You know what purse lint is--that stuff that collects in the bottom of your handbag, just sticking around until you have to scoop out all your nickels and dimes from its depths when you are desperate for a coke and nary a dollar bill is in your wallet. Darn those ATM cards, I never have cash on hand anymore.
Sometimes things that I think about could be categorized as "purse lint". It's things that aren't really worth much in the grand scheme of life but at the same time it's the stuff that has hung on relentlessly in the gray matter of my cognitive filing cabinet just waiting to be cleaned out on a nickel-hunting expedition.
I know cigarettes are bad for us; statistics have proven this over and over. I'm glad that there are laws on the books now so that I don't have to eat, shop or fly on a plane next to someone with a jones for a Kool. My lungs and the lungs of both those I know and love as well as the lungs of those I don't know but love still (gotta love, don't have to like) thank the people who created those laws and those that keep them. Cigarettes are bad for us, I am in total agreement. But, at the same time, there's this tiny place in my heart that feels a slight pang of wistfulness every time I pass by a Waffle House late at night when all of the "regular people" are home in bed safe from the smoke rings of an unfiltered-Camel- crowd and it looks, well, so "sanitized" in there as if all the life had been sucked out of the place by one huge smoke-clearing vacuum cleaner. Every time I've frequented my own neighborhood Waffle House establishment over the past several years there has been a dearth of Steinbeck-esque characters lounging around the corner booths wearing their world-weary aires as close as a Texas Ranger's duster. They can't smoke there any more so they've taken their lounging ways somewhere else, and the where is a mystery to me.
Cowboys and drifters and good-time Charlies will always be with us but where they are gathering now eludes me because we took away their last bastion of comfort in the middle of the night when we took away their smoking rights at the Waffle House. One of the most interesting evenings that I ever spent was in a 24-hour sandwich shop akin to a waffle place many more years further back than I care to think about. It was back in my single days when 3:00 am meant nothing to me when I didn't have to be to work until 10:30 am (youth is wasted on the young you know) and I found myself sitting in a corner booth with a friend listening to two old drifters saddled up with back packs, guitars and Marlboro's. As they sat there and ate and smoked they played their guitars for us as long as we cared to listen. And even as young as I was that night I had sense enough to realize that I would probably never pass that way again and that what I was experiencing in that small capsule of time was to be savored along with the ketchup and french fries on my plate. It's not often that you get free concerts at 3:00 am with a hamburger steak special. I don't know if the old guys were heading out by bus or foot after they ate I just know they were headed somewhere along with the rest of the pack of Marlboro's to a tune only they knew how to play.
Would it be so wrong if we allowed 24-7 places to allow smoking between midnight and 5:00 am for those that wanted it? I know we'd have to put warning signs up for those who can't stand to be around smoke (normally me but at a Waffle House I'd make an exception) And of course the people who worked there would have to understand the dangers and that they too would be around second hand smoke. Heck, they might even be smokers too. I miss the old ladies who used to work at the Waffle House who probably had a smoke on their break or when no one was looking; the ones whose faces practically screamed of a thousand stories just looking at the lines around their eyes; the ones whose hairdo was a hair-don't at least from this decade and the ones who treated you nice whether you looked like a big tipper or not. I miss the smoke and the ash and the crud and the interesting people that the Waffle House drew in like a magnet. If I wanted a 4-star meal served on a white tablecloth I'd go to a restaurant where crud gets Lysoled daily and "characters" get a table near the kitchen. Sometimes I'd just like to hear the tread of a worn-out pair of boots and the sunny sigh of a waitress (not a "server") named something like Darlene welcoming in a person of interest and showing him to a corner booth at the all night Waffle House.
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Thursday, January 26, 2012
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Sears...Where Santa Shops
Sometimes the best Christmas memories of gifts received aren't the ones where we were the recipient of the gift at all but instead were among those privileged to witness the exchange.
I would be hard pressed to name a specific Christmas that was "the best" for me growing up as a child in the days where toys pretty much were only displayed in stores for two months out of the year and where children only received toys twice a year at Christmas and on birthdays. No one that I can even think of in our large, kid-filled neighborhood got toys in the middle of the year unless somebody was lucky enough to maybe have an aunt or uncle come to town bearing gifts like the 3 wise men in June but even this was pretty rare. There was just something so exquisite about the day when the Sears Christmas catalog arrived and each of us kids would take turns at the breakfast table for the next month or so turning the pages and marking our "wants" from Santa. Those wants changed as the days drug by; President Andrew Jackson's "Kitchen Cabinet" never made any more important executive decisions than we did if we decided to change one of our "big" presents on the list. It never occurred to any of us as to the reason that we had to circle stuff in the catalog anyway; after all we always sat on the old man's knee down at the Roebuck Shopping Center (except for my sister who was scared to death of Santa although she claims not to have been but that is another story for another day) and recited our well-rehearsed and multi-bullet-pointed verbal list of what our hearts desired for him to load on the sleigh that year. Somehow the explanation that Sears had a direct line to the North Pole sufficed and we wore that catalog out, each dutifully taking our turn with it at the breakfast table with care not to rip any of the pages.
My Christmases past are filled with achingly exquisite wonderful merriment and adventure of growing up in Sherwood Forest along with a bunch of other kids just like myself who wanted and got a Barbie doll, a three-speed bike, a skateboard or maybe Rockem-Sockem Robots at some particular time in some unnamed year and there was much peace on earth and good will toward men. By noon on Christmas we were all out in the street sharing our loot, showing off whatever the "best" prize (in our opinion) happened to be that was under our tree that morning and playing together like it was any other day of the year because by noon on Christmas well, it pretty well was.
Growing up in Birmingham the smokestacks of Southern Electric Steel cast a long shadow. Steel was King and if your daddy didn't work for a public utility or in insurance he pretty much worked in a steel mill. Daddy was a foreman over the melt shop. This meant that he never worked a 9:00 to 5:00 job and the work shifts meant that he wasn't at home with us a lot during our waking hours growing up. He had to miss out on a lot to make a living for the five of us. But on this one particular Christmas Eve morning he was at home in bed. As a matter of fact we were all still in bed because it was very early when there was a knock at the front door. I don't remember who got up first, mother or daddy, but one of them did. And there followed an exchange of voices at the door and with my mother becoming as vocally animated as a school girl while she and daddy and this unknown third voice all talked excitedly together (at least from what I could hear from the bedroom) and then I heard something being huffed and puffed in to the house. I knew it was for her because I could never ever remember my mother being so downright giddy before; she was far too sensible and a good Baptist besides. But there it was, I could hear it in her voice. I rolled over in bed just letting the excitement of whatever it was that involved my mother being so happy wash over me like bubbly, swishy Seven-Up. She and my daddy were like two kids in the kitchen along with this unnamed third person. I guess I must have finally gotten up to see what the fireworks were all about and ran in to the kitchen to find the Sears delivery man rolling in a brand new portable dishwasher. You know, the kind with the hose attachment that affixed to the kitchen faucet (built-ins were still for the idle rich back then) and as big as bulky as a small chest freezer but for us as fine a work of art as the Taj Mahal--no more washing dishes in the sink! My mother was mouthing those sweet exchanges with my daddy about how he shouldn't have spent so much money on her and my daddy, who at that particular moment appeared to be ten-feet tall in my eyes was whispering back that he wanted her to have it and that he'd been saving his money for it and that he loved her--I actually have no idea what they were saying but it all appeared to be what I've just written or something close because she was hugging him and we kids were all dancing around our new dishwasher and we were so happy because they were so happy! This was going to be something to brag about to my friends in the neighborhood--"my daddy got my mother a dishwasher for Christmas...oh don't worry about using a clean plate, it's ok, we'll just put it in the DISHWASHER when we're finished..."
It's hard to surprise a mother at Christmas. And after having been one for many years I know this even more to be true. We are the orchestrator of so much at Christmas that it's sometimes very hard for our loved ones to truly pull off a surprise. But on that one special morning, the day before Christmas, my mother was as surprised as any child would ever have been when they woke up to find that Santa had brought them something magical. And she loved that dishwasher. And we loved our daddy for buying it for her.
I would be hard pressed to name a specific Christmas that was "the best" for me growing up as a child in the days where toys pretty much were only displayed in stores for two months out of the year and where children only received toys twice a year at Christmas and on birthdays. No one that I can even think of in our large, kid-filled neighborhood got toys in the middle of the year unless somebody was lucky enough to maybe have an aunt or uncle come to town bearing gifts like the 3 wise men in June but even this was pretty rare. There was just something so exquisite about the day when the Sears Christmas catalog arrived and each of us kids would take turns at the breakfast table for the next month or so turning the pages and marking our "wants" from Santa. Those wants changed as the days drug by; President Andrew Jackson's "Kitchen Cabinet" never made any more important executive decisions than we did if we decided to change one of our "big" presents on the list. It never occurred to any of us as to the reason that we had to circle stuff in the catalog anyway; after all we always sat on the old man's knee down at the Roebuck Shopping Center (except for my sister who was scared to death of Santa although she claims not to have been but that is another story for another day) and recited our well-rehearsed and multi-bullet-pointed verbal list of what our hearts desired for him to load on the sleigh that year. Somehow the explanation that Sears had a direct line to the North Pole sufficed and we wore that catalog out, each dutifully taking our turn with it at the breakfast table with care not to rip any of the pages.
