In the Moment

Talk about blow out. I’ve never seen anything as huge as The Dallas Airport. I’m sitting there at this moment, having spent about 20 minutes getting to, I hope, the right gate, as the jolly orange sun busts through the surely smokey stuff that is so huge it’s impossible to believe it’s true.

I’m having a hard time writing and remembering today. Have to refresh and restart after the long flight from Sao Paulo and the confusions of Dallas Airport which I loathe. I have a helper there and that makes my stop-throughs pleasant and gets me to the right place. However, a few months ago when there was a frightening tornado through which our pilot flew right through it, everyone went into panic mode. We made it to the ground landing, shaken and dramatized as some feared with tears that life was done.

I was happy to see first that a paid helper was at the gate, and we dashed to the baggage claim where my three huge Patagonia bags had arrived first on the bags round thing. I was the first to get my bags were always transferred on to Memphis. However, for some reason, through the storm people had been using their cell phones to call airport help to make sure they got their bags shipped forward. I had been the first one at the baggage claim. But the two service people managing the baggage problems were nasty, and refused to let my bags go through to Memphis, even though I had paid for them from Uruguay to Memphis. I was not only horrified, but shocked. I had been a first-class customer for decades with American Airlines. Yet, the two service people refused to let my bags continue on as it should to Memphis. That’s when I had to pay someone safe to drive me the eight hours to Memphis, and that’s another story. Pleasant as it was, the price was $1800 Dallas to Memphis by car.  I’m getting too old and such a long-time customer to be treated like that who pays first class on American Airlines.

Truly, I’m so much happier living in Carmelo, Uruguay, in our cottage on a small hill where I can walk or slide down to enjoy the Rio de La Plata as it toddles down toward not only Com-Car Prison, where I spent a few years trying to animate prisons to stop the prison stuff and get a job. Of course they laughed at me. And they were probably right - I had what I needed in life. They didn’t nor don’t and so that’s why they break out and do crime stuff, trying to get food, money, a place to rendezvous with one’s gang, or watching soccer, if not playing in it. At least moaning and feeling sad that they had not leaped into the fray when his age kids were breaking out into soccer and probably schools if they could afford to go to one.
Most Uruguayans who protest their imprisonment live in ratty shirts even if one has to go barefooted and have to dump unappealing stews into their metal plate, considered their daily meal. But about everyone in the prison ranks start kicking the soccer ball (which seems to be allowed in Com Car or Libertad prisons as they try to learn the ropes of soccer stars after having watch Diego Maradona over and over - no one would ever be as exciting, not even Messi who now is slowing down playing in Miami to give a bite of his presence, to show it off as long as he can since all soccer players like any other sports star has a time when life has time to look at life and wife and kids (do they even  like football and what’s come next?) Age creeps and crawls and we all have to live with it, but best is to make reality jokes and smile and when there are too many drops and falls and oops, maybe it’s time to become a straight man who fixes things, not to build up balloons that take flight into the stars or white clouds into which they can disappear at least spiritually.  Maybe we should do that, disappear now and then.
 
When I was born 85 yeas ago, war busted the daily news. I don’t know how my parents greeted it, but I think my wonderful grandfather had a hard life, living with his mother outside the country town of Grenada, Mississippi, which was near a small chapel. But they were so poor my granddad could not go to school. He began working on the railroads at an early time in life. But maybe that was his destination. He not only created Federal Compress and Warehouse Co. but made it to become the largest in the world. My grandfather was an amazing gentleman, not fancy or overwhelming, but a good ole man who loved to hunt and ride cowboy style as he achieved all his tasks to become the owner of the largest compress in the world, which he had created, giving many black men jobs. He learned by watching, chatting, talking and asking questions of anyone in the cotton business. He gave super barbecue events at the farm for all his employees each year. Later in life, his priority was me and my brother, and he would not allow any punishment for us for any reason because he would intervene and save us from whatever we did that might not be right.

But on this day when I was trying to get home from Uruguay to Memphis, there was drama and fear in the American flight. On rolling out on the huge, massive runways that allow flights to get to where they are going without knocking each other out, I began to remember something about early Dallas. Back in the day, people from the Mid-South toddled down to Dallas to shop and see shows and things of interest. It also had a fantastic Garden Club with so many members that they could put on a splendid flower show without having to entice too many garden club members from all over the states. Well, one show, our Garden Club in Uruguay was invited to participate. I was not only a judge having been through Uruguay training, and schooling, and visited and participated in or became a judge as was normal in so many garden club shows, having created designs in various shows.

Our leaders had been invited to the big Garden Show of Dallas not only to judge but to participate if we wished. Well, where I got my ideas, I don’t know. But I did a sort of abstract thing that was simple but colorful and somehow the judges were not only surprised, they chose my design not only first of my class, but also Best in Show. I was totally embarrassed. I thought we were there to learn from them. But it gave me a chance, also to visit the artwork of the greats. That normally old Dallas was calm, cool and capable of great art, great gardens and new friends. It was in the more modern time, like a couple months ago, that Dallas double crossed some of us flying to its airport on a horrid, violent storm. And I had to pay the $1800 to a taxi limo driver, Greek as he was, but a gentleman all the way, getting me home in eight hours with my three big bags still happily filled and in good shape.

~Rev

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audrey@audreytaylorgonzalez.com
www.audreytaylorgonzalez.com