, our miracle was going to happen. I told her that it was dangerous to be that naive.

I went from one dead-end job to another, from video store to box factory to warehouse, working whatever hours were available, mostly at minimum wage. Sherry’s doctor wouldn’t let her work at all, so she spent her days with grandchildren and her nights in the carport with mice running back and forth across the covers. There were mice in every box and every pile of clothes on the carport floor. A mouse fell into our coin jar and rattled the pennies all night. Sherry had nightmares about mice and told me she couldn’t stand it anymore. But I couldn’t do anything about it. I had no hope to offer, but my naive, stubborn sister did.

Ramonda began sending us money and we protested, knowing that she had nothing extra to give; she sometimes supported herself on loans and paid them back when her sales commissions came in. “I’m borrowing a little extra each time and sending it to you,” she said.

She said she "just knew" that I was going to get a better job. I told her there was no way, because I didn't even have clothes suitable for an interview. But Ramonda doesn't let people give up. She sent me a box of clothes she’d picked up at a Goodwill Store and I wore them on an interview and did, indeed, get a better job.

Ramonda said she was praying for us to get a house of our own. I informed her that after doctor bills, prescriptions, and an old loan, we had about $300 per month left over, and nobody could get a decent place for that.

The day after this outburst, I was walking in my daughter’s subdivision when a little dog began following me. I met a woman coming from the opposite direction and asked if she knew whose dog it was--(she didn't)--and she asked me if I knew someone who wanted to buy a house for $303 per month.

After we moved in, Ramonda and sister Ronda showed up with a vanload of furnishings and household items.

Ramonda urged Sherry to apply for disability. “That takes years,” I said.

But Ramonda, who didn't know any better, said “Have faith! At least try!” We did, and within a few weeks, Sherry began receiving disability income.

As soon as we became self-sufficient, the I.R.S. stepped in and garnished my wages. They took all but $4.00 per hour of my income, as well as a portion of Sherry’s disability checks.

"See there!" I said. "I just can't win!"

Ramonda said, “Look up. Your miracle’s coming.”

And without asking my permission, she borrowed money for me to hire a tax lawyer. Having fought the I.R.S. since 1987, I knew it wouldn't work, but she already had the money and wouldn't take it back. The new lawyer got the garnishment lifted within a week.

Without Ramonda's encouragement (and cash), we’d still be living in my daughter’s carport with the mice, or in my other daughter’s utility room (where we spent six months before moving to the carport.)

Like Sherry and me, millions of Americans have lost jobs in the past few years; many of these will lose their homes. My great hope for them is that they'll meet someone like Ramonda who not only believes in miracles, but does all she can to make them happen.

PREACHER'S KID

2008-07-06T14:47:00.013-03:00

by Randy Reynolds

The first time my future wife ever noticed me, I was in 6th grade, she in 5th and she was in love with one of the triplets I was fighting. Stephen, Stanley and Sidney McLain attacked me for the simple reason that I was a preacher's kid. It was their rite of passage. And mine. This was my sixth school in six years, so I knew the drill: only if I fought back hard enough would they and others leave me alone in the future. So it was no-holds-barred. We fought with fists, feet, elbows, teeth, fingernails--everything we had. Almost everyone on the playground, including my future wife, yelled encouragement to the triplets. My little brother, who could have been a big help, stayed neutral.

(Dad: “Ricky, why didn’t you help Randy when it was three against one?”

......
(Ricky: “W-w-w-well, it looked like a fair fight to me.”)

As a preacher’s kid, I was used to getting picked on: in third grade, I’d whipped two boys who jumped me from behind, and the teacher said I jumped on her when she broke it up (though I don’t remember that.) In fourth grade, a kid stabbed me with a pencil. On my first day in Covington, church members’ kids forced me into a fight. That was in late summer. Now the new school semester was underway, and I was having to prove myself again.

After the fight with the triplets and a few skirmishes with bigger boys who had been held back several grades and already had mustaches and driver’s licenses by sixth grade, I became an accepted, even popular, kid at school. And that popularity led to my last fight.

I was elected Mardi Gras King in 8th grade, but was forced to resign my throne because the King was required to dance with the Queen and Daddy wouldn’t let me dance because dancing was a sin. The teacher in charge of the Mardi Gras pageant was extremely insulted that I had rejected the greatest honor that could befall a Louisiana boy, and when he saw a chance for revenge a few days later, he took it. In the lunch line, an older boy named Eddie grabbed a pen from my shirt pocket and I grabbed it back. “Okay boys,” said Mr. Stewart. “You want to fight? Let’s do it outside.”

Both of us protested that we didn’t want to fight, but he took us out, followed by the entire lunch line, formed the spectators into a circle and said, "Come on, boys, let's see you fight. What's wrong, Mr. Reynolds? You wanted to fight, didn't you?" "No." "You'll fight or I'll use the paddle. Your choice. Hit him, Mr. Sharp." Eddie started hitting me, reluctantly at first, then harder, determined to end it. I rushed him, got my arms around his neck and my legs around his stomach and squeezed until his face turned blue.

Mr. Stewart tapped me on the shoulder and mumbled, "Let him go." He also said, "Nice fight, Randy. Back to the lunchroom, everybody!".................................................

Eddie came to school the next day wearing a neck brace but refused to give me credit: he said his neck was already sprained before the fight.

That was my last fistfight and I memorialized it in my second published story, “Fight, Fight!”

Although, I never started a fight, I always finished it. At that time, the same could be said of the United States. Lord, how times have changed! .............

................................................
PREACHER'S KID
by Randy Reynolds

(first published in The Clergy Journal)

Preachers' kids were examples,
Conscious of how things would look.
We had to let bullies trample us,
Because they never read The Book.
..................................
Preachers' kids couldn't fight.
We were taught to be mild and meek,
For The Book said the thing that was right
Was to turn the other cheek.
...............................
Then I felt the call to teach
The joy and the truth of this.
So I turned many other boys' cheeks
With the sting of my righteous fists.
...............................
Though now it seems odd to tell,
I'm proud of what I did:
In my childhood I beat the hell
Out of many a member's kid!
............................

ROCKET SCIENTIST

2008-07-04T17:17:00.040-03:00

by Randy Reynolds

My mother's brother, Ensign Bobby Cecil Appling was the first official “rocket scientist” in our family. Bobby wanted to be a fighter pilot, but flying made him dizzy and he became a rocket scientist instead.

We've had lots of other military men in the family, though--to be honest--not that many "rocket scientists." ...........................

General Zachary Taylor, (related to both the Reynolds and Appling clans,) was the hero of the Mexican War, became President and died in the White House after consuming too many cherries (cooled on possibly typhoid-contaminated ice) during the July 4th celebrations of 1850. Colonel Daniel Appling, (for whom a county was named in Georgia,) was a hero of the War of 1812. Other kinfolk fought in the Civil War, World War II, Korea, Vietnam and now Iraq. ..........

But this is not about them. This is about me and why I didn’t serve. ...............................................................................................................

Each time my wife watches one of those bloody Vietnam war movies, there's some guy running up a hill in a hail of bullets and she says, “It’s a good thing you didn’t go, because that’s what you’d have been doing." Maybe. Maybe not. But I'll never know. I missed my chance.................

There was never any question about whether I believed in the war. If the U.S. was in it, I was for it. I believed in Johnson. I believed in Nixon. I believed we had to fight in Vietnam or we'd be fighting "over here." .................

When Lyndon Johnson bombed North Vietnam after the Gulf of Tonkin "incident," my dad predicted "We'll bomb them back to the stone age. This war won't last two weeks." This concerned me greatly because I didn't want it to end before I was old enough to fight.

Not to worry. It was still going strong when I turned 18. But I didn't volunteer because I had one little problem: military physicals required blood tests; and though I fancied myself to be unafraid of bullets, bombs and the Vietcong, I was deathly afraid of needles. .............................

I was so scared of needles that I refused to enter the doctor's office when my fiancee and I went to get the blood tests required for a marriage license. As Sherry was getting stuck, the doctor asked who the lucky man was. She said, “Randy Reynolds.” He said, “Oh, I know him. He doesn’t need a VD test.” And he signed the papers verifying that I was clean. .....................

I was a little insulted that he would take it for granted that I had lived a clean life up to that point, but I nonetheless accepted his help avoiding the needle and I got married and didn’t go to Vietnam and we lost the war. ......................................

Ps. I became a hero anyway--at least to the nine grandchildren who eagerly watch me stick my finger with a needle to draw a drop of blood, which I have to do each morning before my first cup of hazelnut coffee. .........

........................................................................

And now I'm a "rocket scientist," too--at least to these nine, who think I have all the answers. (And who am I to tell them any different? )
.......................................

COUNTRY LOVE

2008-06-07T20:55:00.017-03:00

By Randy Reynolds

When four women bought a radio station in Gainesville, Georgia, in the late 1970’s, the local newspaper ran a story about how unusual this was. There was a lot of gossip about whether women would do such a thing on their own--especially these women, only one of whom had much radio experience. Sure, other women owned radio stations inherited from a husband or father. But women going into the radio business for themselves? From scratch? In Gainesville? In the 1970’s? This was unheard of! Surely, according to the coffee-shop chatter, there was a man behind them.

Yes, there was. Me!

The four women and I were equal partners, with each of us owning 20% of the station. They all paid cash for their 20%. I earned mine in other ways.

I did the morning show, managed the station, did all the hiring and firing, helped with sales, handled the promotions and, of course, selected the music.

Aaah, the music.

I—we—named the station “Country Love” and we played country hits and oldies, but not all of them. Every song played on our station had to have “Love” in the title or in the lyrics of the song. No train songs, beer songs, prison songs, fighting songs, hound dog songs, death songs or other typical country fare. It was nothing but love songs. Country love songs.

My co-owners and I thought the result was breathtaking: hour after hour of love. Country Love. All day long, each time we said the name of the station, we had to say the word love. All day long, every song we played was a song to fall in love by. Or make love to.

It worked! We became popular. A ratings service showed we were number one with women in the morning. My head swelled.

Actually, my head swelled in more ways than one. I went to the beauty shop and got myself an Afro that made my head look as big as a watermelon. When I ran for county commission and the local paper took my picture and their flashbulb threw the shadow of my Afro onto the sheetrock wall behind me, my head looked TWICE as big as a watermelon! (But my run for office is another story.)

