Los Angeles — There is an enchantment that exists in this sun drenched land just as surely as the marine layer rolls in from the Pacific each evening. Like a mist the enchantment seeps into your heart and binds you to Los Angeles. I believe the magic ingredient is the sun. Mankind has an internal need to bask in sunlight and when we are deprived of it many suffer from depression, but has anyone ever studied what happens when we are exposed too much sunshine.

They should begin such a study and they should begin in Los Angeles. In America’s southern states, the sun and rain mate to dance like lovers creating an abundance of trees and rivers. This is not the case in Los Angeles. Here sunshine is as constant and steady as a clock’s second hand. The sun pours into the soul like an overflowing cup and speeds up the body’s energy.

After two winters in Los Angeles and it is, to say the least, a hypnotic place.  Until this recent monsoon, dawn means another day of sun shine in Los Angeles.

I contend that this constant exposure to sun over-charges energy cells creating a rare condition I call Too Much Sun (TMS). Due to the lack of abundant shade trees they receive massive amounts of sunshine. You just don’t find a lot of trees growing in deserts and LA is no exception. Palm trees that grow to heights of 150 – 300 ft. do not create shade nor do most cactuses.

TMS stokes Los Angelinos with too much energy causing a belief in immortality, ambition, dreamscapes and the sport of chasing youth. TMS causes a disconnect with reality. How else would you explain millions of people disregarding fault lines and earthquakes? Each day on their interstates Californians deny the law of physics by proving that two cars can occupy the same space. They paper clip their houses to the side of cliffs and are totally shocked when the homes roll downhill. Southern Californians believe that either a lawsuit or a plastic surgeon can cure all ills. Los Angeles is a parallel universe.

Southern California encourages eccentrics and individuality as surely as the South once did. Stir in Too Much Sunshine and you have a mix of people that can delight and stun the average person.

Los Angelinos like animals. Their legislature has stated that anyone who has a pet is not an owner but a guardian of the chosen pet. With the exception of restaurants and many shopping malls well-mannered pets are welcome in retail shops. Recently, Lee and I were visiting a boutique with my two small Pomeranians, Jipper and Sassy. While I was trying on a belt, the saleslady petted my dogs.

Jipper and Sassy are beggars. They roll over, perform tricks, and beg for attention. It is a sport with them. They were standing on tip toes begging for more pats and a scratch behind their ears. As I purchased the belt, Lee told the saleslady that they were rescued dogs. Her response was, “My goodness, what do they rescue, cats?” Certainly, this was an LA Moment and a good example of TMS.

Later, we were carrying the dogs while descending to the parking lot on an escalator. One lady leaned over the top of the escalator as we descended and said, “Your dogs are Pomeranians. I know because I have a German shepherd.”

I was still pondering that comment when the lady in front of us turned and said, “Well, I was just thrown out of Nordstrom’s because of my dog. Were you?” She was dressed in leather, wore an abundance of jewelry and carried many packages. I kept looking for her dog, but none of the packages were moving and I could not see a dog anywhere. As we were waiting for the valet to bring our cars to the front, she turned to talk to us. When she did, there was a very small dog snuggled in her cleavage. My first instinct was to point at it.

She pulled her out and introduced us to Bijou, a fawn colored Applehead Chihuahua. Bijou could not have weighed much more than a pound, but she was dressed in a pink tutu and a jeweled collar. Before I could ask if the dog could dance, the valet drove up in a large white Hummer and held the door for her to get into the car. In a flash, Bijou was tucked back into her spot close to her owner’s heart and they drove off to another adventure. Wouldn’t you consider that this was a case of TMS? I think so.

Not long ago, we went to movie theatre near the campus of UCLA. It was a wonderful old art deco theatre. The theatre reminded me of the Carolina Theatre in downtown Charlotte when I was young. The ticket taker was old enough to have been working at the theatre since the 1940s. I just hope they keep an oxygen tank nearby for him.

