Daddy's Girls

Also part of our IKE play, though largely made up of whole cloth, there are tidbits of actual stories here and there. Like "On a Stick," the "Daddy's Girls" sections are essentially long monologues, in this case broken up and bounced between the three girls. The three asterisks in the middle of the monologues and in all of the play's stories represent the storm passage. The "Stick" monologue was broken up and woven through the whole play as one of the connective devices to, excuse the expression, "stick" the whole play together. The stick girls last line, "my sister cried, but I ain't gonna" was the last line of the show.

The girl evacuating alone after her shift as a waitress was a student story, told to me as true, except it was a story about the Rita evacuation. She took the back roads and made it to Huntsville nearly a half a day before her Mom and Dad did via 288 and I45. She also had her ten-year-old sister riding with her. That was possibly a better story than I wrote, but it didn't fit the IKE frame.

The man who cut down a tree, dropping it across a trunk line, cutting off power to a whole neighborhood after it had been restored is a story that went around via email in LJ after Ike. I suspect it is an urban legend.

Muffy's story is whole cloth, though I know a few non-mechanically inclined guys who struggled comically with generators after the hurricane.

We called them Daddy's Girls, but named the segments . . .

My Dad is Nuts

RONNYE My Dad is nuts.

BRANDY My Dad is nuts.

MUFFY My Dad is nuts.

RONNYE So I get home after school Tuesday and he’s already there, got off from work early. He’s running around saying “There’s a storm in the gulf and it’s headed our way.” I’ve never seen him moving so fast. He’s got a pile of plywood and he’s boarding everything up. I get to hand him nails and carry his hammer.

BRANDY When I got home, my Dad had the car packed. And the engine running. Says we’re getting out early, not getting stuck on the road like Rita. It took us twenty-four hours to get to my aunt’s in Huntsville. This time he had this map marked with a special route that goes around all the evacuation routes. He said that was the real problem last time. He joined the Lemmings on the road and got jammed up. He says get in the car. I tell him I have to work. He says the restaurant is probably already closed. I tell him I at least oughtta call. He says okay, so I call. They’re open and want me to come in if I can. I tell my Dad they really need me because they’re shorthanded. So we argue.

MUFFY My Dad is unloading a generator when I get home. I don’t know where he got it, but mom keeps calling it her new couch. He says we’re really going to need it when we get back, after the storm—says the power may be out for weeks, but we’ll be okay because he got this generator.

RONNYE Dad boards up everything, the house, the tool shed, the doghouse, and the garage door windows. I reminded him to leave the front door open so we could get in and out of the house. I thought he’d be mad—he doesn’t have much of a sense of humor when he gets like this--but he just said he wished he had some sandbags, and left the board to go over the front door on the porch.

BRANDY We argue with my Mom and sister sitting in the running car until finally he says I can work my shift if I promise to get right in my car and drive to Huntsville as soon as I get off work. He gets out another map and marks the route for me. It looks like spaghetti. He takes my mom and sister and drives off. I go to work. After work, I call him on my cell. He says they’re some-place-I-never-heard-of “making good time.” I hear Mom say they’re lost again and why doesn’t he just stop and ask directions. He says he has his map and knows exactly where they are, then whispers into the phone, telling me to "be careful of the Needville cutoff," then loudly he says to "be sure and follow the route he marked on the map, and to call him every hour."

RONNYE I asked him why sandbags and he took me inside and made me look at this computerized map that showed Angleton as coastal city if a 21-foot storm surge hit Freeport. He played it over for me, twice—10-foot surge and Surfside is gone, 18-foot surge and Freeport is under water, a 21-foot surge and Lake Jackson is . . . well a lake. He wanted to go to Surfside and see how many sandbags we could make with beach sand and mom’s pillowcases. I told him it was illegal to take sand from the beach, Mom would probably hide all the pillowcases if she knew what he was planning, and that this was a particularly crazy time to go to Surfside, so instead he made us haul most of the furniture upstairs.