My Christmases past are filled with achingly exquisite wonderful merriment and adventure of growing up in Sherwood Forest along with a bunch of other kids just like myself who wanted and got a Barbie doll, a three-speed bike, a skateboard or maybe Rockem-Sockem Robots at some particular time in some unnamed year and there was much peace on earth and good will toward men. By noon on Christmas we were all out in the street sharing our loot, showing off whatever the "best" prize (in our opinion) happened to be that was under our tree that morning and playing together like it was any other day of the year because by noon on Christmas well, it pretty well was.
Growing up in Birmingham the smokestacks of Southern Electric Steel cast a long shadow. Steel was King and if your daddy didn't work for a public utility or in insurance he pretty much worked in a steel mill. Daddy was a foreman over the melt shop. This meant that he never worked a 9:00 to 5:00 job and the work shifts meant that he wasn't at home with us a lot during our waking hours growing up. He had to miss out on a lot to make a living for the five of us. But on this one particular Christmas Eve morning he was at home in bed. As a matter of fact we were all still in bed because it was very early when there was a knock at the front door. I don't remember who got up first, mother or daddy, but one of them did. And there followed an exchange of voices at the door and with my mother becoming as vocally animated as a school girl while she and daddy and this unknown third voice all talked excitedly together (at least from what I could hear from the bedroom) and then I heard something being huffed and puffed in to the house. I knew it was for her because I could never ever remember my mother being so downright giddy before; she was far too sensible and a good Baptist besides. But there it was, I could hear it in her voice. I rolled over in bed just letting the excitement of whatever it was that involved my mother being so happy wash over me like bubbly, swishy Seven-Up. She and my daddy were like two kids in the kitchen along with this unnamed third person. I guess I must have finally gotten up to see what the fireworks were all about and ran in to the kitchen to find the Sears delivery man rolling in a brand new portable dishwasher. You know, the kind with the hose attachment that affixed to the kitchen faucet (built-ins were still for the idle rich back then) and as big as bulky as a small chest freezer but for us as fine a work of art as the Taj Mahal--no more washing dishes in the sink! My mother was mouthing those sweet exchanges with my daddy about how he shouldn't have spent so much money on her and my daddy, who at that particular moment appeared to be ten-feet tall in my eyes was whispering back that he wanted her to have it and that he'd been saving his money for it and that he loved her--I actually have no idea what they were saying but it all appeared to be what I've just written or something close because she was hugging him and we kids were all dancing around our new dishwasher and we were so happy because they were so happy! This was going to be something to brag about to my friends in the neighborhood--"my daddy got my mother a dishwasher for Christmas...oh don't worry about using a clean plate, it's ok, we'll just put it in the DISHWASHER when we're finished..."
It's hard to surprise a mother at Christmas. And after having been one for many years I know this even more to be true. We are the orchestrator of so much at Christmas that it's sometimes very hard for our loved ones to truly pull off a surprise. But on that one special morning, the day before Christmas, my mother was as surprised as any child would ever have been when they woke up to find that Santa had brought them something magical. And she loved that dishwasher. And we loved our daddy for buying it for her.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Remembering
9-11, 2001, found me in Gulf Shores with my family and it was there that we watched in horror as the tragic events of the day unfolded like pages in a guest book at Jefferson Memorial. I think being away from home made it seem even more surreal, more cold (as if the killing cold could have been any more bitter) almost like it was happening someplace else and not here in "you can't touch this" America. There's just something about being in your own home with its familiar intimacies that make things seem more, well, "real". I think that must be why so many people feel the need to get away after suffering a personal tragedy, maybe somehow the impersonal-ness of a hotel room in a strange city must give some a temporary respite from the pain of reality? (God never said that there wouldn't be pain, He promised that He would be with us during it.)
Since we didn't come home from the beach until late that next weekend it wasn't until I went back to work on Monday that I was finally able to talk to friends about what had happened that past Tuesday, about where they'd been when they heard the news and about how their own lives had been affected. I think that God created in us an innate desire to bond, to cling, to share those common experiences with fellow human beings. You might say that we unconsciously create our own unofficial group therapy sessions as the need arises as part of the mechanics of coping. (Women, I must say, seem to have more of those bonding genes than men and we aren't afraid to call a therapy session in a heartbeat.)
Today in church we watched a short video of remembrance about 9/11/2001. And as I sat there and watched it I realized that almost all of the young children who had been in the early part of the service to share in a second-grader's baptism were not even born then, that the only thing that they will ever know about that day will be through the media and whatever we who were here then, tell them. It made me think about Pearl Harbor and my generation. We weren't around then. I've only read about it or watched film clips of it. My parents lived it as children. 9/11 is my own "Pearl Harbor" and the middle schoolers who sat in those seats at church will unfortunately have to wait on theirs. And it will come. Actually, I think it happens each day that any soldier loses his life on the battlefield but another event such as that which happened on 9-11 will probably happen again during the lives of those innocent children. I say this with the sincerest regret that I can give you but also with a truck-load of confidence because as sinful man living in a sin filled world we are doomed to repeat our own bloody history until Jesus comes back to take His children out of it. As long as sin exists we will keep hurting each other with a vengeance but Hallelujah, what an Answer we have for the hurting and the incredible pain that we bring on ourselves. Thank you Jesus, our very Balm in Gilead.
Kiss your loved ones today. Tell God thank you, for everything, and I mean everything. Never take tomorrow for granted. Those who perished at the World Trade Center had absolutely no idea that their last tomorrow was already in the history books.
Since we didn't come home from the beach until late that next weekend it wasn't until I went back to work on Monday that I was finally able to talk to friends about what had happened that past Tuesday, about where they'd been when they heard the news and about how their own lives had been affected. I think that God created in us an innate desire to bond, to cling, to share those common experiences with fellow human beings. You might say that we unconsciously create our own unofficial group therapy sessions as the need arises as part of the mechanics of coping. (Women, I must say, seem to have more of those bonding genes than men and we aren't afraid to call a therapy session in a heartbeat.)
Today in church we watched a short video of remembrance about 9/11/2001. And as I sat there and watched it I realized that almost all of the young children who had been in the early part of the service to share in a second-grader's baptism were not even born then, that the only thing that they will ever know about that day will be through the media and whatever we who were here then, tell them. It made me think about Pearl Harbor and my generation. We weren't around then. I've only read about it or watched film clips of it. My parents lived it as children. 9/11 is my own "Pearl Harbor" and the middle schoolers who sat in those seats at church will unfortunately have to wait on theirs. And it will come. Actually, I think it happens each day that any soldier loses his life on the battlefield but another event such as that which happened on 9-11 will probably happen again during the lives of those innocent children. I say this with the sincerest regret that I can give you but also with a truck-load of confidence because as sinful man living in a sin filled world we are doomed to repeat our own bloody history until Jesus comes back to take His children out of it. As long as sin exists we will keep hurting each other with a vengeance but Hallelujah, what an Answer we have for the hurting and the incredible pain that we bring on ourselves. Thank you Jesus, our very Balm in Gilead.
Kiss your loved ones today. Tell God thank you, for everything, and I mean everything. Never take tomorrow for granted. Those who perished at the World Trade Center had absolutely no idea that their last tomorrow was already in the history books.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Saved From a Life of Crime by Mississippi Power
This morning I saw a beautiful sight...the power company setting a new pole in my neighborhood. I threw on my sensible Birkenstocks and headed down the hill just as fast as my chubby legs would carry me, (never mind that I still had on pajamas, by this time I was past caring what I looked like--you try putting on makeup by flashlight and see if your lipstick doesn't wind up looking like something out of Sunset Boulevard) and all but kissed some young man from Mississippi Power who'd come to save me from being sent to Julia Tutwiler. I had been just this close to shooting out our neighbor's generator (with my imaginary gun) because they had power for the TV and microwave and I didn't. I have my priorities and electricity is high on the list. Don't get me wrong, I know that I have been extremely blessed. God is so good and I could never thank Him enough for the blessings that He has given me. Too many times we forget to thank Him for the simple things like electricity and if you've been without it for a couple of days He'll bring you right back on track with what you ought to be thanking Him for!