People were filing into the theatre, locating their seats and talking softly as we waited for the movie to begin. We had seated ourselves at the end of a row. A couple came to the row and we stood to let them enter. The man was very nice looking with a shock of gray hair. He looked very familiar and I assumed he was a television commentator. His wife moved to slide past us, but he said, “Before we sit down, may I ask something. Are you a Democrat?”

Well, he had asked me not Lee, so I responded, “Why yes, I am. I am a raging Democrat.”

He smiled, congratulated me and sat down by me. I kept trying to figure out who he was. He had a deep voice and I figured I knew him from television. Just as the curtain parted and the previews began, I knew who he was. This amiable man was former presidential candidate, Michael S. Dukakis who obviously suffers from TMS.

I leaned over and said, “I voted for you for President.”

Recently, I had dinner with several friends. The food was peppered with attitude and laughter. It was a meal that left me warm on the inside long after we had parted and gone to our separate homes. I have shared many dinners with these ladies. Long ago, I dubbed us The Grumpy Old Ladies of Shuffletown.

First, let me make one thing clear…the GOLS are not grumpy or old. Well, they are only old if you are a reader under the age of forty. GOLS are usually women who are older than fifty enjoying their wisdom years.

GOLS have, in fact, reached an age where we are still independent and free– not locked up in a mauve-painted room wearing a straight jacket is proof aplenty that we have survived and surpassed. Most of us are past the travails of menopause; PMS is a choice; you see, we are Broads.

Let’s define the term, “Broads.” A broad is any female who is not a “chick.”

A broad is not a “tomato.” A broad is harder to push around that a younger woman. I do not consider the term, “Broad” derogative. It is an earned title.

A broad is a force to deal with. It is popular today to refer to the three ages of women as maiden, mother, and crone. Well, I prefer Broads to crones, but I find no offense in crone. It is just that the term “crone,” doesn’t sound like fun. A broad is a woman past the age of fifty enjoying her wisdom years; a broad is wise, stubborn, and has an attitude.

Dorothy L. Sayers was speaking to broads when she said, “Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.”

Broads are good neighbors, grandmothers, aunts, and friends; broads have faced hard winters and each one has a story.

Broads are fun. Broads are the girlfriends you meet along the way; the women who sit with you when life is hard and hold a lantern to light the way; they are women who giggle with you in irreverent places; ladies who wink at life. Broads are quilters who have stitched their bits and pieces of their lives together as required by circumstances, adjustments and reconstruction. Broads have hard earned wisdom.

These women are real; beautiful in many ways, but as you know the best people are often not golden and bright, nor perfect and unflawed. Like the Velveteen Rabbit, some of us are covered in rust and have broken nails.

Bette Davis was a broad. She knew the advantages of being a broad. She said: “If you want a thing done well, get a couple of old broads to do it.” All friendships are blessings. Friendships with broads are the spice of life.

The recent dinner with the GOLS reminded me of the importance of women companions. The GOLS are a pride of individuals who know the secrets of life. But we each only know one of life’s secrets. This is why we need many girl friends. A circle of friends provides a pool of wisdom to draw upon. Women gather in circles because there is always room for one more, always room for another viewpoint.

I am beginning this New Year in gratitude of the women foot soldiers I have met along my life’s journey. While Hollywood is handing out Golden Globe Awards and magazines are selecting people of the year for their covers, I would like to suggest that you take time to honor a broad. Take a broad to lunch.

In the spirit of Bette Davis, I am going to take time to honor several women I know who have a twinkle in their eye and a wink for the future with a Grand Old Broads Award.

My first award would go to Frances Haines who in her 90s is an artist and recently held an art showing that raised more than $3,000.00 for charity and still is very quotable. I recently heard her say, “I got my wings clipped. But I can still paint; I can still see; I can still hear; I’ve got my teeth; you just take what you have and do the best you can with it.”

