Those of you who know me well know how much I cry. I cry for little to no reason most of the time. Maybe I’m laughing so hard I cry. Maybe a song hits me just right. Maybe I’m mourning the Reese Cup I accidentally dropped on the floor. I suppose instead of Chester’s Chronicle I could do something called Amelia’s Emotions.
Today, this brought me to tears.
I couldn’t ask for better neighbors. They’re friendly, they’re respectful, they’re quiet. They wave at me if I’m sitting on the porch, they constantly consider me when it comes to the roaming of their chickens, they give me a heads up when they’re planning a get together so I’ll be prepared to party with them or leave the premises. They are entering their second harvest season and evidently their garden took on a life of its own this year. They had put a couple of containers out by the road when the squash started coming in. Today, it was a whole table.
Now, it isn’t just their generous hearts that made me a little mushy. Scott & Chasity live in my great-grandparents house. My Papaw built that house, starting with just a few rooms, and built on as his family grew. It was a bit of a mish-mash of a house, as you would expect. When Scott got down to remodeling it, he got way more than he’d anticipated. The wiring was a t-total nightmare, and the plumbing….well, it was a complete overhaul to say the least. But he persevered and he and his family have been living next door for about a year now. I’m tickled pink with them. And I’m off track.
So this piece of property that I live on was at one time much bigger. I would call it a gentleman’s farm, where my Papaw raised Charolais & Polled Herefords, pigs, chickens, hay, tobacco, and some rank ponies. He also put out an enormous garden. Those of you who are familiar where I live–that whole front field where I used to work my horses was a garden prior to my horseback riding years. So anyway, during the hottest parts of summer, that’s where you could find him, early morning and late evening, hoeing and picking produce in his straw hat and soft cotton, cornflower blue, button up shirt. I remember following him up and down the rows for ages, watching for packsaddles (it’s a stinging caterpillar that likes corn), picking beans and tomatoes by the five gallon buckets, and reaching for cucumbers that he’d point to with his hoe, simultaneously drawing back the scratchy leaves. I was closer to the ground, you see. I thought I made a fine helper, but the truth was I probably slowed him down immensely.
Anyway, most of the time there was an excess of what Mamaw and Grandmother and everybody could can, plus all we could eat and give away. So he’d set him up a little table out by the road. It was nothing special, and back in those days you could drive a mile and find three or four more. 1980’s Seymour would be hard for most people to recognize today. He had a set of scales, index cards held on with a clothes pin to the front of the baskets, some bags, and a jar for money. Shopping was on the honor system. This is also how I sold my 4-H bunny rabbits. You could mostly trust people back then, and we didn’t have the luxury of sitting under a tree fanning ourselves waiting on somebody to stop and give us a quarter for two heads of cabbage. We were busy with other things, like bush hogging, or putting up hay, or canning, or working at the factory, or taking little Amy to clogging or baton or modeling lessons……or maybe fishin’.
So today, I pull up my same ol’ gravel driveway that’s been here way longer than me, and there sits a little rickety table with cucumbers, squash, and tomatoes across the surface. And a great big sign that says “FREE”.
Because my neighbors are busy with other things, like taking their kids to practice, and working, and gathering eggs from their free range chickens. The honor system might still work, but this was close enough to my 1985 home as anything that’s happened in the last twenty years. And so I had to cry. ❤️
Holidays, full moon, too much alcohol. What do these things have in common? All make for a busy night at 911 dispatch.
So it was no surprise to me that I have two friends from that past life who made a little Facebook post about it. One relived a traumatizing suicide call and the other just cautioned us to be careful this weekend. I look for more posts from other former coworkers soon. You know, a ripple effect as we all think about our own experiences behind the headset. Holidays always bring out the crazy in people, and the call volume is definitely up. And therefore, the memories. Of course I have my own demons, and ghosts of calls that rattle in my head from time to time. If you could hear the screaming, you would understand why I’ll never swing my leg over another motorcycle. If you could hear the incessant ringing, you’d know why I exercise extreme caution at the Pleasant Hill and Chapman Highway intersection. And if you could hear the gasping sobs, you’d know why I am so adamantly against narcotics.
