Tall tales and memories

Good mornin’ folks. I woke up on this beautiful, cool fall day in the best mood. I made myself a cuppa coffee with some vanilla syrup in it and sat down to my computer to write this this week’s column all about tall tales you hear from your family growing up. We all have them — some little random thing that your grandparents or parents say in passing that makes you do a double take and say, “WHAT?”
For me, there was the time my mom said she kicked Jamie Lee Curtis’ ass, or when my grandma said she went to school with Willie Nelson or that one of the little people from Wizard of Oz was her neighbor and used to play with her kids at the playground.
These are all things that I had heard growing up and kept in my memory but never really thought about too much. Then as an adult, it made me stop and think: What tha fuck?!

These aren’t normal family stories.

My grandma on my momma’s side is a character. When I was little, she was this little mean-ass woman with a Pall Mall unfiltered sticking out of her mouth. Now that I’m an adult she’s still a little woman, but she has definitely mellowed in her old age. Now she is just funny to me.

I feel guilty that I don’t talk to her enough, so, to get some clarity on the above subjects, I called her this morning. For a good 30 minutes I grilled her like I was some sort of top journalist. Truth is, I’d ask one question, and she would tell me the story. As she spoke, I could feel her going into her memory, and I smiled as she told these old stories.

First I asked her if my mom actually kicked Jamie Lee Curtis’ ass. Since I wrote about this a few years ago, I will give the short version here:

Apparently, my pawpaw worked as a ranchhand on Tony Curtis’ ranch in Palm Springs in the 1960s. My mom was with him one day and saw Jamie Lee Curtis, Tony Curtis’ daughter, hitting a horse with a stick. Ma, who was just a kid herself — like 7 or 8 — told her to stop hitting the horse. Jamie Lee didn’t stop, so my mother proceeded to whoop that little bitch’s ass.

Needless to say my pawpaw was fired, but when I asked him a few years before he died about this story, he confirmed it was true and said he had never been as proud of my mother as he was on that day. And to this day, every time we see an Activia commercial or a Halloween movie, my Mom says, “I whooped her ass,” as she points to the TV.

My Grandma has now confirmed that story, too, and that story led her into the story about the little person from The Wizard of Oz.
Apparently Billy Barty — who I found out wasn’t in The Wizard of Oz but was in a shit-ton of other movies from the 1930s all the way to 2000 when he died (That little guy worked!) — lived in the same apartments as my grandparents and their kids. He would go to the nearby playground and play with all the children. Grandma said he was the nicest guy and was about the same size as the kids, so they loved to play with him. I remember him being on the The Love Boat, the Masters of the Universe movie and Willow. This apparently took place in Palm Springs, too.

The next story she told was about her going to school with Willie Nelson in Abbott, Texas. I have heard that she went to school with Master Bud Willie since, well, since forever, but in my head it was in a tiny little one-room school house. She was quick to point out that, in fact, it was a three-story school house, and the gymnasium and auditorium were on the third floor.

Grandma and Willie were in the same class room. I asked what she remembered about him, and she said he was a shy, sweet boy. She said the reason he always kept his hair long is because they couldn’t afford haircuts. The one time his daddy made him cut his hair, he cut it using a bowl, and Willie Nelson hated it so much he vowed he would never cut his hair again.

Of course, I don’t know how much of that is true. But it makes for a great story, so I believe it.

This last bit of family folk lore comes from my dad’s side of the family. Unfortunately, my Dad’s mom, Christine, passed when I was in the sixth grade, so I can’t call her up to ask her a few questions. That would be awesome if I could; she was a great lady.

So, the legend goes that the night that Bonnie and Clyde were killed, they asked my grandma Christine to go with them. She said she couldn’t because she had to watch the kids. I’m not sure who the kids were, maybe her brothers and sisters. My aunt Mary told me this story a thousand years ago. She said that Bonnie Parker was my Grandma Christine’s cousin.

We did “23&me” a few years ago, and I have not found any distant relatives with the last name Parker — yet. The Grandma I talked to this morning said that it could actually be true because lots of our relatives knew Bonnie Parker. She said everybody knew everybody back then and that she knew for a fact that Bonnie and Clyde hung out a lot under the Sylvan Street bridge near downtown.

It’s probably all tall tales and folklore, but it’s cool to feel a connection to the past. Do you have any family stories like these? If you do, let me know. My mind is already full of useless crap. Who needs facts when you can have hearsay and gossip?

It was nice to talk to my grandma today. Y’all need to call up a relative that has been on your mind lately. Do it — and remember to always love more, bitch less and be fabulous! XOXO, Cassie Nova.