............. ....................................................... ...........................................................................................................................................................It was a great time in my life—I thought the world was mine, that anything was possible. I had two little daughters and a brand-new baby boy and a pretty wife and a house in the country, with my all-time favorite horse, Abadon (named after an Iranian oil field) in the back yard. My fellow-Georgian and inspiration Jimmy Carter was President. I could do anything I wanted at the station. I had no boss, no one to answer to except the four women who bought me my own radio station because they liked my morning show so much. (Or whatever their reasons may have been.)

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

The four of them gave me everything I wanted, except a big paycheck...which was okay—we all agreed that I’d work cheap at first and make up for it when the profits came rolling in.

...
Our little enterprise fell apart before the big money kicked in. (The story of my life!)

.................................

But it was fun while it lasted—being owned by four women; five, counting my green-eyed wife, who thought I was enjoying Country Love so much she eventually decided to get into radio herself.

HOMECOMING

2008-05-11T00:38:00.021-03:00

by Randy Reynolds

The old lady, spare and stark,

White-haired, sad-faced in the park

Sees relatives all gathered round,
Dinner spread out on the ground,

Children graying, grandkids grown,
Great grandkids she's never known.

In her sad eyes linger traces
Of yearning for forgotten faces:
For the husband who passed away
On a dimly distant frozen day;
For infants under slate tombstones;
For happy times long-since gone.

We laugh and eat and all the while
Her toothless mouth can barely smile.
Homecoming. But she cannot forget
That she's not home--not quite home yet.

(Poetry Corner/Gainesville Times/1974)....... (Photo: Chesty Reynolds, circa 1970's)

PERSISTENCE

2008-05-06T09:37:00.017-03:00

By Randy Reynolds

Sunday, November 6, 1977 - When the dam burst and sent a 120-mile-per-hour wall of water through Toccoa Falls Bible College I was 31 miles away sleeping through a rainstorm at my home in the tiny community of Lula, Georgia, and Rosalyn Carter was 564 miles away at the White House. We arrived at the devastated college simultaneously, soon after the bodies of 39 victims had been removed.

Bruce Hall, my boss from a former life, arrived with his CBS-TV crew shortly afterward. Bruce—the guy who’d fired me from my TV job in Jacksonville 6 years earlier—tried to elbow me aside so he could get a better shot of the First Lady when she gathered the news crews around her for a statement, but I refused to get out of his cameraman’s way. He cussed and whispered and pushed me, but I stood my ground, as he would have wanted me to do had I still been working for him. The last time I let a TV crew push me aside was in 1967 in the basement of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. On that occasion, the TV guys got a good shot of Martin Luther King, Jr., and I got a bunch of background noise and a good cussing-out from my boss back at the radio station.

By 1977, I had been a local radio Newsman in nearby Gainesville, Georgia, for more than six years.

(*We “Newsmen” didn’t call ourselves “Reporters.” We were much more important than that! A “Newsman” was reporter, editor, anchor and—often—talk-show host and sportscaster…a one man department who worked for the thrill of scooping the competition, for the satisfaction of informing the public, for the ego-gratification of becoming well-known. And for an income slightly higher than that of most disk-jockeys and much higher than that of all female employees who weren't in sales.)

(**President Jimmy Carter, a few days earlier, had signed a bill raising the minimum wage from $2.30 per hour to $3.35. The increase was set to take effect three years later—on January 1, 1981. I personally was glad the country had three years to get ready for it, because I wasn’t sure the economy could survive a minimum wage like that. Every low-level employee in America making almost as much as a “Newsman?” Go figure.)

Bruce was national, having risen from WJXT-TV Assignment Editor, to CBS-TV correspondent… and I was local (though I did on-the-air reports for ABC Radio that day and fed information to a CBS Radio editor in New York, as well as to A-P and The Atlanta Constitution.) Even had I not been filing reports with the networks, I wouldn’t have stood aside for Bruce’s crew. What Mrs. Carter had to say was interesting—maybe even important to some people—and my audience was going to hear it clearly. No more allowing myself to be shoved aside. I stood my ground.

Bruce had fired me from my TV job when I was 21, in early 1971. We were owned by Post-Newsweek—owners who supposedly had very deep pockets. But word came down from Washington headquarters that every department had to lay off a certain number of employees. Even though I was weekend Assignment Editor and Anchorman, supervising a staff of 12, I was the youngest in my department and marked for dismissal. When I asked Bruce for a reason that the ax was falling on me, he assured me that I was great on-air but—“well, times are bad…and, uh, your writing isn’t up to par…”

My writing isn’t up to par? I was the guy who cleaned up other reporters’ writing for the 4 weekend editions of the news that I anchored. I pointed out that I’d been getting published in national magazines since the age of 18. I was a stringer for the wire services. I’d covered hurricanes (Betsy & Camille) for radio and riots (in Jacksonville) for CBS-TV. My copy sizzled. I could churn out airworthy stuff faster than anyone. And they were letting me go for my writing ability?

I argued that I didn’t consider myself all that good on the air, but Bruce assured me that I was the best. And had a great future in it. But he didn’t like my writing.

I moved my wife, my daughter and my repressed anger to North Georgia for a radio job in my grandparents’ home town which, after Jacksonville, was like retreating into a cocoon. I toyed with the idea of being a novelist, sometimes producing hundreds of pages a week. On more than one occasion in the 70’s I spent my entire one-week vacation babysitting and writing.

Many books get turned down before finding a publisher—the first Harry Potter book was rejected by the first 12 publishers who read it; Bridges of Madison County was rejected by more than 60. Each time one of my books was turned down, I tossed it into a trunk and forgot about it.

..........................................
It might be interesting to revisit some of those manuscripts some day. If it turns out that some are publishable, the joke will be on me. I, who (after becoming a manager) preached goal-setting and persistence to people who worked for me, was only persistent with my writing, not my marketing. Perhaps I’m mature enough now to laugh at myself if I discover that I’ve written something that would have paid off years ago had I kept submitting it to publishers! Or maybe I’ll jump off the nearest ledge. Or treehouse.

On the other hand, if Bruce was right about my writing skills (or lack thereof,) this trunk full of manuscripts that I use as a footrest beneath my desk will make a heck of a bonfire for a weenie roast with the grandkids one of these nights….

(Bill got it wrong: I started in November, 1969 and became fulltime in January, 1970, when he passed me in the hall one day and said, "You're anchoring the weekend news from now on. Go see Bruce and find out what to do." I had no training and had never anchored anything, except a boat, but Bill--and the camera--liked me, hence the hallway promotion that resulted in my being on the air frequently from that time until the Nixon economy of 1971 caused a ton of cutbacks at all Post-Newsweek properties.)

GOAL-SETTING: BREAK IT DOWN INTO SMALL PIECES

2008-04-11T17:10:00.029-03:00

By Randy Reynolds ...............................................................................
(PHOTO: Jimmy Carter proclaiming POULTRY BOWL DAY. I did play-by-play for the not-so-famous college football game. I’m the smiling guy on the far right who set up the meeting. The pic's in bad shape after many years stuck to the glass in its frame--in a storage box.)....................
....................

Two of our Channel 4/Eyewitness News reporters stood at Bruce Hall’s desk, smoking, waiting for the assignment editor to get off the phone. The news staff was scattered about the newsroom, some of us typing our stories--3 pages thick/2 sheets of carbon paper in between-- on electric typewriters with oversized keys; (we were state of the art !) Other reporters were in the editing room, splicing 16 mm newsfilm with razor blades and glue. Bruce put his hand over the receiver and said, “Jimmy Carter is coming by in a few minutes for an interview. Who can do it?”

“Who’s Jimmy Carter?” said small, dark Jack Bookout, who looked like Paul Anka.

Dandy Don Lewis, an aging ladies’ man, spoke with his cigarette dangling from his lips. “Isn’t he the guy running for governor against Carl Sanders?” ....................
.................................
Our star reporter, Brad Davis whose seriousness was compromised by his page-boy haircut, said, “I’m waiting for a call from the Mayor’s office. Let Randy have Carter.”

Our police reporter, Jack Gould, said, “I’ve got film of a wreck to edit. Let Randy do it.”

News Director/Star Anchorman Bill Grove, who was older than sin, said, “It’ll be good experience for Randy even if we don’t use it.”

Thus, I got my first interview with Jimmy Carter and my first exposure to the secret of his success.

Peanut farmer and former state senator Jimmy Carter came begging interviews from WJXT-TV in Jacksonville, Florida, because our signal covered most of South Georgia and he desperately needed the free exposure.

My main question, which ended up on the cutting-room floor, was “How do you expect to win against a well-financed candidate like former governor Carl Sanders?”

He politely answered my question, barely moving his lips as he spoke. “I have a goal of shaking hands with 200,000 people and asking them for their vote.”

“And you think that will get you elected governor?”

“In combination with some other things, yes I do.”

He had broken this goal into small, do-able tasks by dividing 200,000 by the number of days in the campaign, and dividing the days by a certain number of hours; thus, he knew how many hands he had to shake each hour.

His goal could have been: win the governorship. But that was too all-encompassing. He thought goals should be specific, small things that could be quantified and marked off a list as he accomplished them. Sure, he wanted to win the governorship, but his GOAL was process: shake X number of hands per hour, X number of hours per day, X number of days. Do the process / win the prize.

The Channel 4/Eyewitness News department used more of this interview on our Christmas party “funny reel” than on the air.

Later that afternoon, as I edited the tape, Bill Blackburn, who had more wrinkles than a Chinese Shar Pei, commented, “Who’s that yokel!”

“A peanut farmer,” I said. “Thinks he’s gonna be the next governor.”

“Of Florida?”

“Georgia.”

“Georgia? Why are we covering the Georgia race?”

“Slow news day,” said Bruce.

“He’ll never get elected to anything,” said Harry Reagan, our producer.

I wanted to say Don’t be so sure, but it wasn’t my job to correct the old pros.

Carter reached his goal, winning the governorship in a stunning upset. And he was a very popular man during the days between his surprise victory and the inauguration. And for the first 10 seconds that he was governor...

Many of the voters who had supported him had just assumed that he was a racist like them. But a few seconds after he took the oath of office, Carter said, "Frankly, I say to you, my fellow Georgians, that the time for racial discrimination is over." (He ended up on the cover of Time Magazine for that quote--in some silly story about The New South.)

