Tommye Lu Foresman Pritchartt: A Talented Lady

Photo by Howard Pritchartt, Jr.  Tommye Lu Foresman, 60 years old.

 My father's third wife was Tommye Lu Foresman from Alligator, Mississippi.  Yes, there really is an Alligator, Mississippi up in the Delta.  My father and Tommye Lu had an ⏤ let's say, interesting ⏤ relationship.  It was all love/hate and drama.  They both enjoyed a good argument.

And Daddy was enchanted not only by pretty women, but especially pretty women who sang and played the piano.  Lots of fights accompanied by lots of music.

They would have these huge fights that echoed off the walls of the huge house they inhabited in the country.  Once, when I brought my baby girl home to visit,  they were having a particularly lively argument.  They sounded like dinosaurs fighting, and the house shook with fear.

"Oh, shut up, you sonofabitch!"

Once Daddy said she got mad at one of her sons and called him a sonofabitch. He would remember and fall into helpless gales of laughter.

I had begun to think bitch and jackass were terms of endearment.

When you grow up in these environments, you don't realize how unusual it is.  You think all parents are like that.  But on a trip home and seeing my daughter's little chin quivering, I demanded:

"If you two don't stop shouting, I'm taking Annet and staying someplace else.  It's scaring her."

They were well behaved the rest of the day.

Daddy told me that once their friend Martha Curry had been out visiting.  As often happened Daddy and T Lu got into it.  Finally, Martha said, "Look. I've got to go."  I'm sure she just wanted out of there.

"No! No," screamed TLu.  "You can't leave me here with him.  He'll kill me!"

"No, he won't," said the all-suffering Martha."

T-Lu had met Martha the day she was supposed to marry Daddy and ⏤ in true T-Lu style ⏤ had forgotten to make a hair appointment.  She came running into the salon in her wedding dress, begging the stylist to do her hair.  Martha offered her her own appointment and they were fast friends after that.  Daddy and TLu hosted a wedding at their house for her daughter's wedding.

(Back to the fight)

"Well, then listen," said Tommye Lu, "...if you haven't heard from me in two hours, call the sheriff."

Martha dutifully promised she would do so and drove home where it was quiet.

A few minutes later, the fight is over and forgotten about.  They BOTH did that.  You'd think they'd never speak to you again and five minutes later, it's over.

"We were having champagne out here on the front porch," said Daddy, the corner of his lip slightly curled.

"All of a sudden we hear this, 'WOOP! WOOP! WOOP!,  and red and blue lights flashing."

'Oh, my God!  I forgot to call Martha!" Tommye Lu exclaimed.  And there was the sheriff, waving and laughing at the nicest domestic violence call he'd ever received.

Sometimes their fights would get so bad, they'd each go to a lawyer and have divorce papers written up, ready to use them at a moment's notice. They kept them in separate bank boxes. Daddy went so far as to buy Tommye Lu a house downtown in the garden district.  He called it "Her Pouting House."  They could fight and she could go stay at her pouting house for a week or two.

Tommye Lu liked to talk while she prattled about the house.  But my father really enjoyed his solitude. He also had his own little hideaway.  Just a few feet into the woods, Daddy put a small metal shed.  He brought a cot into the room. He had a window-unit air conditioner for summer and a space heater for the winter.  He covered the windows with cardboard so she couldn't see the lights at night.  

See, Daddy knew that Tommye Lu was scared to death of snakes and would never, ever, not even once, step into those woods.  So even though it was but a few feet from the house, she never knew about it.  He would lie on the cot, read the newspapers, listen to a portable radio, pass wind and open a can of sardines and eat an onion.  Or a can of Spam.  Eddie Albert had nothing on Howard Pritchartt for the joys of farming.

Then one day I got a call from Daddy, saying he'd been on the tractor all day and his lower leg was swollen and hurting.  So he went to see Dr. Tillman the next day who told him it was a blood clot and he had to be admitted and stay perfectly still.  He would send him up to Jackson by ambulance the next day.

The night before they were to leave, Daddy said he was lying in bed. 

"Tommye Lu had been upset all day because she'd dropped a mirror and it broke.  She believes that stuff and had been upset all day."

Tommye Lu had just stepped out of the shower and was walking toward Daddy when she suddenly stumbled and grabbed her head.

"Baby?  You all right?"