Our power was off for two long days almost to the minute and I think if I'd had to walk around with a flashlight one more night I think I'd have thrown my "Little House on the Prairie" books straight through our still-blank TV (the power may be on but you know the cable company hasn't gotten with the program yet.) Camping is not a favorite hobby of mine nor is anything that involves flashlights or porta potties. A lack of electricity makes me claustrophobic, like I've moved to Laura Ingalls Wilder-ville. I can feel a panic attack wanting to start churning up my diaphragm every time I watch LHOTP and snow starts falling thicker than Eaglebrand and Halfpint is whining because she can't walk that 5 miles to school (it can't be up hill both ways because they lived on the prairie for pete's sake and the prairie doesn't have any hills.) I could not have been Ma Ingalls; I'd have killed Charles or Mr Edwards or Mr Olson or anybody else who'd driven up with a wagon full of beef jerky and a sack of meal telling me to throw another log on the fire, that it was time to start dinner. It's a good thing that God didn't leave it up to the likes of me to populate the United States because I'd have never left "back East" where people had neighbors and stores and gas lights and half-off sales.
I know there will be times ahead when the power will go off again and I'll get just as jumpy. But we're going to invest in a generator. I think I've convinced Larry that the expense would be well worth it when you compare what it would cost in gas these days to drive to Wetumpka on visitation weekends (the home of Julia Tutwiler Women's Prison for those that didn't already know) versus buying a generator that will run a television and a microwave. It's really his civic duty to keep a potential criminal off the streets!
Our power was off for two long days almost to the minute and I think if I'd had to walk around with a flashlight one more night I think I'd have thrown my "Little House on the Prairie" books straight through our still-blank TV (the power may be on but you know the cable company hasn't gotten with the program yet.) Camping is not a favorite hobby of mine nor is anything that involves flashlights or porta potties. A lack of electricity makes me claustrophobic, like I've moved to Laura Ingalls Wilder-ville. I can feel a panic attack wanting to start churning up my diaphragm every time I watch LHOTP and snow starts falling thicker than Eaglebrand and Halfpint is whining because she can't walk that 5 miles to school (it can't be up hill both ways because they lived on the prairie for pete's sake and the prairie doesn't have any hills.) I could not have been Ma Ingalls; I'd have killed Charles or Mr Edwards or Mr Olson or anybody else who'd driven up with a wagon full of beef jerky and a sack of meal telling me to throw another log on the fire, that it was time to start dinner. It's a good thing that God didn't leave it up to the likes of me to populate the United States because I'd have never left "back East" where people had neighbors and stores and gas lights and half-off sales.
I know there will be times ahead when the power will go off again and I'll get just as jumpy. But we're going to invest in a generator. I think I've convinced Larry that the expense would be well worth it when you compare what it would cost in gas these days to drive to Wetumpka on visitation weekends (the home of Julia Tutwiler Women's Prison for those that didn't already know) versus buying a generator that will run a television and a microwave. It's really his civic duty to keep a potential criminal off the streets!
Friday, September 2, 2011
Wherefore Art Thou Bobby Sherman?
Dear Cheryl Tiegs:
It's me again, forever the faithful fan of you and Summer Blonde by Clairol (although at this age I've had to resort to the professional stuff and let my hairdresser do the heavy "lifting" to get that sun-kissed look.) I hope you are doing well today. In my imagination you're still skipping down the beach in that famous pink bikini while the likes of guys like Moondoggie and Bobby Sherman are falling all over themselves just itching to hoist you aloft like some life-sized Barbie doll. Work it honey, because in this blog you won't have a single wrinkle and those pesky spider veins won't ever appear in the city limits of the Malibu that's in my mind. You're safe here, Cheryl, I've got your back (now if I only had those long legs!)
About this weight loss gig that I've taken up. You know, the one I told you about in my last blog where I needed to lose 90 pounds to get back down to my lowest high school weight that I can remember? You know, so I can create my OWN Cheryl Tiegs kind of Summer Blonde commercial because I absolutely adored you in yours where the cute guys were holding you up like some freshly-cut pine tree in the lumberjack Olympics? Now you remember. Well, I've lost a whole pound since we last "spoke" so I've just got 89 more to go. Oh, don't get me wrong, I know it's too early to start looking for 4 or 5 cute young guys who'd be willing (or persuaded for a fee) to hoist me up like some prized heifer at the County Fair but I'm a pound closer than I was when I last blogged.
One whole pound...I'm nothing if not optimistic. Are my bifocals lying or is that Bobby Sherman way down at the end of the beach looking my way? Just 89 more pounds, Cheryl, just 89 more pounds...oh yes, and the pony tail is still a project in the works, more like a pony's thumb. I've been sweatin' like a field hand today while I cleaned out the basement but I didn't take the scissors to it even though I wanted to. I just kept thinking "what would Cheryl do?" I figure what you'd do is pay someone to clean out the basement while you and your beautiful hair sat on the couch upstairs and read movie magazines but unfortunately that is where my fantasy and cold, hard reality slapped each other like two divas fighting over a cocktail dress at a two-for-one sale.
Bobby Sherman, please see if you can dial up Moondoggie on the hot line and tell him that mama's comin in 89 more pounds. And Cheryl, keep that hair swishin' and stay perky!
Sincerely, your biggest fan (and I do mean your biggest fan)
Modine Gunch
See Yoo in Mala-Boo
It's me again, forever the faithful fan of you and Summer Blonde by Clairol (although at this age I've had to resort to the professional stuff and let my hairdresser do the heavy "lifting" to get that sun-kissed look.) I hope you are doing well today. In my imagination you're still skipping down the beach in that famous pink bikini while the likes of guys like Moondoggie and Bobby Sherman are falling all over themselves just itching to hoist you aloft like some life-sized Barbie doll. Work it honey, because in this blog you won't have a single wrinkle and those pesky spider veins won't ever appear in the city limits of the Malibu that's in my mind. You're safe here, Cheryl, I've got your back (now if I only had those long legs!)
About this weight loss gig that I've taken up. You know, the one I told you about in my last blog where I needed to lose 90 pounds to get back down to my lowest high school weight that I can remember? You know, so I can create my OWN Cheryl Tiegs kind of Summer Blonde commercial because I absolutely adored you in yours where the cute guys were holding you up like some freshly-cut pine tree in the lumberjack Olympics? Now you remember. Well, I've lost a whole pound since we last "spoke" so I've just got 89 more to go. Oh, don't get me wrong, I know it's too early to start looking for 4 or 5 cute young guys who'd be willing (or persuaded for a fee) to hoist me up like some prized heifer at the County Fair but I'm a pound closer than I was when I last blogged.
One whole pound...I'm nothing if not optimistic. Are my bifocals lying or is that Bobby Sherman way down at the end of the beach looking my way? Just 89 more pounds, Cheryl, just 89 more pounds...oh yes, and the pony tail is still a project in the works, more like a pony's thumb. I've been sweatin' like a field hand today while I cleaned out the basement but I didn't take the scissors to it even though I wanted to. I just kept thinking "what would Cheryl do?" I figure what you'd do is pay someone to clean out the basement while you and your beautiful hair sat on the couch upstairs and read movie magazines but unfortunately that is where my fantasy and cold, hard reality slapped each other like two divas fighting over a cocktail dress at a two-for-one sale.
Bobby Sherman, please see if you can dial up Moondoggie on the hot line and tell him that mama's comin in 89 more pounds. And Cheryl, keep that hair swishin' and stay perky!
Sincerely, your biggest fan (and I do mean your biggest fan)
Modine Gunch
See Yoo in Mala-Boo
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
It's True Blondes Have More Fun...
Dear Cheryl Tiegs:
You probably haven't given a whole lot of thought to that commercial you made back in the late 60's, early 70's for "Summer Blonde" by Clairol but I certainly have. As a matter of fact, just about every summer that rolls around I think about that commercial and how doggone much I wanted to be that long haired beautiful blonde ("now your hair can have that summer look all year long, with Summer Blonde by Clairol") with legs from here to Tuesday, horizontally perched across the chests of half a dozen baby-faced, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, perfectly chiseled Adonises in Malibu.
I used Summer Blonde on my hair religiously. By the age of 13 that dreaded puberty phase had set in like a pair of pantyhose with a run right up the front. My naturally blonde hair had begun its nose dive in to the spectrum somewhere between "mousey brown and dishwater blonde". A dishwater blonde was practically no blonde at all so something had to be done to bring back that youthful cotton-top look of my babyhood. Clairol promised me that sun-kissed look, maybe not the hot guys on the beach just waiting to hold me like a human surfboard but blonde locks anyway. Though somehow, Cheryl, I never quite got the look I was going for. I wanted to look like you. Never mind that you were about 5 inches taller than me and probably 40 pounds lighter (and believe you me, being a size 12 back in the Twiggy era was like being a size 22 today.) Back then a girl's weight had to be in double digits only and her dress size in a single one or else you were destined for eating potato chips with the sweat hogs on date night, or at least that's what I was afraid of. It never quite got that bad but at times I did think that unless my hair grew down to my shoulders over night and I grew legs the length of a lamp post that I'd have been relegated to sensible pumps and clothes from the "chubby" department for size 12's. I can't say that the horrible, misguided opinion about a girl's weight has really changed much since I was a teenager but at least now people are more aware of its consequences.
