What I know for sure

Joe had a big business meeting, but his day started out badly when the alarm didn’t go off, there was no hot water in the shower, the coffee pot malfunctioned, and the elevator was out of service. By the time he got his car into city traffic, he was already stressed out. A few blocks away from the office, he pulled up behind a car at a red light. The driver was fidgeting with the rear-view mirror, not watching the light, and Joe thought, “Damn woman driver is gonna make me late.” Just then the light changed, but the woman not only didn’t drive forward, she got out of the car and went to fool around in the backseat of her car! Joe was about to lean on the horn, but thinking better of it, jumped out of his car and ran toward the woman, who by now was reaching fully across her backseat. Gearing up to give her a piece of his mind, Joe stopped suddenly when he saw that there was a baby in a carseat, and the baby was choking. The mother was performing CPR on her own child.

Going up or going down?

Best birthday: 16

What I asked for

I asked for a new purple ’74 Gremlin automatic and Baked Alaska (because I’d never had it), and I expected a relatively quiet family thing because I was rehearsing late for my first musical role — Louisa in The Fantasticks.

What I got

I got a surprise party with a houseful of friends, duck à l’orange, and a 1966 Mercedes 200D stick (calm down — it cost $200 and was not a purple Gremlin).

But the best part came when it was time for cake. My mother, bless her heart, came through the swinging kitchen door in her little dotted swiss half-apron, spatula in one hand, Steuben olive dish full of melted ice cream in the other, her ruby red lipstick smudged a skosh, and a few tasteful tears staining her lightly powdered cheeks.

Memories of Alabama, The Royals, and Alternative Weaponry

All-girl production of "Oliver," Birmingham, Spring '75

Dateline: Birmingham, Alabama, 1975. The all-girl production of Oliver closed as scheduled after a half-dozen sold-out performances. I had understudied Nancy and played the Strawberry Seller and Noah Claypole nightly while standing at the ready in case the star couldn’t go on. With just six performances, I knew the opportunity was scant, and I really didn’t care. I was in love with my life. Junior year was ending with huge opportunities looming for seniorhood — editor of this and performer of that — but first, one last summer at Camp Seafarer, a sailing camp in the coastal town of Arapahoe, North Carolina, where I’d been summering since I was twelve. This year I’d be a counselor, a privilege I would happily have met for free, but which nonetheless paid $135 gross for the twelve weeks I would spend away from home — more than enough to cover the round trip in my 1966 Mercedes 200D at 36 cents a gallon.

Coming of age, embracing change

A couple of years ago, I had dinner with a group of friends that included a 77-year old and her 25-year old grandson. The conversation turned to the relative merits of Facebook versus MySpace, and listening to the two generations talk in terms of acronyms and modern hieroglyphics (like smiley face icons), I found myself time-traveling back thirty years to a series of unforeseeable events — those that would notably shape the first half of my adult life.

Straight out of high school, I went to the University of Georgia and declared a journalism major. After my first semester, I sat down with my academic advisor, who said, “Alice, your work is good, your professors like you, everything’s fine. I just want you to know that there are no jobs for women in journalism.”

Visiting the inner circle of Hell — by subpoena

The Mother of the Bride walks into The Main Attorney’s office and says, “I’ve been wronged and I need help.”

“Come in,” says The Main Attorney, “and tell me your story.”

“Well,” she says, “Last year, my daughter was getting married and I needed a Mother of the Bride hat for the wedding. I went to the local hat shop, and there was a delivery of new hats just arriving. As The Hat Delivery Driver was unloading the hats, right away I spotted one that would be perfect with my Mother of the Bride dress, but it lacked the pink pearls it needed. I told The Hat Saleslady that I needed a hat that could have pink pearls added, and she assured me that would be no problem. As the hat was quite expensive for my budget, I called my Long-time Seamstress and asked her to come over and look at the hat before I bought it. She said right away that the hat could not be beaded because of something to do with the material of the hat. I don’t know about those things, so, of course, I have to rely on the experts.

And she was grateful

A storm was coming, but it passed, and she was grateful.

A second storm was coming, but it too passed, and she was grateful still.

A third storm was coming and she thought, it won’t come here. But it did, and she had fallen ill and was sorry to be a burden and grateful to have good friends to help her evacuate and offer her shelter at the last minute.

The office.

The storm came, and her office was among its first reported casualties, including all the computers and desks and files, and she was grateful that all her team had been out of the building when the waves took it.

She began to write and to send messages to her friends and neighbors so that they might share news as it emerged, and her messages went viral. And she was grateful to have the outlet.

My dream home is high above the ground, she said, where the storm surge can’t reach it. When I return, I will provide shelter and a meeting place for those who lost their homes. And she was grateful to have bought her dream home so that she could offer this safe place.

