Thomas Tate Archives - Page 2 of 9 - grace grits and gardening

Last Laugh.

January 31, 2014 By Talya Tate Boerner 15 Comments

Rivercrest High School, Wilson, Ar

“Where were you today?” Daddy asked me at supper.

Momma shot me a look of whatdya mean where was she today?

“I was at school, the place I go every day. Where did you think I was?”

“I thought you were over by the St. Francis floodway. I followed a yellow corvette all afternoon. It wasn’t you.” He shook his head and grumbled as though bitterly disappointed he didn’t catch me messing up.

“Of course it wasn’t me.”

I knew better than to skip school. In Mississippi County even when you didn’t know what you were doing, everyone else did.

Grace Grits and Gardening

This post was written especially for Write Tribe 100 Words on Saturday. Prompt: She Had The Last Laugh.

Today was my Daddy’s birthday. He would have been seventy-seven. He died twenty years ago…

Thomas Tate

Y is for Yellow

April 29, 2013 By Talya Tate Boerner 27 Comments

Yellow is just not your color, Momma always told me.

It wasn’t that she was being rude. She was only trying to save me from looking washed out and jaundiced.

None of the Tate girls can wear yellow, she said. It clashes with our mousy hair and freckly skin.

But Momma, Momma, this is key.

I love yellow. It’s sooooo me.

What about to school? You see,

a Keiser YELLOWjacket, I shall be…

Could I, should I, late at night?

No never, ever. It won’t look right!

The color of summer sunshine, yellow is lemony fresh clean. I’m all about clean…

My kitchen is painted happy yellow. Sweet broom and yellow bearded iris fill my flower beds. Yet rarely do I wear the color…

As was typical in our family, Daddy never got the memo about our yellow problem. During his mid-life crisis, before I was even old enough to drive, he bought me my first car.

A could-it-be-any-brighter(?) YELLOW corvette.

Oh the irony.

talya

Look at the stars. Look how they shine for you, and everything you do. They were all yellow. —Coldplay, Yellow.

Musical Pairing:

Yellow Submarine, The Beatles

almost done!

Y is for Yellow.

T is for Texas!

April 23, 2013 By Talya Tate Boerner 18 Comments

As a child, Texas held a certain mystique for me. Larger than life and certainly larger than our corner of Northeast Arkansas, the Lone Star State was home to giant belt-buckle-wearing cowboys, gun-toting Texas Rangers and ♫♫Davy, Davy Crockett… King of the Wild Frontier♫♫♫.

Texas was the place of tall tales where crude oil flowed like the Mississippi River.

historic White Elephant Saloon, Ft. Worth, Tx

Papa Creecy shot a wild boar while hunting in Texas. Like any proud hunter, he stuffed it and hung the beast on the wall of his den. The hog’s sharp teeth and wild eyes scared most of my friends but not me. I thought it was neat, just like Texas.

I was planning to live there someday.

When Daddy gassed up the Oldsmobile and announced we were headed to Mexico for summer vacation, the drive through Texas took DAYS, as though we traveled by covered wagon. Our first night was always spent in Texarkana, a town that straddled both Arkansas and Texas.

Do you want to sleep on the Arkansas side or the Texas side, Daddy asked? TEXAS, we cheered! The air was different at the motel on the Texas side.

photo courtesy of bizjournal

Don’t say a word until we get through Houston, Momma warned us the second afternoon of our journey. Daddy was crazy-nervous driving in all that bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic underneath tangled overpasses that reached high into the hot Texas sky. My little sister and I sat quietly in the back seat coloring. We barely moved or breathed until we came out on the other side of the city.

Queuing up to drive across the border into Mexico, I was sure we would be arrested for smuggling. What we might have been smuggling, I wasn’t sure, but I felt certain we were guilty of something. After a lengthly wait and inspection by border agents waaaaay scarier than Papa Creecy’s wild boar, we entered and exited with no problema.

Texas always held a certain mystique for me. Someday I was planning to live there.

And then I did.