You see, when you do something stupid, and you pay for it with your life, it doesn’t just affect you. That’s a very selfish thought. Of course it affects your family, your friends, the people you work with. But it also affects the paramedics who work your body, the police who have the grueling task of interviewing witnesses, the firefighters who establish command, and the first responders. It affects the innocent bystanders who were witness to your idiocy. Its a ripple effect that never stops. I left dispatch in 2007 and some of those calls still haunt me. I guess they will for life. And I didn’t even see them with my own two eyes, I only heard them. Sometimes calls only last a few seconds, sometimes they last over thirty minutes. And like I said, some last a lifetime. It’s a rarity when you get to find out what happened afterwards. Sometimes you wish you didn’t.
A few of our dispatchers have been there since this county gained a 911 center in year 2000. So a little over two decades. That’s a lot of kids prank calls, domestic disputes, cows in the road, reckless drivers, fights at the Walmart, drunk and disorderlies in Gatlinburg, and MVA’s (motor vehicle accidents). That’s a lot of brush fires, house fires, tire fires in the Valley on Halloween, and chimney fires. Oh, and not to forget, “I see smoke, but I can’t tell where it’s a-comin’ from”. That’s a lot of seizures, babies being born, allergic reactions. There are heart attacks, strokes, and more often than not, just waking up dead. There are thousands of calls about bears on porches, bears in cars, bears on the road. And then the people trying to get off the mountain in the snow. It makes my head hurt just thinking about it. It’s also a lot of meals scarfed down in a rare, quiet minute. It’s sheer panic; the single worst event in the caller’s life. But for the dispatcher, it’s just another Tuesday night. Most of the time, anyway. It’s scary for the dispatchers though, when the caller can’t tell you where they are. That’s the absolute WORST. I would say the location detection is much more accurate these days, but I cannot stress enough how important it is for you to know your whereabouts at all times. You’ve got a big problem on your hands, but now you have two when you don’t know where you are.
But I tell you: dispatchers who stick with it are a rare breed, indeed. They have steel 2 inches thick for skin and a guarded heart. Sometimes they take off their headset after a particularly taxing call and go stand in the rain, smoking, staring into the distance. Or sometimes maybe they just close their eyes against the raw pain of it all. I’ve seen it. Maybe they run down the hall to the secluded bathroom to empty their soured stomach or cry into their hands and pray they don’t get another call like that tonight.
And then they come back, sit down, and plug back up. Because the phone never stops ringing. There is never a shortages of emergencies. And when it rains, it pours. It’s almost as if people wait till they know you’re busy to wave a gun in traffic, choke on food, or hit a deer. No one can understand what dispatchers go through besides the other ones who have stared so hard at that map, clenched their teeth as they heard the last words of someone in pain, and have prayed with those that are scared. Sometimes that fire’s so real you can feel the heat and sometimes you give your desk CPR to help the caller keep time. Sometimes you pace while you wait for EMS to get on scene because you know this one’s especially bad, and why does anybody choose to live out Wilhite? You work second shift, then the next night you’re on graveyard and you just swing it because you’re called to. It’s not preaching, and it’s hard to live right, but those dispatchers are out there giving it all they can.
Even now As I sit on my porch, writing this, I hear sirens. And lots of fireworks. It’s not even dark yet, nor is it the Fourth of July. So for the love of God, BE CAREFUL THIS WEEKEND. It’s not just about you. It’s the ripple that never stops.
Love from the former #7.
This is all my fault. It usually is, I don’t know why I’m surprised.
See, I had been thinking I needed to write. My mind has been all jittery lately, which is a sure sign something needs to be cut loose. But I didn’t have anything I really wanted to expound upon.
Until this morning.
I had to meet my DC & company with a folder so they wouldn’t be late for a field visit. Since I was in my personal vehicle and wouldn’t be compensated for mileage, I figured I’d stop and wash Maggie on the way back. It surely wouldn’t be an issue if I were stopping for breakfast, what’s the difference? Ten miles for ten minutes, same thing. I was planning on cleaning her up at lunch today, anyway, so two birds with one stone and all that. Look how efficient I am.
I stop over here at the carwash by Burger King. I like to hand wash, since I have a sunroof and I hear those automatic ones are hard on sunroofs, not to mention paint.