"I'm really dizzhzhhhy," and one side of her face went limp.  She'd always had high blood pressure, and they both knew what had happened.  He rushed down to her side where she lay, naked and afraid.  She looked up at him and pulled his face down to hers and gave him a long, hard kiss.

"She was just lying there, naked.  She looked so beautiful, but we both knew this was bad."

Despite the divorce papers, the fights, the disappointments and the joys, the fun, the laughter, the good times and the bad, there was still so much love.

"Where the hell is the ambulance?" he cried.  

It had been 45 minutes.  He called again. They said they were having trouble finding it.  This was before Garmin, iphones and google maps.  Finally, an hour and a half later, they arrived and had her flown to the hospital in Jackson and admitted in ICU.

Meanwhile, Daddy had his own blood clot and was riding by ambulance to the same hospital.  He was on one floor; she was on another.  

"They won't let me go see her," he said, pulling at my arm.  I'd just flown in from Los Angeles.  I'll go up and check on her and I'll be back." 

This went on for several days.  My stepbrothers, Tom and Ed Foresman, were by her side the whole time.  But after a few days, they told us she was beyond help.  I had to leave Daddy in the hospital.  I can't remember why now but I had to get back for something.

A couple of weeks later, Daddy was up and walking, and Tommye Lu passed quietly away.  I remember it was in October.  1995, perhaps?

I'd never seen real grief before that day.  It shocked me.  I'd been there when his parents, his friends, would pass away.  But I'd never seen his shoulders so slumped, his face so downcast. He was shattered in every way.

"I never understood it before," he said. "I understand it now."  

He would read the names in the funeral register, over and over noting who hadn't come, hadn't called.  To him, friendship was sacred.  I don't think he ever forgave them.  At least it gave him someone to be angry at.

One night he was going through pictures.  "I remember this day," he said "It was cold outside. We'd had an ice storm.

I woke up and looked outside.  She was out there holding King Cat (her Siamese) and was wearing a fur coat.  God, you know that was the only thing she had on?  Nothing else.  The sad, faraway look in his eyes spoke of a morning spent doing intimate, unspeakable things, a fire burning in the fireplace while the trees snap and drop branches and fall all around the forest, and thinking that life is just perfect.  And it was.  For awhile.

The End of Everythihg

 The fire didn’t realize the strength of water

until she killed him.

The water didn’t realize

the strength of radiation before she evaporated

like a magician’s rabbit (without the wiggle), and began to complain about the sky’s all-powerful portal

— which, as everyone knows —

will kill us all.

By Elodie Pritchartt, August 18,2023

Dreamscape

Last night I dreamed I was in 
India.

Elephants and houses had

memories as long as being.

A phantom shook my shoulder.

I tried to wake,
but my dream was syrup.
I could not swim up.

I felt you touch me,

and tried to stir.

I think death will be like this:

Sticky, sweet, heavy.

And silent as a sigh.

~ Elodie Pritchartt

April 7, 2014

On the First Cold Day of 2018

Today felt like first winter when you're kind of delighted it's Christmastime but the sky is pewter and the air is cold and you wonder if it's ever going to be a bright, sunshiny day again. Halfway between desolation and utter joy.

You think of all the dead, but also of the children who still wonder at the magic. And the knowledge that one day in the not-too-distant future, you'll be among the dead they're missing at the table, wishing you could make it easier for them.

In the meantime, the constellations turn in their heavens and never notice the tiny starts and finishes of the ants who live upon this hill. And people wonder why I never make the bed.

11/01/2018

Politics of Summer

Summertime.
Garden-district cottage.
Cats on the porch.
Ancient oaks. Peaceful.
Shady.

Tomatoes -- blood red --
and mayonnaise,
salted, peppered,
waiting
on the table.

Last week a feather
in the kitchen.
Yesterday a wing in the hall.

A cardinal batters
the bedroom window,
knocking to come in.
A wren batters from within.
How do I get out?
How did you get in?

Last night, a fight. Barking
In the den.  Flick the light
and then, a raccoon
dashes for the door.

Soon half a squirrel,
intestines twirled
on the front steps. Cats
draped on benches,
lick themselves.

Sweet scent of summer
Smells like death.

~ Elodie Pritchartt
07/02/2018

In Memoriam

“You tried, Sweetheart,”
she whispered.
She tossed a handful of dirt
down on the coffin of our country.

A cold wind blew.
The sky was dark. Acid
rained. Chaos.