I would like to honor Belle Banks. Belle is the gracious hostess of the antebellum mansion, Cedar Grove. She writes a weekly column for the Lake Norman Times. Belle recently gave her last public performance in the role of Mrs. Santa Claus. In her weekly column, she wrote, “We were two old dames who had a blast together.” Recently, I was a guest in Belle’s home and she is still having a blast. Sonia Morrison, who celebrated her 80th birthday and retired from her job so she could have more time to take more cruises and do more dancing.

There are so many other wonderful broads in my life and I am grateful for each one. I am so appreciative for the Grumpy Old Ladies of Shuffletown. They entered my life and blessed it with shared laughter.

Thank you to all the women who touch my life. Thank you for your spunk, kindness, patience and wisdom. Thank you for your enduring friendship and for sharing life as it passes.

Ma Joad said it best in John Steinbeck’s novel, Grapes of Wrath. She said: “Well, Pa, a woman can change better than a man. A man lives – well, in jerks. Baby’s born or somebody dies, and that’s a jerk. He gets a farm or loses it, and that is a jerk. With a woman, it’s all in one flow, like a stream – little eddies and waterfalls, but the river, it goes right on. Women look at it that way.”

Broads have experience with the river of life. Take a broad to lunch; sit back, learn, laugh and, most of all, enjoy.

— From Ferry Tales, a monthly column by Judy Rozzelle in the Mt. Island Monitor, Huntersville, NC

God Bless Aunt Nancy and all the Other “Aunt Nancys”

Mostly, I didn’t like Aunt Nancy and mostly, she didn’t like me. At least that is how it was for most of our lives.

Until I was fifteen, she was the family “Old Maid.” She was uptight, devout, priggish, and wore her hair in tight waves around her face. She led an organized and scheduled life. She was close to forty when she married, but marriage didn’t change her too much. She and Uncle Willis had a quiet marriage and after a couple of years, they moved into separate bedrooms.

When I saw her coming, I saw trouble. I suspect that as a child, I represented a world she would never know and wasn’t the least interested in.

I was a slob, tardy, rowdy, and most often, had a remnant of chewed bubble gum in my uncombed hair. My behavior never upset my parents as much as it upset Aunt Nancy. My existence just plain exasperated Aunt Nancy. For example, when she was the teacher of my third grade Sunday school class, she instructed us to memorize a Bible verse to be recited the following week. The next Sunday, I was the first person she called on; I stood and recited, “Jesus wept,” the shortest verse in the Bible. While the other children snickered, Aunt Nancy fought back tears and, I suspect, prayed for lightening to strike me.

Aunt Nancy’s professional career had been in banking, but in her retirement years, she had me. On my third and final return to Shuffletown due to divorce, like a screw being anchored in hard wood, I was spiraling hard into a depression.

Yet, at the end of her life and the renaissance of mine, it was Aunt Nancy who picked me up, dusted me off and set me upright, again. And I am grateful.

She was there for me. During those dark days, Aunt Nancy became my support group. She didn’t like me any better, nor I her, but during that time we set that aside and accepted that we were family. Unnoticed by either of us, we began to care for each other. We suspended animosities and Aunt Nancy wrote my salvation in indelible ink into her life mission statement.

I led a hard life back then. Wrong choices led into prescription drug addiction, aching loneliness, and eventually cancer. During my recovery, Aunt Nancy was my constant support and companion. I found comfort just sitting beside her and talking. She became the Beatrice of my life, my journey. She had helped me structure a budget to pay medical bills. She balanced my checkbook, helped me set up payment plans with doctors and brought my life into balance.

She kept a straight back chair alongside her big, tan corduroy, overstuffed chair where she sat each day. She kept a pillow for her elbow in the chair. She broke her elbow on a trip to Disneyland with a Christian tour group. The old injury often ached – it was an unpleasant reminder that this same Christian tour group never sent her flowers–while she was in the hospital–in another state–among strangers; nor did they send flowers, best wishes, or acknowledge her return home to Charlotte.

