Remembering Randy Wells

1973 Pontiac Grand Prix

I moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma over the Labor Day weekend of 1977. One of the first people I met at church that Sunday was a friendly, somewhat cocky guy named Randy Wells. Randy drove a ginormous 1973 Pontiac Grand Prix that smelled like vanilla and leather, and had a hood long enough to land a small aircraft. I drove a '76 Honda Civic hatchback, and he always poked fun of my small, "beep-beep" car. Ironically, Randy would loan me the use of his Pontiac a year or two later during my annual "snow crash" period of wrecking cars in the Oklahoma wintertime. It was terrifyingly powerful.

Not long after moving to Tulsa, I became enamored with one of Randy's sisters, Darlene, and to Randy's dismay we were soon a very thick couple. He once griped, "every time I find a new friend, one of my sisters takes him away."

Randy was also derisive of my Texan heritage and passion for the Lone Star state, even though I'd moved into The Indian Territory. Less than a decade later, I would return to Texas...with his sister and our children. And as fate often mocks us, Randy would move to Texas with his family a few decades later, settling in Huntsville. Randy and his family flourished in Texas. 

Randy Wells (1957-2021)

He was beloved by me and all that knew him, and he was taken too soon by COVID on Father's Day 2021.
Today (3/12) would have been Randy's 66th Birthday.
Rest in Peace, my brother-in-law and brother in Christ.

A COVID Christmas

 

So, it’s the night before Christmas, and down at the HEB
not a parking spot remains as far as the eye can see.
People are pretty jovial, in a gallows-humor kind of way,
They know there’s no such thing as Santa and his sleigh.

The bake shop is bustling, home-shoppers are hustling,
and the food samplers are holding sway;
‘Cause who doesn’t like free food while bumping elbows in the store on the night before Christmas Day?

This year’s Christmas is different in so many ways…
the anticipation of family together for a few days
has been shattered by diagnoses of COVID and such,
we’re not getting to spend that time together so much.

So, my wife swapped her kerchief for a face mask instead,
as she’s in quarantine--we must sleep in separate beds.
We watch separate TV’s, and sit five yards apart;  
this social distancing thing really is such a farce.

The stockings were hung from the mantle with care,
in hopes that our grand-kids soon would be there;
But COVID’s put a kabosh on our plans for family fare--
they’ve bugged out to Hempstead to spend their Christmas there.

We’re spending Christmas with each other and the nasty, ol' ‘VID;
watching holiday movies and swilling NyQuil, this illness to rid.
As for Fauci and the others who’ve politicized this craze--
We’ll have a Merry COVID Christmas in spite of you.

(With apologies to the estate of Clement Clarke Moore)