So Cheryl, how are you these days? Had any hunks pick you up like a big catfish on Hillbilly Handfishin' lately? Is your hair still long and blonde? I hope so because in my mind you're still hanging out in Malibu putting Summer Blonde on your hair and spinning old Beach Boys tunes on a Hi Fi. Lately I've decided to let my "inner Cheryl Tiegs" and I'm growing a pony tail. Yes, a pony tail. I know I'm awfully old for one and during this steamy, hot Alabama summer I've threatened to whack this hair that's grown down below my ears off but I keep thinking "what would Cheryl Tiegs do?" and I put the scissors back in the drawer. I've never had one, a pony tail that is, not a real one anyway, in my life. But I'm going to have one and it's going to be blonde.
I've also done a quick analysis of my vital statistics and found them to be sadly lacking in several areas as far as you are concerned and unless I can grow about 5 more inches, lose about 80 or 90 pounds, bob my nose to a perky little button and change my eye color to blue I'll never have anyone stop me and ask what Cheryl Tiegs is doing here in Trussville, Alabama. But you've given me hope, Cheryl Tiegs. I may not can grow vertically but I can lose horizontally and I'm doing it all for you. Well, that's not really true, but you have definitely given me a goal. I'm going to lose 90 pounds to get me back to my high school weight (hard to believe that in 40 years I've put on 90 pounds but if you do it slowly enough it'll creep up like kudzu on a telephone pole.) And you can bet your bottom dollar that when I get my pony tail all out there and I've got it "blondeened" to the proper hue that would make Clairol proud, I'm going to round me up 6 of the cutest young hunks I can find (or rent, for a nominal fee) at the beach to hoist me up just like you were in that commercial. My sweet husband will just shake his head and laugh I'm sure, but he'll be a good sport and take pictures. (my friends can be counted on to play some Beach Boys tunes on their iPods while I pose.)
I'll keep you posted on my progress, Cheryl. I may not be a California girl but I've got a great hairstylist that can give me that summer look all year long!
Yours very truly,
Modine Gunch
See you in Mala-Boo
You probably haven't given a whole lot of thought to that commercial you made back in the late 60's, early 70's for "Summer Blonde" by Clairol but I certainly have. As a matter of fact, just about every summer that rolls around I think about that commercial and how doggone much I wanted to be that long haired beautiful blonde ("now your hair can have that summer look all year long, with Summer Blonde by Clairol") with legs from here to Tuesday, horizontally perched across the chests of half a dozen baby-faced, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, perfectly chiseled Adonises in Malibu.
I used Summer Blonde on my hair religiously. By the age of 13 that dreaded puberty phase had set in like a pair of pantyhose with a run right up the front. My naturally blonde hair had begun its nose dive in to the spectrum somewhere between "mousey brown and dishwater blonde". A dishwater blonde was practically no blonde at all so something had to be done to bring back that youthful cotton-top look of my babyhood. Clairol promised me that sun-kissed look, maybe not the hot guys on the beach just waiting to hold me like a human surfboard but blonde locks anyway. Though somehow, Cheryl, I never quite got the look I was going for. I wanted to look like you. Never mind that you were about 5 inches taller than me and probably 40 pounds lighter (and believe you me, being a size 12 back in the Twiggy era was like being a size 22 today.) Back then a girl's weight had to be in double digits only and her dress size in a single one or else you were destined for eating potato chips with the sweat hogs on date night, or at least that's what I was afraid of. It never quite got that bad but at times I did think that unless my hair grew down to my shoulders over night and I grew legs the length of a lamp post that I'd have been relegated to sensible pumps and clothes from the "chubby" department for size 12's. I can't say that the horrible, misguided opinion about a girl's weight has really changed much since I was a teenager but at least now people are more aware of its consequences.
So Cheryl, how are you these days? Had any hunks pick you up like a big catfish on Hillbilly Handfishin' lately? Is your hair still long and blonde? I hope so because in my mind you're still hanging out in Malibu putting Summer Blonde on your hair and spinning old Beach Boys tunes on a Hi Fi. Lately I've decided to let my "inner Cheryl Tiegs" and I'm growing a pony tail. Yes, a pony tail. I know I'm awfully old for one and during this steamy, hot Alabama summer I've threatened to whack this hair that's grown down below my ears off but I keep thinking "what would Cheryl Tiegs do?" and I put the scissors back in the drawer. I've never had one, a pony tail that is, not a real one anyway, in my life. But I'm going to have one and it's going to be blonde.
I've also done a quick analysis of my vital statistics and found them to be sadly lacking in several areas as far as you are concerned and unless I can grow about 5 more inches, lose about 80 or 90 pounds, bob my nose to a perky little button and change my eye color to blue I'll never have anyone stop me and ask what Cheryl Tiegs is doing here in Trussville, Alabama. But you've given me hope, Cheryl Tiegs. I may not can grow vertically but I can lose horizontally and I'm doing it all for you. Well, that's not really true, but you have definitely given me a goal. I'm going to lose 90 pounds to get me back to my high school weight (hard to believe that in 40 years I've put on 90 pounds but if you do it slowly enough it'll creep up like kudzu on a telephone pole.) And you can bet your bottom dollar that when I get my pony tail all out there and I've got it "blondeened" to the proper hue that would make Clairol proud, I'm going to round me up 6 of the cutest young hunks I can find (or rent, for a nominal fee) at the beach to hoist me up just like you were in that commercial. My sweet husband will just shake his head and laugh I'm sure, but he'll be a good sport and take pictures. (my friends can be counted on to play some Beach Boys tunes on their iPods while I pose.)
I'll keep you posted on my progress, Cheryl. I may not be a California girl but I've got a great hairstylist that can give me that summer look all year long!
Yours very truly,
Modine Gunch
See you in Mala-Boo
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Just Call Me Big Maude from "Convicts at Large"
If you asked me if I was a law-abiding citizen in good standing with the local constabulary I believe I would quickly tell you that, yes, I am, other than the occasional breaking of the speed limit; and even then I am prudent with my decisions. I love animals and trees and anything else that one might could hug and still be legal about it. I want to save the dolphins and the whales and polar bears. I even have a heart for those little tiny little snail darters which, for some unexplained reason that only God knows the answer to, have found themselves to located in only like 4 places on the entire earth and two of them happen to be in a pond near Roebuck Recreation Center and in Turkey Creek. I've been to both of these places on more than one occasion and I can attest to the fact that they've got some hard living going on there.
However, and you knew there was going to be a "however" didn't you, those who know me well, there is a place where this law-abiding citizen will draw the line and quicker than you could say "satan's handpuppet" I'd become the Bonnie Parker, Ma Barker, Belle Starr, you name her and I'd be it, of crime, and this is concerning an article that I saw in the Birmingham News yesterday where the Eastern Diamondback rattlesnake is being put on the endangered species list and that it will become law that they can not be killed. I'm getting out my imaginary six-gun right now and loading it up with enough virtual ammunition that would rival anything that was ever seen in the wild wild west on a hot Saturday night and would blow away the first one that I saw with nary a thought (actually, if I really saw one, I'd probably set a new land-speed record for a fat girl in a pair of flip flops.) I am not saving rattlesnakes from extinction nor snakes of any kind. There. I've said it. I will break the law, officer get out your handcuffs and take me away, I just don't care. If I happen to have the bad luck of driving through somewhere that Eastern Diamondback rattlesnakes lurk (because I surely don't want to be on foot) and see one crossing the road you can bet your sweet Aunt Fanny that I'm not going to put on the brakes for it to get to the other side (I've stopped more than once while driving through our neighborhood to give some silly squirrel enough time to make up their mind about which side of the street they really wanted to be on.) I don't care that the paper went on to say that the snakes keep the rodent population down, bring on the rats, that's what we have cheese for.
I am all about conservation, preservation, the Sierra Club, Auntie Litter and even the tiniest fraction of a smidgen of Al Gore when it comes to keeping things "All Things Bright and Beautiful". The Father indeed "made them all" and left us in charge of keeping this earth clean, green and healthy. But I'm falling back to Genesis on the snake bit (oh, a pun!) and I'm going with the cursing of anything that crawls on its belly and has fangs. Snakes don't belong in my world and I'm giving them fair warning that if they come around my house (please please don't) I'll be looking for something in my virtual arsenal where weapons only exist in my imagination or, for my very real and trusty hoe with which I'll show you some extinction! Sorry, you snake lovers, if you're out there, you can put 911 on your speed dial and send a squad car after me if I encounter one of the new "endangered species" because I'll be going to jail.