There was no new South. And the time for racial discrimination in Georgia was not over. (Nor was it over in Florida: our news department was lilly-white. And that was so normal at the time that I never even thought about it till today... this moment... as I write these lines 38 years later.)

With great fanfare, Carter hung a portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr., in the state capitol.

From that point on, the redneck-cracker portion of the state hated Carter passionately. And these previously loyal Democrats would become Republicans after Ronald Reagan opened his 1980 Presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were murdered and buried in an earthen dam.

I was a radio news director in North Georgia during Carter's governorship (in the early ‘70s) and talked with him many times during his visits to our station and on his “listening tours,” during which he strolled around the town square talking to all-comers.

People got suspicious when he continued the listening tours into the final month of his governorship.

I remember sitting at the counter in an all-white café a block from the courthouse in Gainesville, Georgia, near the end of 1974, and hearing someone ask what the hell Carter was running for now. “The senate,” said a businessman, looking over the top of his newspaper.

“He couldn’t be elected dogcatcher in this state,” said someone else.

Somebody laughed. Someone else cursed Carter for his liberalism.

The soon-to-be ex-governor came to the radio station that day and announced that he was not going to run for the senate, after all. He had decided to run for president.

We thought he had lost his mind!

I remembered his appearance on the TV show WHAT’S MY LINE? -- the panel failed to guess that he was a governor. They didn’t know him even after he told them his name. (Nor did the rest of America. His recognition factor, nationwide, when he began his campaign for president, was less than 1%.)

“Do you have the money to run a presidential campaign?” I asked.

“Not yet. But I won’t need any at first. I’ll travel coach. I’ll spend the night in people’s houses instead of hotels. We’ll do it on a shoestring budget.”

“But how can you win?”

“The same way I won the governorship. I’m going to campaign the same way in Iowa. I intend to shake 200,000 hands. And after I win Iowa, I’ll be the frontrunner in New Hampshire…and it’ll be all over. Nobody will catch me after that.”

He had crunched the numbers and knew just how many hands he could shake per hour and how many hours he could spend visiting barber shops, beauty shops, farms, factories and malls to find those hands.

He didn’t have to worry about his big goal, winning the election, so long as he did all the little things that would add up to success.

The man unknown to more than 99% of Americans, the man who thought he could end racial discrimination in Georgia, the man who stumped the panel on WHAT’S MY LINE?, the man who couldn’t be elected dogcatcher, fulfilled his daily goals during that campaign and, thereby, made his big dream come true, becoming 39th President of the United States.

MAGIC

2008-04-08T14:33:00.030-03:00

by Randy Reynolds
On a spring night in 1986 Louisiana State Police get a strange call. There’s a traffic jam, a big one, on a remote stretch of highway in a sparsely-populated area between Lake D’Arbonne and Arkansas. There are only 3,000 people in the nearby town of Farmerville, Louisiana—but there are more people than that partying at the lake with a radio station from West Monroe.

For two days and one night during the Magic 106 “Weekend On The Lake,” Lake D’Arbonne seems more like a Florida beach during spring break than a lake in the woods in North Louisiana. The State Police send reinforcements to handle traffic.

Magic 106 is the station people listen to even when it’s off the air. (Before we pull the plug to install a new antenna and transmitter, we promise a free camcorder to the first person who calls when we go back on the air. The moment we resume broadcasting, the phones start ringing... proof that people were listening to our static--waiting for us to come back on the air-- rather than listening to our competition!)

We have a 1961 Pink Cadillac named Gertrude. “When you see Gertrude in traffic, if you roll down your window and yell, 'My radio sticks to 106!' the deejay driving Gertrude will give you $50.” Drivers follow Gertrude everywhere. Every time we take her out, it’s like a parade! People drive down the street trying to get our attention, leaning out their windows yelling, "My radio sticks to 106!"

We send housewives, librarians, preacher’s wives and the like to rock concerts. We call it our “Wild Women’s Tour” and they eat it up.

We bring the rock group Cinderella to town just to have lunch with a girl who wins a Magic 106 contest. We get a gold record from 10,000 Maniacs for being the first station to play their hit “In My Tribe.” We’re the first station outside of Florida to play “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” and other stations nationwide follow our lead.

Even after I become General Manager, I continue my old job of programming the music for Magic 106. Unlike other stations, we play no slow songs. We play only the fastest, funnest dance tunes, the hot hits. No oldies! No soft stuff! We grab the listener, pick her up, squeeze her, shake her, never let her go. (Figuratively, of course.) Roger, the owner, hates it. He calls me into his office and berates me for playing “Oh, Sheila" (by Ready For The World) and says he never wants to hear anything like that on his station again. The next morning his wife and daughter sing “Oh, Sheila” at the breakfast table and he comes to work and apologizes to me and never interferes with music selection again.

I convince him to subscribe to the ratings, which cost more than the salary of a fulltime employee. When he doesn’t see an immediate increase in advertising revenue, he calls me in for an ass-chewing. “We haven’t made one red cent from national advertising because of these ratings. I was stupid to take your advice and I promise you it won’t happen again.” At this moment—this very moment—our lovely red-haired secretary pops in and says, “Randy, Lay’s Potato Chips wants to buy some advertising. Do you want to call them back?” Roger never reins me in again.

When I’m spending $19,000 per month running his station, we're bringing in $40,000 in sales. When I spend $40,000 per month, we make $60,000. When I increase spending to $60,000 per month, our income rises to $165,000 in one month.

January is the toughest month for selling ads. But, in consecutive Januarys, we bill $19,000, $42,000 and $126,000. These increases aren’t due to Monroe being a thriving, growing market, because it isn't. We succeed because of our creative ideas and winning attitudes –which are the main ingredients in the “magic” of Magic 106.

One of our January campaigns is “A Winning Attitude Is Magic,” in which we talk about business owners’ winning attitudes and then run their ads. “Joe Sixpack started with a wheelbarrow and two shovels and now he owns shops in six states….” Followed by, “Shop at Joe Sixpack’s store today for….” whatever. That one idea results in a 150% increase in business in one month.

I hire a country disk-jockey, Chuck Redden, for the morning show. He thinks he’s supposed to be laid-back, sophisticated on an Adult-Contemporary station. I tell him to be himself—act a fool. He does. Which makes him a phenomenon. Chuck can talk like Governor Edwin Edwards, writes a song about Edwards (“The Edwin Shuffle”) and we sell hundreds of copies of it on cassette. “The Edwin Shuffle” gets noticed as far away as Dallas. The Dallas Morning News does a story about it.

Imagine a little station in a converted laundry building in West Monroe, Louisiana, getting press coverage from the Dallas Morning News! Damn! Geez! What’s going on?

Our news guy Clifton Riley writes news that flows like poetry.

Clifton does a perfect imitation of Ronald Reagan. So does Steve Cannon, my midday host. Together, they become the Reagan brothers, pretending that Ronald Reagan is twins. They do hilarious spoofs of the bumbling old President.

Our night man, Paul Piro, sounds like a fire-and-brimstone preacher. We name him the Piro-maniac and he sets the night-time ratings on fire.

Tom Ross (Tom Gombossy) is a Hungarian refugee with a Psychology degree from Louisiana Tech. I hire him as a deejay but he’s so good at making people like him that he drifts into sales and makes the transition from $6.00 an hour to (sometimes) hundreds of dollars an hour, from the slums to a big house in a fine subdivision in less than a year.

I first hire Tripper Lewis (Louis Lowentritt III) when he’s 17. The kid does superb production, runs a tight show and has incredible sales abilities. He does so many different things so well, I sometimes have trouble deciding which slot to use him in, but—one way or the other—I’m counting on him for the long-haul. The kid’s practically a genius. How could I go wrong with a genius? His one big drawback is insecurity—constantly asking if I’m going to fire him. Fire him? Hell, that’s the farthest thing from my mind. I’d never fire him in a million years. Except for the power of suggestion.... except he never lets up. Before I realize it, I'm thinking about it as much as he is so I have to fire him. Seven times in six years. However, I hire him eight times in those same six years and he’s still there when I get fired by new owners.

Although I’m GM and don’t have an air shift, I write and produce many of our commercials. (My record is 136 in one day.) (Steve did 35 that same day.)

We develop a “sharp angle” sales pitch in which our sales rep says, “Mr. Businessman, if I can get a commercial for you in the next five minutes that makes you laugh or gives you chill bumps, will you spend X amount of dollars with me next month?” To prove there’s no pre-recorded spot, we let the customer—not my sales rep—call and give me a few details. I write and produce the spot and call him back within five minutes. If he laughs or gets chill bumps, we get the sale. It never fails.

We’re good at selling our customers. We’re even better at selling OUR CUSTOMERS’ customers. Some examples, from one of our brochures at the time….

IDEAL APPLIANCE: “The remote we ran on 106 DOUBLED the largest day we ever had!” (Martin Thibodeaux)

ARCTIC SCOOP: “More than 1100 people came in and asked for our special IN ONE DAY, after 21 ads on Magic 106!” (Don Spatafore)

TRENTON HOUSE BRIDAL REGISTRY: “After 16 spots on Magic 106, over 700 people attended on Saturday, when normally about 40 come in!” (Martha Rogers)

SUBWAY SANDWICHES: “Our customer count increased by 125% when we did the remote with Magic 106. The following day doubled!” (Shane McOmber)

TWIN CITY HONDA: “Spending $2,000 per week on a Magic 106 promotion, we did over $415,000 of business in 4 weeks…doubly impressive since it occurred during and after the stock market crash.” (Lannie P. Henley)

No other station before or since has ever gotten results like this. Because no station was ever as exciting as Magic 106—the station people listened to even when it was off the air.

When I find out that Roger has secretly sold the station, after promising me throughout the past five years that he’d never do so, I tell him how disappointed I am. Then I get the biggest break of my life when Roger gets sued by some former employees, forcing him to postpone the sale until he settles the suit. He tells me if I’ll stay till the sale goes through, he’ll let me do everything my way. And he keeps that promise. He goes back to the tire business and I run the radio station.

I do everything I ever wanted to do in radio—with billboards, giveaways, hot music, fun-loving deejays, commercials that are so good they’re part of the entertainment, not an interruption of it, huge promotions (like the afore-mentioned Weekend On The Lake.)