I was a Lasker Home Girl

As published in the August 2010 issue of The Islander Magazine.
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My name is Rebekah Boyle. I was born March 3, 1918, and my family moved to Galveston, Texas, when I was just five years old. My father left us soon after, and my mother found work as an upstairs maid for a prominent Galveston family. As it seemed she would be quite busy with her duties, it was arranged for me and my younger brother, Jamie, to stay at the Lasker Home for Homeless Children. My older half-brother, George, went to live with his father’s grandparents. I never saw him again and have always wondered what became of him.

The Lasker Home, 1019 16th St. (photo courtesy of Texas Historical Commission)

Jamie and I were picked up from our mother and brought to the Lasker Home by a stern but kindly lady named Mrs. Frenkel and a strange looking gentleman with a long beard, funny hat, dressed all in black called Rabbi Cohen. It was Thanksgiving Day in 1923, and before we could even unpack our small grips, the home became the scene of a wonderful dinner with turkey and all the trimmings, the likes of which Jamie and I had never seen. The meal was followed by a musical fairy playlet that betokened much thought and care and was played with great charm by the children, who seemed happy, and who we would come to know as our friends and siblings. The costumes, made of paper in the pastel and autumn shades, were unusually beautiful. They were designed by the matron, and made by the older girls. There were about a hundred people present that night, all having a festive spirit about them and treating us children like members of an especially large family, and I did think that maybe this place would not be at all an unpleasant place to be for a while.

What’s in a name?

Today a Facebook friend wrote, “How come women use multiple last names?”

What a sweet way to say, “Alice, what the heck is up with all your names????” Funny thing, if Facebook didn’t have length restrictions, it would’ve been longer. But since they do, my profile name is Alice Thoman Melott Robertson.

So just between us friends, the answer to the multiple names question is — Witness Protection Program.

An interview with Ida Smith Austin

As published in the July 2010 issue of The Islander Magazine.

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The Austin House (Oak Lawn) c. 1936

Sitting stately for the past century and a half on the corner of Market and 15th streets, The Austin House, with its double galleries and dual entries, pays homage to the at-one-time-equally important thoroughfares it faces. It is one of those iconic structures where tourists and residents alike stop to point and shoot every day. The home was already over 30 years old when Ida Smith Austin came to live in it and became its loving steward through the turn of the century and the Great Depression.

The Islander: Good afternoon Mrs. Austin. Thank you so much for meeting with me today. I’d like to start by asking you about your background. How did you come to Galveston?

Ida Smith Austin: I was born in 1858 in Lexington, Virginia, and educated at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton. At thirty-three, I came to Texas and began teaching Sunday school at First Presbyterian Church. Four years later, I married Valery E. Austin, a prominent real estate dealer and city commissioner.

Why Florida?

It’s a rude awakening. You get invited to an adult party and with those adults you ride a bus to the places that you frequent for lunch and whatnot during the day, but as you navigate the tight nighttime crowd, you hear snippets of high-pitched conversation and brush up against unblemished shoulders and look into the cloudless eyes of babes, and you realize that through no fault of your own, and no matter how much you might want to commune with these delightful striplings, you’ve simply crossed over, that the cool kids are still ten years older than you are, and that makes them 60-something, and those clear-skinned droids filling the evening venues are, as a generation, completely abstract to you (and/or you to them), and for the first horrifying time, you realize why Florida exists.

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Copyright © 2010 Alice Melott

Blue is the new red (it’s not what you think)

Blue is the new red.

When it comes to toenails, blue is the new red.

Here’s my thinking: There’s nothing any more natural or unnatural about nails being painted blue (or green or purple) than being the traditional red (or pink or orange). It’s paint. There’s nothing natural about it. We’re just used to red.

But I recognize that this is a generational fashion statement, and like white shoes after Labor Day and blonde hair after 60, it might take some getting used to for some people. I had this lightbulb moment while spending time with a woman of my mother’s generation, 80-ish, who looked at my purple toenails and remarked, “My, your nails are purple!” I don’t think that meant she liked them; only that she had noticed.

Hurricane planning: What not to do

This piece originally ran as a New Year’s story 100 days after Ike, but on the occasion of the First Day of Hurricane Season 2010 (625 days after Ike) as we all begin commiserating over evacuation plans, it seems worth a rerun. It’s good to have a plan.

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December 28, 2008

I haven’t told this story before.

My loft the week before Ike

On Wednesday, September 10, 2008, I decided to cash in my birthday massage coupon – it being six months old already and all – and since we thought the third storm in a month was headed south of Galveston, I thought what the heck? And if it decided to come closer to us, we still had ‘til Friday to get out. We’re well rehearsed at this stuff, and I deserved an afternoon off.

About twenty minutes into some pretty intense deep tissue acupressure on my neck – a luxury strangely akin to putting your head in a meat press, I’m guessing – the room started spinning. I mean SPINNING like I was a pencil let loose beneath a twisted rubber band. I stopped my guy and truly thought I was having a stroke. He kept working on me gently for another half hour or so, but the room kept going and before long, it was clear I was sicker than I had ever been in my life, and in no condition to transport myself to the bathroom, let alone home.