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Rhoda Apple, former owner of the Hope Springs Eternal Hotel in Grantsville, besides sending French teenagers my way also introduced me to Root Lady Reverend Rose Sharon. The Rev was a prophet and a Baptist minister. Rhoda Apple had been consulting her for years—that’s how she got into coffee futures and why she sold the hotel to an oil company in a town that didn’t like outsiders unless they got gas and went.
I had consulted Root Lady on occasion. I liked Root Lady. Root Lady lived near Pimlico Race Track. On consultations an appointment was made at her house. The waiting room was a clean living room usually in the company of her nephew, Wee Willie who was constantly on the phone either taking appointments or bets. When it was your turn a door would open. Wee Willie would nod and the short walk past the aquarium and through the opened door was always accompanied by Wee Willie’s smile and play by play chatter: “He’s up and stretching—I think he has a bad back—the spread is four points—he’s in…” and then it would be through the door into Root Lady’s bedroom where she was sitting in a comfortable cushioned chair with a Bible in her lap and a small TV turned on to some sporting event with the sound humming on low chatter. After sitting across from her Root Lady read a short verse from the open Bible. Finished reading, Root Lady sat quietly smiling with the open Book in her lap. After a donation was inserted in the Bible Root Lady closed the Book and said a prayer asking for guidance in the prophesy. Root Lady saw me driving a truck; she saw me making movies; she saw me on the big screen; she advised me to get a passport for unexpected journeys.
Root Lady organized a bus trip from Baltimore to a small wooden church and hall south of Saint Michaels on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The trip took place on a Sunday in August and packed the church with singers and chanters and people who sweat including me. After singing and anointing and a walk to the Chesapeake Bay for baptisms, a supper of baked chicken and greens and salads and corn bread filled the void where spirit and passion worked up an appetite and Wee Willie sat on the sidelines smiling and chattering a play by play of what happened.

A bit over 17 and a half miles from the DELMARVA Peninsula to Newport News, Virginia, over and under the water, and one lane in each direction it was not fun to pass another vehicle and less fun to be passed. The trip usually began at about 3.00a.m. with a short nap on one of the man made islands until the sun came up, continuing on to Good Christian Dave’s Diamond Spring and bottling plant where the 180 five gallon bottles would be unloaded onto the conveyor belt and run through the wash and sterilized before being refilled, blasted with ozone and capped. The ride home was always treacherous being about 3500 pounds above the gross vehicle weight for the one ton Ford Econoline van with a single axle. The challenge was to get back across the bridge tunnel without breaking down, back onto the Peninsula where the earth was flat. Once back to the storage trailer the truck was mostly unloaded and restacked with crates of glass bottles and cases for the next days delivery or the trip north on the Peninsula and across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, the biggest hill, to Fort Meade where Mountain Valley would be loaded. The supply from Hot Springs, Arkansas was trucked in by Earl, Mr. J’s truck driver. He had a big truck and many Ford econoline vans to serve the Baltimore/Washington DC area and the White House. The summer was driving and stacking and lifting and carrying and I seldom saw the ocean only in passing Indian River Inlet in Delaware, another hill.
The tai-chi ch’aun classes were in the Autumn and Spring and then twice a week until the entire form was second nature and a few people actually stuck with it and learned the form—a very few. In the Autumn of 1992 the possibility of a video was discussed between The Professor, a senior student Earl and myself. I volunteered to produce and direct and soon we had a project. The Professor wanted the Wife to participate. Dancer True would be the second woman since there were none in the classes that had stuck with it enough to learn the complete form. I worked with Dancer True on the choreography of the form over several weeks along with her intense lessons with Earl and the Professor.