We toss 10,000 wooden nickels from our float in the Monroe Mardi Gras parade. The nickels are numbered and one is worth a new car, which we give away a week later at Pecanland Mall. The giant mall is swamped with Magic 106 listeners. There’s standing room only—barely breathing room—around the Magic 106 stage where we announce the winner of the car. There are so many people in attendance that mall merchants close their doors and lock their grates to keep our crowd from standing in their stores. The whole event is broadcast on live TV.

In the first ratings period after Roger has given me complete control of the station, something incredible happens: the ratings company (Birch Radio) refuses to release the survey on the announced date because one station’s ratings are so high they can’t believe it. They review the data, double-check with respondents, re-calculate and, finally, announce that Magic 106 has scored the highest ratings ever tabulated in a 12-station market: 37.2% .

In those days, we—Chuck, Tom, Tripper, Steve, Clifton, The Piromaniac, Sherry and me—walked on water. We were magic.

DREAM CHARTS

2008-04-06T11:02:00.018-03:00

by Randy Reynolds

On July 1, 1982, I start growing a beard as a symbol of the new, more determined, more ambitious, reinvented me. On that same day I sit at the flimsy table I use for a desk in the radio station in a converted laundry building in West Monroe, Louisiana, and write something on my calendar 92 times, once for each day from July 1, 1982 to September 30, 1982.

I write I. W. B. G. M. O. T. S. B. T. D: 9/30/82. ....

................... ........................................................................

The initials stand for I Will Be General Manager Of This Station By This Date: 9/30/82.

I don’t do anything to undermine Gary, the current General Manager. In fact, I work harder than ever to make him look good. He asks me what’s up with the beard and why am I wearing a suit to work every day and I say I just feel like it’s time for a change. He asks about the three months of strange entries on my calendar. I tell him it’s my new mantra. Knowing how weird deejays are, he doesn’t probe any further.

There’s a higher authority in this radio station: Roger, the owner. I hear him say more than once that deejays are like the tire-changers he employs at his tire dealership—by which I assume he’s saying we’re the bottom rung of the social scale—people without safety nets, the kind of people who need occasional salary advances to pay the doctor, people who quit at the most inconvenient times for him and move on down the road to get slightly higher-paying jobs.

Though I’ve had better jobs in the past, I’m down on my luck in 1982 when I write I. W. B. G. M. O. T. S. B. T. D: 9/30/82 on 92 consecutive blocks on my calendar.

My wife wins a free pizza. We go to pick it up and they won’t let us have it because we don’t have the 12 cents tax. We retreat to the parking lot and take the back seat out of the car, hoping there’ll be some stray coins there but, for once, there isn’t. She goes back in and begs for the pizza. They won’t let her have it without the twelve cents tax... so no pizza for the Reynolds kids this night.

I sit at the kitchen table with a .410 shotgun, loaded and cocked. When the enormous rat I’m waiting for scurries out from behind the washing machine I blast him. I used to be an anchorman on TV. I’ve interviewed presidents and Nobel Laureates and movie stars and astronauts. I’ve programmed radio stations. I’ve been in politics. I’ve had stories published. I’ve won writing awards and sales awards. Yet here I am living in such a dump that I’m having to shoot rats in my kitchen with a shotgun.

And after fifteen years of working my ass off, my net worth is less than 12 cents.

My wife Sherry gets a job managing apartments in Bastrop, Louisiana. Part of her compensation is a free apartment. I get a night-time deejay gig at the Bastrop radio station; my days are spent doing apartment maintenance. Voluntarily. For free. Forty apartments are vacated that summer. I re-paint them, all 40 of them, every inch of every wall and ceiling, four and five room apartments. I do it to prove to the company that hired my wife that they made a good decision. But one day while I’m in the bathtub washing paint out of my hair I hear voices in the living room…the owner of the property, evicting us from the premises because we’ve made a 35-cent long-distance personal phone call on the office line.

That day, while the kids are in school and Sherry’s out looking for a job, I single-handedly pack our four-rooms of furniture, (including the shotgun-damaged washer) into a U-Haul and move us across town to a rental house. I unpack the trailer, hook up the appliances, arrange the furniture and return the U-Haul. But Sherry has gotten another apartment job in nearby Monroe. They want her to start today. I rent another trailer, load it by myself before the kids get out of school and move everything again. We never even spend the night in the rented house. (This is the shortest of our 59 moves and the only day I had to move twice.)

Any deejay or tire-changer can probably tell similar hard-luck stories…but I am determined that I’m not going to end up like this. I get a job at Roger’s station in West Monroe. The facilities are a dump. It has no listeners—a mere 2.2% in the ratings. He’s barely making ends meet, selling $19,000 per month worth of advertising, which is what it takes to run the place. I think he’s doing everything wrong, but I bite my tongue and bide my time and try to be the best employee he’s ever had. Every day, I look at that promise on my calendar, and touch it with my fingers and whisper it to myself, a private mantra. I refuse to shave until this dream has come true and so I have my changing appearance looking back at me from the mirror to remind me of what I want. I wear the suit. I lose 40 pounds. I'm going to think like a manager, act like a manager, look like a manager...and AFTER that, I'll BE a manager. Or so I tell myself.

My wife reads about dream charts and starts keeping one. While I'm writing I. W. B. G. M. O. T. S. B. T. D: 9/30/82, she's cutting things out of catalogs and magazines and pasting them to a piece of poster board. She cuts out a new house, one that's way too upscale for us, of a certain kind of bricks that look like a mixture of new and old brick, skylight, fancy doors, swimming pool, oak trees in the yard--the works. She also finds a picture of a car--a gaudy, silver luxury car and glues that onto the dream chart, too.

"What the...?" I exlaim the first time I see her chart.

"You've got to be able to see it in your mind," she says. "I'm putting this in the bedroom, so the first thing every morning and the last thing every night, this is what we'll see. Once it gets real in our minds, it will happen." I know better than all this, but I've got to humor mama, so the poster with the childish cut-outs goes up in our bedroom. And a few days later, she adds a dark blue van for me. And a black muscle-car for our daughter who's about to get her driver's license.

Roger almost fires me one morning that summer because my Question-Of-The-Morning on the Randy Reynolds Show rankles him. My question is: “Should secretaries make coffee for their boss?” He calls me into his office after the show and pounds his rickety desk, which is held together by a piece of rusted tin nailed across the front. “Of course secretaries should make the coffee!" he shouts. "And I don’t want any more of this crazy women’s lib stuff on my station. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

Two of Roger’s favorite sayings are, “Don’t worry about the mule going blind, just keep loading the wagon” and “The sun don’t shine on the same dog’s ass all the time.”

In the summer of 1982, I just keep loading the wagon. And by the time 9/30/82 rolls around, I’m the dog the sun is shining on: Gary has moved on down the line and Roger has appointed me General Manager.

I work the salespeople too hard and I have all these bat-shit crazy ideas about writing down goals and making dream charts and accounting for all their time during the day, so they quit. Roger has always been the main salesman for the station, but he goes out and tries to give away 100 free spots, no strings attached, and the client turns him down. He tells me to hire some new salesmen, pronto, it doesn’t matter who, just so we can get some warm bodies on the street. He's desperate. “Hell, tell your wife to come in on her lunch break and make some phone calls for us. I’ll pay her twenty percent commission if she sells anything. Just for now. Till we find some good salespeople.”

There’s a television show called The Jeffersons, a sitcom about the adventures of George and Louise Jefferson becoming successful and “Movin’ on up….to the East Side…” We feel like George and Weezy for a time there…after Sherry comes to work for me, because shy, sweet Sherry who makes pitiful dream charts and dreams big dreams can handle clients like no one else. Before Roger sells out and the new owners fire us, Sherry is selling $100,000 of ads per month. We buy our first new house on July 25, 1985. It has oak trees in the yard, fancy doors, skylights in the roof, the works; even the bricks are the same combination of colors as the house on her dream chart. Roger buys $4,000 worth of furniture for us. We go to a car dealership on that same day and Sherry sees the fancy silver car of her dream chart on the showroom floor. "That's it! That's my car!" she squeals. We buy it without a test drive. A week later, we buy that black muscle-car for daughter Kerri. And a few weeks after that, we go out and buy the dark blue van that was on the dream chart. We pay sticker price. Who has time to comparison shop or haggle? The radio station is all-consuming. We dedicate ourselves to it and it succeeds beyond everyone’s wildest imagination.

There are articles about us in national publications (Radio & Records; Sound Management.) The I.R.S. starts probing my $100 business lunches. I claim several per week on my tax returns, accompanied by the actual receipts, but they decide to disallow them, as well as certain other business expenses, and I’ve been paying I.R.S. taxes, penalties and additional back taxes ever since. (As of this writing, in 2008, the take-home pay from my current job is less than $4.00 per hour. The I.R.S. gets all the rest. My young grandsons keep saying, “Pop, I wouldn't have a job like that! When you gonna get a job that pays more? You never have any money!” I guess they don’t quite understand how the I.R.S. works. Neither, of course, do I.)

Roger sells the station for an enormous profit. New owners come in and figure they can save a lot of money by not paying commission on Sherry’s sales. So, on her birthday, 1988, they fire us both.

A few months later, we're again on intimate terms with our old friend Poverty. We live in an orange grove in Weirsdale, Florida, (our fifth-grade son calls it Weirds-dale) in a house that migrant orange-pickers use in season. Our only furnishings are a waterbed, bunkbed, dining set and TV. Naturally, Sherry gets out her scissors and paste and buys a poster board we can't afford and starts putting together another dream chart. We still have two cars, so the new chart doesn't contain cars...but it has a house on it that's practically a mansion--even bigger than the one recently repossessed from us by the bank. We have no credit. I'm in a dead-end job. We've just used our last $6,000 to pay for our daughter's wedding. And Sherry's doing a dream chart!

Flush with failure, I ridicule her for it.

Still struggling to climb the corporate ladder, however, I send my resume' and application to a station owner in Alexandria, Louisiana, not realizing the man is now deceased and his wife, who has Alzheimer's, is the new owner, and her affairs are in the hands of a lawyer who has hired a Washington consultant who is looking for ME.

The consultant somehow knows about the Randy Reynolds success story from West Monroe, and is searching for me all over America when, out of the blue, my letter to the dead man arrives on his desk. The lawyer, the consultant and I meet at the Atlanta airport in a private lounge for VIP's, and ink the deal (as they say in show business) and I'm back on top!