BRANDY After I talk to Dad, I toss his spaghetti map in the back seat, pull out on 288 and drive straight to Huntsville, no traffic, no problem. I arrived at my aunt’s an hour before they did.

RONNYE Wednesday morning we load the car and go to Waco to stay with Grandma & Grandpa.

MUFFY We don’t leave until Friday morning. Mom made him check us into a really nice hotel in Dallas. She said if she couldn’t have a new couch, she was at least going wait out the hurricane in a nice spa.

* * *

MUFFY The hotel was nice. I wish we had stayed longer. Saturday afternoon, after the storm passed through Lake Jackson my Dad was in a big hurry to get back home. Driving down from Dallas, we ended up in the edge of what was left of Ike. It was pretty bad, rain, wind, even a little hail. The power was out when we got home. I think dad was glad.

BRANDY We drive back from Huntsville Tuesday the way I went up, straight down 288. I never did find out what took them so long going up. They don’t talk about it. I never did tell Dad I drove up 288 and there was no traffic. I don’t think he wanted to talk about that either. When we got home, there was no power

RONNYE When we get back to our boarded up house there is no power, no air conditioning, the weather is cool outside but the house is hot, muggy, and we just lay around like dead people, hot sweaty dead people. It’s like all our energy was used up getting ready for the storm and after the storm, we lay around in a boarded up house unable to move.

MUFFY When we got back, he went straight to the garage and started fiddling with the generator. He had his nose buried in a book trying to start it, trying to hook it up to the house. It took three hours. Finally, we heard it start and we had power. Everything came on. Then it sputtered and stopped . . . but we still had power. The power came on for our whole end of the street. We were some of the first in Lake Jackson to have our power restored. We didn’t need the generator.

RONNYE We eventually started taking down the boards so we could open the windows. Taking down boards, picking up branches. When the air came on it was like my dad got his second wind. He was out picking up the yard, hauling limbs to the curb. He got so into it he fixed the patio door and the back light—stuff mom has been after him to fix for months.

BRANDY My sister and I had to pick up tree limbs and pile them at the curb. She pretended we were building a fort. I got a call to go in. With everybody, eating out because they had no power, the restaurant really was shorthanded and needed me.

MUFFY That generator didn’t do us much good. I wished he’d gotten something that would pick up limbs and branches from the yard. Maybe he can trade it in on a new couch.

RONNYE Everything was okay--I mean I thought Dad would end up repainting the house or something--but everything was okay until he decided the big tree in our back yard needed to be cut down because “it would probably fall in the next storm.” He borrowed our neighbor’s chain saw and started on the tree, but something went wrong. Instead of falling across our back yard, the tree crashed through the power line behind our house, taking out the power for the whole neighborhood.

He went in the house right after it happened—made me sneak the borrowed chainsaw back into our neighbor’s garage. I think he’s hiding out, trying to pretend the tree fell over because of the storm.

I guess that’s kind of true.

On a Stick

I'm not a prolific poster, particularly when I'm in the middle of productions--which is most of the time--and especially when my involvement includes writing for a production. Without spending time trying to justify it's inclusion, thematically, in e-verities, I'm posting this and reserving judgment on it's place here for later.

It is a monologue I put together using bits and pieces from three student storm evacuee stories, several events reported in newscast, a little research about "on a stick" foods at fairs, my own memories of working a funnel cake booth at the Brazoria County Fair for several years, and my own imaginings. It is one of several segments I've written for our production, IKE, the *not so* Great Storm of 2008. In the production several monologues, duets, comedy skits, songs, dances, a few poems and special effects are woven together to make up the evening's entertainment. First conceptualized to include only student created work, it has evolved into something broader, including a whole company dance number to a brief excerpt from Gene Kelly's "Singing in the Rain," that delights me every time I see it. If you're nearby, Nov. 6, 7, & 8th, consider attending a performance.

So, the monologue we call,

On A Stick

First, we loaded up Dad’s truck and the van with everything we could haul down from the apartment and headed up to my Aunt’s in Houston. That was late Wednesday. Dad drove back down to work in Galveston Thursday and helped his boss, Virgil, board up his boat shop. Dad does fiberglass work on boats, repairs and stuff. He made a whole boat once, nearly by himself. By the time he got back up to my Aunt’s that night, there were twelve of us staying in the house. I gotta lot of cousins.

