Charlotte Stories

If you could have known Mama before her son died, you wouldn’t even recognize her. She was an old lady living in May, Texas, population 200. She was looked on as the town disgrace because of her being a very vocal, bleeding-heart, rabid, yellowdog Liberal Democrat. In this neck of the woods, Jesus and all his true followers are Republicans. Why, a Democrat is as rare as the fabled goat-blood-sucking creature known as a chupacabra. Like a chupacabra, few people ever actually saw Mama unless they happened to be driving down our very rural county road when she was picking up the mail. She’s always in the company of a pack of dogs and, more often than not singing Christmas carols. Once Buster arrived, behind her back, she became known as May’s Octomom because there are three dogs and five cats in our family. Back then, she was a 64-year-old woman without a real care in the world. Then one day, John was gone, and we all changed. It’s hard to explain, but somehow our great loss brought along with it many unexpected blessings. I’m Charlotte Richardson, a 6 year old dog, a herding breed mostly Border collie and some Australian shepherd. I live with my family in May out in the boondocks of the state. If you were going to mark our place on a map, I’d say stick the pin smack dab in the middle of the “X” in Texas. The nearest big town is Brownwood, twenty miles away, population made up of 19,500 Southern Baptist red Republicans and 500 god-less closeted blue Democrats. Mama and Poppy make up a sizable portion of the Democrats in Brown County. Our house sits on top of Star Mountain. It’s a 2-story blue vision surrounded by an 8’ porch, nestled on sixty acres of mesquite and live-oaks and a generous share of cactus and broom-weed. By day it’s simply the prettiest place a soul could wish for; at night it’s like a ghost-ship floating on a sea of stars. Our mail box is a half-mile walk down a winding caliche road meandering towards the county road. The mail box is the outer boundary of my world. To pass it means I’m on a trip to Doc Joe’s for a rabies shot. So, you’d think because I don’t get out much that I wouldn’t have a lot to say but, you’d be wrong. Whenever Mama hears any particularly weird story she’ll say, “There’re a million stories in the Naked City, Charlotte.” I’m not sure where Naked City is; I think maybe it’s in California. Anyway, I’ve never been there or know anyone who has. I have a feeling though that Naked City has nothing on our town May in the “interesting” stories category. There’re thousands and thousands of them right here, and a big bunch of them belong to me and my family. I’ve been thinking for a while now about telling some stories of my family and our friends. You’ll see that life has dealt us a rich hand: laughter, sadness, craziness, drama, kindness, beauty, death, renewal…