Two-hundred some-odd years.

Well, not really such a good run,
after all.

Few attended the service.
Few knew who had died.
Or when.

Rest in peace, Dear One.
Blood will fertilize the ground once more.

Tears will water it. Hope
springs from the scorched earth.

Some day, we will learn.
Or not.

~ May 28, 2018

Bragging Rights!

The Reckoning

In the pictures 
we seldom smiled.

Stubborn children 
forced to pause
and pose before the hearth 
in the cabin 
in the woods
in the childhood
in the life
he'd built 
in the 
happy time.

He pulls the tattered box
From under the bed,
studies each fading moment 
for clues.

The lamp sheds no new light
On the mystery of us. 

The smell of dust, 
the screen door’s slam,
the island in the pond
saddles in the shed,
the boat, the chill,
the sweat, the water,
the shadow and the light
the silence of a Sunday
night waiting 
while he locked the gate.

Turned the key 
On another memory.

The sandbar, 
Alligator gar and
Busch beer in a pull-tab can.
Dinosaurs, all gone
like the sound of a horn on a barge,
first large then drifting away.

He puts the pictures back,
Hopes the phone won’t ring,
bringing something new 
to grieve.
Lying back, he sighs,
Closes his eyes and waits
for the reckoning

~ March 3, 2010

Gollum

Before Gollum had tasted

the power of The Ring,

when he still had family with whom

to sing in the Gladden Fields, when

things like friendship, honor, love

and joy would bring

all the happiness of spring, 

do you suppose he considered how a

ring – a small, pretty, shining

thing could change a man?

Did he think his first

drink of power would be

a thing so easily imbibed,

how it changed

a man inside

from what he’d been

to something he despised?

Before it split his soul in two,

before his craving really grew

into a wolf howling at

the moon in the darkness

of the Misty Mountains,

did he think he might

one day loathe the light?

Did he consider

wrong from right

or did he only ask for more?

Did he grieve his own lost soul

as his father surely did when

he crawled into his hole

to find that bloody ring?

And when he clawed his way

over friends and good intentions,

and he claimed The Ring his own,

he’d lost what really mattered

and died in flames alone.

Do you think as he lay dying,

precious ring clutched in his hand,

he wished he’d never seen it?

Did he ever understand?

The Weight of Water

The wind whispers secrets soon to

be revealed.  Pushes him along.

There is no cure.

He shuffles. Small steps. Unsure

for the first time

in forever

whether he can make the hill.

Pail in hand, he bends, turns

the spigot, spends 

precious minutes.

Watches water fall. Rinses

out the larvae and the slime.

Fills the pail and after

a time convinces himself to stand.

Physics is cruel. And a body at

rest remains. He moves forward.

Pours water for the cats,

seed for the birds, feed for the possums

and raccoons. Corn for the deer.

Meat for the dogs.

They need. They all need to live, he says.

Everything is creation or calamity

and he the only thing between.

What will they do when he is gone?

It is hunger that drives him

though he does not eat. He is shrinking

and I think he may shrink into the earth

when his credits and balances are due.

He is winded, his time near its end.

He passes me the pail. I bend.

Turn the spigot.     Water falls.

~ Elodie Pritchartt

March 9, 2012

Suicide is Painless

People will go to any lengths for fame, won't they? In the May, 1800 edition of a Natchez Newspaper, Thomas Thackwood advertized his upcoming public suicide by pistol -- one shot for the abdomen and another for the brain (his own, that is), promising his audience plenty of staggering, convulsing and grinning.

Heck, if you've got nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon, why not?

"C'mon, honey! Grab the kids. Let's go to the killin'."

Not to be outdone, however, he warned readers not to be taken in by claims of Mr. Touchwood, whose public hanging, Thackwood claimed, would only be staged.

I don't blame him. If I'm going to a killing, it better be the real deal.

You can read the ad here.

And, yeah, I couldn't resist: Mr. Thackwood went out with a bang.

*Posted by Elodie

*Photo not the man in the story. Just an old photo.

Falling Leaves

Perhaps it would be better if I don’t speak.

Reflect the silence back into the water,

listen to the evening come to help the night begin its dark trip behind the  sun.

The winter apples turn.

Fall nudges summer gently to the side,

and the light burns amber, realigns itself

so shadows  lengthen early.

The pages of this book that will not

be lain aside rustle toward its solitary end.