Plus, I’m a pansy. I find them terrifying.
Alright. So two of the wash bays are taped off when I pull in, which makes me a little apprehensive. I ease into the one on the end, noting it’s dry. I give myself a little optimistic word of encouragement. Maybe it’s not broken. Maybe I’m just the first person to wash their car today. I go over to the change converter and feed it my dollar. It reluctantly spits out the equivalent in quarters. All is well. I go back to the bay and begin dumping my loot. It’s obvious that this one is more expensive than the one I frequent by the house. It takes a quarter more to start and then you don’t get as much time per additional quarter. But no matter, I can hustle.
I should add here that I am in 4″ wedges. I’ll include a photo for visual proof, you can even make out some pink stain on the straps. I am sort of dressy today since some friends and I are going out tonight for my birthday. Chesapeake’s, which is a classier sort of joint, at least compared to places I typically dine.
Let me also add that my favorite color is pink, in case you didn’t already know. I like to wear pink. But I don’t want to BE pink.
Ok, so I’ve deposited the required five quarters. The wand roars to life, and I breathe a sigh of relief. So I sink the rest of my stash. Who can wash their car in two and a half minutes, anyway? I take hold of the wand and it’s like a charged fire hose. Fine by me, pressure is a good thing. I get Mags all saturated and turn the dial to foam brush. She needs a good scrubbin’; the soap wand ain’t gonna do it. Not much soap is being generated, and I notice where the apparatus is joined to the hose, there is a significant amount of duct tape. I mentally shrug and keep after it with the brush and miniscule bubble production.
Suddenly, there’s a pop followed by an angry hiss. I turn, and am greeted by a fountain of hot pink foam squirting to every corner of downtown Sevierville. I’m pretty sure the Dolly statue at the courthouse got drenched. My eyes bugged out and I froze, considering my options. I couldn’t get by with the soap wand, of that I was certain. Better just lay in there. Decision made, I scrubbed faster as pink soap oozed and fizzed around me, puddling on my car, the brick walls, the concrete floor. It was like that old movie, The Blob, where the mass grows and slides over everything in its path. I waded through piles of the pink goop as geysers shot forth even more, drops hitting my face and collecting in my hair. It was too late to turn back now.
When I turned 21, me and a couple of friends celebrated on the strip in Knoxville. We were pretty tame, by most peoples’ standards…sure, there were tequila shots, a few random strangers, a few drinks in a hot tub quickly followed by a resurrection of everything I had consumed in the last sixteen hours. What there wasn’t was foam dancing. Oh, it was available, and fun, and I wanted to, but everybody thought that would be a terrible idea (although why the hot tub was never entered their minds). So. Twenty years and three hundred and sixty-four days later, I got to foam dance.
Alone.
With no music.
In a car wash.
Sober.
But back to the situation at hand. I was torn between rage that I was being coated in bumble gum colored soap and a waste of five dollars, not to mention the potential destruction of clothes, versus the fact that this was a quintessential Amy Event and I might as well laugh. So laugh I did, catching the attention of everybody in the parking lot of the gas station, the Burger King drive-thru, and probably the guys in hard hats constructing the firehall across the road. I wanted to take pictures, but time was a-tickin’ and I’d already wasted enough quarters on this colossal mistake. So I continued to scrub, trying to make the squirting foam work to my advantage while also avoiding the worst spurts.
I’ve never seen anything like it. And I’ve seen a LOT. Yes, indeed, I’ve been to two goat ropin’s and a World’s Fair, truly. But in the end, it’s just soap, and my car wound up fairly clean. All’s well that ends well. I have come back to the office and scoured myself the best I can without a shower. Pink stains remain on my shirt, but luckily it’s a pink flower pattern, anyway. My hands are still pink, and one ankle just won’t come clean. But it’s alright, I have a pinkish complexion, anyway. Maybe I can get by with appearing sunburned. Luckily, my pants are a dark khaki color so the splotches are nearly undetectable. Otherwise, I guess I look about as good as I always do. I’m just gonna tell everybody I got some watercolor tattoos.
Moral of the story: thoroughly inspect all apparatus prior to using. Kinda like checking for toilet paper in public restrooms. If you get a bad feeling, walk away.
