The Best and Worst Things My Grandma Taught Me... this one is a goody.

My Grandmother, Ida Willie Belle, was born in 11/11/1911. She grew up pulling cotton with her 9 other siblings in far west Texas. She went by the nickname Tiny and she was the rowdiest of all her siblings... and the smallest.
She used to tell me that she would routinely pass out for no good reason, but "figur'd it wuz cuz uh that time when I hit my head real hard walkin' a barrel."
To date, she's the best guitarist I've ever heard. She died over 10  years ago on Elvis Presley's birthday(January 8th)...which I'm sure she planned on because Elvis was kind of a big deal in my house growing up.

In fact, I really believed he was a relative until I was old enough to figure out that my family were just kind of nutty about the man and recalled his death as "the most gaht dam saddest day ever."

My Grandmother was not your typical old lady. She drove a mint condition 1967 cherry red Pontiac Firebird with a vintage decal that said, "Cherry Bomb." She would regularly do what she said was "blowin' the soot out'th'firebird." Which meant: She would drive this bad ass car about 90+ mph until she heard it "whistle." Then she'd say she had "blown the soot out." Now, at 35 years old, I know that was total bullsh*t.
On a few occasions, I would go on these "soot blowing procedures" and I found it to be absolutely terrifying and thrilling all wrapped up into one loud "AHHHHHH," fist clinching, body pressing to the back of the black leather seat with one-eye open, experience.

As a kid, she convinced me that this had to be done and so I would naturally believe I was "helping" by assisting her in listening for the "whistling" sound at MACH 5.

Another fascinating skill that my my grandmother demonstrated regularly was the "docterin' of animals." She had various vermin she'd take in to "doctor up" so that they'd be alright, etc... At one point I can remember her having 3 snapping turtles in the bathtub that she was administering some type of skin care to. They had names.

There was Haus, Raus, and Big Joe. She found these turtles somewhere on one of her "soot blowing" excursions and figured "they got be somethin' wrong with 'em cause a snappin' turtle ain't gonna be out in the middle of no street like 'at." She was right, but... it's a snapping turtle... no THREE snapping turtles. THREE.

I remember her puttin' Camphophenique and Iodine on their "bad places," (areas with disease) and I heard her yelp really loud and say, "Welp, o' Haus got me in the meat of my fanger, right 'cher, look. at. that. Woooooo, My word that hurts."

This snapping turtle bit a chunk out of her finger that should've required an Emergency Response Team, but instead, she threaded a needle and gave herself some stitches while talking to that turtle like this..."Naw Haus, now why'd you go n' bite on me like that when I's just tryin' to make you better. I guess you feelin' better naw ain't cha'."

She got these turtles up to par and released them back into the wild in a few weeks... long enough for her to find more things half dead to drag into the "operating room."

She had a cat named Foo. (it's already funny) Foo wasn't a flippin' cat though. Foo was part bobcat and was mean as hell. My grandma had "rescued" Foo from a trap out by our scary ass cabin in the woods- where we would go fishing in the cooler months of the year.

Foo lived in the house when it wanted to, and the rest of the time it lived in dark places with shadow demons.  Well, Foo got hold of my cousin's goldfish and bit a hole through it. My grandmother didn't give up the quest of "doctorin'" so she put her usual concoction of Camphor and Iodine and "dobbed in on the bad place."

She stuck a tiny part of an aloe vera plant inside the hole of the goldfish. The hole, by the way, was right in the middle of the fish. After about 4 days, the she cleaned the hole out again and that fish lived 5 more years. You could see right through it. No really, you could actually see through the fish! Foo was given a nasty talkin' to and was told "that fish ain't fer you Foo."  Foo killed a lot of things that couldn't be fixed though.