However, and you knew there was going to be a "however" didn't you, those who know me well, there is a place where this law-abiding citizen will draw the line and quicker than you could say "satan's handpuppet" I'd become the Bonnie Parker, Ma Barker, Belle Starr, you name her and I'd be it, of crime, and this is concerning an article that I saw in the Birmingham News yesterday where the Eastern Diamondback rattlesnake is being put on the endangered species list and that it will become law that they can not be killed. I'm getting out my imaginary six-gun right now and loading it up with enough virtual ammunition that would rival anything that was ever seen in the wild wild west on a hot Saturday night and would blow away the first one that I saw with nary a thought (actually, if I really saw one, I'd probably set a new land-speed record for a fat girl in a pair of flip flops.) I am not saving rattlesnakes from extinction nor snakes of any kind. There. I've said it. I will break the law, officer get out your handcuffs and take me away, I just don't care. If I happen to have the bad luck of driving through somewhere that Eastern Diamondback rattlesnakes lurk (because I surely don't want to be on foot) and see one crossing the road you can bet your sweet Aunt Fanny that I'm not going to put on the brakes for it to get to the other side (I've stopped more than once while driving through our neighborhood to give some silly squirrel enough time to make up their mind about which side of the street they really wanted to be on.) I don't care that the paper went on to say that the snakes keep the rodent population down, bring on the rats, that's what we have cheese for.
I am all about conservation, preservation, the Sierra Club, Auntie Litter and even the tiniest fraction of a smidgen of Al Gore when it comes to keeping things "All Things Bright and Beautiful". The Father indeed "made them all" and left us in charge of keeping this earth clean, green and healthy. But I'm falling back to Genesis on the snake bit (oh, a pun!) and I'm going with the cursing of anything that crawls on its belly and has fangs. Snakes don't belong in my world and I'm giving them fair warning that if they come around my house (please please don't) I'll be looking for something in my virtual arsenal where weapons only exist in my imagination or, for my very real and trusty hoe with which I'll show you some extinction! Sorry, you snake lovers, if you're out there, you can put 911 on your speed dial and send a squad car after me if I encounter one of the new "endangered species" because I'll be going to jail.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
The End of Innocence
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.
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.
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.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner
Admit it...when Dirty Dancing comes on (I get pulled in if I watch more than 5 minutes of it, Patrick Swayze, dead or alive, will always be Johnny Castle, and Johnny Castle is magnetic enough to snatch you through the TV set quicker than you can say "Carry me to the Catskills") you're gonna watch it, especially if it's the last 5 or so minutes where Johnny Castle utters that immortal line "nobody puts Baby in a corner".
I don't have to watch any other part of the movie, those last 5 minutes are the part that I've bought my ticket to see. And for that entire time, this plus-sized, old Southern Baptist married person and mother (which means that we did not grow up dancing in our household and I will forever blame my parents for making me the left-feet on the dance floor that I am. I know you and daddy jitter-bugged, mother, you just did it before I was ever born and I never inherited any dancing skills, shame on it all) is indeed Frances "Baby" Houseman. It's ME that Patrick Swayze, a la Johnny Castle, is flinging and slingin' around like a rag doll in a rat terrier's mouth, and it's ME that flies off that stage in that lift that Johnny and Baby could never get right any other time. I am too fine. I know all the words to the song and he's singing it to me although it's a little hard to hear because I'm huffing and puffing after doing all those fancy moves. But not to worry, we finally slow down at the end and do a big smooch and the world is all peach pie and ice cream.
I don't give it any thought that after Baby and Johnny finished the dance and her doctor-daddy had packed up the sedan that Baby went home, started college, probably joined the Peace Corps afterwards, than married a nice Jewish lawyer and Johnny probably went home, joined the Painter's and Plasterer's Union alongside his own daddy and was too tired to dance except for Saturday nights after a hot hour of League Bowling. There were no cell phones in 1963, long-distance calls were way too expensive and writing letters was probably out of the question...guys like Johnny Castle didn't do well in high school; English was not one of his better subjects and if it hadn't been for that cute little cheerleader (you know there had to be a cheerleader involved) that helped him study or gave him the answers, he probably wouldn't have even graduated. But it really doesn't matter to me because I don't let Dirty Dancing take me that far. I don't ever leave the Catskills. And Johnny Castle never ages one day, no one gains one ounce and I am forever and always Baby...and I never get put in a corner.
I don't have to watch any other part of the movie, those last 5 minutes are the part that I've bought my ticket to see. And for that entire time, this plus-sized, old Southern Baptist married person and mother (which means that we did not grow up dancing in our household and I will forever blame my parents for making me the left-feet on the dance floor that I am. I know you and daddy jitter-bugged, mother, you just did it before I was ever born and I never inherited any dancing skills, shame on it all) is indeed Frances "Baby" Houseman. It's ME that Patrick Swayze, a la Johnny Castle, is flinging and slingin' around like a rag doll in a rat terrier's mouth, and it's ME that flies off that stage in that lift that Johnny and Baby could never get right any other time. I am too fine. I know all the words to the song and he's singing it to me although it's a little hard to hear because I'm huffing and puffing after doing all those fancy moves. But not to worry, we finally slow down at the end and do a big smooch and the world is all peach pie and ice cream.
I don't give it any thought that after Baby and Johnny finished the dance and her doctor-daddy had packed up the sedan that Baby went home, started college, probably joined the Peace Corps afterwards, than married a nice Jewish lawyer and Johnny probably went home, joined the Painter's and Plasterer's Union alongside his own daddy and was too tired to dance except for Saturday nights after a hot hour of League Bowling. There were no cell phones in 1963, long-distance calls were way too expensive and writing letters was probably out of the question...guys like Johnny Castle didn't do well in high school; English was not one of his better subjects and if it hadn't been for that cute little cheerleader (you know there had to be a cheerleader involved) that helped him study or gave him the answers, he probably wouldn't have even graduated. But it really doesn't matter to me because I don't let Dirty Dancing take me that far. I don't ever leave the Catskills. And Johnny Castle never ages one day, no one gains one ounce and I am forever and always Baby...and I never get put in a corner.
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Bah Bah Mother's Day, Have you any wool?
Readers beware: This is not a sweet and frilly mother's day message. For one, I am not a "frilly" person and sometimes I'm probably not even sweet although I try to do my best.
Mother's Day was a day, in my humble opinion, invented by the Hallmark industry and the International Brotherhood of Restaurants (I just made that up but it sounded good) to guilt-trip hapless men and women into buying cards and going out to eat at 12:00 noon on Sunday with their mothers. In theory there is nothing wrong with this...every mother should get sweet cards from their children and should definitely be honored at a meal often and maybe even oftener (another word I just made up) but why do we have to be like the sheep that we've made ourselves to be and wait for Hallmark to tell us when to do it? You just try and take your mama out to dinner this Sunday after church and you'll see how many other sheep have gotten there before you and are holding one of those little beepers in their hand just waiting for a table that's not going to be called "yours" for a good, solid hour!
Mothers should be loved every day. We should send them cards in months that don't always begin with an "M". Restaurants will be glad to seat you and your mother most any day of the week, last time I checked, and the food will be just as honorable then as it is on mother's day. Wouldn't it mean so much more to you if your children called you up on another day, during another season even and invited you out someplace just because they loved you? Wouldn't a card mean so much more if you got one in Junevember from someone just telling you that you'd done a great job raising your children?
Sorry folks, that's my tale and I'm currently sitting on it...riding in a car on my way to the beach and yes, my mother is with us, and yes, we'll be sitting somewhere in a restaurant on Sunday looking out at the beach...but I can promise you, the card that I bought isn't frilly!
Mother's Day was a day, in my humble opinion, invented by the Hallmark industry and the International Brotherhood of Restaurants (I just made that up but it sounded good) to guilt-trip hapless men and women into buying cards and going out to eat at 12:00 noon on Sunday with their mothers. In theory there is nothing wrong with this...every mother should get sweet cards from their children and should definitely be honored at a meal often and maybe even oftener (another word I just made up) but why do we have to be like the sheep that we've made ourselves to be and wait for Hallmark to tell us when to do it? You just try and take your mama out to dinner this Sunday after church and you'll see how many other sheep have gotten there before you and are holding one of those little beepers in their hand just waiting for a table that's not going to be called "yours" for a good, solid hour!
Mothers should be loved every day. We should send them cards in months that don't always begin with an "M". Restaurants will be glad to seat you and your mother most any day of the week, last time I checked, and the food will be just as honorable then as it is on mother's day. Wouldn't it mean so much more to you if your children called you up on another day, during another season even and invited you out someplace just because they loved you? Wouldn't a card mean so much more if you got one in Junevember from someone just telling you that you'd done a great job raising your children?
Sorry folks, that's my tale and I'm currently sitting on it...riding in a car on my way to the beach and yes, my mother is with us, and yes, we'll be sitting somewhere in a restaurant on Sunday looking out at the beach...but I can promise you, the card that I bought isn't frilly!
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Humpty Dumpty
I've decided that there are two types of people in the world and you'll know which type you are simply by answering the question "when you are going to the basement because a storm is coming what do you take with you or what would you have taken with you if you could have?" Not considering the third answer of "I'm not thinking about taking anything but me and my family" for the sake of this particular blog, the other two answers are going to be something like "wallet, cell phone, check book, car keys" or "photographs and heirlooms".