Friday mornin’ TV announcers were tellin’ us where we were in Houston had to evacuate, too close to the ship channel. It looked like Ike was going to roll right over us, so we loaded everything back up and drove north to my Uncle’s place south of Tatum. We drove up in our truck, the van and my Aunt’s two cars. Including us, the Houston folks, and some others that just showed up at my Uncle's from the piney woods, there was nearly twenty people bedded down. It was crowded. Like I said, I gotta lot of cousins.

The TV in the workshack was up high. We sat around on the floor, boxes, and workbench to watch the storm roll in over Galveston. In one of the reports, Dad was pretty sure he saw his boss’s boat shop flooded with the roof partly blown off. Maybe also it was on fire, he wasn’t sure. Even if he didn’t see it, the TV said there was six feet of water and mud in the buildings along the bayside and that had to include the boat shop.

Saturday, Dad kept trying to call in and couldn’t get Virgil. By then it looked like Ike was gonna roll right up over Tatum too as a tropical storm. Some of us was sleeping in the shop, and the little boys were outside in tents, so Dad decided we’d ease the crowdin’ and go to my Mom’s parents, Granmaw and Granpaw, in Dell City, Ok. He had to borrow money from my Uncles to buy gas for the van and the truck.

Dell City is near Oklahoma City, home of the State Fair of Oklahoma, and tho’ Granpaw and Granmaw are retired—I can’t remember from what—they run a couple of concession stands at the fair. They’ve run food concessions at the fair for longer than I’ve been alive. Mom said she use to work them when she was my age. It sounded fun. Granpaw said he could use help, so Mom and Dad went to work for him. I didn't get to go, at first. I had to sit around Granpaw and Granmaw’s house and watch my little sister, she’s a first grader. She’s okay. Only sometimes, she’s a brat, but she’s waay better than any of my cousins.

At the fair, Mom was makin’ Deep Fried Twinkies on a stick. Never heard of ‘em before. They poke a stick through a Twinkie, dip it in batter, and deep-fry it. Mom said when the fryer gets going they smell so good you can’t make ‘em fast enough for the people that crowd up. The smell just pulls people to ya. Granpaw says if you could figure out how to sell stuff by smell over TV, you could get "double dog rich." I don’t know what that means really, but it sounds good, I think, at least the rich part.

Mom brought home some broken fried Twinkies for us. They were good, but mom said they tasted better fresh hot out of the fryer. She couldn’t hardly stand the sight of them after the first day. I never saw her eat one.

Dad worked serving Bar B. Q. Baby Back Ribs—on a stick. He says that’s a funny thing about the fair. They sell all kinds of food on a stick. Granpaw says it’s a tradition. Says he was the first vendor to batter dip and fry a chunk of cheese on a stick about twenty-four years ago. He said he started the whole on-a-stick food thing. I don’t know if he really did, sometimes he just says things ‘cause they sound good. He said back then the only thing ya could get on a stick was corn dogs and some kinds of ice-cream.

By Tuesday, Granpaw said they needed more help in the concession stands and he’d rather pay family than foreigners, so I got to go work at the Oklahoma State Fair. I thought my sister would get to go too, but Granmaw an Mom did a funny thing. They enrolled her in the Dell City Public Schools. She didn’t like it much at first, but she didn’t get to choose. Mom told her it was just for right now and that she didn’t want to fall behind and disappoint Mrs. Taylor when we went back home. That’s her first grade teacher; she just loves Mrs. Taylor. That settled her down and she went right off to school without crying.

I fried Twinkies for twelve hours that first day. When one would break, I got to eat it. I ate a bunch the first hour. I didn’t break any on purpose. I was just learning how to do it and sometimes they just fell apart. After the first six hours, I couldn’t eat any more. After ten hours, I couldn’t hardly stand to smell ‘em. Now, it makes me a little sick just thinking about ‘em.