Within a year, Sherry and I have our bigger, better dream house, and our stint in the sharecropper's cottage in the orange grove in Florida is all but forgotten... until, twice more in our radio careers, the radio stations we devote ourselves to are sold and new owners come in each time and fire us and try to prove they can run things just as well without having to pay for a Randy and a Sherry.
................................
Like Roger always said, “The sun don’t shine on the same dog’s ass all the time.”

THE EYE IN THE SKY: I.B. FLYIN'

2008-03-17T11:12:00.019-03:00

by Randy Reynolds

Most mornings, in the late 1990's and early 2000's, lawyers and public officials gather around someone's car outside the Rapides and Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana, courthouses. With car doors open and radios blaring full blast, they listen to I.B. Flyin' on the Randy Reynolds Show. They'll be talking about it all day, a common greeting in the courthouse being, "Hey, did you hear what Ol' I.B. said about you this morning?"

The chief judge in Rapides Parish tells me of the day that a police juror comes running up the steps of the courthouse yelling, "Did you hear what I.B. said about us today? Did you hear him? What does he want us to do?" The judge replies, "Why don't you call him and ask him?"

The reason they can't call him and ask him is because he doesn't exist. I.B. is my own voice (pre-recorded) in the dialect of an old Cajun ("Aaaiiiiiyyyyeeeiiii"). I ask him questions and play my pre-recorded answers over the background sound of a helicopter. We call him our traffic reporter---"the eye in the sky"--but he does no traffic reports. What he talks about is what's going on behind the scenes at city hall, the courthouse, the school board...

When the mayor says, "Alcohol has never touched my lips", I.B. says, "That's because he drinks it through a straw." And when the water pumps malfunction at a city water tower, I.B. jokes about it, says the tower is filled with Miller Lite and the mayor must be going there to drink because there's straws all over the ground. The mayor and city council then bestow legitimacy upon I.B. by passing (and publishing in the newspaper) an official resolution denying I.B.'s "accusation" that the water tower is filled with Miller Lite. The council calls on all good citizens to boycott the Randy Reynolds Show. They also write to the FCC, complaining about I.B. Flyin'. He's a cartoon character, but they try to step on him as they would step on any 3-D flesh-and-blood citizen who gets in their way. So the fictional character becomes real...and more dangerous to the powers-that-be.

Newspaper coverage of the city council's fight with I.B. causes our audience shares to grow. Advertising revenues for the station increase dramatically. And the phone starts ringing off the hook with people calling in news tips for I.B. Flyin'. Some are jokes, like the "bit" that started it all--a water-tower filled with Miller Lite. Other tips concern real issues that don't get reported by the timid local news media --or "news meteors" as I.B. calls them.

When four hard-partying off-duty cops on a beer-run drive their pickup onto a sidewalk and get out to beat up a small time drug user and then charge him with carjacking, assault, attempted murder of a police officer and about 7 other things, I.B. has a field day! All the other "news meteors" buy the official story that an unarmed young man tried to carjack a vehicle with four cops in it. I.B.'s laughter (and commonsense) fuel so much public outrage that it's the police, not the accused carjacker, who get bound over for trial on assault charges. When the guilty verdict comes in, the whole courtroom explodes with applause, shouts and prayers. That young man would likely be in Angola State Penitentiary today if I.B. hadn't refused to bite on the official story.

In the I.B. voice, I announce 75 reasons why a 21 year old murder suspect held for three years without a grand jury hearing could not have committed the gruesome crime he is accused of. The young man (Joey Hilton) is released from jail on Christmas Eve after a deal between I.B. and the District Attorney. The deal is simply for I.B. to "lay off" the D.A., (that is, stop making jokes about him,) and the D.A. will release Joey Hilton. (I.B. may have been the first cartoon character ever to make a deal with a real D.A. ) On Christmas Eve, 1998, after three years behind bars for a murder he didn't commit, Hilton is released. He and his mom come to the station and I interview them live on the morning show. It's the most emotional show I've ever been involved in...the kind of stuff 60 Minutes and 20/20 are famous for. What Joey and his mom really want is to meet I.B. Flyin' and thank him in person, but I tell them he's up in the chopper and will have to call them later.

When a state senator's daughter uses his office to run a pyramid scheme, when city government cuts & sells the timber on state-owned property, when a mayor's wife brokers a secret deal for the city to buy some church property at ten times the going rate, when the police chief's sons commit crimes, when the city council buys a fire engine that's too big to fit inside the fire station, when the city dams up a National Scenic Waterway to increase property values in a favored subdivision, when a city crew hooks up sewage pipes to a drinking-water main, when a mayor gets caught having sex in his office and another mayor spies on his police department, and a cop's drug dog dies in a hot car while the "piece" officer is having some afternoon delight, and two police horses get electrocuted because their riders take a coffee break and leave the horses tied to a metal light pole in the rain, when the school board and city spend millions on unnecessary "studies"...

I.B. blows the whistle on them. It sounds like comedy, but it's all true. As I.B. demonstrates every morning, News IS Comedy in Central Louisiana.

I and the station are threatened with numerous lawsuits...but we don't respond to the subpoenaes....and nothing happens. Those who threaten lawsuits want to scare us, but don't want to get in deposition with I.B. They're afraid he knows too much about too many things that need to be kept secret.

As I.B. Flyin' exposes the profit schemes and boondoggles hatched by members of local government and the behind-the-scenes manipulators I.B. calls "the shadow government," we receive numerous threats. For two weeks, a volunteer with a shotgun stands guard outside my studio door during the show. Someone slashes three of my tires in the station parking lot. One night soon afterward, I am assaulted at a political rally. On my way to work, at 2:15 on a Monday morning, I look out my car window and see a local politician's son in the car beside me pointing a pistol at me. As we race at 70 mph across what I.B. calls "the Tallywhacker Bridge," I waver between firing first and waiting for him to fire. Luckily he speeds up and disappears down I-49.

The types of things that I.B. fought with ridicule and laughter are happening in your town, too. But they aren't a part of anybody's official record. The kinds of things I.B. exposed usually go unrevealed and unpunished because, in most places, there is no investigative reporting, no public ombudsman, to connect the dots. But, for a while, in Central Louisiana, there was...

SNAKES, SPACESHIPS AND NAKED DEEJAYS--JUST ANOTHER DAY AT THE OFFICE

2008-03-16T12:39:00.023-03:00

by Randy Reynolds

5:45 a.m., my fingers hover near the mic button. I'm about to punch it and go live on the air to talk about the next song and to promote Shirley Q. Liquor, the nurse's aide who's going to tell us one of her funny stories--this one about the Holy Ghost Revival, Catfish-fry and Liquor Throwdown coming up at her church. I'm groovin' to the Al Green song that's about to end, when--suddenly--the worst thing that can be heard on a morning show fills my earphones....

.....silence!

I rip off the headset and lurch out of my chair yelling, "Godawlmighty! Not again!"

I burst through the soundproof door to the other studio, startling the naked man standing on a folding chair with his head above the frame of the drop-ceiling.

"Boo, you did it again!"

The groggy d-j who, except for his baldness, is a dead ringer for Samuel L. Jackson, bends down from the crawl space and says, "Whassup?"

"You cut the cable again!" I yell. "You gotta quit doing this, man!"

Boo, the greatest deejay I have ever worked with, waves an open switchblade. "Thought it was a snake."

"I told you there's not any snakes in that ceiling! When you cut long black things up there, we go off the air, and lose listeners, and don't get paid. You know what I'm sayin'?"

"I hid sumpin' up here. Lookin' for it. Saw a snake."

"You've got to quit hidin' drugs in the station, Boo!"

"Sumpin' important. And I turned around and it was a snake."

"Why don't you go to the roof, man? Get ready for your space ship?"

Boo becomes animated, nearly falls off the chair, but catches one end of the cut cable and steadies himself. "You seen it? You seen it, man? It's really there! Between two stars and gettin' bigger every night. It's comin', man!"

"Well, go wait for it then. And be careful climbing up the drain pipe."

"You comin', too, Randy? You a good man. You deserve to get out of this place."

"Yeah, I'll be there a little later."

"And I.B. And Plucker. And Mr. Winky. And Shirley Q. Liquor."

In Boo's state, it would do no good to remind him that I.B., Plucker and Mr. Winky are all just different versions of me--figments of my imagination presented on my show as separate individuals--and that Shirley Q. Liquor is an Internet comedian.

"You think there's enough room for all of us, Boo?"

"I'll make room, man. You good folks. You deserve to escape."

"Thanks, man. We'll be there. But first you've got to get your clothes on."

"I forgot where I left 'em."

"Well, I'll help you look after I call the engineer to come fix this cable. Now give me your knife before you fall and cut yourself."

"Nobody gets my blade, man." Boo closes the switchblade against his pubic area and steps off the chair. "Nobody gets my blade."

(Photo: Notice the drop-ceiling where Boo hid his drugs)

THE TALLYWHACKER BRIDGE

2008-03-14T10:38:00.027-03:00

by Randy Reynolds

When I was fifteen, my dad decided it was time for me to get a job and start paying my own way. He ordered me to put in applications at the A & P, which needed bagboys, and the local radio station, which needed a janitor. I applied at the radio station first. The manager was on the air and really too busy to talk with me, but handed me a booklet, told me to read it, go to the New Orleans' Federal Building, take an FCC test and come back to see him. I thought it was a lot of trouble to go through for a janitorial job, but I memorized the book and took the test.

When I went back to tell the manager that I'd passed, he assigned me an air shift and told me I was a deejay now. That was 1965.

For the next 40 years, I was a deejay, then a deejay-turned-reporter, deejay-turned manager, and finally, at my last station, all of the above. My morning show was number one with women/number two with men in a 13 parish area of Central Louisiana when new owners called me late on a Sunday night in 2004 and said, "Don't come to work tomorrow. Our financial model does not include paying your salary. And tell your wife she's fired, too."

Thus ended my adventure in radio ...and my health insurance. Two months later my wife had a heart attack, followed by several other health problems and we began our adventure in homelessness. But that's a different story...

