In the Doo-Doo Again

Lee Hancock's recent series in The Dallas Morning News, "Mary Ellen's Will," introduced us to Mark McCay. He is a partner in a used furniture store in Deep Ellum called Deco-Dence who went to an old lady's death bed in order to convince her to sign a new will cutting...

By Robert Wilonsky

August 18, 2006

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Lee Hancock's recent series in The Dallas Morning News, "Mary Ellen's Will," introduced us to Mark McCay. He is a partner in a used furniture store in Deep Ellum called Deco-Dence who went to an old lady's death bed in order to convince her to sign a new will cutting him and his partner into her estate.

I take no position on the propriety of getting old ladies on their death beds to put their John Hancocks on new wills that cut acquaintances into their estates. I imagine it's a tough job, but somebody's gotta do it.

I just want to point out that the Dallas Observer first made McCay famous in former staff writer Paul Kix's wonderful story about a river of doo-doo that flows beneath the Deep Ellum district, "Up the Crick." In a description right out of Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee's lyrical movie about nature, Kix wrote:

Mark McCay is on his belly, crawling. He's beneath Deco-Dence, with its posh furniture, its big bands on the stereo, its expensive artwork. McCay talks as he creeps. "Sometimes, you get a whiff of it, and it's just like, 'Whoa,'" he says.

Paul went on from there. On and on and on.

Made me think that the horrors of the death bed were probably nuthin' to this guy. --Jim Schutze

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