There are at least 13 other animal stories off the top of my head I could write out in this blog but I'll save those for later. Rest assured though, there were a lot of animals that got the "doctorin'." The most bizarre thing about all of these animals is that they would live a ridiculously long amount of time. WAY past the legal limit of most pets. Some of them were still alive by the time she died but they all passed on within days of her death. I think they all made a pact with Foo's shadow demon friends or something to go back to the netherworld... or as I call it- the crawl space under the house.

The story that defines the title of this blog is this one and the last story in this blog.. they are connected though. So bear with me and stay entertained. There's a great ending, promise...


My grandma would always tell me the bible verse about being kind to those less fortunate because "they could be angels among ya' unawares." I took a lot of things she said way too far. I was that kid that believed that every grown up was 100% right all the time, and I was 100% wrong for having a "gut feeling" about something.

Terrible really, but I was kind of stupid. Or still am... jury is still out on that.

I really believed her when she told me about the angel thing...

I was desperate to meet an angel and I was sort of obsessed with the thought that I might be able to meet one if I was super nice to the bums and wine-os at the Stop n' Go down the street. In retrospect, I think I actually believed that if some bum asked me for money, and I gave it to him,(but it was really an angel in disguise) that some type of confetti from heaven would fall down and a voice over (Bob Barker style) would say, "Congratulations Melodee! You passed the test! This isn't a drug addict loser with crabs, this is ARCH ANGEL MICHAEL!!!!"

Then I would imagine Michael the Archangel saying, "hey kid, sorry bout that, here's your 5 bucks back(I was generous) and all of us angels are super stoked about you, and so... we were wondering if you'd like to meet the whole team?!"  Sort of like a backstage pass to meet the ultimate superheros only way more kick ass.

So I explained to my grandma how I'd just given 5 bucks to some homeless guy when I went to buy her bread and milk and that it "wasn't an angel," because he took my money and obviously "angels don't need your bread and milk money do they Granny?" She would kind of walk away and get real quiet before she'd come back and say, "I'm going to blow the soot out of the Firebird."

She never told me anything different to do with the next round of bread and milk money, but she would say, "that man at the Stop n' Go ain't that angel your a' lookin' for. He ain't Meldee, he just a good fer nothin' drunkard and don't be talkin' to him no more, he ain't got a lick uh'sense left."

 So... Okay, cool... not that guy. Got it. Got it?

To this very day, her voice haunts me when I see homeless people/bums/wine-os anywhere in Dallas who ask me for money.

 I think "well, the second I don't give some of my change, it will probably be that angel or something..."  The other day however, I was thinking that and started laughing to myself as I thought, "Mel, if it was an angel, do you really still think he's going to say he is one?"
 (Angel says: Congrats I'm an angel, gotcha! Wow, you really fell for the ol' bum on the side of the I-35 & Medical District Drive trick? I'm an angel and you're an idiot for rolling down your window and giving me my booze money you dope!)

Then it hit me! Not the angel, but the thought hit me...

"I really have been expecting this for 30+ years?"  This got me thinking about all the other things I learned from Ida Willie Belle and somehow survived...  the list was 7 pages long.

Don't get me wrong, she had great advice most of the time. However, the advice she gave would be deemed nowadays as being terribly misguided and moderately dangerous to the average person.

However, saying that I'll say this....
I've never been afraid of anything. I'm not afraid to be in a "bad part of town," or to talk to people who don't look like me, or to help someone or an animal that looks distraught, sick, in trouble, etc... Maybe I'm still stupid, but I think there's some valuable sauce in that pot of advice she fed me.

Here's how I know that's true...
This story is the best one I've got in my bag.