Or heck, just go with it. It might make for a good story!
I have wished for
Skinnier legs
Perfect vision
Clearer skin
Better math skills
A flatter stomach
Straight hair
Longer hair
Less hair
More manageable hair all around
Or at least no frizz
I have wished for
A less demanding job
A windfall of money
A helicopter
For things I've already procured
I have wished for
Sunny skies
And rainy days
A broken heart to mend
Different endings
A dog to live longer
Better barbeque sauce
No speeding ticket
As I topped 100
I have wished for
Island vacations
No snakes
More comfortable shoes
A meeting with Sturgill Simpson
A phone call
And to simply go home
I have wished for
People to change
People to stay the same
People to stay
People to go
People to disappear
To forget
And forgive
I have wished for many things
Some I got
Some I prayed for
Some I worked for
Some that aren't within my reach
But that never kept me from wishing
For one more thing
And I hope
Wishes are like pennies
That they turn up
Just when you need one
I am finding it
Terribly overrated
To be an adult
A responsible adult, that is
Because all we do is
Get a job
(Smile)
Keep the job
(Still smiling)
Drive back and forth to the job
(Don’t kill anybody)
Go grocery shopping
To buy food
That has to be cooked
With other food
To be consumed
Shave your legs
Floss your teeth
(So you can smile)
Vacuum sweep mop
Dust dust dust
Mow the yard so the neighbors won’t talk
And you won’t have snakes
Paint patch plunge
Pay bills on time
Every time
Pick out insurance
(Which isn’t nearly as fun as picking out pocketbooks)
Separate laundry
Fold laundry
Match socks
Dry cleaners
Put away laundry
Weigh yourself
Critique yourself
Compare yourself
(Smile)
Don’t miss appointments
Schedule more appointments
Buy gifts
Attend events
(All the smiling)
Understand politics
Pick a side
Pick a candidate
Pick a team
Follow sports
Find a soul mate
(So much smiling)
Know how to sew
How to walk in heels
How to tame your hair
How to change a tire
How to say thank you
And I’m sorry
Grieve with grace
And dignity
And never lose your cool
Because you may never come back
To all this madness
If you go crazy
It would not do
For me to love you
To the point of distraction
As I am already distracted
And barely remember
To put on shoes
Never mind tying them
And anyway
Poets are fluttery souls
And you don’t want that
You should probably seek
Someone who is grounded
And knows where the flashlight is
In case of a power outage
I’d rather have candles anyway
March is Women’s History Month. There are plenty of notable women out there. I would like to share the story of one who directly influenced my life.
I’ll tell you about a strong woman in history. That would be the first woman to work in a farm store as a “salesman”.
The first strong woman to do so at the Sevier Farmers Co-op was Tuletta Myers. I hope she doesn’t mind me writing about her; I didn’t ask permission.
Women had been working at the Co-op, but back then they just wrote tickets. You’d come in to shop and one of the men would lead you around and assist you with whatever you needed- bolts, a new washing machine, rake teeth, fine china. They’d cart your purchases to the counter where a lady (dressed in heels and a skirt) would hand write your ticket on carbon copied paper, then total it up on an adding machine.
Y’all just take a minute to picture that. I’ll wait.
Yeah.
But in the mid-eighties, things began to change with the introduction of the computer. And the Co-op evolved as well. I imagine it happened all over the state around the same time. And Tuletta was our hometown girl. She practically had to beg people to let her wait on them. Not the women, no, they were relieved to find a lady that wouldn’t treat them like they were incapable of understanding. It was the men who were uncomfortable telling a woman they needed palpation gloves or asking her advice on hardware. Heaven forbid a woman know something they didn’t!! The first thing everybody wanted to know was where she was from, who her people were. Luckily, she was from here and not a transplant from some God-forbidden place like Knoxville 
She became the top roofing salesperson in the state because nobody knew anything about it and nobody bothered to learn until she came along. She found her niche. She began to clean cobwebs from corners nobody had touched in years. She studied about machinery and saw to it that there was ample supply of mower blades and pitman arms to sell.