When I came in, I would pick up the cushion and sit down in the straight chair. I guess I wanted to be near her. On the other side of her chair was the telephone within arm’s reach. She spoke on the phone for more than fifteen minutes each hour, except, of course, when her favorite daytime soap was airing.

We rarely had meaningful conversations. We talked about regular things; family news, the weather, what the preacher said on Sunday, and who was sick in the community. I am not sure that we really got a long any better. I think I mostly had learned to steer clear of subjects that would irritate her. I never stopped being afraid of her and I always felt just one step away from reminding her of the child who memorized the Bible shortest verse, Jesus wept.

I needed her; I had begun to care dearly for her; and it became important to earn her love and her respect. Aunt Nancy represented all things good and virtuous. In those times, when I was a slaying dragons, Aunt Nancy sat by me and set aside her judgments of me.

And the times I recall most fondly of those years are Friday afternoons. During the work week, she babysat my little dog, Gracious. I would drop Gracious off each morning and pick her up each afternoon.

In the morning, she and Uncle Willis would always be eating breakfast, I would open the door, set Gracious on the floor, and Aunt Nancy would lay down her wheat toast, slide away from the table, pat her lap and Gracious would run to her. In the afternoon when I arrived, Gracious would be in her lap sleeping while Aunt Nancy watched the news or talked on the phone. It was an arrangement that pleased everyone.

When winter passed and the days became longer, Aunt Nancy would encourage me to stay and visit especially on Friday afternoons. My lingering became a ritual. On a yawning Friday afternoon I would step out of my car and shortly, Aunt Nancy would step lightly down the back door steps. Gracious would bound into the freedom of the yard and I would retrieve two webbed lawn chairs from the storage shed near the car port. Then, we sat in silence, mostly, and wait for the sky to change from blue to orange to blackberry to twilight.

In the gloaming, this twilight time, we renewed family threads and connections. Too old to worry about the differences in our lives, we would slide into the quiet comfort of our company. Again, our conversations covered many things, community, family, births, marriages, and the infirm. During these afternoon visits, Aunt Nancy talked to me about change and if I had a penny for every time she said: “change was the only constant in life”, well, I could pay cash for a Lexus.

Aunt Nancy understood that nothing in life was permanent except the frailty of the human soul and the necessity of faith. As day faded into evening, Aunt Nancy led me back to earth.

Old habits die hard and sometimes, we disagreed. During this time, I returned to writing and each time an article was published, Aunt Nancy would take umbrage with some fact in the essay. We debated the most trivial of things and facts never got in the way of Aunt Nancy’s opinion.

We even argued over when the road in front of her house was paved. To settle the argument, I called the public library’s reference desk to settle the dispute. They confirmed my side of the argument. Aunt Nancy’s reply was, “Well, you can’t believe everything people tell you.”

Aunt Nancy and her home became my safe haven. A place I felt welcome, even when she would turn to me and say: “I am tired; now, go home.”

In too short a time, Aunt Nancy had become the only surviving member of our father’s siblings. She became the lynchpin, the cog that held the Rozzelle family together. She was the clearing house for family information. When times began to change in our world; when old home places were sold; when commerce came to the crossroads and Shuffletown Grocery was sold; and Rozzelles began to move away from the area, she comforted us. Still, as she continued to remind us, “The only constant is change.”

My sister, Jill, reminded me last week that it had been a year and a half since Aunt Nancy died. It doesn’t seem possible that it has been that long. Yet, it also seems like a century since I unfolded a lawn chair and sat with her at sunset. Since her death, it and the world I once shared with my sister and brother exists only in small pockets around Shuffletown. There are only remnants of places where we were once family. We have drifted, like planets escaping gravity, to far away places.