My grandma had an open door policy. Neighborhood kids and everyone in the free world could come over at any time and open the fridge and eat anything in it. Little did I know as a kid that she was feeding all of us on a combined monthly income from my Grandfather and her's social security checks which totaled about 1000 bucks a month. My Grandfather was a veteran in WW2 and worked his whole life as an electrician for Phillips 66 and this is what they had to "retire on."  However, none of us kids knew anything about that. They never behaved like they were put out, or tired of helping people, or irritated by raising other people's kids. Every single day was a party.  Her relaxation came from rescuing animals, playing guitar in the living room, and "blowing the soot out" of that Pontiac Firebird. We couldn't afford to go to the beach one summer and she bought a 50 lbs. bag of navy beans and poured them on the floor so we could play as though it were sand... it was fantastic. Better than the beach in fact! (my Grandfather played the part of the Salt Water Crocodile that hunted us if we got too buried in the "sand." So much squealing and laughing... so much)  Anyway...

Here is THE story...
One day a man came into the house with the intent to rob us. (my grandfather wasn't there at the time for the record, and this story would've had a much different outcome if he had've been there)

He had a mask on, had a gun, and busted through the door saying, "Get down bitch, where is your purse, where's your F**KING purse bitch."

My grandmother literally didn't flinch.

She looked at him in the eyes and she said, "You outta be ashamed of yourself talkin' to a woman that way. Now listen here. I ain't gonna be talked to that way in my house. I'm gonna give you all I got but you gotta sit down here and eat breakfast with me first."

This man's face was white as a ghost. He trembled and said, "are you crazy or somethin,  I ain't gonna sit down here while you call the cops on me, shit, shit, hell no..."

She replied with, "I ain't gonna call the cops on you young man. I am just askin' you kindly if you will sit down and eat breakfast with me. You interrupted my breakfast and I'm just hungry is'all and I want to talk with you."

I was listening in on the conversation from the hallway by the kitchen and what I heard was nothing short of a miracle. My grandmother disarmed this man with words and truthful ones. She told him that he doesn't have to take the road he's on and that she would give him all her money, but if he decides to take another road, a better road, later on... "to kindly pay me back when you get set straight."

They finished breakfast, she handed him all the cash she had in her wallet, wrote him a check for 200 bucks, and told him she'd "talk to an angel or two" on his behalf.

Little did I know, until her death, that this man kept up with her and wrote her letters and sent her pictures of his life, loves, and now a family, etc... He walked up to me at her funeral and said, "You will probably remember me in a not so good way,  but I was the man who robbed your grandmother when you were just a little girl. She's been a great friend since that day and just so you know, I paid her back with interest."

 He continued to tell me that she was the reason, the ONLY reason he changed his life around. He was honest about how it wasn't overnight either. It took several years of trial and error and trouble before he got off drugs and began a new life... He did tell me though, that when he would ask her in his darker days and moments of guilt and shame as to why she was being kind to him or cared at all, she said, "sometimes you entertain angels unaware."

Good night Ida Willie Belle and I hope they let you blow the soot out up there... oh and don't pose as a bum on I-35 either because I'm not rolling down my window anymore.

That Ain't Gonna Hurt Ya None

I remember hearing the phrase, "that ain't gonna hurt ya none, " more than I heard my own name as a child growing up in rural Texas.

I was talking to someone recently about this and it dawned on me- the truth of that phrase, and how it previewed terrible accidents, food poisoning, and various vermin bites/stings, etc...

I woke up this morning with a request from my Dad to help him steady a ladder. Simple enough. Not simple. I had no idea that my father was going to be climbing to the top of the ladder with a chainsaw rigged up to a pole to cut down a LARGE tree branch that was nestled in between 2 power lines. I kept asking him, "Dad, it's too high for you to reach it." He agreed. So instead of aborting mission, he gets a rope and ties a large hammer to the end of it to "lasso" the tree branch thus pulling it down and tying it off to a post in the ground. The hammer was barely hooked on the branch and all I kept thinking about was how this could easily become a Three Stooges Fail resulting in death by: hammer to the face at full force, tree branch falling on me, tree branch falling on my dad who was on a ladder holding a pole with a chainsaw attached to it which then would all....fall on me.

I said, "Dad if that hammer comes unhooked from that branch....." He interrupted me with, "Melodee, this ain't gonna hurt you none." Fine. You win.... until you don't win. Until you lose...hard.

