FLIGHT SCHOOL

 

On our Adventure walks, we’re always on the lookout for Fairy houses and activities, and so when we spotted this seeming scar on the tree,  we realized we’d happened on a treasure:  See that tall, thin line extending casually from top to bottom?  That is the Ingress:  the magical doors which slide silently back, revealing a perfectly wonderful scene---the many, many tiers of a Fairy School, its vast heights providing high halls in which the little flightlings practice their takeoffs and landings, their swoops and swirls.

The inside is one great chamber of dozens of towering ledges, some of each kind of surface from which a fledgling flyer might be expected to have to use for takeoff:  Grassy plains, with soft landings and gentle errors, til the little wings catch  their wind;  tree limbs and lacy bushes and crannies in the rock, as well as stony ledges over great chasms, as the little ones grow in verve and skill.   There’s even a water-ledge, its surges held magically from the overflow, each drop hanging precipitously yet never falling onto the balconies below, as the tiny mer-fae burst   from the water masquerading as minnows, spilling silvery droplets as they rise.

 There are delightful classes in floating down on frilly filigree of banisters, ornate brims of opera-boxes, shelves of books and shining glassware.   Specially chosen cadets are schooled in Royal Comportment and Matters of State, for gracing velvet cushions and behind-the-throne lounging ledges built into the back of every royal chair in every kingdom, for quick consultation or immediate dispatch, or just for the fun and honor of having such magical friends close at hand.

And there are indoor-type launches and landings as well, for learning the genteel art of set-down on carpet, stairs, marble floors of great halls.   There’s a special course in Hover-and-Float, for secret landings inside flowers or  behind sugar-bowls and muffin-stands on tea-tables.

  One afternoon features special guests, for it’s dedicated to alighting gently and safely on the shoulders of Folk-friends. 

All these charming scenes reside behind that pale green door, as tall as the gates of fabled cities, rising in tiers of colour and form, as the patient trainers lift and guide, console and cheer, teaching their wee charges to fly.

And when those doors glide open, the glitterings and gleamings, the magical spells and the delight of flight---those are too much for most eyes.  But when you’re lucky enough to be there for the opening---when you’re quick, and when you BELIEVE---THEN you’ll see something you’ll never forget.

           GRADUATION PROMENADE

                YUME CYAN

NEARLY SEVENTY YEARS

 

Pretty near SEVENTY years ago---September 26, 1956, my best friend Linda got her Mama to drive us to the Tupelo Fair to see Elvis perform. We were just  in High School, and like many a young’un of all eras, we got together on the phone the night before, to decide on what to wear. Sitting there in our September-night houses, with perhaps the fan going and the heat of the day subsiding, we threw all sense to the nonexistent winds and chose to wear our new black skirt-and-sweater sets, bought for the new school year---both sweaters were long-sleeved wool, pushed up to the elbow, and hers was angora. We got dressed the next morning and off we went, confident in our sophistication, the curl of our immaculate ponytails, and our stylish outfits, decades ahead of Fernando’s infamous “It’s better to look good than to feel good.”

It was HOTTTT, even early morning, even in the car. They had a BIG Oldsmobile, with the flip-forward front seats for getting into the back. It was dark green with white leather seats, and her whiny brother had to ride in the front because he got carsick---which was fine with us, because neither of us wanted to be stuck in the back seat with him, anyway.

We’d first hoped that Linda's Mama would go and visit with her sister, who lived there in town---but the even more fervent hope was that she wouldn’t go off and saddle US with Little Brother while we had mature lady-things to do. But he wanted to stay for the Fair, and so they both stayed. We had matinee tickets, because we had to try to get home before dark.

We carried a picnic lunch in a big carrier, and we had to take it in when we went through the gate, so we took turns carrying the thing, and baby-sitting it when the others would go on the rides. I don’t think she and I ate a bite, for the show started about 2 p.m., and we were just so nervous to go and get into a good spot. No reserved seats---no seats at all in a lot of places, and as we entered, Randy started to whimper and pull back, because of the crowd, surging and already screaming all around us, and Mrs. T. had to stay behind with him, as we went WAY forward. The stage was a big plank platform, and all these years I’ve remembered it as a flatbed truck, somehow---maybe there were wheels visible. It was all open in the sun, and I’m sure we were limp as dishrags by the time we got as far front as we could.