The dead revisit, though they are far away.

Anticipation turns to fear

that winter will not forgive.

Silence becomes prayer.

Breathe the honeyed quiet,

and brace yourself for the tilting

of the world.

So long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Good Night...

I bet I've lost over 35 friends and parents of friends in the last ten years.  Sometimes it seems as though I have more dead friends than live ones.  And this past week, I lost a really special friend, Andre Pascalis Volant de La Barre of New Orleans.  

I only knew Andre for the last ten years of his life.  He was -- shall we say -- special.  Andre was handsome, brilliant, funny, outrageous and, most of all, kind.  He was one of the kindest people I've ever known.  I saw Andre clothe people who needed clothes, feed people who needed food, give encouragement and spiritual support to those who needed it most.

Andre was from New Orleans.  I'll post his obituary here, for there is nothing I can add, except that I've added a few stories told about him at the party honoring him after his funeral services.  My wish is that you all meet and know someone as special as Andre.  And recognize that person for who he or she is while they are still alive.

Andre, here's to the memories:

Andre Pascalis Volant de La Barre

Obituary Guest Book "an incredible man. thank your for your bright and generous..." - scott symmank View Sign Andre Pascalis Volant de La Barre, beloved event planner and philanthropist, passed away Thursday, November 2, 2017 at the age of 59. Mr. de La Barre, the eighth generation of de La Barres in Louisiana, was preceded in death by his father, Francois Duffossard Volant de La Barre. He attended De La Salle High School, Louisiana State University, and the Parsons School of Design in New York City. In addition to his work in architecture and design, he planned many of New Orleans' best-remembered events for more than thirty years.  He was one of the Millennium Monarchs for the Krewe of Shangri-la. Mr. de La Barre was an enthusiastic community advocate and patron of the arts. His work benefitted a multitude of nonprofits, including: Save Our Cemeteries, the Audubon Institute, Planned Parenthood, Human Rights Campaign Fund, the New Orleans Opera Association, Liberty House, Southern Repertory Center, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the National Council of Negro Women, the National Council of Jewish Women, Preservation Resource Center, the United Services for AIDS Foundation, and the Vieux Carré Property Owners' and Residents' Foundation. "His Royal Highness" will always be remembered for the depth of his generosity, his razor-sharp wit, his ability to fill any room with laughter, and that time he wore cow print pants with his tuxedo jacket.  Survivors include his mother, Mary Giovingo de La Barre; his sister, Maria Carmen de La Barre; his godchildren, Logan Carmen de La Barre-Hays and Sales Volant de La Barre; and his cherished weimaraner, Camelot. Relatives and friends are invited to attend the Memorial Service at LAKE LAWN METAIRIE FUNERAL HOME, 5100 Pontchartrain Blvd. on Monday, November 13, 2017 at 6:00 p.m. Visitation will begin at 4:00 p.m. until service time. Interment will be private. To view and sign the online guest book, visit www.lakelawnmetairie.com. Also, please enjoy these memories that were shared by his friends:

In a Hollow Space

A Hollow Space 
By Elodie Pritchartt

"The big sweetgum by the front gate finally died." 

Every death affected him these days, animal or vegetable. 

"Oh, really?" I answered, still unaware of its significance in the scheme of things. 

"I took the tractor and went down to the gate to cut it down the other day." 

He crushed a pecan with a hammer. Shells skittered across the counter and spilled onto the floor.

"I hooked a cable onto it, up high so I could pull it down, you know?"

I nodded, having seen it done many times before. "

And then I went to cut a vee out so it'd fall the way I wanted it to. It's a big tree." 

I shuddered. He had no business pulling down trees like that sweetgum. He was eighty-two, and still doing the work of a younger man. But to tell him otherwise would be cruel. Better to let him die quick and violent than to take away his power. 

I remembered the time we brought the pony into town in the back of the Scout. The pony wouldn't budge. He was a stubborn brute with a mean streak. Finally, he reached down and picked up its front hooves and put them on the tailgate. Then he squatted down behind its hindquarters and lifted while we children watched, astonished, as muscles strained and bulged and 600 pounds of horse was heaved bodily into the truck bed.

Those boys are men now. They still talk about it in tones of marvel and wonder. 

"Well, when I started making the cut, I got about six inches in, and realized it was hollow. So I worried that it might not fall the way I wanted. I called Power & Light and told them they’d better send some people out to cut it down. It could fall the other way and bring down those lines out on the road. You know?"

