Not my Usual Blog I’m using this site as a web site for now in order to recruit a new Personal Assistant for Walker. If you’ve found your way here, you might want to click on the list on the right and read some of my stories about Down Syndrome. Or, maybe you just want to know more about the job as Walker’s personal assistant, and that’s fine too. Walker is going to be 47 this month, and lives at home with us in East Memphis. He works at Superlo Foods on Spotswood, and has been there almost 24 years. He enjoys attending a number of social events designed for adults with Special Needs, and also attends a Language Learning Lab and speech therapy at the University of Memphis. Since Walker doesn’t drive, he needs transportation to and from his various activities and work, and the State of Tennessee provides funding for his needs under what is called “the waiver”. The waiver has requirements, which his “Personal Assistant” mist work within, and these will be explained to you more fully if you are interested in applying for the job. The hours for the job are somewhat erratic, and somewhat, but not completely, flexible. They generally work well for a U of M student or someone else with a flexible schedule. You can work about 20 hours a week. The pay is around $20 an hour. There are some requirements and training required, CPR and First Aid certification, Freedom from Harm training, and a background check are among these. It will take several weeks to get you into the system. If you think you’re interested, I’d love to talk to you. Please respond to morrishome1@bellsouth.net or call me at 901761-1020 for an appointment. Thanks for your interest! Janie Morris

Wandering off my Usual Path This Morning

 I don't usually write about my childhood, so most of you probably don't know that I was brought up as the child of a politician.  After watching a good bit of the hearings on the January 6th hearings into the insurrection that my husband has stated, and I probably concur with, is the most significant event in our lifetime, I started thinking about what my daddy would think of politics today.

Daddy was a true-blue Democrat, but he would probably find the two parties of the forties and fifties unrecognizable today.  My earliest conversation with him about political parties occurred in 1953 or '54 when I declared that I wanted to vote for Eisenhower.  He told me first off that I couldn't vote because I wasn't old enough, and secondly, that Ike was a Republican, and we were certainly not Republicans.  I was crushed, I liked Ike!  He reminded me of my Popo, who had died not long before. I became aware of Ike when a friend gave me a pin with his picture on it, and Daddy had a Stevenson pin, and there was a decided difference in my young eye.  Never mind. The issue was settled.

When it came time to campaign, whether as an incumbent at the Public Service Commission, or as a wannabe Governor, Daddy was the most ethical of politicians.  I know he would be horrified at what he called "mudslinging" that goes on today.  In his day, it was considered taboo to so much as mentioned your opponent's name in a seech.  He thought it was giving the other guy free publicity.  He campaigned on his record of helping the "little guy".  He believed that keeping utility rates as low as possible while not making it impossible for the businesses who provided them to make a profit was his job, and he did it well.  Pretty much what the Dems espouse today.  He had a relatively small, but loyal following, mostly comprised of people he knew from he knew from his days at Auburn University or from the Marines.  

Daddy was proud of his family, and when campaigning, Mama was his biggest assett.  She was pretty and vivacious, and remembered names and faces.  He loved the trips when all of us appeared together on a platform stage in front of small crowds in little country towns.  He came up with the idea of travelling in a small heliocopter (pictured below) so that he could drop in on more of those towns, accompanied by a truck hauling a bed with a huge plywood book which two burly guys turned the pages on while we sat rather impatiently on the stage while he talked about his big ideas for the Great State of Alabama.

Years later when I was in college, I was working as a volunteer in the Student Government office when we were told that Barry Goldwater was planning a campaign stop on our campus and that we would be in charge of the event.  I didn't know Mr. Goldwater from a frog, but I was more than willing to pitch in as usual to make the event go smoothly.  I don't remember much about the visit, but I was impressed by his speech, and if I had been old enough, I might have voted for him. I had no idea what party he belonged to

Daddy didn't live long enough to see what has happened to the two parties, and he wouldn't recognize them if he had.  The hot button issue in his day was segregation and like almost everyone in Alabama, he supported it.  Basically, he would have been unelectable had he not.  

One night when I was home from Auburn, I can remember him being served a warrant after we had gone to bed.  A law officer knocked on the big brass knocker on our front door, waking all of us up.  He presented Daddy with a court order to take down the signs over the drinking fountains in all the bus stations designated "white" and "colored". Daddy, as President of the Alabama Public Service Commission was responsible for all public utilities, and the transportation system came under his control.  I had no idea what came of the case, whether he complied with the order or not, I just went back to school and forgot about it until years when I saw movies about the incident and saw the signs come down.  Daddy never talked about work with us.  He just did his job.

Daddy held his job from the mid-forties until the mid-seventies when he was unceremoniously dumped in the Republican landslide when all Democratic incumbents were thrown out with the trash.  For his many years of service to the state of Alabama he didn't receive so much as a plaque, as I remember.  I don't agree with the ideas he held back when, by any means, but I do know the time he grew up in and I understand that he was not a bad man.  The African Americans that came into our lives never had a better friend, always knowing they could come to help, night or day until the day they died, so I can't judge his politics by today's standards.  I hope you won't either.

I don't know what he would make of our former president, or of his followers.  I know he would be horrified at the attack on the Capitol, because he believed in upholding the law, and being honorable.  I think there are a lot of men like him out there who have been led astray by our former president.  I hope they will stop and re-center as some of them people I've seen testifying seem to have done once all the evidence comes out.  

There is no divine right endowed on anyone simply because they were born with white skin or a silver spoon in their mouth.  That part in The Constitution about all of us being created equal really means something.  Let's take a minute to think about that.

Blessings, Janie