I was acutely aware of this, last month, when I stopped at the red light at Shuffletown crossroads. The crossroads were dark. There were no porch lights on. There are no front porches, left. Aunt Alma and Uncle Ed’s home is gone from the southwestern corner. Uncle Johnny and Aunt Mutt’s house in the Northwest corner stands empty and waits for the next chapter. The swimming pool behind Cousin Phyllis’ house is empty and looks lonely.

Once upon a time, in Aunt Nancy’s era, if you lived more than a mile or two from the crossroads of Mt. Holly-Huntersville Rd. and Rozzelles Ferry Rd.you lived out of town. Now, I live three time zones away.

Kinfolks and generations of neighbors can be too real and too challenging for many of us. But change has found us and, as it turns out, Aunt Nancy was right about many things.

Change is constant and once it begins in earnest, it picks up speed. Sometimes, I call my sister and brother for no reason other than to remind myself that once we were neighbors.

When Aunt Nancy died in June of 2004, she took with her an era. As surely as the closing of her casket, the door to a time and the memory of a place disappeared into obscurity. It seems as though she had departed a hundred years ago. This is an ode to Aunt Nancy and to all the Aunt Nancy’s of the world: there are too few of them left. If you listen to them…they will right your world.

Ferry Tales, Mt. Island Monitor

Gather ’round, come with me back to a time when the land hereabouts was still wild and unknown; to a forest filled with wolves, wild turkey, and bobcats, where the roots of ancient oak trees stretch across the land like bony fingers and the unrestrained Catawba River runs deep and unbound through the land. Not far from here, an army of ghosts and angels serves and protects a sacred church.

The year is 1865 and the Civil War is drawing to a close. Robert E. Lee has surrendered, but Union soldiers have been ordered to destroy the Confederate Navy Yard in Charlotte (although Charlotte, obviously, is not a port, the Confederate States of America constructed a naval production facility in the city. Weapons, ships and other items for the Confederate Navy were built in Charlotte then shipped elsewhere.) Four units of hard-riding, hard-hitting Union cavalry, calloused by the war, are thundering towards Charlotte. Their instructions are to ride at night and hide during the day. Given orders to burn the armory and destroy all who try to stop them, coming from four different directions, they rode like the wind. It was even rumored that Gen. Sherman was riding up from Columbia to meet them.

Within two days, three of the Union companies were captured by the rag-tag Confederates operating in the area. Only one unit still rode on, towards Charlotte, and they came from the western mountains of North Carolina. They had made it into Gaston County and, on this foggy and cold morning, they were not stopping.Funeral fight

Coincidentally, at daybreak, the members of St. Joseph’s Mission are gathered to bury John Cox, one of their own. A Civil War soldier, John Cox had been killed defending Richmond, Va. His body had been placed in a rough wooden coffin and brought by rail and wagon to the church yard.

Almost every member of the church was present, but still there were less than 20 people in attendance, including women and children. Most of their men had been killed in the war and the hard winter had taken its toll on the women and children left behind.

Sgt. Pierce Cahill was home nursing recent battle wounds, but he was present for the funeral. He was leaning against a tree trunk in sorrow and pain. Only the mourning doves broke the silence with their lamenting call.

The Union soldiers had not made good time during the night. The fog was as thick as pea soup and it was impossible for the young lieutenant leading them to see his soldiers. Only the sound of the horse’s hooves assured him that they were there at all. Their horses had stumbled on the rutted roads and a thick fog shrouded each rider in a lonely damp world. They were weary, hungry and wet.

In the original plan, the riders were to ford the Catawba River above Rozzelles Ferry, but the fog caused them to miss the turn. However, they had among them a sympathetic southerner who was guiding them to Thompson’s Ford on what is now NC Highway 73 that runs by St. Joseph’s Mission. Here they would turn south, towards Charlotte.

As the riders followed the wagon trail toward Thompson’s Ford, John Cox’s body was being lowered into his grave. An owl hooted and Sgt. Cahill glanced up, suddenly, sensing danger.