I nodded, quiet."It was the weekend. So I left it hooked to the tractor 'til they came out on Monday. They brought a crane and cut it off at the top, got it down to a manageable size. Then they said, 'Let's go ahead and pull it down with the tractor.' So we pulled it over. It broke about halfway up the trunk. And you know? It was the strangest thing." 

"What was?"

"When it broke, the front half of the trunk fell off, but left the rest of the tree standing. And inside the trunk, about six feet up, was a horseshoe hanging on a nail."

"You're kidding." 

"No. You should've seen the look on the faces of those men. That tree had to be over a hundred years old. And it was solid, all the way around. No knotholes, nothing. And six inches thick. "

I had to see. Before we left the house, he put the cat outside. 

“Oh, no,” he said as he opened the door. “There’s a dead chipmunk out here. One of the cats probably killed it.”

“He's brought you a present.”  I smiled. He didn't. 

“I wish they wouldn’t. They’re cute little things and I hate to see them dead.” 

It surprised me to see him so upset over a chipmunk. I could remember when we were little, and he’d come home with a deer he’d killed. He’d hang it from the rafters in the barn, make a cut all the way around its neck and set a hook into the skin. He’d attach a chain to the hook and attach the other end to the bumper of the Scout. Then he’d back the Scout up, pulling the skin clean off the deer. It was quick and bloody with a thick, coppery smell that hung in the air. He didn’t give it a second thought. 

Now he spent his days putting out salt licks and corn, and chasing off anyone who dared try to poach a deer, in season or no. It was late afternoon and the light was slanting at sharper angles, sending shadows out across the field. We stopped by the workshop in the woods.

"See that metal post right there?" 

"Yes." 

"Okay, now look over there."

He pointed to another post some distance away. 

“Those two posts are forty feet apart. If you take a string and tie it between the posts and measure 20 feet, that's where you'll find the water line for the house. I know because it broke one time and I had a heck of a time trying to find it. When I did, I made sure to mark it. I couldn't mark the exact point because it's in the roadbed, but you measure, and that's where it is. I'm probably the only person who knows that."

He sighed and his shoulders seemed to sag.

"You’re going to need to know these things when I’m gone.”

I nodded but couldn’t speak. 

“You know, when people die, it really doesn't matter who they were or what they did. They're only remembered by the few people who knew them, and once those people are gone, you’re forgotten. It's like you were never here at all." 

I knew he was right. I’d thought it, myself, on occasion. We spied two deer eating acorns under the oaks before they saw us and fled for the woods. 

"Brandon died day before yesterday."

“Oh, no. ” 

Brandon was the golden retriever he’d rescued a couple of years ago. He couldn’t stand seeing a dog without a home and he now had a pack of about 14 dogs. At least two or three times a day, they’d gather in the front yard. One would begin with short, high yips and within a moment the others would join in, howling and yipping at ghosts.  Brandon had been a steady quiet, companion who never complained. 

“Remember how he chased after the car the last time you were here? A few days later he just lay down and died. He seemed just fine, and then he died.”

I wondered how old he'd been.  We stopped beneath the oaks from which the deer had fled. He showed me how to tell the difference between a buck and a doe.

“The scat the doe leaves looks like little round balls, like pebbles. See?” 

I looked.

“Now, look over here. This is a buck.”

Several mounds of scat, larger than the first, like little mushrooms bloomed beneath the tree among the acorns and the leaves. I thought about all the lessons I’d missed by moving so far away. 

By the gate, the trunk still stood as he'd left it. I looked down into the hollow. Twisted through the trunk was some ancient barbed wire that emerged again on the outside of the tree.

"Only thing I can figure," he said, "is somebody hung that shoe on that fence a hundred or more years ago, and the tree just grew around it." 

He reached in and pulled out the shoe where he'd hung it. 

"Well, I'll be," I said, shaking my head. I wondered why the shoe hadn't become embedded in the tree. Who had put that shoe on the nail? How long had they been gone? Does anyone remember them? I tried to remember when barbed wire was invented. How many people had come and gone since that day? 

I remembered the arrowheads we'd found in the lakebed a few years before, just feet from that spot. 

"I'm tired," he said. "I don't know why I'm always tired lately." 

We started back to the house so he could lie down for awhile in the cool of the evening.