O'RETA SNAPSHOT MEMORIES

Her maiden name was O'Reta Wood. Most everyone called her Reta, or Reeter, with the exception of my dad. He called her O'Reeter, which, akin to Reeter, is one of those rural Southern peculiarities I never have figured out. It's like Cinderella becoming Cindereller. Who added the "er," and why was it added? But I loved to hear my daddy call her name, and I think she did too.

My first memory of my mother is her sitting in a chair beside me, before a long row of curtainless windows, looking out at the night.

I guess I was three or four years old. We were in the first house I remember, and below us was a honky-tonk, and beyond that, across the highway, a drive-in theater.

On the huge drive-in screen were cartoon figures (most likely Warner Brothers), and sometimes actors going through their paces, and from that distance cartoons and humans were about the size they would be on a television screen, which we didn't have.

Since we couldn't hear what the characters were saying, my mother translated their silence to words. I had no idea then she was making it up; I thought she was omniscient. What I do know is I enjoyed it. It was my introduction to storytelling.

When I think of my mother, this is most often the first memory that comes to mind. That and her reading me Uncle Remus, and, of course, the tornado.

One day, while my father was off at work, which was a lot of the time, the birds went quiet and the sky turned greenish, and my mother suddenly grew agitated. She threw open the windows and the doors, and from those same windows where we had watched the drive-in theater, we saw something else.

In the distance, beyond the drive-in, trees leaped up and swirled in a cone, and the cone danced. It was a tornado, a Texas cyclone, a twister, looking not too unlike the tornado I would see later on television (when we finally got one) while watching The Wizard of Oz.

Mom scooped me up and ran to the next-door neighbor's house. He had a storm shelter. Once inside with the neighbor's family, we found ourselves at least a foot deep in water. There were jars of canned food on shelves, and the man who owned the shelter, a person I barely remember, stood with flashlight and club. As we watched, he killed a water moccasin that had crawled in down there. Above us the storm hollered and stomped and tugged at the latched double wooden doors like a maniac with a knife. My mother stood in the water and held me in a death grip.

I don't remember being afraid of the storm, just excited. But the snake, my first, had scared me. Never have liked them since. Maybe I got that from my mother. She was scared of snakes, water, drinking alcohol, and electricity. So am I.

The storm was over almost as fast as it happened. All I remember is that when we came out into the light, our house was untouched, as were the handful of houses in the immediate area, but the drive-in screen was gone and partly in our yard, and some of the honky-tonk's roof had been taken away. It had all seemed like a dream.

Later, I remember it being said that a house some distance behind us had the tornado drop in, as if for a visit, only to leave the place in shambles. We were lucky. The damn thing had jumped over us and gone on.

Other memories of that time: Wandering bums. They call them homeless now, but they called them bums then. They were sometimes men down on their luck, more often than not lost souls who claimed to be preachers. They'd come to our door and ask for food. My mother nearly always fixed them something. Sometimes they did a little work around the house in return. Sometimes they preached, or gave us a little story of how they had come to where they now stood, or wobbled, as was the case with some.

If my mother smelled alcohol on their breath, they not only didn't get fed, she ran them off by locking the screen door and lecturing at them through it about the depravities of drink. They usually took hat in hand (as everyone seemed to wear hats then) and slunk off apologetically.

None of this sympathetic twelve-step stuff. These guys were drunks. Mom was a fanatic teetotaler and viewed 1920s prohibition exponent and saloon-smasher Carrie Nation as a kind of saint. My father viewed her as an annoying busybody who might have served more good if she had been hit by a truck.

Looking back, seeing a number of friends of mine who took to the bottle, fell in, and didn't come out, the number of social drunks I've been around, I'm glad mom scolded me at an early age. I don't see the occasional drink as quite the resident evil my mother did, but drunkenness I've never liked and I have never been drunk myself. A legacy from my mother: have no respect for the bottle, because it has none for you.

* * *

My mother was pulled into this century as if by a tornado of technology. Future shock. And she never quite adjusted to it.