She didn’t know about tack, though. I was probably the only chick in the county riding English and I’d go in to order a pad or figure 8 noseband (this was in the days before mail order State Line Tack was popular or attainable to me) and she’d just hand me her catalog and a piece of paper and I’d find me a corner and make a list.
She paved the way for more women to come on board and for it to be “normal” for us to know about more than flowers and birdseed. She taught me so incredibly much and she never cut me an inch of slack. We all called her the Dragon Lady for good reason. She was respected and feared. I can still hear her, catching me chatting with a friend, “You got time to lean, you got time to clean!!!” Still sends a shiver down my spine. She said while you were cleaning, you were reading. She wasn’t wrong. You’d be so bored with wiping herbicide bottle after herbicide bottle you had no choice to figure out what it killed. She beat us all to the store and would be back in her office, smoking cigarettes like a diesel rolls and sorting through receiving documents in her Birkenstocks. She wouldn’t send a man in to do her work rooting for a misplaced item, she was on her feet and out the door before the words left your mouth. Tuletta was a trooper. She was a warrior of a man’s world. It wasn’t easy when I came to work the counter, but it helped she’d been there in that same spot, and she always has an ear to listen.
I hope y’all enjoyed the history lesson and I hope you were blessed to have needed and found Tuletta at some point during her tenure there. This is a great picture, displaying her dry humor and sarcasm. And she was in her element– INVENTORY.
When you’re seventeen, you don’t think about your best friend’s dad dying. When you’re seventeen, you don’t think about attending the funeral of your first boss. You don’t wonder whether the guy who owns the mountain where you ride horses is gonna die of cancer. When you’re seventeen, all you’re concerned with is boys, hair, and if you’ve got enough gas to run to Wendy’s. You worry about how you look in your swimsuit, and who is going to prom with whom. When you’re seventeen, you’re self involved with your own problems…and too young to realize they’re not problems at all, because they have zero bearing on the rest of your life.
But when you’re forty-one, you smile through tears as your best friend delivers her father’s eulogy. You remember the times spent with him as he patiently taught the two of you how to drive in their subdivision. The silver van with the emergency brake lever in the console. You think about how many times he drove you to Walmart because there was nothing else to do…sometimes twice in one day! You recall him helping move furniture and building bookshelves and baking cheesecakes. You realize how much he loved his daughter and how he impacted your life, too.
When you’re forty-one, you dress in black on a dreary Saturday and drive to a nearby church to pay your respects to the first woman who ever took a chance on you. You remember her saying she hired you because you were the only candidate to wear pantyhose to the interview. You wear pantyhose now. Not only because it’s proper, but because it’s Sue. You worked with her son at a job later in life, and you’ve kept in touch all these years later thanks to Facebook. The death touches you more than you would have believed. Especially more than you would have believed at seventeen.
When you’re forty-one, looking back on a man who offered you a cold beer from his wooden porch on a humid summer day, who told you which trails were best for your high-headed Saddlebred, who laughed as you bet against Tom Brady EVERY TIME, who is now laying in his hospital bed, just waiting….
To be seventeen again. When you think heartache is a guy asking another girl to dance. When your day is ruined because you can’t stay the night with your best friend. When you got a B minus on your Chemistry test and you know you’ll be grounded from the phone and the movies this weekend. When you have no idea what it feels like to attend three funerals in seven days. Back before you watched a man you care about tear up as he tells you about his last words to his cousin. Decades before you see your best friend get up to fix her dad a plate then suddenly remember he’s not there and sit back down. Prior to watching your friend in a black suit, standing beside his mother’s casket, with his arm around his daddy. That’s how you get wrinkles, and grey hairs, and why you treasure life.
Yes, I attend many funerals. I don’t know how to avoid them unless people stop dying or I stop loving. Sometimes I go for the ones I’ve lost, sometimes I go for the ones that remain. It’s all about the same thing: to show respect and to let them know they made an impact on me in some form or fashion. It hurts. It’s sometimes awkward. But I’ve never regretted showing up. I don’t say I love you enough and I never answer the phone. But if I have attended a funeral, there was love in my heart. And I am so sorry you’re grieving the loss of your loved one. My prayers are with you. It’s a beautiful, messy life, isn’t it? Better to be an angel. I hope my wings are silver, I can’t ever keep white clean.