It's week seven of the 13-week ratings period and my imaginary co-hosts and I are in rare form. My jokes are funny, my listeners are funny; even the wooden duck-call known to listeners as Plucker-the-Duck and the plastic squeak-toy I call Mr. Winky are in rare form today.

...................................

(No, I don't have problems distinguishing reality from make-believe, but my listeners do, thanks to the magic of radio. I treat Plucker as a real individual and so do listeners. Though it's only a duck-call, I have conversations with it. Listeners love to suspend their disbelief and play along; they even call in to ask him questions, he responds in duck-talk, I interpret and deliver the punchline, ergo! people think Plucker is hilarious! As for Mr. Winky, he's just a plastic toy that makes a metronome-sound when shaken, so I frequently shake him and tell the audience what he's saying. Women call in and blast him for his male chauvinist opinions. They don't get mad at me. It's not my fault. I'm only the interpreter. They call and argue with Mr. Winky. And, often, it's hilarious.)

I punch the mic button and ask, "Where's the most unusual place you ever did it? That's the question of the day, and the phone lines are open!"

.................................................

I blow into the duck call and pretend to have a conversation with Plucker-the-Duck. "We already know you're in the mile-high club, Plucker. But let's give some listeners a chance to respond."

A school teacher calls in to say she "did it" on the desk in her classroom with a DARE officer.

.................................................

I say, "Hey, I read about you in the police chief's self-published novel!"

"I know," laughs the teacher. "He said he gave plaques to two DARE officers for doing it to teachers in their classrooms and I don't understand that. I think the teachers deserved the plaques. We're the ones who put our jobs on the line."

"You mean on the desk," I say.

.................................................

She giggles and I blow on the duck call again and say, "You don't sound like the kind of teacher the chief wrote about. You didn't really do it with a DARE officer on your classroom desk did you?"

"Oh, I DARED all right," she says.

I laugh again, shake Mr. Winky, blow into the duck call, play a laugh track from the computer and start the next song.

..............................

When we're safely off the air, I ask, "Hey, what's your name?"

"I don't give out that information," she teases.

................................................

"I'll need it for your plaque," I persist.

...................................

"You are so funny, Randy. I love your show. It just brightens my day."

...................................

"You're the one that's funny--thanks for calling," I say.

..........................................

It's time for I.B. Flyin', my imaginary Cajun traffic reporter. I've already recorded, in a heavy Cajun accent, I.B.'s part of the script; now I'll ask questions and the I.B.-voice will answer from the tape. If my timing is right, it'll sound exactly like two people having a conversation.

........................................

I punch a button and a helicopter sound-effect fills the airwaves.

.................................................

"Aaaiiiyyyiiieee!" shouts the recorded I.B. voice above the thwump-thwump-thwump of the rotor blades.

"Sounds like I.B. Flyin'. How's traffic?"

"Movin' slow on the Tallywhacker Bridge. Two lanes blocked with a accident."

"The Tally-what?"

"The Tallywhacker Bridge. I named it that because of what that state representative was doin' on the Pineville side of the bridge with that other man."

"I.B., we're not going to have another show about politicians and their tallywhackers. Let's talk about what's happening in the news. How 'bout that 41 year old Mississippi triple-murder case up there near the Tallahatchee Bridge? The government convicted an 80 year old man yesterday."

"Don't give the gummint all the credit. It was a school project by three little girls in Illinois that got the feds to reopen the case."

.............................

"Three little black girls found the evidence...40 years after the murders?"

"No, no, no!" yells I.B. above the sputter of the chopper's motor. "Three little white girls from Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois. These little girls got obsessed with the case and made a ten minute film about it and rest is history. Just goes to show what you can do if you get obsessed about sumpin'."

"Obsessions are dangerous," I say, thinking of several obsessions I haven't heard from lately and wondering if they ever think of me anymore.

I'D CHOOSE HORSES

2008-01-26T21:24:00.042-04:00

by Randy Reynolds

1960, Covington, Louisiana. A huge baby-faced man named Alex Jenkins stops by to get acquainted with his new pastor (my dad) and sees me riding a stick horse in the yard, playing cowboy with my younger brother. "Would you like to have a real horse?" he asks. My heart almost leaps out of my throat.

Would I like to have a real horse? I, who've read Black Beauty, National Velvet, My Friend Flicka, Fury, The Crooked Colt, everything written by Will James and Zane Grey; I who watch cowboy shows on TV just to see the horses--Trigger, Buttermilk, Silver, Scout, Diablo--would I like to have a real horse?

Brother Alex convinces my dad that his Tennessee Walker, Mac, is gentle enough for kids and so he brings the big sorrel over and we stake him out on a rope in the front yard like a dog. We have a horse! A real horse! Borrowed, but he's ours for a while. Yes, Randy, dreams do come true!

At dawn the next day, with my unsuspecting parents still sleeping, I stand on a five gallon paint bucket beside Mac, grab a handful of mane and struggle aboard, bareback. I reach down for my younger brother's hand, pull him up behind me and we head across the highway into the woods for an all day ride.

Brother Alex eventually reclaims Mac, but takes my daddy to a livestock auction and lends him $37.50 to buy a one-eyed bay that I name Ranger. (In our family, the dog, the cat, and all six children have names that start with R, so the horse gets an R-name, too.)

Through the years, I grow up (to some extent,) get married, have a family, pursue a career in a cutthroat business (radio,) and move 59 times. Whenever possible, I have a horse, even when it means I have to rent stable space and pasture or, on occasion, keep horses and ponies in my back yard in the suburbs.

Ranger, Beauty, Kawliga, Sugarfoot, Trigger and Prince carry me through my teen years. In my 20's and 30's, Abadon, another Trigger, Brandy, Dusty and Amber take most of my free time and extra money. In my forties, Baby and Luke are my last two horses. Both are beautiful--a quarter horse and an Arabian--but injuries I receive from them cause my doctor to ground me in 1991.

In 2007 I say to a well-to-do neighbor, "I wish I had every dollar I ever spent on horses." He replies, "I still do." Touche'!

But then I remember how the world looks from horseback, and suddenly I'm longing for the wind in my face again, the thunder of pounding hooves, the ripple of a thousand pounds of muscle beneath me, the speed, the danger, the total concentration required to anticipate the sudden jolts and turns, and I know that if time circles back again and I have a chance to choose the money or the horses, I'll choose the horses.

END OF THE TRAIL
by Randy Reynolds
(first published in Australian Horseman)

When he was a wild-eyed pony And I was just a kid
You could never imagine the foolish And dangerous things we did.

I tried to make him a jumper, Practicing higher and higher,
Till he panicked and ripped his chest And forelegs in the wire.

We pretended to be in the Derby.... With a blacktop road for a track.
Then we met a bus on the backstretch And the pavement met my back.

We were Roy Rogers and Trigger,
Only he didn't know any trick
'cept biting the hand that fed him....
And showing me he could kick. ...

Now you run to the house and hurry To fetch my bullets and gun
And you take him way down in the pasture Where you know what has to be done

While I recollect him as Trigger.
And pretend again that I'm Roy.............
And cry for the wild-eyed pony........
That I loved so much as a boy. ...............

OLD DEAD-EYE
by Randy Reynolds

He lived at the end of a rope.
We couldn't afford any fence,
With him costing thirty dollars
And fifty-some-odd cents.

It was never known before .............................Here, you're expecting corn,
'cause I never cared to tell .............................And although he was the worst
Of the times that I got thrown ......................You think I'll say I loved him
Or sometimes simply fell. ..............................As you always love your first.

Old Dead-eye had my number. ......................Well, I'd slap my knees in laughter
He wanted me to die. ......................................But both of them are in splints.
I could tell it by the evil .................................Be quiet! The auction's startin'!
Gleam in his one good eye. ..........................."Now here's a bargain, gents!"

PLOWING TILL TWILIGHT

2008-01-25T09:03:00.020-04:00

(Photo: 1955 - Randy in cowboy hat, Papa Bonnell, Ricky, Ronda)

by Randy Reynolds

I'm eight years old, traipsing on a windless afternoon after my grandfather as he forces a manual plow through the hard-packed ground. I want to be like Papa. I want to do everything he does. "Papa, slow down," I whine. "Let me do it." He ignores me and I feel my sense of injustice rising.

Although he pushes the very earth before him and I have only myself and my pique to carry, his long, loping hardscrabble-farmer stride carries him so far ahead of me that I know he can't hear me anymore so I demonstrate my feelings by throwing myself to the ground. Rolling over and over, disturbing several of his newly-plowed rows, I get the cool red soil all over me, I lick my lips and taste it. Not bad.

I lie face upward, not sure if the cottony clouds in a bright blue sky are moving or if the earth is. Now I'm dizzy as well as angry, waiting for Papa to come back down the row and deal with me. If he'll only stop to listen, I can tell him that I want to plow, too; that I want to be like him. I think he'll be so honored that he'll turn the plow over to me and stand back to proudly watch me finish plowing his back yard and he'll go inside to brag on me to Mama Maude and, later in the week when my daddy returns to get me, Papa might tell him about it and Daddy might be proud of me, too. That feeling is what I live for, but it's hard to come by for a little boy who happens to be the oldest child in a large and growing family, and therefore the one who gets the least attention.

I fear that I won't be the man my papa is because I've heard him say that he started plowing when he was eight years old, the age I am this day, and nobody lets me do ANYTHING yet. Papa began with one mule and a plow stock as high as his shoulders. His daddy told him to keep plowing till twilight. Papa didn't know what 'twilight' was, exactly, having never heard the word before, so he plowed till it was good and dark, just to make sure he wouldn't get a beating for quitting too soon. That night his daddy took the plow reins and whipped him savagely for working the mule too hard and sent him to bed without supper. Deep in the night, his mama snuck over to the bed he shared with several younger brothers and gobbed lard onto the back of his shirt to loosen it from his bloodied flesh.

A half-century later, Papa Bonnell tells this story, and many others like it, without rancor, as if the whipping was no big deal. "Hell, I can't blame the old man for taking care of his mules better than his young'uns. He could always have more kids, but a good mule was hard to come by when cotton was five cents a pound."

I crawl over to the row that Papa's on and lie there watching him come toward me, pushing the plow, pulling it back, pushing again, pulling it back. He pretends he's going to plow right through me, and I roll to safety and sit up, licking more dirt from my lips, still liking it, feeling I'm a part of it somehow. Maybe that's what Papa feels. Maybe that's why he comes home from a hard day as a loom-fixer at the cotton mill and plows till twilight. All he says to me that day is, "Get up from there, you little skeester!" And he keeps going, herky-jerky, straight down the row, no time for foolishness.