When I was around 8 years old and out in the middle of the woods with my Dad I saw a beautiful snake. I knew it was venomous and he told me to "move the snake out' tha way" so he wouldn't roll over it with his giant wheelbarrow. I said, "Um... I think that snake is one of the bad snakes." His reply... "that ain't gonna hurt you none." I moved the snake. I was bitten by that very snake. It was venomous.

My uncle, Dad, and brother told me to eat a fist full of these wild berries that grew on out in the fields of South Texas... He called them "Dewberries." I was a fat kid with a pension for sweets so I ate the hell out of those berries. Within seconds my mouth was numb, I couldn't feel my tongue, and my eyes started to water. I ran back to the farm house and couldn't explain myself properly and I was met with laughter and pointing. I cried and they said, "Don't worry, that ain't gonna hurt you none."

My family has a problem with understanding expiration dates on food items. I have been a fridge nazi since I was a little kid because I throw things away with expired dates clearly printed on the side of the package. My family flippantly ignore expiration dates and I think I've even heard a few family members say "they don't believe in them." Well... they exist? Right? Yeah, they exist. I realized later in life when my family says, "I don't believe in..." what that really means is, "I am choosing to ignore that detail."

Very recently I was plagued with wicked food poisoning/stomach virus pot luck surprise. I realized that the culprit was my Mom's own version of consolidation. She consolidates expired things with non-expired things as a sort of trash alchemy. I busted her doing this a few days ago with some really really really old cheese. She was trying to mix a bag of new fresh shredded cheese with old rotten putrid cheese. I confronted her about this and she said, "Well, Meluh'dee that ain't gonna hurt you none, you just bein' silly." No. No. No I'm not. I'm not being silly when I make a full sprint at 3:30am into the bathroom and have my head stuck in a toilet for 30 minutes while I moan and audibly cry, "Why?! Oh God.... (puking noises) Oh why...Oh God..."

While I do believe that people now are contributing to "global laming," by not disciplining their kids, forcing their dogs to be vegans and feeding their newborn babies pre-chewed food (*Alicia Silverstone).... There has to be a middle ground between everyone being afraid of everything to everyone saying there is nothing to be afraid of. I don't think one kid in the USA under 10 years of age would've made it a week growing up in the 1970's and 80's. Example: The slide at my elementary school was at least 25 feet high, made of solid stainless steel and if you fell off of it you would hit hard ass gravel. If you used the slide in the summer months wearing shorts (we did) you would get 2nd degree burns on the back of your thighs and sometimes on your arms if you tried to "slow yourself down." Nothing about this was okay. We played with cinderblocks, threw rocks at hornets nests, pushed each other off the tree house, dared each other to belly crawl through barbed wire fence. For most of my childhood I was covered in scabs from turfing it off my BMX bike because I decided it was a good idea to launch off of something really sketchy. If we had any fear as young Texans about doing any of the dangerous activity surrounding daily life, we were told, "that ain't gonna hurt you none." I can very clearly remember being covered in rocks and blood with a nail sticking out of my foot and hearing that phrase with the tag line, "you is alright Booger, put some Camphophenique on it." Most of the times I was told to rub some type of over the counter shit on my wounds is when I most certainly needed medical attention.

All the years of therapy in my 20's and hearing shrinks say, "Your biggest issue you need to deal with is your inability to ask for help when you really need it." I get why that was hard for me to wrap my brain around after realizing that most of the time I was told "that ain't gonna hurt you none... You is alright."

You know what though? I was alright. And though I don't agree with consolidation of rotten food-trash alchemy, playing with venomous snakes, or running barefoot through a field with rusty nails.... I do agree with not living in fear of germs, playground equipment, or occasionally reaping the reward of living dangerously.

It's April Fools day and I'm patiently awaiting a nice slice of "dewberry pie."

Afterall... it ain't gonna hurt me none.