My grandparents built a wonderful house out in the country. I can distinctly remember riding over 10th Street Mountain the summer that I was five with my grandmother as we took a hot lunch to my paw paw and the laborers to eat as they paused in their work long enough to perch on upturned concrete blocks and share in a good noonday meal. There were no sandwiches back in those hot, un-lazy days of summer for those men, no sir. Grandmother fixed a "meat and three", wrapped it up good and set the bowls on trays along with gallons of cold, sweet iced tea for the bumpy ride that she and I took daily. At that time the highway department was still working on the road that crossed the mountain which separated "town" from "country" and it seemed to take forever to get to where we were going (this same journey can now be made in about 10 minutes.) The house was isolated from other homes but in reality was only a few blocks from the next one on a sleepy highway that would later see traffic greatly increase as the area built up out past my grandparent's on Choccolocco Road.
Their house became a wonderful place to spend summers; my great grandmother, "Mama Doss", (who lived in town yet still had my paw paw wrapped around her finger until the day she died as if he and my grandmother had never moved out of her home on McCoy) had the good fortune (in my opinion as a child) to have been born on the 5th of July which was certainly close enough to the 4th of July for everyone to have an excuse to celebrate in a big way. The proverbial "fatted calf", in the form of juicy beef ribs, was smoked for hours in a homemade Bar-be-que pit that my paw paw got up and tended on the morning of the 4th before the chickens had even taken the curlers out of their hair. Relatives came from far and wide to fete both Mama Doss and America on the 4th of July. I, as a child, could never understand why they didn't just throw my birthday in to the big celebration mix and make homemade ice cream in my honor as well since my birthday was on the 10th of that month but I never said anything. After all, Mama Doss was old, and I was going to have a fabulous birthday party back at home in Birmingham anyway in less than a week.
Life was good at that house. The isolation meant that we could make all the noise we wanted, wear our pajamas on the porch if we felt like it because the distance from the house to the highway although quite visible was just enough to blur the fact that one was still in their sleeping clothes as a friendly neighbor tooted their horn as they passed by. Once when my brother was 11 or 12 he put on an old cheerleader's outfit and a blonde "fall" that he'd gotten somewhere (I'm not even sure why he had it but I know that my sister was teaching him some sort of cheers to go along with it, probably as a prank) and they were jumping up and down out in the front yard. Some guy came driving by blowing his horn and hollering at that long legged "sweet thang" with the pretty blonde hair and it made my brother so mad that he gave him the middle-finger salute and flounced back in the house. The road was just far enough from the front yard so that he really did appear to be a girl.
The house on Choccolocco long outlasted both my grandparents and at some point my mother and dad became the tenants there along with my brother and sister. It was fully remodeled so that on the inside it was only a vague resemblance of the way it looked when my grandparents lived in it. But the one thing that had never changed was the isolation save for the one neighbor who lived on the acreage next door but who couldn't have heard you if you yelled or seen you from their porch and everyone liked it that way. Grandchildren explored every bit of those 5 1/2 acres around that house and great-grandchildren fell in line doing the same thing, continuing to wear pajamas on the front porch if we wanted to because even though the traffic had greatly increased on the highway it was still too far away to really matter.
My brother went off and joined the Marines and then never really came back home to live again except only briefly before he married. My sister moved to town. My dad died several years ago and then it was only my mother. And suddenly the isolation that we had once enjoyed there had now become a liability and I prayed hard each night for a hedge of protection to be around my mother in that house. You can think of its location in the same way that you might think of walking down a busy street with a group of friends and you are leading the way. You come to a corner and because you are in front for a few seconds as you turn the corner you are alone with whatever is there. Of course in a few seconds your friends are joining you, having turned the corner too. But that's the way my mother's house can best be described. She is so close to neighbors but she might as well be a thousand miles away because they all live several acres away and through thick woods. It goes without saying that cellphone service is almost non-existent there as well.