“Hide. Hide now,” a voice hollered from the direction of the road. A young man rode out of the mist. He jumped off his horse and said, “There are Union soldiers coming this way. They are armed and dangerous. You will be killed.”

John Cox’s body was abandoned and the women and children rushed inside the church. Sgt. Cahill took command. He ordered the men and boys to crouch behind the rock wall with their weapons. They waited in the mist until they heard the riders. As the riders rounded the curve above the church, the sun burst through the clouds revealing the Union soldiers. The rag-tag militia stood and fired the only round of ammunition they had.

Fast retreat

The Union lieutenant suddenly held up his hand, hollered, and halted the soldiers. He turned his horse and rode wildly back down the road shouting for his soldiers to follow. The Union soldiers did not fire a shot in the direction of the church. They rode quickly back into the curtain of fog.

The sun disappeared behind a grey cloud and the fog closed around the retreating soldiers. They rode as if they were being chased by the Devil himself. Not one shot was fired in the direction of the rock wall at St. Joseph’s Church. Not one soldier or horse was hit by the church’s rag-tag militia.

The Union soldiers were captured shortly thereafter, having ridden right into a Confederate Army unit led by General Robert Johnson. When the chaos, shooting and shouting ceased, General Johnson asked the Union Lieutenant what had they been running from in such a hurry?

The Lieutenant replied that down the road at a small church they had been fired upon by more than 60 men in white uniforms from behind a rock wall surrounding a church. He recounted how two rows of these ghostly apparitions had challenged them as they rode towards Thompson’s Ford and, to save his men, he had hastily retreated. General Johnson sent a soldier back to the church and discovered it had been only a few men defending the church, the mourners, and John Cox’s body. The defending force was far short of 60 and none wore white.

Two stories

I do not doubt that there was a ghostly army.

You see, this story comes by way of Carl Heil, the church’s faithful caretaker. He was told this story of that fateful and mysterious day by a 90-year-old woman who stopped by the church one afternoon to visit the gravesites of relatives. She was accompanied by her 70-year-old nephew who had driven her to the church, from Georgia.

It was by chance that Carl was at the church that day when the woman arrived. He listened, amuse and amazed, as the women told their tale. It was only after the left, however, that the story began to take on a new meaning.

Carl remembered a similar tale of the Civil War that he had heard as a child. It was an account of the same battle as told by his great grandfather, Edward Craver. As the two tales began to merge in his mind, Carl began to shiver. Suddenly, he knew that this tiny North Carolina church that he had served so faithfully was the same church where his great-grandfather had once confronted ghostly soldiers.

You see, Carl Heil grew up in Syracuse, N.Y. His great-grandfather, Edward Craver, fought for the Union Army in the Civil War. He had mustered into the army at Fort Gibson, N.Y. Carl remembers how his great-grandfather loved to tell of his adventures during the war. There was one story he would always avoid, unless his great-grandfather’s wife teased him into telling it.

“Go on,” she would say, “tell them about the church in North Carolina where your company encountered 60 soldiers dressed in white uniforms.”

Finally, his great-grandfather would admit that he had been with Union soldiers that had confronted a strange and ethereal army behind the rock wall of a small church in North Carolina. But he would not talk further about the incident.

“My great-grandmother always told him that they must have been drinking Southern moonshine,” Carl says. “Everyone is dead now and I can’t prove this tale, but I know it is true.”

In mathematics, two angles that fit together perfectly are said to coincide. Is it coincidence or providence that Carl Heil, a native of Syracuse, N.Y. and resident of Los Angeles retired to Charlotte to become the caretaker/guardian of St. Joseph’s?

I choose to believe that the same angels and saints that protected St. Joseph’s that foggy morning brought Carl full circle. Today, they stand with Carl protecting and caring for this holy place, this graveyard of children, fathers, grandfathers, mothers and grandmothers.

Ferry Tales Column, Mt. Island Monitor