Standin’ over the fryer that long makes you feel greasy: greasy skin, greasy hair, greasy clothes. Grease would drip on the floor—you couldn’t help it when you got to frying them fast. It got so you could skate around on it, but Granmaw doesn't like foolishness while workin'. All the grease smelled like fried Twinkies. After you were good and sick of the Twinkies you got to thinking only crazy people would be buyin’ them to eat. I showered for an hour that first night and washed my hair three times.

My second day, Granpaw said I was working good enough to get a break for lunch and dinner. I didn’t have any money to buy food, couldn’t stand the Twinkies, and don’t really like ribs, so Granpaw taught me about “barter.” He fried up a perfect Twinkie and went to the back doors of the other concession booths, offering to swap for whatever they were making. He got me a turkey leg, on a stick of course. It was pretty good. After I learned how to barter, I could have almost anything I wanted. Sometimes other vendors would come knockin at our back door with something to barter and I didn't even have to go lookin' to trade. Usually I could find someone who wanted one or the other, Twinkies or ribs, so for the rest of the week I just bartered through the whole on-a-stick menu.

I made a list of everything I tried:

Twinkie on a stick, of course.

BBQ baby back ribs on a stick.

Turkey leg on a stick.
Cheeseburger on a stick.

Hoagie on a stick.
Hamburger on a stick.

I think they put some of the stuff on a stick just so they can say it's "on a stick."

Ice cream on a stick, four kinds!

Teriyaki beef on a stick.

Corn dog on a stick.

Pork Chop on a stick.
Pickle on a stick.
Funnel Cake on a stick.
Catfish on a stick.
Popcorn Ball on a stick.

Broccoli on a stick, really gross. Broccoli is still Broccoli.

Cheesecake on a stick.

Baked Potato on a stick.
Spaghetti on a stick, really strange.
Frozen grapes on a stick.
Deep-fried Oreo on a stick.
Bacon on a stick.
Caramel Apple on a stick.
Eggroll on a stick.
Choc covered banana rolled in nuts on a stick.

Gator on a stick, greasy, but taste like chicken.
Chicken on a stick, three different kinds, some of 'em didn't taste like chicken.

Sausage and roll on a stick.
Frog Legs on a stick.
Caramel Pear on a stick.
Pizza on a stick.
Steak on a stick.
Jalapeno on a stick.

Deep-fried garlic mashed potatoes on a stick.
Meatballs on a stick.
Cajun Quail on a stick.
Shrimp on a stick.
Lamb on a stick.
Cheese on a stick.

Fried Coke on a stick. It's kind of like a funnel cake made with Coke syrup in the batter and Coke syrup drizzled all over. Taste okay, but I like my Coke with fiz.

Pecan Pie on a stick.
Fried Marshmallows on a stick.
Deep-fried corn on the cob on a stick, really good.
Fried praline on a stick.
Fried peanut butter, banana, and jelly sandwich on a stick.

Fried macaroni and cheese on a stick. I took some to my sister. She liked them cold, yuck.

And my all time favorite,

deep-fried Snickers on a stick,
I had four one day, was sick all night.

* * *

I’m back now, but not for long. Mom and I came back in the van—spent a bunch of her Twinkie money on gas. We’re gettin’ the rest of the stuff from our apartment. There's not much that's ours. She’s been sneakin’ around actin’ all hangdog (that’s what Granpaw calls it). I think we still owe rent.

Dad finally got Virgil on the phone. The boat shop is closed—Virgil is taking the insurance money and retiring my Dad said. We’re going to be stuck stayin’ on with Granmaw and Granpaw for a while.

My sister is still in school in Dell City and begged me to take Mrs. Taylor this letter.

I’m withdrawing from B'wood today and going to Dell City next week.

The fair’s over, so no concession jobs ‘til next year. I might be able to eat a Fried Twinkie On A Stick again by then.

Dad’s going to work at Sooner Fiberglass in Oklahoma City.

Mom’s looking for a job.

My sister cried a lot, but I’m not gonna.