We were WAY early, and as we stood in that September sun, with the sweaty, nervous crowd pressing ever close and closer, I could just feel the fever in my clothes---that wooly outfit, so chic and so sophisticated, was just intolerable, and the sweat was running down our faces. We’d grabbed a few each of those awful brown NIBROC “towels” in the restroom---the ones like pinking-sheared grocery bags, and we were steadily trying to dab our foreheads and not let anyone see, as the Coty powder from our dollar compacts dissolved and our Tangee lips must have looked like teeny-bop Riddlers.

There was none of the fanfare of later years---no dramatic 2001/Zarathustra and strobing lights---they just announced him, and there he was---Elvis, beginning his first number. And we were vindicated: The King was wearing almost an exact duplicate of our own outfits (he was in pants, of course). Despite the darkness of his own clothes, he just shone, up there in the sun---his hair was closer to REAL hair at the time, hardly distinguishable from any haircut in our acquaintance, and he was SO beautiful.

His shirt looks black in the picture, but I swear it was a deep, sapphire-y blue, kind of glinting as he turned and moved, gleaming almost electric sometimes in the depths, like the changes when you blow onto a cat’s fur, with the light hitting the velvet just right. I heard later that his Mama had made that shirt, and it was no big deal at the time, but now, it’s a thing of rare grace to think of---that just-starting-out Most Enduringly Successful Show-Biz-Personality-of-All-Time, wearing a garment made by his beloved Mama on her old Singer. And he was proud to wear it.

We were two shy small-town girls, in every sense, and would never have intruded ourselves onto anything, but somehow we were RIGHT BENEATH HIS FEET, right up at the front of the stage, with fans who were screaming and crying and reaching fervently toward him, as if to Touch His Garment. Flashbulbs were popping and the music was blasting, and he was gyrating and we were literally burning to death inside those infernal wooly clothes, and it was like no other experience I can imagine.

And of the continuation, MOIRE NON.

SWEET AND LOVELY

In addition to shirking my attentions to my own blog, I’ve missed out lately on a lot of the wonderful ones I’ve enjoyed over the years.   One of these is CAKE WRECKS, and there's a cheer-you-up, BRIGHT you, in a little story-in-cake.

The tiny, timeless characters from all over the world of baking are simply the sweetest ever, and the little poem to accompany is spot-on perfect.

https://www.cakewrecks.com/home/2017/5/21/story-time-sweets.html

RIPPLES FROM ANOTHER TIME

 

REFLECTION FROM TEN YEARS AGO---You know how you meet someone and instantly that person becomes a part of your life-memories, even though you never see them again, nor they ever think of you as well.   Just a small encounter at a restaurant, a child of such grace and charm that her tiny being captured my heart in that moment.   Often in these ten intervening years, I've wondered if she's doing well in school, or is she happy and dancing, or perhaps she's had a wonderful something in her life that would BRIGHT me to know.   However, wherever, I hope she is still that beautiful young lady whose small touch on my day has resounded in such a strange, welcome way, and I wish her WELL.  

From September, 2015:  Leah and I had been to Sunday lunch at a salad restaurant, and she had lingered with a takeout-container to collect some for her lunches of the week.   I stood in the lobby, and met a small girl whose sweet smile and fabulous, luxuriant hair simply captivated my interest.  The waiting line was sparser, but still going through, and I looked down and across the divider to see the most beautiful child---a little girl of about three, with the most astonishingly-beautiful hair---just a shining waterfall up in a tight band---not a ponytail, somehow, but across the width of her head and cascading down way past her waist.  She reached up, several times, lifting it by the sides and letting it fall sumptuously through her little hands as if she luxuriated in that special gift she carried.   Almost exactly like this, except not in "made" curls---more a cascading ripple of small gleaming waves, and the young lady was much tinier.