My mother's car is sitting in our driveway. A few weeks ago she made one of her trips to visit my brother in Tampa; we take her to the airport, the flight is an hour and five minutes, and my brother meets her there. She can get there quicker than I can drive from my house in Trussville to hers in Anniston. There was no car in her own driveway and no lights to be seen to keep the wolf from the door. My sister called me this past Monday to tell me that Jeanne, a friend of mother's had gone by to leave some peach jam for her return and noticed when she walked up that the back door was standing ajar and a footprint imprinted on it where it had been forced open. She immediately ran back to her car and backed out of the long driveway as fast as reverse would take her and called 911. She couldn't reach her husband so she did the next best thing and called the preacher. He lives right down the street so it didn't take him long to get there in his flip flops and packing a pistol. Jeanne was afraid that one of the robbers could still be in there, or even worse, my sister so Bro. Roland walked through with his gun drawn hoping to find no one but preparing for anything. No one was there. Whoever had broken in to my mother's home had long gone and fortunately my sister had been safe at her own place in town. The police got there quickly and did what they could but you know that CSI is only a TV show and that real crimes are never solved in an hour nor do the perpetrators ever leave those tiny slivers of evidence that locks them up before the last commercial.
Larry and I rushed over to my mother's as quickly as we could that day. Friends were there. It sort of reminded me, in a sick sort of way, of the Amish building a neighbor's house. Someone was sweeping the floor of all the debris left from the broken door. Jeanne's sweet husband had immediately gone and bought another door, a much heavier one, and he and my son Will were working on getting it back in place. Larry went and bought timers for the lamps. My sister, Jeanne and her 4 children began the task of picking up the things in my mother's bedroom and in the other rooms that they had gone through. Whoever did this was obviously looking only for jewelry and drugs because they did not take anything else. They did not find much either, the things that they did take had more sentimental value than a dollar one although they will probably get money for their drug habit from what they did take. I felt such a sense of violation yet a sense of relief that my mother had not been home and that these people, whoever they were, did not do anything malicious to my mother's home. All they did was take our innocence and it's hard to pawn that for a quick high.
My mother took the news of the break-in just as you'd think that she would, with much grace yet incredible sadness for the things that had belonged to my dad that would or could never be replaced. Once innocence is lost it can never be regained and the innocence of that house disappeared with that footprint on the back door. Whoever put it there had no regard for what they were doing and the far-reaching effects that their actions have and will cause. I almost feel sorry for them, the losers that they are, and pray that God will be merciful and woo their hearts toward His Son Who loves them as much as He loves me. We no longer want my mother there in that house and when she returns from the safety of Tampa we will begin to process of "the next step." Right now we aren't exactly sure what that next step is, we just know that the house that brought such joy to so many and gave us so many wonderful memories in its isolation will never be the same. It will be put up for sale and life will move on but this time it will be where there are neighbors for my mother.
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Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Monday, July 11, 2011
Candles on the cake
Yesterday, July 10th, was my birthday and July 12th is my best friend Henrietta's birthday. Her name isn't really Henrietta, it's Sherri, but I haven't called her that since we were freshmen in high school. Back then we had both decided that we were destined to become literary giants someday and that to be a good one, giant that is, a memorable pen name was needed. Her choice was "Henrietta Snodgrass". We may not have become quite the publisher's darlings that we'd dreamed of being but her name stuck, at least for me it did, and I've called her Henrietta ever since. She calls me Trixie and I like that just fine.
I believe that one truly has only one "best friend" in their life and that everyone else is called by other adjectives which modify the word friend, i.e., "good, dear, close, closest", you fill in your own blank. It doesn't even matter if you and that person grow apart, which most best friends from childhood are oft to do, I think that once you've identified them as your "best" that no one can ever have that name again. Henrietta and I went all through grammar school together and we were friends but weren't that particularly close. It wasn't until we were freshmen in high school and wound up sitting next to each other in the same French class that we somehow clicked and virtually became inseparable. We shared secrets and dreams and anything else that came to mind back in those high school years. We watched each other fall in love, wish that the one we'd fallen for would love us more, and shared our kleenex as we sobbed when Ryan O'Neal uttered those immortal words in Love Story, that "love means you never have to say you're sorry". It didn't take long though to find out that Ryan O'Neal was no real psychologist and that Ali McGraw still died no matter how many times you watched the movie.