My husband is of the "wallet, cell phone" ilk while I fall firmly into the "photographs and heirlooms" category. So many many people lost everything in the devastating tornadoes across the Southeast this week, none hit harder than our own state. Whole communities vanished in to thin air like a wave that washes up on the sand only to ebb back into itself and the sea. The tales of destruction and survival are incredible. The pictures on television remind me of a sci fi movie where the BOMB has been dropped and civilization as we know it has ceased to exist. I half keep expecting giant ants or spiders to come crawling across the TV screen, impervious to man's guns or rockets and looking to make a meal off the first living creature that falls in its path when they show parts of Tuscaloosa that used to be and is no more. Now please don't hear me and think that I am trying to make light of the devastation for that is not my intent. All I am saying is that unless you actually go through what those poor people did in places like Pratt City, Tuscaloosa, Cordova and Cullman I just don't think we who are safe in our own well-shingled houses with electricity and hot water could ever truly grasp what it means to lose every physical possession that one owns. And I hope to God that I don't ever truly understand.
Hence, the thoughts about what I would take with me to the relative safety of my basement, or even further underground, to our downstairs bathroom, if I only had a few moments to gather up that which I didn't want to lose to the claws of a tornado. When it passed over Trussville this past Wednesday and we were spared I took nothing with me except for 8 of our neighbors who had no basement to run to. It was only later that Larry shared with me about taking his wallet, cell phone, etc... and I shared that I had thought about taking pictures downstairs with me but that was all, just a thought. I can replace a wallet, a cell phone, car keys, the roof to my house, a car, a check book. Even those who lost these things will eventually do the same. However, it is for their photographs for which I grieve for them the most. Those cherished little momentos that mean absolutely nothing to most anyone else, but the very world to some mother, some daddy, some grandparent. My heart breaks for them now even though most probably haven't even had something as mundane as a photograph cross their mind while they are in the fight of their life just trying to get a roof over their head. But I've been thinking about it for them and it makes me so sad because this is a loss that no All State or State Farm can replace.
If I was a magician I would snap my fingers and begin photographing every child who was affected by this terrible storm and begin a new collection of pictures for the families who have none. Children have relatively short attention spans and someone with a camera would produce smiles that would never detect the hurts and shock from the past Wednesday. If I was a magician I would produce photos to make any mother proud. Unfortunately I'm no magician and it would take a thousand photographers with a thousand cameras to get the job done. But maybe I can help one. Or maybe even two. I know that this is such a small small thing in the grand scheme of things but they say that it takes a village to raise a child and right now the village has gone the way of Humpty Dumpty. If I could help to spackle over just one of Humpty Dumpty's broken parts...could I make some mother smile again?
My husband is of the "wallet, cell phone" ilk while I fall firmly into the "photographs and heirlooms" category. So many many people lost everything in the devastating tornadoes across the Southeast this week, none hit harder than our own state. Whole communities vanished in to thin air like a wave that washes up on the sand only to ebb back into itself and the sea. The tales of destruction and survival are incredible. The pictures on television remind me of a sci fi movie where the BOMB has been dropped and civilization as we know it has ceased to exist. I half keep expecting giant ants or spiders to come crawling across the TV screen, impervious to man's guns or rockets and looking to make a meal off the first living creature that falls in its path when they show parts of Tuscaloosa that used to be and is no more. Now please don't hear me and think that I am trying to make light of the devastation for that is not my intent. All I am saying is that unless you actually go through what those poor people did in places like Pratt City, Tuscaloosa, Cordova and Cullman I just don't think we who are safe in our own well-shingled houses with electricity and hot water could ever truly grasp what it means to lose every physical possession that one owns. And I hope to God that I don't ever truly understand.
Hence, the thoughts about what I would take with me to the relative safety of my basement, or even further underground, to our downstairs bathroom, if I only had a few moments to gather up that which I didn't want to lose to the claws of a tornado. When it passed over Trussville this past Wednesday and we were spared I took nothing with me except for 8 of our neighbors who had no basement to run to. It was only later that Larry shared with me about taking his wallet, cell phone, etc... and I shared that I had thought about taking pictures downstairs with me but that was all, just a thought. I can replace a wallet, a cell phone, car keys, the roof to my house, a car, a check book. Even those who lost these things will eventually do the same. However, it is for their photographs for which I grieve for them the most. Those cherished little momentos that mean absolutely nothing to most anyone else, but the very world to some mother, some daddy, some grandparent. My heart breaks for them now even though most probably haven't even had something as mundane as a photograph cross their mind while they are in the fight of their life just trying to get a roof over their head. But I've been thinking about it for them and it makes me so sad because this is a loss that no All State or State Farm can replace.
If I was a magician I would snap my fingers and begin photographing every child who was affected by this terrible storm and begin a new collection of pictures for the families who have none. Children have relatively short attention spans and someone with a camera would produce smiles that would never detect the hurts and shock from the past Wednesday. If I was a magician I would produce photos to make any mother proud. Unfortunately I'm no magician and it would take a thousand photographers with a thousand cameras to get the job done. But maybe I can help one. Or maybe even two. I know that this is such a small small thing in the grand scheme of things but they say that it takes a village to raise a child and right now the village has gone the way of Humpty Dumpty. If I could help to spackle over just one of Humpty Dumpty's broken parts...could I make some mother smile again?
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Where's Jesus?
If you know me well you've already heard this before and if you know me less then you'll be educated. I do not care for holidays.
While Mother's day is the "holiday" for which I hone my sharpest darts (this blog will come later with much spit and vinegar) with Christmas following a close second I suppose that Easter will slide in to third safely. These "holidays" are little more than man-made efforts to get me to buy greeting cards, flowers, gifts that I can't afford and marshmallows that have been shaped in to everything but the Mona Lisa. I guess the Easter season has my motor running faster than Steppenwolf's and I'm having to look in the mirror to see my own guilty face staring back because I've got a huge shopping bag full of everything for Easter that is not Jesus. I've got chocolate rabbits and chocolate footballs and marshmallow peeps and stuff from Bath and Body Works for my daughter-in-law's basket. I've got skittles and starbursts for the boys and a chocolate covered something or other for Larry. I've got a little scented candle and some lip gloss for my mother (actually it was a buy one get one free at B&BW so mother is going to be the recipient of the free part along with some little snicker bars and bright pink peeps.) I've got plastic eggs that look like little animals from Noah's ark so do I get points for that? Of course not. I've got Reece's Pieces in a plastic bag that's shaped like a big carrot; I'm not sure who will get those yet. I've got everything but Jesus in the basket.
Have you ever stopped to wonder what Jesus must think about us when He looks down at His creation and all he sees is us standing 10-deep in line at Walmart with our pre-lit Christmas trees and tinsel and stuffed bunnies and plastic baskets so that we can celebrate HIS BIRTH AND RESURRECTION? Have you taken a look around when you are trying to decide if you want milk chocolate or dark to see if there was virtually any sign of why we are celebrating? I know that some stores will throw Him a sop by having a token Nativity scene or two squeezed in between the Disney stockings and dancing Santas but at Easter you are not even going to find a token in your major stores; although I will have to say that at the dollar store I saw chocolate praying hands...I even bought two of them but when you think about it even that carries the scent of clever marketing to get my dollar. Chocolate praying hands? I've even seen chocolate crosses and that just about takes me to a level of hypocracy that I am not comfortable with. The Jesus that I know did not die to be commemorated with a chocolate cross. We have sanitized these so-called "holidays" until they are so far from the truth that if we were to discover a civilization in the deepest, darkest jungles of somewhere, anywhere, that had never heard of Christmas and Easter, and we brought them to America during one of those two shopping seasons do you think they would have even the remotest clue as to why all this "stuff" was displayed like carnival fare in the windows of our shopping establishments? Sometimes I think that we have gotten so far away from what Christmas and Easter actually mean that even WE can't distinguish truth from fantasy.
I'm pretty sure that when we get to Heaven that there won't be any holidays celebrated, or, at least there won't be any dancing Santas or marshmallow peeps. Sorry to disappoint you peep lovers but I just don't think they're going to make the cut at the table of plenty. There will be a celebration all right, but it will be focused on Him alone, with none of the human trappings of plastic and goo that we have allowed our own personal Jesus to become buried in. I'm sorry if this wasn't the Easter message that you would have expected in my blog--don't read it on Mother's Day unless you want your ears to sizzle. I don't even want to think about it right now, that holiday just makes my pressure go up like a Roman candle.
Have a blessed Easter! He is indeed risen and He loves you very much! (and yes, we will be eating peeps tomorrow...)