She turned and we smiled at each other.    I said, “You look very pretty today.”    She ducked her head, looked up, smiled again.     Catching a glimpse of the two Disney characters on her tiny shirt, I said, “Oh, do you like Elsa and Anna, too?   We do.”

She held her shirt-front out from her body for a look, and grinned.   “You know, we like them so much we had a FROZEN birthday party for my granddaughter,” I said.    Her Daddy had been smiling at the interchange, as she and I talked of the movie and the two sisters, and I went on to tell her about the party decorations and how much fun we had had.

He said,   “Her birthday’s tomorrow, and mine was yesterday”---then we got into the Happys and the “Mine was a few days ago, and Caro’s is Friday,”  with good wishes and general congratulations all around, like a bunch of happy Shriners at convention.       Isn’t it a marvel what just a smile among strangers will enkindle?

She still comes to my thoughts in happy dreams, this unknown little one, and so, wherever you are, Baby Girl, I hope you have had a wonderful decade, and wish you a future as bright as your smile.

A REAL HISSY-FIT

 

I’ve contemplated defining some Southern terms like “might could” and “come up a cloud,” before going on with adding any more characters to the Paxton census. But recently I read an etiquette question from a young woman who went to her first pitch-in lunch since she moved to the South.

She’d taken a cake as her contribution, and as everyone had been asked to take home whatever food remained on or in the dishes they’d brought, she picked up her plate with a bit of cake left, thanked the hostess graciously, and started for the door.

The hostess called out, in front of all the other guests, “Hey! You’re taking my PLATE!” Guest answered that was indeed her own plate---she’d brought the cake on it. Hostess replied, even more loudly, that it certainly WAS her plate, because it had a Christmas tree on it---going on in that vein, all but calling the guest a liar and a thief.

Embarrassed and chagrined that her first party in her new town had made her the center of such a spectacle in front of ladies she hoped would be her friends, the guest removed the Saran from the bit of cake and showed the hostess the plain white plate. Hostess made no apology beyond a grudging, “Well, it LOOKED like mine.”

The letter-writer asked if that were common behavior (and as my Mammaw would have said, it was VERY COMMON, indeed, but it certainly is not the norm where I come from). I answered her post, saying that it was NOT the usual way of doing things, and that the hostess certainly owed her more in the way of an apology than a four-year-old might be coerced to offer.

Then I explained an almost-entirely-Southern phenomenon---in other regions it might be called a fantod, or a “going off” or just plain RUDE. Down South it’s called a Hissy Fit.

You, My Dear, may have had your first (I hope) and last (more fervent hope) encounter with what is known as a Hissy Fit. And a very amateurish attempt, it was, pitched by someone who has not obtained her proper HF credentials, much like the hangers-on of Rock Stars and Movie Idols.

She THOUGHT she could, but failed miserably. She attained merely Rude, and SHE was the spectacle.

Southern Belles learn the power of the properly-thrown Hissy Fit in their cradles, and use them to good effect and AT THE PROPER TIME---in case of absolute, dyed-in-the-cotton rudeness from someone, or when they see another creature, human or animal, being abused. Gray areas less or more than these are cause for contemplation, reflection and consideration before throwing or refraining. A mistaken dish, no. An overheard bit of gossip, perhaps.

Catching Bobby Ray kissing Sissy Maud---Oh, Yeah.

A REAL Southern Belle KNOWS the difference, and is a model of calm and mannerly decorum, unless dire circumstances require. Some circumstances do require a Dressing Down, a Blessing Out, a taking-to-the-woodshed. Yours, however, did not do Any Such Of A THING.

Your hostess was NOT Raised Right, was probably a THAT CHILD, left to run roughshod over everyone in sight, and was exhibiting TRASHY WAYS.

She is a true blight on Belledom, and would be cut dead at any Garden Club, Debutante Ball, Fishfry, Huntin' Camp or Eastern Star South of the M&D. Her lack of apology is certainly no surprise. I apologize on behalf of Belles everywhere; we do not hold with such nonsense, No Sirree.

I truly trust that you will not have any further truck with such a hussy.   I'll bet she even put dark meat in the chicken salad.