Henrietta and I moved on with our own separate lives in separate cities after graduation but somehow, and I give her all the credit, she kept the friendship from dissolving even when its depth had become no more than the width of a card and envelope. Many years passed, who knows, maybe thirty, I quit counting, and Henrietta and her family moved back to Birmingham. We both have moved on. We rarely see each other except when I pop in occasionally where she works to say "hi" but when I do it's as if we've never been apart. She sent me a birthday card a few days ago, with the same almost illegible handwriting that she had in high school, and scrawled on the back of the envelope was her home address. It is the same address of the same house that she has lived in since she was a child, the house that she grew up in and the house that was so much a part of my own life. I felt comforted by seeing that address. There are so few constants in my world but that address is one of them because I know if I went there and rang the doorbell that she would answer.
So Happy Birthday in a few hours, Henrietta. I love you, my always and forever best friend.
I believe that one truly has only one "best friend" in their life and that everyone else is called by other adjectives which modify the word friend, i.e., "good, dear, close, closest", you fill in your own blank. It doesn't even matter if you and that person grow apart, which most best friends from childhood are oft to do, I think that once you've identified them as your "best" that no one can ever have that name again. Henrietta and I went all through grammar school together and we were friends but weren't that particularly close. It wasn't until we were freshmen in high school and wound up sitting next to each other in the same French class that we somehow clicked and virtually became inseparable. We shared secrets and dreams and anything else that came to mind back in those high school years. We watched each other fall in love, wish that the one we'd fallen for would love us more, and shared our kleenex as we sobbed when Ryan O'Neal uttered those immortal words in Love Story, that "love means you never have to say you're sorry". It didn't take long though to find out that Ryan O'Neal was no real psychologist and that Ali McGraw still died no matter how many times you watched the movie.
Henrietta and I moved on with our own separate lives in separate cities after graduation but somehow, and I give her all the credit, she kept the friendship from dissolving even when its depth had become no more than the width of a card and envelope. Many years passed, who knows, maybe thirty, I quit counting, and Henrietta and her family moved back to Birmingham. We both have moved on. We rarely see each other except when I pop in occasionally where she works to say "hi" but when I do it's as if we've never been apart. She sent me a birthday card a few days ago, with the same almost illegible handwriting that she had in high school, and scrawled on the back of the envelope was her home address. It is the same address of the same house that she has lived in since she was a child, the house that she grew up in and the house that was so much a part of my own life. I felt comforted by seeing that address. There are so few constants in my world but that address is one of them because I know if I went there and rang the doorbell that she would answer.
So Happy Birthday in a few hours, Henrietta. I love you, my always and forever best friend.
Monday, July 4, 2011
The Ice Cream Version of the Neiman Marcus Cookie Urban Legend
I figure that most anyone who actually takes the time to read my blog is already well acquainted with the urban legend about the Neiman Marcus chocolate chip cookie recipe...you know, the one where the lady buys a cookie at the bakery at Neiman Marcus and has such a fit over it that she asks how much they'd charge for the recipe and supposedly the salesperson says "$250" which the person mistakes for "$2.50" as in "two dollars and fifty cents" but when she gets her credit card bill she discovers that she's been billed two hundred and fifty dollars so to get back at them she shares it with everyone she knows yada yada yada. The first time I heard it I think I actually believed it and in addition the cookies were fantastic. Nice story, just not true though.
Well I've got a story for you and it's no urban legend, I can guarantee it, but it's about as bad. I think Southerners have an intense relationship with homemade ice cream about the same way we do with anything fried in grease and tall, cold glasses of sweet iced tea. Some of my earliest childhood memories are of being the "designated sitter" on my paw paw's ice cream freezer. First he'd cover it with newspapers, then with an old terry cloth towel and lastly me for ballast. He'd churn and I'd hold everything in place until he knew just by turning the handle when the delicious confection inside was finally ready to eat. Ambrosia of the gods was what that stuff was.