While Mother's day is the "holiday" for which I hone my sharpest darts (this blog will come later with much spit and vinegar) with Christmas following a close second I suppose that Easter will slide in to third safely. These "holidays" are little more than man-made efforts to get me to buy greeting cards, flowers, gifts that I can't afford and marshmallows that have been shaped in to everything but the Mona Lisa. I guess the Easter season has my motor running faster than Steppenwolf's and I'm having to look in the mirror to see my own guilty face staring back because I've got a huge shopping bag full of everything for Easter that is not Jesus. I've got chocolate rabbits and chocolate footballs and marshmallow peeps and stuff from Bath and Body Works for my daughter-in-law's basket. I've got skittles and starbursts for the boys and a chocolate covered something or other for Larry. I've got a little scented candle and some lip gloss for my mother (actually it was a buy one get one free at B&BW so mother is going to be the recipient of the free part along with some little snicker bars and bright pink peeps.) I've got plastic eggs that look like little animals from Noah's ark so do I get points for that? Of course not. I've got Reece's Pieces in a plastic bag that's shaped like a big carrot; I'm not sure who will get those yet. I've got everything but Jesus in the basket.
Have you ever stopped to wonder what Jesus must think about us when He looks down at His creation and all he sees is us standing 10-deep in line at Walmart with our pre-lit Christmas trees and tinsel and stuffed bunnies and plastic baskets so that we can celebrate HIS BIRTH AND RESURRECTION? Have you taken a look around when you are trying to decide if you want milk chocolate or dark to see if there was virtually any sign of why we are celebrating? I know that some stores will throw Him a sop by having a token Nativity scene or two squeezed in between the Disney stockings and dancing Santas but at Easter you are not even going to find a token in your major stores; although I will have to say that at the dollar store I saw chocolate praying hands...I even bought two of them but when you think about it even that carries the scent of clever marketing to get my dollar. Chocolate praying hands? I've even seen chocolate crosses and that just about takes me to a level of hypocracy that I am not comfortable with. The Jesus that I know did not die to be commemorated with a chocolate cross. We have sanitized these so-called "holidays" until they are so far from the truth that if we were to discover a civilization in the deepest, darkest jungles of somewhere, anywhere, that had never heard of Christmas and Easter, and we brought them to America during one of those two shopping seasons do you think they would have even the remotest clue as to why all this "stuff" was displayed like carnival fare in the windows of our shopping establishments? Sometimes I think that we have gotten so far away from what Christmas and Easter actually mean that even WE can't distinguish truth from fantasy.
I'm pretty sure that when we get to Heaven that there won't be any holidays celebrated, or, at least there won't be any dancing Santas or marshmallow peeps. Sorry to disappoint you peep lovers but I just don't think they're going to make the cut at the table of plenty. There will be a celebration all right, but it will be focused on Him alone, with none of the human trappings of plastic and goo that we have allowed our own personal Jesus to become buried in. I'm sorry if this wasn't the Easter message that you would have expected in my blog--don't read it on Mother's Day unless you want your ears to sizzle. I don't even want to think about it right now, that holiday just makes my pressure go up like a Roman candle.
Have a blessed Easter! He is indeed risen and He loves you very much! (and yes, we will be eating peeps tomorrow...)
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Bloom Where You are Planted
Driving past St Vincent's East one day last week I happened to notice a tall stand of cedar trees off on the right side of the road. Doing a quick count I think there must have been five or six of them and you could tell that they had all been planted at the same time. It looked like they had been placed there as a cover for some flaw in the landscape and were doing their job well. However, one of them on the far end was as dead as a rock concert featuring chamber musicians and then one in the middle was about "half" dead. As I passed on by I immediately began wondering what made the one die and another one trying to follow close behind. I figure they'd been there for close to twenty years by now, probably put there when they built the hospital. And they would have all received the same kind of care or lack of it, the same amount of rain and sun, the very same soil, the very same everything. Yet, something, at some point, happened to make one of those trees die and another one to begin following in its own path of destruction.
Of course, being a person who is always looking for the "more" in something, more of an explanation than what I've been given (not quite to the level of those pesky White House reporters who pepper the president with their endless staccato of question marks but more closely to Alton Brown on "Good Eats") I began thinking about how those trees were such a telling commentary on our own personal existence today. Like when Jesus spoke in easy-to-understand parables to the people who crossed His path such as the one about the farmer who planted the seeds and how they fared depending on where they landed (some dying immediately, some living but at the first sign of bad weather dying on the vine while some flourished) I think that we humans are basically no different, in this way, from those cedar trees or seeds.
If my purpose for being put here in the grand scheme of things is to be like one of those cedar trees and serve as a covering for some flaw in the landscape then so be it, God had that plan down pat for me before I even born (breech but that's another blog for another day.) I know He wants us to be faithful and to bloom no matter whether we're a cedar tree or a giant redwood sequoia right where we are...to bloom where we are planted.
Of course, being a person who is always looking for the "more" in something, more of an explanation than what I've been given (not quite to the level of those pesky White House reporters who pepper the president with their endless staccato of question marks but more closely to Alton Brown on "Good Eats") I began thinking about how those trees were such a telling commentary on our own personal existence today. Like when Jesus spoke in easy-to-understand parables to the people who crossed His path such as the one about the farmer who planted the seeds and how they fared depending on where they landed (some dying immediately, some living but at the first sign of bad weather dying on the vine while some flourished) I think that we humans are basically no different, in this way, from those cedar trees or seeds.
If my purpose for being put here in the grand scheme of things is to be like one of those cedar trees and serve as a covering for some flaw in the landscape then so be it, God had that plan down pat for me before I even born (breech but that's another blog for another day.) I know He wants us to be faithful and to bloom no matter whether we're a cedar tree or a giant redwood sequoia right where we are...to bloom where we are planted.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Larry and Will's Excellent Adventure
Larry and Will were fortunate enough to be able to go to the practice round on Tuesday in Augusta at The Masters. It really takes a lot to excite my husband but this was on "par" with a chocoholic being given the keys to the city in Hershey, Pennsylvania and being told to stay awhile. He loves golf and has always wanted to make the pilgrimage to Augusta to the most famous golf course and tournament of all. (I guess this is no different than the time that I went to Memphis so that I could see Graceland; I mean I think it's a law or something that if you go to Memphis you've got to see Graceland at least once.)
The Masters was everything that Larry had hoped it would be. He was able to see some of the top players in the world on a day when they could be more relaxed since they were only practicing and they played more to the crowd than they will as the week progresses. Will took some beautiful pictures of the landscape and I'm sure they don't even do it justice. It almost doesn't even look real; it kind of reminds me of the "Disney effect" that you get when you walk through The Magic Kingdom for the first time.
I think it's positively wonderful when people that you care for are able to cross something off their bucket list as having been done and at the same time making a memory with someone they love that will last long after the list gets tossed aside and forgotten. Memories and pictures...some of my favorite things.
What's on your bucket list?
The Masters was everything that Larry had hoped it would be. He was able to see some of the top players in the world on a day when they could be more relaxed since they were only practicing and they played more to the crowd than they will as the week progresses. Will took some beautiful pictures of the landscape and I'm sure they don't even do it justice. It almost doesn't even look real; it kind of reminds me of the "Disney effect" that you get when you walk through The Magic Kingdom for the first time.
I think it's positively wonderful when people that you care for are able to cross something off their bucket list as having been done and at the same time making a memory with someone they love that will last long after the list gets tossed aside and forgotten. Memories and pictures...some of my favorite things.
What's on your bucket list?
Saturday, April 2, 2011
LuLu and Shady, Part Deux
"I knew it was only a matter of time...seems twin #1 cut it a little too close while racing through the house and caught a corner with the side of his head...yep you said it...emergency room for stitches....after it was all over and back at home, Shady complained 'my whole day was wasted and I ain't taking nobody else to the emergency room' "...Bro
I have a feeling that it will be a cold day in, well, let's just say that it's going to be a cold day on the "great gray greasy mighty Limpopo" before Shady lets LuLu extend the right hand of hospitable friendship to any relatives from across the big pond to visit again. It may take months for his blood pressure to crawl out of stroke level.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Help Wanted at the Bronx Zoo
While getting dressed for work this morning I happened to catch a newsbyte on TV about a catastrophe that happened this week at the Bronx Zoo. It seems that one of their cobras has disappeared from its container and is nowhere to be found. "Not to worry", the newsperson said, "zoo officials have closed down the reptile house until the 20 inch adolescent can be found." Not to worry, my Aunt Fanny's backside.
What poor sucker is going to have to look for that snake, I mean who are they going to make put that on the top of their list of things to do? I suspect that on the next day following the great escape a higher percentage than normal of reptile-house employees felt a touch of the rheumatism flare up or had a burrito back up on them so maybe they'd just better call in sick and stay home. If I was one of those cage cleaning, copperhead caterers I'd have thought twice about going in to work that day myself. A cobra, either a "20 inch adolescent" or a full grown, 8 foot, mean motorscooter is going to kill you dead as a ballpeen hammer if it bites you unless you've got a pocket full of anti-venom right close by. I've seen enough shots of New York traffic on TV to know that you've probably got a better chance of finding a clearance table at Tiffany's than you do of getting from the Bronx Zoo to a hospital that's got a vial of cobra anti-venom sitting and waiting on you to wheel in. If I was a betting woman, and I'm not, but if I was, I'd lay odds on that cobra living to see another day and you becoming worm food if you happen to be the employee who runs up on that thing and surprises it. I don't know much about snakes but I do know that they don't take kindly to being surprised at all.