My mother's Scotch-Irish mother, my grandmother, Ole, was born in the 1880s in Oklahoma Territory. It didn't become a state until a few years later. She traveled by covered wagon and actually saw Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. I remember her telling me about it: White horses. Stagecoaches being chased by wild Indians, gunfire, sharpshooters (maybe Annie Oakley), and the old man himself, white-bearded, handsome, magnificent. Wild Bill Hickok had only been dead about ten years when she was born.

She told me of seeing Indian encampments as a child. Of attempting to homestead land (most likely Oklahoma during the land rush), where snakes tried to climb in the wagon all night and were fought off by her family. But the snakes were so thick and persistent, the very next day they abandoned their homesteading adventure and departed.

She told me Irish ghost stories about birds that appeared before the death of loved ones. Family stories, like how her husband's brother, George, an older man, fought in the Civil War in place of his son, George, Jr., who had deserted. George Sr., however, was later shot and killed for stealing horses.

Ole saw a number of her children buried. She lived to be ninety-eight years old, and in pretty good health until the end. She loved the modern world and thought the good old days weren't all that damn good. I think she adjusted to the changing times better than my parents, who were born in this century.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, shortly after the death of the Wild West, my parents were born. My father in 1909, my mother in 1916. Buffalo Bill was still alive, as were Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and Emmett Dalton, the lone survivor of the Dalton gang's last raid. Frank James died a year before my mother was born. My father was approximately six years old at the time.

My mother's family moved to Texas, where she met and grew up with the man who was to become my father. She and A. B. Lansdale were married in 1933. My father wanted to be a mechanic. Mom bought Dad a Model T with some money she had earned from berry picking. She told him to take it apart and put it back together until he could do it without thinking. He took her advice, and that was how he learned his trade.

My brother was born in 1935. Emmett Dalton was still alive and writing for the movies. Wyatt Earp had only been dead six years. Pretty Boy Floyd was about to meet his end. It was the middle of the Great Depression.

Sixteen years later, in 1951, I was born. World War II was but six years gone. It was the Eisenhower generation. The nuclear age. The baby boom. Hank Williams and Ernest Tubb were on the radio. The birth of rock and roll was on the very near horizon. Prosperity ruled the nation, if not East Texas. Some dumbass was going to invent the Hula-Hoop.

This to me is the most amazing thing about my family. That they had a foot in so many different generations. The Wild West, the Great Depression, the nuclear age. I think this was part of what made them who they were.

My mother and father were very close, and very different. They argued a lot. My father was uneducated. He had begun helping raise his family at eight years old, when his mother died. His father was a mean-spirited jackass who was quick with the whip, and my father had scars to prove it. As well as brawling scars, snakebite scars, and smallpox scars. He never so much as spanked me.

My mother had come from a family that wasn't overly educated, but had a respect for education--especially her father. Her father, my grandfather, was her hero. She adored him, told me stories of him, and praised him. He was no saint, however. Besides her four brothers and one sister, her two half-brothers from a previous marriage, there was a simultaneous marriage to a woman on the other side of the Ozarks. The result of that second union was a half-sister. When we found out about her, met her years later, there was no denying she was kin. She was the spitting image of my mother.

When I was growing up, the Depression was constantly in our house, even if it was supposedly long over. We pinched pennies. We ate what was on our plates. We saved bits of cloth, paper, damn near anything we could get our hands on. My mom ran the coffee grounds through twice, sometimes three times. We saved the grease from frying and made soap out of it with lye.

My mother never could get hold of the idea that times were better. For her the wolf was always at the door. She had a terrible fear of going hungry. She was absolutely paranoid about it. And it wasn't something my father took lightly either. I remember Dad hunting squirrels, and it wasn't just for recreation. My mother made meals from polk salad and wild dandelions, made jelly out of wild grapes and persimmons, tea from sassafras. We raised a garden, hogs, and chickens a lot of the time.

There was never a moment in my mother's life when the future was secure, and because of this, I think it was hard for her to plan too far ahead for herself. For her family, yes, but she and my father constantly denied themselves things to make sure it was there for the family.