(Bonnell Reynolds & his mother Chesty Collins Reynolds, 1980's)

(below: 1978, Five generations of Reynolds': Chesty, Bonnell, Gene, Randy, Kerri, Kristi)

PERMISSION TO MARRY A FAMOUS WRITER

2008-01-22T23:09:00.002-04:00

by Randy Reynolds

.....Sherry's mother entered the living room and perched on the edge of a wing-backed chair. John took the one facing her. On the piano bench with their daughter, I felt surrounded.
.....Sherry hit them with it cold. "We want your permission to…"
.....Mary leaned forward. "Absolutely NOT! You're too young."
....."Mo-THER, you didn't let me finish."
.....I squirmed to the edge of the bench, poised for flight. "We can come back later."
.....Sherry pulled me back. "We want to get MARRIED!"
.....Her daddy, stalling: "How will y'all make a living?"
....."Randy's going to be a famous writer!"
.....John smiled. "Oh, so we're talking about the distant future."
....."No. We're talking about now. Right away!" she blurted.
.....John: "What have you kids done?"
....."She's pregnant!" said Mary.
.....Me, suddenly chicken-hearted, "Honest, ya'll, I never touched her."
.....Sherry held my hand and wrinkled her cute nose at me. "Yes, you did, you big liar!"
....."I'm going to throw up," said Mary.
....."If y'all are through with your innuendos, I'll explain. Randy's going to write books and we'll be rich."
....."The boy's going to be rich," said John, third person, like I wasn't even there.
.....Sherry scrooched against me, hot, "We could have waited till later, but our future's already secure, so we just thought, why not?"
....."Secure?" asked John.
....."Randy's been accepted by the Famous Writer's School. And all we need is two thousand dollars…"
.....Mary swooped in. "So you want my daughter and we pay you two thousand dollars?"
....."You people! " said Sherry. Softening for her father, "Daddy, you're a businessman. How's this for a plan--you give us the two g's for Randy's tuition? We'll live right here till he graduates. I can help him study in my bedroom all day. And night, too, of course."
.....I thought about how I would write this scene. Coils of hatred radiated out from the midpoints of Mary's cheeks, like an electric stove warming up.
.....Or, I could see the whelps of her allergy beneath a layer of makeup--her allergy to me.
....."You're right about Randy eating like a horse, Daddy. But now we know the reason why. And don't worry we'll pay you for what he eats. Just keep a list, okay?"
....."So why, exactly, does he eat like a horse?"
....."Because of his creativity! Randy says it takes a lot of calories to run a brain as big as his."
.....My eyes were glued to the floor. "Is this new carpet, or did ya'll just have it cleaned?"
....."Randy says that the part of the brain that controls his creative urges also controls his sex drive. That's why he has such a large one."
.....Mary's eyes traveled down my bony frame.
.....Sherry: "Mother! Honestly!"
.....John cleared his sinuses.
.....Sherry explained the options. "We may have to publish Randy's first book at our own expense, or yours, if you'll loan us the money. Or is it lend? Loan, lend, I never know the difference."
....."Lend," I said.
....."Oh, you're so good with words. You're good with everything," she said, kissing me on the cheek.
....."Y'all lend us ten thousand dollars for the first one and Randy will get discovered and we'll pay you back. It's simple, see? And when he writes his second book, we'll buy a house. I want a big one with a brick fence around it."
.....John narrowed one eye but not the other.
....."We haven't even said yes and the boy's already asking for twelve thousand dollars?"
....."Only because you've never been able to say no to your daughter," said Mary.
....."And I haven't even added in his food," he groaned.
.....Sherry's hand moved from my knee to my inner thigh, rubbing circles the way I liked.
....."Talk some sense to them, John!" beseeched Mary.
....."Okay, here it is, kids. Take it or leave it. You forget about Famous Writer's School and publishing a novel, and I'll chip in fifty dollars to help with the honeymoon."
...... "Seventy five!" countered Sherry.
......"Deal!" he said. "Welcome to the family, son!"

(John & Mary, two years after Permission)

A TREEHOUSE FULL OF MIRACLES

2008-01-17T07:55:00.000-04:00

.........................................All My (Grand)Children
............................
Standing/orange shirt: Brandon...
His mama had to have steroids for him to survive long enough to be born prematurely. Now he's bigger than his classmates and can throw a baseball like a bullet. Has been on this earth nine years and so far has never taken NO for an answer--the greatest salesman I have ever seen. Loves to write.
..............................................
In the yellow hat: Sam...
Sam is a little guy with a big mouth, a joker who gets into a lot of fights. His older brothers beat him up (or try to,) as do bigger kids in the neighborhood, as did a gang of five boys at school...but Sam fights back. He NEVER gives up. A kid crushed his skull with a golf club last summer and he had to have emergency brain surgery. Woke up thinking he's a rapper. Calls himself Little Slim.

Standing/green shirt: Pierce...
Born with holes in his heart, too lethargic to drink. His mama coaxed him to health, one ounce of formula at a time, every few minutes, around the clock. Now he's the picture of health, leader of the gang, totally outgoing, not a shy bone in his body. Loves to explore, play war, build club-houses and target-shoot. Cries over dead animals and misses his pet snake which is loose somewhere in the house.

On her brother's knee, striped shirt: Madison...
Born in the front yard before the ambulance could get there, umbilical cord wrapped tightly, three times around her neck, she was lifeless for her first four minutes. Her daddy & the 911 operator brought her to life. Now she's as tough as her brothers, can climb anything, eats vegetables, crawfish, gumbo, boudin, anything anybody else is eating and is fiercely attached to her daddy.

The twins, pink and fuscia tops: Anna & Sarah...
A lefty & a righty, mirror images, a diva and a tomboy but they change roles every few months. They're cheerleaders. They have a great sense of style, sometimes changing clothes a dozen times during a day to mix'n'match, coordinate and accessorize. They love to take long walks, eat their daddy's special pancakes and shop with Mom. Each has a poodle (Maxi and Troy) and they have shared their home (at various times) with pet lizards, a parrot, canaries, cat, hamsters, guinea pigs, a big brother and their brother's missing snake.

On the far left: Mackenzie...
Very motivated and self-sufficient. Every school day, she wakes up by herself, dresses herself, fixes her own breakfast, cleans up after herself, wakes her parents to tell them goodbye, and goes to catch the bus. Has rock collection, insect collection, hilarious sense of humor. And very coordinated: taught herself (in a very few minutes) to ride a bike.

Far right, clinging to the post: Georgia...
Georgia is absolutely certain that she's a princess, and she's quick to tell you so. She's a dancer, too. In restaurants, she goes from table to table and dances her version of the Flamenco and Twist and Cha-Cha for strangers, who always applaud and laugh. She's also a daredevil. Will do anything any other kid will do, and always with a smile of pure joy because she loves to perform.

..............................................

Center, holding his sister: Jacob...
Jake loves to debate; he would argue with a stump. Great questioner--starting at age 3, he would ask about snakes, dinosaurs, Presidents, wars, etc., and remembered it all. Hated to read, and got poor grades, until he discovered the Harry Potter books and read them all. (God bless J.K. Rowling!) Decided to become a writer. Got his first story published at age 12. Decided to go to a private school--which the family couldn't afford--and won a scholarship. Decided to become a Congressional Page and got selected twice in the same day--by the Republican leader in the House and a Democratic Senator. He chose the Democrat.

YOUTH CAMP: LOUISIANA, 1966

2007-12-09T10:25:00.008-04:00

by Randy Reynolds

She was easily the most radiant thing in that dusty quadrangle defined by the canteen, two bunkhouses and the tabernacle, she with her form sculpted from my fantasies and erected there in my path. She drew me on with her eyes, which even at some distance I could tell twinkled with joy, (or was it mockery?)

She looked at me over the shoulder of her friend, listening to the friend, talking to the friend, but looking at me, her lips upturned slightly, her dimples barely visible, possibly smiling at me (or, just as possibly,) trying to conceal laughter: laughter at the ease with which she manipulated my movement.

I knew her name. I knew her parents. I knew the boys she had dated. But I had never spoken directly to her before that day, that day she stood there, glowing, in the middle of the yard, with that hair just the color of the hair I always dreamed about whenever I dreamed of girls, and her clothing, modest though it was here at church camp, still not modest enough to obscure her allure. I was drawn to her like interstellar debris sucked into the orbit of an irresistible cosmic body.

I was not usually afraid to speak. I had performed onstage in crowded church and school auditoriums. I had been on debate teams, made speeches at school and for two years now had hosted my own weekend show on the truly lousy local radio station. No, I had never been afraid to speak; never, until now.

And I, whose ambition it was to be a writer, I who wrote poems and stories and read them to my unresponsive brother far into the night after we were supposed to be asleep, I who waged constant verbal combat in history class with my tirades against evolution (because I believed everything my preacher said about it at the time,) I... was unaccountably out of words.

When I couldn't take another step without meshing our three bodies into one, I stopped, speechless, rigid. The friend turned my way and giggled. Sherry dropped her head, then glanced slyly upward through long lashes, smile widening, dimples deepening.
S
She bathed me with her eyes, bemused, as if I were some harmless alien creature with whose care she had just been entrusted. Her demeanor empowered me, and a torrent of unplanned words spurted suddenly from my mouth. I heard myself ask if I might sit beside her that evening in the worship service. She gave me a soft "yes" and we made arrangements to meet by the solitary pine that towered near the tabernacle.

And now--so many years later!--I no longer argue about unimportant things such as evolution. Now I stand up only for the things that really matter, the things I know are true: such as love at first sight.

LAND OF INNOCENCE

2007-12-09T10:19:00.001-04:00

by Randy Reynolds

The dime bags I sold on the streets of Bainbridge, Georgia, in my youth were different from the dime bags of today. These days, a dime bag means ten dollars worth of marijuana. (I looked it up.) The dime bags I peddled back then were bags of boiled peanuts that really cost a dime.

I wandered the town, barefoot, pushing my dime bags to a wide variety of otherwise respectable citizens. Some were furtive about the transaction, looking one way then the other before giving me their dimes and stashing the little sack in their handbags or pockets and hurrying away.