Yep, I can just see the help wanted sign outside the reptile house about now: "Wanted, one Cobra Hunter, advantageous to be single, preferably with no next of kin (and few aspirations of advancement because this could very well be a dead-end job.") Watch where you step in The Big Apple!
What poor sucker is going to have to look for that snake, I mean who are they going to make put that on the top of their list of things to do? I suspect that on the next day following the great escape a higher percentage than normal of reptile-house employees felt a touch of the rheumatism flare up or had a burrito back up on them so maybe they'd just better call in sick and stay home. If I was one of those cage cleaning, copperhead caterers I'd have thought twice about going in to work that day myself. A cobra, either a "20 inch adolescent" or a full grown, 8 foot, mean motorscooter is going to kill you dead as a ballpeen hammer if it bites you unless you've got a pocket full of anti-venom right close by. I've seen enough shots of New York traffic on TV to know that you've probably got a better chance of finding a clearance table at Tiffany's than you do of getting from the Bronx Zoo to a hospital that's got a vial of cobra anti-venom sitting and waiting on you to wheel in. If I was a betting woman, and I'm not, but if I was, I'd lay odds on that cobra living to see another day and you becoming worm food if you happen to be the employee who runs up on that thing and surprises it. I don't know much about snakes but I do know that they don't take kindly to being surprised at all.
Yep, I can just see the help wanted sign outside the reptile house about now: "Wanted, one Cobra Hunter, advantageous to be single, preferably with no next of kin (and few aspirations of advancement because this could very well be a dead-end job.") Watch where you step in The Big Apple!
Sunday, March 27, 2011
LuLu and Shady
I've wanted to talk about these two particular characters for quite some time now but wasn't quite sure how to go about it since, how shall I put it, they are family...not immediate family mind you but still in the same garden where our family tree flourishes so it's family all the same. I am changing the names to protect the guilty, innocent, the dizzy and the dotty but let me say up front that my garden spot would be so very boring without LuLu, Shady and all their kin watering it with their antics from time to time.
LuLu isn't from around here, she hails from a small village across the "big pond". She met her husband "J.D.", a deep-South redneck, who'd hopped a freighter for parts unknown looking for fortune and adventure (and not necessarily in that order) and their paths happen to cross like Bogie and Bacall (or Bardot and BillyBob.) Neither could understand each other's language but the language of amour needed no translation and so love and marriage commenced. She also couldn't pronounce her "J's" very well and "J.D." came out "Shady" and the name stuck. I think they've been married close to 50 years so I guess they've learned to communicate even though sometimes you still have to listen close to what LuLu says in order to understand what she is saying.
Right now LuLu is in the proverbial doghouse thanks to her generosity which she unwittingly extended to some younger members of her family who still live across the "big pond". She invited one to come for a short visit and instead, wound up greeting six of them at the airport with three being children under the age of ten. Shady is not happy a bit and I think that if he wasn't so concerned about them destroying his entire house that he would just check in to a motel for the duration of their visit. Oh yes, and they are staying for a month! Within the first few days one of the two year old twins had already thrown something down the commode and stopped it up necessitating an expensive call to the plumber. Then they threw coins in to the swimming pool and practically tore up the filter. More than one of LuLu's favorite antiques has had to be rescued from their grasp. Their mother's solution has been a double harness with a long tether in order to keep them from running any more amok than they've already run, at least when they go outside. Shady just shakes his head and keeps threatening to move in to a motel while LuLu just keeps cooking and cleaning up the house.
Now LuLu weighs next to nothing. She loves high heeled shoes and how this little woman teeters around on them without falling down is a mystery to me. So when her daughter drove by the house last week just to see if there was any evident carnage from the twin cyclones she was rewarded with the sight of seeing LuLu holding on to the reins of their harness for dear life, being pulled along like a chihuahua on a jet ski and doing her best to keep her balance in her best high heels. Those two miniature steam engines had pulled her down the steps, out of the yard, across the street laughing like banshees and she wasn't strong enough to stop them. I wish I could have seen that.
Now LuLu just cooks and cleans and marks days off the calendar while Shady picks up toys off the floor. I think he would leave town for the next few weeks just for some peace and quiet but he's afraid that they'll burn down the house while he's gone.
Wasn't it Benjamin Franklin who uttered so astutely that "fish and visitors both smell in three days"?
LuLu isn't from around here, she hails from a small village across the "big pond". She met her husband "J.D.", a deep-South redneck, who'd hopped a freighter for parts unknown looking for fortune and adventure (and not necessarily in that order) and their paths happen to cross like Bogie and Bacall (or Bardot and BillyBob.) Neither could understand each other's language but the language of amour needed no translation and so love and marriage commenced. She also couldn't pronounce her "J's" very well and "J.D." came out "Shady" and the name stuck. I think they've been married close to 50 years so I guess they've learned to communicate even though sometimes you still have to listen close to what LuLu says in order to understand what she is saying.
Right now LuLu is in the proverbial doghouse thanks to her generosity which she unwittingly extended to some younger members of her family who still live across the "big pond". She invited one to come for a short visit and instead, wound up greeting six of them at the airport with three being children under the age of ten. Shady is not happy a bit and I think that if he wasn't so concerned about them destroying his entire house that he would just check in to a motel for the duration of their visit. Oh yes, and they are staying for a month! Within the first few days one of the two year old twins had already thrown something down the commode and stopped it up necessitating an expensive call to the plumber. Then they threw coins in to the swimming pool and practically tore up the filter. More than one of LuLu's favorite antiques has had to be rescued from their grasp. Their mother's solution has been a double harness with a long tether in order to keep them from running any more amok than they've already run, at least when they go outside. Shady just shakes his head and keeps threatening to move in to a motel while LuLu just keeps cooking and cleaning up the house.
Now LuLu weighs next to nothing. She loves high heeled shoes and how this little woman teeters around on them without falling down is a mystery to me. So when her daughter drove by the house last week just to see if there was any evident carnage from the twin cyclones she was rewarded with the sight of seeing LuLu holding on to the reins of their harness for dear life, being pulled along like a chihuahua on a jet ski and doing her best to keep her balance in her best high heels. Those two miniature steam engines had pulled her down the steps, out of the yard, across the street laughing like banshees and she wasn't strong enough to stop them. I wish I could have seen that.
Now LuLu just cooks and cleans and marks days off the calendar while Shady picks up toys off the floor. I think he would leave town for the next few weeks just for some peace and quiet but he's afraid that they'll burn down the house while he's gone.
Wasn't it Benjamin Franklin who uttered so astutely that "fish and visitors both smell in three days"?
Sunday, March 20, 2011
A Love Story in a Single Paragraph
He was a blonde-headed, long, tall drink of water with more tattoos than he had bare skin on his arms and legs and he was loading their groceries in the cart. She was a short, slightly-chubby thing with several tattoos herself, wearing glasses and sporting hair that was obviously dyed from a bottle that must have been labeled "Black as Egypt." She was paying for the groceries. In the child's seat was a little blonde-headed moppet with a Disney Princess T-shirt on, happy as a lark and making funny faces at me while I waited for my turn to check out. She was a little doll and when her dad looked my way I spoke to her and said something like "well aren't you the cutest thing" and she just grinned. Her dad looked at me and replied "she sure is the cutest thing" and then he paused for just a second and looked at me again with a smile and then said "just like her mama". To me the onlooker, that child looked nothing like the girl paying for the groceries but at that very instant there was absolutely nothing else in the world that could have competed with that compliment. That short, slightly-chubby, slightly-tattooed, glasses wearing, dyed-hair sporting young thing suddenly straightened up a little and looked at him with such love and tenderness that I swear for an instant she looked 10 feet tall and runway model beautiful. The love that passed between them in that moment was more tangible than if a dozen tuxedoed men had just waltzed by the cash registers singing "You Are So Beautiful" and I felt incredibly privileged to have witnessed it. I watched this odd little family as they walked out of the store laughing and talking, quite in their own little world, her chubby little arm linked in his as they pushed their daughter and their groceries out of the store and in to the night. Sometimes Walmart can indeed be the very best place to make a memory.
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"While enjoying a meal this evening at Cracker Barrell, Shady informed LuLu in between bites of his open face roast beef platter that "she" was just about "in trouble" with him. Lulu sneaked off to the local casino with her visiting nephew presumably to teach him the evils of gambling....didn't return until 1:30am to Shady's dismay. All of this being said while Shady's scratching off the last number of a losing lotto card and complaining that they must have changed cooks, cause the food just ain't as good as it used to be. Fine dining at its best".....Bro