In spite of this, my parents probably did better during the early Fifties than at any other time in their lives, and it's the only time I remember living in a close neighborhood with a house immediately next door. Then my mother was a full-time housewife, and my father worked at Wanda Petroleum, a butane company. He was a mechanic troubleshooter, on the road a lot of the time fixing broken-down trucks. Sometimes he'd work in horrible weather and be out late and far away, have to lie in puddles of water on freezing nights working on a motor. I've seen him come in the door with freezing chills and icicles in his hair. Next morning, he'd be up and gone before daylight, back to work.

My mother was a great lover of books, especially nonfiction. She was interested in comparative religion, and it's my belief she wrestled with her views on religion all her life. There were times when her views were strictly hard-shell Baptist, and times when she was somewhat agnostic. Most of the time she was what I would call a liberal Baptist. An oxymoron to many, but the truth is they did and do exist. My mother loved reading the Bible, and she hooked me on the habit. I'm not religious, but I still read the Bible. Great stories. Great lessons for life. Lots of sex, murder, and perversion.

She loved William Faulkner, more for what he accomplished than for his books, which, to my knowledge, she had never read. Faulkner, for some reason, reminded her of her father, a conclusion I presume she gleaned from reading about his life. I doubt she knew Faulkner was a notorious drunk.

My mother had a natural knack for color. She loved to paint, often did her painting with her fingers, using boards or squares of plywood for her canvases.

She would just suddenly have the urge, and she would paint. Perhaps for days on end. When she was finished, occasionally these paintings would find their way on our walls, or she would give them away, or sell them, and sometimes, she would just toss them. Usually the paintings were of flowers. My mother loved flowers. Sometimes they were just colorful, and not obviously anything but fine displays of color.

The paintings, no matter what they were of, always had a kind of, well, fuzzy weirdness about them. They were art, and they were unique, but they weren't at all traditional. Later, when I saw Van Gogh's work, I realized that it had much the same appearance. Not on the same level, but the same sort of technique. My mother had never taken an art lesson, and had never even heard of Vincent Van Gogh. Maybe part of the result was due to the weakness of her eyes, but I tend to think she painted what she saw. A world bright and beautiful, but fuzzy around the edges.

She was great at making something out of nothing. From food to throw rugs to coffee tables to flower arrangements, she could take nothing--which is mostly what she had to work with--and turn it into something.

When I was young, she was very optimistic. Always looking for a better day. She instilled that in me. Unfortunately for her, this wasn't her true nature. She was subject to tremendous ups and downs. I think now she would most likely be diagnosed as a manic-depressive. In later years, it got worse.

* * *

Growing up, my mother was always there to read to me, tell me she loved me, impress on me how intelligent and special I was, but how I should keep in mind that others didn't have all the advantages I had, and that I should respect every human being, no matter their race, color, religion, or financial station in life. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

It never occurred to me that we were poor. We thought of ourselves as broke. It wasn't until years later that I realized it.

There was no reason I should have felt poor. When I was young my mother made my shirts and even jackets, sewed them on a pedal Singer sewing machine.

She always found money for me to buy comic books and the occasional paperback book. At Christmas I always received a book or two, because I was a fanatic for the stuff. At the time I loved DC comics especially, and some offbeat comics like Black Cat, which starred a female crime fighter who had judo tips in the back of her comics. But Batman, he was my main man.

My mother made me a Batman uniform with ears I was never quite satisfied with. They tended to droop. She solved this to some degree by placing cardboard inside the ears. She made my nephew, who is only a few years younger than me, a Robin outfit. I wish I still had mine.

My nephew and I had plans to solve crimes in Mt. Enterprise, but the place seemed short on the stuff. Nonexistent, in fact. And besides, we had to be in the house at a certain time and go to bed early enough to be up for school. My bedroom may have been the Bat Cave, but it was still in my parents' house.

But Bat Cave it was. With chemistry sets, insect and mineral collections, fingerprinting materials, and books on all these subjects.