So I recently decided that I'd try and duplicate the efforts of my long departed paw paw and get the stuff in which to make memories and homemade ice cream myself. I know what you're thinking...back when I was the "designated sitter" on the back porch of yesterday there was no such thing as BlueBell or Ben and Jerry's or Mayfield's or Edy's (who all make their own pretty doggone good version of faux homemade anything) and homemade was what you got unless you wanted some of that nasty stuff called "ice milk" or maybe some Barbers vanilla that didn't even come close to the real thing.
It was 98 degrees in the shade and hotter than a $2.00 pistol when I walked in to Walmart to walk down Nostalgia Lane looking for an ice cream freezer. The lightweight, cheap plastic version of my aforementioned paw paw's 10 pound wooden bucket with metal can, metal dasher, metal and wooden handle was hardly worth the $22.99 that I plunked down for it but I figured that was the best that I was probably going to be able to do. And right next to it was the "ice cream mix" which I figured took the place of all the goodness that your mama used to cook on the stove to make "real" ice cream so at $2.50 or something like that each, I figured why not, and bought 4 of them. I traipsed around to the back of the store and bought a half gallon of milk and then a quart of half and half, another $5.00 or so spent and then picked up some strawberries on sale for 99 cents. The rock salt however, was another story. I looked around where I'd found the freezer but no rock salt was to be found (as opposed to the other day when I was in the same store looking at the same freezers which were then surrounded by a plethora of boxes of rock salt.) Not to be discouraged, however, I schlepped around to the garden center to see if they had any rock salt there. I was not the first person who'd come to the garden center looking for rock salt either, the cashier told me, but they didn't have any either. The cashier called the service center and they said to look around where the Epsom Salts was. I knew it wasn't going to be in the pharmacy area so I didn't even bother to search there. I did go to the "regular" salt area on the spice aisle just to give it a look but nothing was there. I flagged down a customer service manager who appeared to be studying an end aisle of candy bars and asked him (by this time I was about to call it a day and just forget the whole idea) and he said that they were out of it, that they'd been out of it for several days. I'd come this far however and was not going home empty handed.
Hot as blue blazes in the car with my purchases...so far that's $22.99 for the freezer, $2.50 for the "mix", $5.00 for the milk and half and half, and 99 cents for the strawberries and I still don't have the magic salt. I pulled in to Walgreen's and asked them if they carried it and of course they didn't (if the cashier had told me to check by the Epsom Salts I'd have thought it was some sort of service desk conspiracy going on.) My last hope was K-Mart. Sure enough, ole K-Mart had it but buddy were they proud of it. Rock salt there was $3.99! They knew they had a captive audience though since they seemed to be the only folks around (at least in my area) that had any on the weekend of the 4th of July. Naturally I had to pick up some $1.99 ice cream cones to go with it since they were sitting there just asking to be taken home.
By the time I got back in that hot car for the 3rd time and drove home I'd done a mental calculation of what my homemade ice cream was going to cost and with tax it came to around $40.00. Without even realizing it I'd just bought in to the Neiman Marcus cookie trap. I've got to admit that BlueBell's homemade vanilla at $6.00 (even cheaper if you catch it on sale) is about as good as whatever concoction I'm going to make with my new freezer (that "mix" stuff is still suspect--it won't hold a candle to real sugar and eggs and vanilla and whipping cream that mama'nim used to stir on the top of the stove until it was time for me to sit on it.) I think I've learned that sometimes you just need to salute the flag and go on...BlueBell or any of its close competitors, wins. I may have bought the freezer but every time I want to use it I'm still going to have to buy the "stuff" that goes in it which will run a lot more than $6.00 and won't even come in a convenient carton to boot.
I'd invite you all over for some homemade ice cream but first I've got these bills to pay.
