A little something about my mom

A photo of my mom LaNelle "Mickie" Porter Gunn
27 March 1931 - 31 March 1998

Yes, this is really my mom. It's a promo photo taken when she represented the city of Tyler in the Miss Texas Pageant, 1952.

[btw, this is my mom you people are drooling on.... have some respect, okay?]

She took first runner-up, if I recall correctly. Somewhere in the vast mountain of photographs I have yet to go through is a picture of her as a parade float. Yes, you read it right. A parade float. See, she was standing on this car thing, with this giant hoopskirt on that covered the car--

Forget it. You'll have to see it to believe it.

It's funny, really, but when I think of my mom, I always think of these older pictures. I guess because it was a view of her I never really saw, you know?

Below is a picture of me with my mom. I'm the suspicious-looking bug-eyed thing to the right.... I'm about three months old in this picture. They started me in the Philippines, but I waited until Mom hit the white sands of Pensacola, Florida to take my first breath. Clever me.... A picture of me and my mom.  I'm 3 months old.

Yeah, there's a story. See, my dad met my mom when he went into the jewelry store where she worked, in Tyler, Texas, to return an engagement ring he'd bought for another chick! Not the most auspicious beginning, perhaps. She eventually ended up flying out to Manila, where he and his dad ran Philippine Airlines. That's where they got married.

Ah, the stories. Could fill a freakin' book. The Russian bear in the apartment upstairs.... Mom's spider monkey Tony and his little hat.... Whomping a Buddhist monk with her purse, which contained a two-pound jar of cold cream....

Anyway.

You can see she died quite recently. Of emphysema. I have this incredible urge to personally slap every smoker on the planet and ask, "Are you really this stupid?" Yeah, okay, smokers have rights. But watch out, because I not only have a right, I have a pretty nasty left, too. Me. Not the me you expected to see, but still me.

Oh, how will you recognize me, you ask? That baby picture's a little, well, dated? Okay, here's something more recent. Me. 1966. Saint Agnes Catholic School. First grade.

[bwa-ha-ha! you were expecting the grown-up me, weren't you!]

In case you haven't figured it out, I don't do photos.... Only a few relatives and friends, and a buncha RACAfest attendees, can attest to my actual existence. I prefer it that way.

When I decided to do this page, I realized I should pick one defining point about my mother that will stick with me forever. So, I looked through the photographs I have until one would not leave my hand. A wedding picture of my parents.

This was it.

It's not the wedding thing so much as this: One morning in 1958, this woman woke up, got dressed, and boarded a plane for the Philippines. Just like that. Oh, they planned the trip, it wasn't spur of the moment, and she did travel with my father's sister-in-law Gwen, but still.

This woman jumped feet first into the void.

She traveled halfway around the world to marry my dad. Amazing. I don't think I could do something like that. I'm too damned scared of change.

My mother wasn't.


Well, thanks for stopping by. Mom always did like company.

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This page and all photos copyright 1998-2009.