In my Bat Cave, it was my plan to also include mementos of cases to come, but, alas, the most I ever did was run around with my cape flapping. To remedy this, I began to think of adventures to write and draw about, my own comics. Mom always took time out from whatever she was doing to hear me read my comics and show her the pictures. In time, I preferred the stories to the pictures, possibly because I was better at it.

Mom introduced me to Tarzan movies on television, perhaps to get me out of her hair. Every Saturday morning there was a jungle theater with Tarzan, Jungle Jim, Bomba the Jungle Boy, that sort of thing, and every Saturday morning I was glued to the tube. I looked forward to it all week. Later, I discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author of the Tarzan books, and my life was absolutely turned around. I had always wanted to be a writer, but when I started reading Burroughs, I knew I had to be.

Again, I owe it all to Mom.

When I was young, though people find this hard to believe, I was shy. My mother sent me around the corner to a lady who taught what was then called Expression. It was taught at her home, and I learned to memorize poetry and sections from books, and to give recitations. I discovered an unusual knack. I was a pretty good public speaker, a good reader, and could memorize entire poems and pages of books rapidly. I loved it. I didn't know it at the time, and neither did my mother, at least not directly, but she was further grooming me for my future career as writer and public speaker.

When we moved back to Gladewater, we moved there with considerably less money. My father quit Wanda Petroleum and struck out on his own.

My cousin made him a wallet card that read:

HAVE TOOLS, WILL TRAVEL.

My father loved the independence, and never gave it up again, but it was hard sledding as a freelance mechanic, and it took time for him to get his own garage and build up a clientele. In the meantime, we ate a lot of pinto beans and cornbread. It wasn't until years later I realized we did that because they were cheap. I just thought we liked them.

My mother sold encyclopedias door-to-door, bought things from swap meets and refurbished them, resold them at a higher price and made money for me to join the Boy Scouts, have uniforms and equipment, and to attend Scout camps. One year she raised enough for me to go to Philmont, a prestigious Scout camp in New Mexico. I still remember my scouting days with great fondness.

Later, Mom worked odd jobs so that I was able to go to the YMCA in Tyler, Texas, and take a variety of martial arts. We had to drive thirty miles every Saturday, and eventually several times a week when I discovered the variety of martial arts offered at night.

I became a fanatic.

Mom even let me try the wristlocks and arm bars on her when my dad wasn't around. She held pillows for me to kick and helped me build punching bags and other simple training devices.

My mother and I were very close until I reached the age of sixteen. That's not unusual. Teenagers strike off on their own for a while, but this was during the turbulent Sixties, and though my mother supported much of the change that was going on--civil rights, women's rights--she disliked the long hair, the slovenly clothes, and the antiestablishment mood that the Sixties, and now I, represented.

We never became enemies, my mother and I, but we didn't see eye to eye on much. I was troublesome at school, was often expelled, my grades dropped, and I just skimmed through till graduation. I'm sure Mom must have wondered what all the lessons in Expression, Boy Scouts, and martial arts had done for me.

I married when I was eighteen and began attending Tyler Junior College, and then I was off to the University of Texas. My marriage fell apart during that second year of studies, and I came home.

It was really pretty wonderful, and for about a year or so, kind of like a second childhood. At the time I was very much interested in Thoreau. My mother loved him too. She and I read Walden a lot and talked. The closeness returned.

It wasn't until my father's death some years later that things went haywire. From the moment he died, she was lost. She didn't pull in and give up, but she seemed frantic all the time. She had never had the ability to stick to any one thing, even the things she loved, like sales, flower arranging, painting. She dipped into these like a bee at a flower, then moved on. The moment something became a bit difficult, she was out of there. She wanted to keep that high of discovery all the time, and therefore sacrificed the greater high of really becoming good and successful at something.

Finally she remarried. A nice enough fella. Shortly thereafter she was in a wreck that caused her to be thrown through the windshield. She never would wear a seatbelt, fearing being trapped, often commenting that she would rather be thrown free. And she was. Right through the windshield that banged her brain and put her in the hospital.