Well I've got a story for you and it's no urban legend, I can guarantee it, but it's about as bad. I think Southerners have an intense relationship with homemade ice cream about the same way we do with anything fried in grease and tall, cold glasses of sweet iced tea. Some of my earliest childhood memories are of being the "designated sitter" on my paw paw's ice cream freezer. First he'd cover it with newspapers, then with an old terry cloth towel and lastly me for ballast. He'd churn and I'd hold everything in place until he knew just by turning the handle when the delicious confection inside was finally ready to eat. Ambrosia of the gods was what that stuff was.
So I recently decided that I'd try and duplicate the efforts of my long departed paw paw and get the stuff in which to make memories and homemade ice cream myself. I know what you're thinking...back when I was the "designated sitter" on the back porch of yesterday there was no such thing as BlueBell or Ben and Jerry's or Mayfield's or Edy's (who all make their own pretty doggone good version of faux homemade anything) and homemade was what you got unless you wanted some of that nasty stuff called "ice milk" or maybe some Barbers vanilla that didn't even come close to the real thing.
It was 98 degrees in the shade and hotter than a $2.00 pistol when I walked in to Walmart to walk down Nostalgia Lane looking for an ice cream freezer. The lightweight, cheap plastic version of my aforementioned paw paw's 10 pound wooden bucket with metal can, metal dasher, metal and wooden handle was hardly worth the $22.99 that I plunked down for it but I figured that was the best that I was probably going to be able to do. And right next to it was the "ice cream mix" which I figured took the place of all the goodness that your mama used to cook on the stove to make "real" ice cream so at $2.50 or something like that each, I figured why not, and bought 4 of them. I traipsed around to the back of the store and bought a half gallon of milk and then a quart of half and half, another $5.00 or so spent and then picked up some strawberries on sale for 99 cents. The rock salt however, was another story. I looked around where I'd found the freezer but no rock salt was to be found (as opposed to the other day when I was in the same store looking at the same freezers which were then surrounded by a plethora of boxes of rock salt.) Not to be discouraged, however, I schlepped around to the garden center to see if they had any rock salt there. I was not the first person who'd come to the garden center looking for rock salt either, the cashier told me, but they didn't have any either. The cashier called the service center and they said to look around where the Epsom Salts was. I knew it wasn't going to be in the pharmacy area so I didn't even bother to search there. I did go to the "regular" salt area on the spice aisle just to give it a look but nothing was there. I flagged down a customer service manager who appeared to be studying an end aisle of candy bars and asked him (by this time I was about to call it a day and just forget the whole idea) and he said that they were out of it, that they'd been out of it for several days. I'd come this far however and was not going home empty handed.
Hot as blue blazes in the car with my purchases...so far that's $22.99 for the freezer, $2.50 for the "mix", $5.00 for the milk and half and half, and 99 cents for the strawberries and I still don't have the magic salt. I pulled in to Walgreen's and asked them if they carried it and of course they didn't (if the cashier had told me to check by the Epsom Salts I'd have thought it was some sort of service desk conspiracy going on.) My last hope was K-Mart. Sure enough, ole K-Mart had it but buddy were they proud of it. Rock salt there was $3.99! They knew they had a captive audience though since they seemed to be the only folks around (at least in my area) that had any on the weekend of the 4th of July. Naturally I had to pick up some $1.99 ice cream cones to go with it since they were sitting there just asking to be taken home.
By the time I got back in that hot car for the 3rd time and drove home I'd done a mental calculation of what my homemade ice cream was going to cost and with tax it came to around $40.00. Without even realizing it I'd just bought in to the Neiman Marcus cookie trap. I've got to admit that BlueBell's homemade vanilla at $6.00 (even cheaper if you catch it on sale) is about as good as whatever concoction I'm going to make with my new freezer (that "mix" stuff is still suspect--it won't hold a candle to real sugar and eggs and vanilla and whipping cream that mama'nim used to stir on the top of the stove until it was time for me to sit on it.) I think I've learned that sometimes you just need to salute the flag and go on...BlueBell or any of its close competitors, wins. I may have bought the freezer but every time I want to use it I'm still going to have to buy the "stuff" that goes in it which will run a lot more than $6.00 and won't even come in a convenient carton to boot.
I'd invite you all over for some homemade ice cream but first I've got these bills to pay.
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