I brazenly took my product into secret city council sessions (there were a lot of those back then, just as there are today.) Proceedings came to a standstill as the mayor and councilmen fished around in their pockets for their dimes. (At least they fed their habits out of their own funds and not at taxpayer expense.)

I got two cents profit from every bag I sold and didn't have to pay taxes on it nor have a social security number. My school didn't have any rules about how long I could work, nor did the city require me to have a permit.

One of the biggest differences between then and now was the lack of air conditioning, which forced people to sit on their front porches and get to know the folks on the porches next door and across the street. Everybody had a dog and all the dogs ran loose. As did the children. Everybody knew not only their neighbors, but their neighbors' children and the names of the neighbors' children's dogs.

Nobody had a cell phone. When Mother wanted me to come home, she went to the front door and yelled my name. Down the block, some kid on a bicycle heard it and told another kid leaning out of a car window at a filling station, who told another kid riding toward the park, who saw me playing ball and said my mom was calling. I boogied for home as fast as I could on a chrome-laden bike with wide tires, fenders, luggage rack, basket, headlight and push-button horn. (Riding a bike was slower--and much better exercise--in those days.)

There was no arguing over menus. Mother decided what to fix and it never occurred to us to demand something different. Co-colas were a treat then, not an everyday thing. (We called all soft drinks Co-cola.) They were smaller, too--six ounces in a thick bottle. (And no matter what they say, Co-cola tasted better from those bottles!)

Toys were a whole lot simpler, too. Electricity and toys didn't mix (except when our baby sisters stuck some toy into a wall socket.) High-tech to us was Mr. Potato Head (the first toy ever advertised on TV.) We amused ourselves for hours with a plastic ring called a Hula-hoop, a coil of wire called Slinky, and lots of items made of wood and string, including yo-yos, tops and stick horses. Most kids had six-guns and cowboy suits. I got my first bee-bee gun in second grade, and promptly shot my sister in the rear. She carried on like it actually hurt and didn't stop crying till I had been spanked.

In fifth grade, my grandpa bought me a Barlow knife. I took it to school and played mumblety-peg at recess with other boys who had knives--a game in which we threw the knives at each other's feet to see who was brave enough not to move. Most boys brought knives to school, but the only time I ever got stabbed, the weapon wasn't a knife. Another boy asked if I thought he would stick me with his pencil. I said he was too chicken, but I was wrong. I can still see the lead beneath my skin--only it isn't lead; it's graphite. (The only way to get lead from a pencil is by chewing off the yellow paint from the outside of it, which we all used to do.)

We said the Pledge of Allegiance every day, and (starting in 1954, added the words "under God"--President Eisenhower's idea, because the Communist countries that used the exact same pledge wouldn't copy that.) I don't remember our class praying together, though a lot of praying undoubtedly went on, then as now, during test days.

Whites and blacks didn't go to school together back then in South Georgia, but we sometimes got together to play baseball on the sandlot. We also dared and double-dog dared each other to do dangerous things, such as walk the rafters of an abandoned warehouse; and jump off a shed into bamboo canes that bent beneath our weight and set us aground--often without injury.

There was no Internet then and no dirty magazines at the convenience stores. (Come to think of it, there was no such thing as a "convenience" store.) We fifth-graders who were curious about women's bodies had to pay a quarter to a girl our age to take off her clothes and turn around in front of us. But a quarter would buy 4 Three Musketeers bars and a Coke, so the girl didn't make much money.

Back then, the government didn't have a yellow, orange and red Terror Alert Level to keep us on edge before and during elections. Nor did they need one. Every day was equally terrifying when polio was on the loose, communism was on the march, H-bombs were being tested, and rock'n'roll was "corrupting the young people."

The biggest similarity between then and now? Our gullibility. We church people believed what the government told us. We didn't ask many questions because we were pre-disposed to trust authority.

BLOWING UP THE BOARDWALK: HOW NOT TO MAKE A BOMB

2007-12-09T10:13:00.002-04:00

by Randy Reynolds

If the "war on terrorism" had existed back when my brother and I made our bomb and set it off in the swamp, we might have been classified as terrorists: we'd be "Breaking News" on CNN, a "major terrorist plot" on FOX, and the President would mention us in speeches designed to scare naive voters. Our homemade bomb resulted in nothing more than a black spot on a rickety boardwalk near Covington, Louisiana, but there are terrorists in custody today who have done even less. Ricky and I were lucky that terrorism back then meant nothing more than the way we treated our younger sisters.

We got our bomb-making materials soon after our house burned down. (For the record, he and I had nothing to do with that particular fire.) The next house we moved into had been occupied by a World War II veteran who had brought home some souvenirs, one of which was an army-issue ammo box that he buried behind a shed in the back yard. He undoubtedly thought it would stay hidden there for all time. But Ricky and I went digging one day and found it.

Why we were digging behind the shed, I don't recall. Motives were forgotten in the excitement of discovering a dark green metal box filled with hundreds of beautiful brass bullets. A box of gold bullion could not have excited us more.

We did with the bullets what anyone would do. We used a hammer and pliers to break them apart, poured the gunpowder from each casing into a jar and went looking for something to blow up.

We settled on the boardwalk, a narrow footbridge in the swamp beside our house.We had no particular ill feeling toward the boardwalk. In fact, we needed it as a passage to neighboring farms where we surreptitiously fished in private ponds, had watermelon fights or lay among bales of hay in a giant barn reading Huckleberry Finn and (later) Playboy. The only thing in our minds was that we had gunpowder and a match and the boardwalk seemed like it needed blowing up.

We piled the powder in the middle of the tiny bridge and trailed some to the edge to serve as a fuse. As the older brother, I claimed the privilege of striking the match. When I threw it onto the line of powder we squatted, wincing and holding our ears in anticipation of a very big boom like hundreds of firecrackers going off at once. But there was only a sizzle as the powder burned itself out in the open air. And it left only a small black smudge on the weathered old boardwalk. What a disappointment!

We shrugged and went about our business for the day, whatever it may have been--pickling water moccasins (in vinegar, because we didn't have any alcohol,) skinny-dipping in the pond where we caught the water moccasins, racing our horses on the highway, setting booby-traps for our sisters...all in all, a normal day except for the unsuccessful bombing attempt.

MY KATRINA

2007-11-15T09:40:00.003-04:00

by Randy Reynolds

Katrina, age 14, smoked Kools behind the church and I, her 7-year-old nephew, had the great honor of being her lookout at the corner of the building. Inasmuch as she was my idol, I spent more time observing her than watching out for adults, but somehow she never got caught on my watch. When I was 14 and she was 21, I tried to blackmail her: "Remember all those times you smoked behind the church and I stood guard? And I never told? Well, now you can pay me back. My girlfriend thinks I have a car. I need your keys."

Amusement twinkled in her ice-blue eyes and the skin around them crinkled in a preview of how her face would look in her thirties. Though it would have been more in her nature to taunt me for having a girlfriend, she merely smiled, extended her upper lip slightly so that her smoke spewed downward, and gave me grownup arguments about why I couldn't borrow her car--(first and foremost, I didn't know how to drive; secondly, I didn't have a license; thirdly, my dad would blow his top.)

I said bitterly, "Well, that's gratitude for you." I'm sure she turned that encounter into a story that lit up rooms. I never heard it--she wouldn't have wanted to embarrass me--but she found the humor in everything and spent her life sharing it.

Everywhere Katrina went, laughter followed--even when she swerved to avoid a dog and went over an embankment, totaling her car and cutting her face on the broken windshield. The look in that cur's eyes, as Katrina told it at one of those extended family gatherings at Grandma's...the game of 'chicken' she and the dog played as her headlights speared him...the terrible moment of choosing to save his life instead of her own and veering off the road...changing her mind too late and losing her love of dogs a millisecond before impacting the trees...the triumph that dog must have felt...the barking in her ears she thought she heard in the emergency room....the story, like all Katrina stories, left us rolling on the floor.

She was the axis of a world of laughing faces.

The faces changed as friends came and went, as nieces, nephews and her beloved daughter Kim grew up, as her good-natured husband and then her parents departed the scene, but the laughter was always there.

Life isn't good to everyone. A misstep here, a blink there, a swerve to avoid the yellow-eyed cur in the road and a person winds up far from where she thought she'd be, but Katrina took it all in stride. Grandchildren gave her a new lease on life. There was adoration in her voice, along with the usual drama, when she spoke of such things as her shopping trip with three-year-old Quinn, who got tangled in her oxygen tubes, cutting off her air so effectively that she couldn't call out for help as his struggle to free himself caused her wheelchair to roll toward the down escalator...

That's the story she told the last time I saw her. The family's center of gravity had shifted and the reunion was in a new place--my father's house. It was Thanksgiving and the women were bustling about the kitchen, carrying on several conversations at once. A constant stream of kids flowed through the house. We men were in the living room hooting and hollering over a football game on the tube. For once, Katrina was by herself, her wheelchair parked where she could see both living room and kitchen, but not close enough for her voice to be heard above the din.

I happened to glance away from the game and caught her staring at me, shrewdly, with no humor in her startling blue eyes. I had never seen her look like that and I wondered what it meant. Had I offended her? Was she remembering the precious little nephew she had loved like her own when she was a little girl? I smiled but she, lost in thought, didn't smile back.

Uh-oh, I thought. She's thinking of something that I've done. I'm in for it at dinner.

But Katrina only told the oft-repeated shopping story about Quinn, the oxygen, the escalator and the good-looking Good Samaritan who saved her life--"If I'd been ten years younger, or he'd been ten years older...." We laughed, those few of us who heard it above the bedlam of the great-nieces and -nephews whom she called the baby-birds. And that was the last story I ever heard her tell.

When the National Weather Service announced that Hurricane Katrina had formed, I thought how melancholy our family would be upon hearing that name repeated so often until the storm ran its course. My sister from South Louisiana called and said, "Oh, Lord, with a name like Katrina, it's bound to be the baddest one ever"--as if our Katrina's strength went along with the name. I've since learned that others in our widely dispersed family, from Florida to Alaska, expressed similar half-joking forebodings.

The only storm our Katrina was ever in was life and she rode it out laughing in its face...except for that last Thanksgiving...looking at me like that...as if telling me goodbye...or thanking me for being her lookout...