She was operated on, and my brother and I and our families went to see her daily. Her husband, Cecil, received only minor injuries and was soon up and around.

But for mother, it was strange. Even when she was allowed to go home, she didn't know where she was. She couldn't get out of bed. She couldn't care for herself. She didn't know who her family members were. Those same eyes that had looked at me with love, and even frustration, were now more like the eyes of a frightened animal.

Slowly, her memory came back, but though she could remember her past, and me, she had lost the ability to show emotion. It was akin to the novel The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or the movie made from it. She looked like my mother, talked like my mother, but something--a lot--was missing.

Eventually her husband became too ill to take care of her, and my brother tried to keep her in his home, but her injuries resulted in twenty-four-hour-a-day specialized care, and it was a care that working people weren't easily available to do.

We did what we had vowed never to do. We put her in a nursing home near my brother. By this time her memories were not only back, but a lot of her personality. Her emotions returned, but she was never quite the same.

She had periods where she seemed absolutely lost. One time when I visited her she would be fine, lucid; the next, confused. She asked for paints, and I bought them for her, and so did my brother, but she never used them. She would give them away, ask for more. The old urges were still there, but not the ability. She would become so frustrated with the fact that she could no longer paint, didn't even know how, that she would rid herself of the kits.

She couldn't do what she loved most. Read. Her mind wouldn't follow the prose; she couldn't visualize the words. She couldn't watch and keep up with a simple television show. She misunderstood the news. During the Gulf War she called to tell me that Iraqis were invading a small Texas community of about two hundred, making terroristic attacks on the gas lines.

She had heard that certain publishing companies were in league with the Mafia, and it became stuck in her mind that I was working for the Mafia by writing for the publishing companies they owned. I often wondered if in her mind she put my martial arts training in league with this and saw me as some sort of freelance hit man for the publishing field.

Having come from the Great Depression, she never could understand how I made as much money as I did. Well, it was a lot by her standards. Not all that special, really, but for someone who every day had to plan her existence down to the penny, she was in awe of the money I made and thought it must come from illegal sources.

Also, the kind of fiction I wrote sometimes led her to believe that I might be crazy, or going crazy. It was all very strange and frustrating, for me as well as her.

On one of her doctor visits, the doctor told me that the x-rays revealed she had a cancer on her lung. Here was a woman that had never smoked in her life, who had had nothing but hardship, was badly injured due to a stupid automobile accident, and now she had a cancer on her lung.

Mom refused to have it operated on. She was adamant about that. She had had too many operations due to her injuries, and now in her late seventies, feeling horrible, she felt it was better just to let time take its course. Her belief was she had lived long enough, and that even without the cancer, she didn't have that much time ahead of her anyway, and if she did, who the hell wanted it?

I pursued her about having the operation for a time, but finally dropped it. Her mind was made up. About mid-May of 1993 she had a sudden and continued period of lucidness. We began to talk about old times, relive them. My Batman suit. The comics I read by the tons. My room fixed up like the Bat Cave. The martial arts. And my dad. We talked about it all, and it was wonderful.

One night, late May, I got a call from Mom asking if I would come over to see her. Since my family and I lived about a hundred miles away, I told her I would, but I would be there in the morning. She said that was all right.

Early the next morning I got a call from a nurse saying I should come over and see my mother. I told her that was my plan. The nurse didn't indicate that the situation was vital, and Mom and I often went through this. On any morning I was to come see her, she might call two times before I left, two or three times to talk to my wife, Karen, before I arrived, as well as ask the nurses to call while I was en route.

This morning I got ready as usual, and was going out the door when the phone rang.

It was the nurse. My mother was gone.

* * *

She was buried beside my father. Later I bought them a double tombstone. It was a large funeral. Friends and relatives turned out and told stories of her generosity. I knew she was kind and generous, but I was amazed to learn of the many selfless things she had done, the lives she had changed.

She was an amazing woman who played the hard hand life dealt her. Played it with courage and with a kind of crazy style.

I miss her.