THE COLOURS OF THE WIND

 

Such Weather art as REDS AND GREEEEENS and all the shocking orange and yellows screeching from the screen.   I'd found a young man with the charming name of MAX (insert little exclamatory, shattery O here)  VELOCITY, on YouTube and since he was doing all warnings to Montana, I just settled to my puzzle.   And THEN I realized:   There CAN'T be another Bloomington and Mitchell and Orleans and Evansville just South there in Montana---too much coincidence.   It was for HERE---I'd been out in the morning, with a little fun shop at ALDI for Christmas leftovers and stocking stuffers for next year, and all was well when I came in lugging all the loot.  

Between then and lunch and MAX, the skies had taken a TURN and then it began to get dark  and I set a little grabbit lantern at my feet just in case.   We had one traumatic outage this past Summer whilst we were having the house re-wired---trauma enough in itself, but worse.

You know how "They Say" that a tornado sounds like a "Freight Train,"---I suppose for the greater weight of the train at the time, rather than a nice excursion or Express for commuting. At least they said that in all my Southern raising---on the Memphis NEWS Dave Brown used those exact words.   And Somehow, the winds were so gusty and the cold descending fast---I swore I could hear AMTRAK and Illinois Central and the Queen:  City of New Orleans, right here around our house.   I LOVE trains with all the love in my small-town-girls' heart, but I could see our enormous TREES waving in the yard as limber as the WeatherBush.    The Across-the-street neighbors had taken down the elaborate array of all things inflatable and lightable, or we'd have had a mylar/vinyl/plastic catastrophe right here in the street.   And dear Minnie Mouse, who we have laughed at for years for her tendency to deflate overnight, and fall sprawling with a drunken smile on her face---once up a tree, with her inebriated, goofy grin facing US, might have made it as far as I-65 before landing.  

We made it through the night, with no visible damages, and only the tiniest dust of white rime in the sidewalk cracks to show for all the rain, but that YouTube art was Scary as all get-out---like runaway Seventies graffiti in neon colors.  I have not heard of any damages or outages, and  it did allow for a couple of hours of texting with Sweetpea, with our describing the sounds and strength of the rainfall and the winds, and setting up a date or two for lunch while she's out of school.     You take BLESSIGNS where you find 'em.      Stay warm and well.  

THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AT THE GOLDEN TORCHES

 

Thursday would have been the Thirty-fifth Anniversary of the Christmas Day that we moved from Alabama to Indiana. I’ve told you about our ongoing love affair with Waffle House HERE, from Christmas Day, 1990, when we were on the road to our new life here.  We’ve had countless breakfasts there since, sometimes at midnight, if the whim strikes.

So, that Saturday of 2015, the day-after-Christmas, we braved the sleety day to go and celebrate our TWENTY-FIVE years in this wonderful, adopted place.  

We walked in onto the slippery, slidey tile floors---wet with countless footsteps, and were embraced by that unmistakable aura of good coffee, sizzling bacon, and the welcoming bright waitresses and cooks.  

We were seated beneath the only PINK-painted lamp in the house, with fanciful snowflakes giving our table an unaccustomed rosy glow.

MY kind of Art.

The windows had all been painted from the inside with festive scenes---wreaths and drums and ornaments, reminding me so fondly of a nice boy from my childhood, whose great talent for chalk-drawing was amazing---he’d come into our classrooms after school, painting blackboard after blackboard with scenes of elves and Santa, or Easter bunnies on bright green hills, or hay-shocks and pumpkins.  It seemed so magical to walk in one morning to such happy pictures, like strolling into one of those Easter eggs with the tiny dioramas inside. 

Waffle Houses are always filled with a cheerful energy, with scurryings and lively banter and rushing to get that good hot food out HOT.   You might well be seated in a Scalosian restaurant, with whatever instantaneous delicacies they might boast, for all the lightning speed of the Waffle House Staff.

Our own server Brittney seemed quite interested when we told her it was our “anniversary of Waffle House," and as she sped and skidded on those continuously-mopped floors, we told her of our tradition, and then, as she went back into the cooking area, we could hear the words “anniversary” several times, including once from the booth just ahead of me, where sat a nice couple having their own breakfast.

On one of Brittney’s return trips with that ever-filled pot, she handed us our ticket.  “I told my manager Nate about your anniversary, and he’s paid your bill,” she said.  

What a lovely thing!  We were simply overflowing with thanks, and as we prepared to leave, we asked to meet Nate and thank him.   He came out and stood behind the register as we repeated the story, with all the staff gathered round.   I don’t talk very loud, but I could hear “AWWWW,”   from several places around the room, and as we headed for the door, I waved and said Bye, and it seemed that the whole room chimed in, waving and calling out.

And that was our Anniversary visit to the Golden Torches, ten years ago. Yesterday would have been exactly thirty-five years since that memorable visit, and I wish that I could be there THIS MINUTE, bathed in that bright golden atmosphere of hustle and hum, smelling those delicious scents of BREAKFAST, and re-living those precious days.   Y'all need to stop in sometime, for scattered, smothered, covered and topped.   

GRAPENUTS CHICKEN

 

Years ago, a recipe went round the South for a tasty chicken dish, marinated in Wishbone Italian, rolled in crushed cornflakes, baked til tender and golden. It turned up at church suppers, funeral feasts, potlucks, pitch-ins, and Tupperware gatherings.

We were invited to the home of friends for dinner (we knew the husband well, as he and the men of our family were members of several organizations and all were farmers. I had met the wife briefly on occasion). Now, for the life of me, I cannot imagine what prompted the invitation, except possibly the husband's urging of a social occasion amongst us four.

And I was delighted for an evening which entailed real shoes, a dining room, and someone else's cooking. The idea of sitting down for an entire meal, without jumping up for the salt, refilling glasses, or wiping up spilt ones---that had its charms, as well. And though I did not know these people well, it was going out for the evening, an unusual and lovely thing, indeed.

Living-room-served Appetizer was rumaki, but not bacon-wrapped. The livers and whole water chestnuts had been marinated in the soy mixture, dumped in a baking dish, marinade and all, topped with slices of bacon, and baked til the bacon was brown around the edges.

The whole panful was poured into a clear glass dish, which then resembled some science experiment gone awry---graybrown chunks of boiled liver, long flappy strands of ecru boiled bacon, the whole floating in a brownish fluid flecked with liver crumbs and congealed lumps of blood. We were given toothpicks and told how much easier this recipe was than wrapping all those yucky, bloody livers. And there we stood, all dressed for special, probing our toothpicks into the brothy clumps with the enthusiasm of folks poking a bear with a stick. We emerged with a dripping bit, held our tiny plates beneath on the way to our mouths, and hoped for the best.

But you know, if you could get past appearances, they weren't so bad; the crispy chestnuts had taken on the hue of the sauce as well, so you weren't sure which you might be putting into your mouth, and would be surprised that the soft unctuousness you were expecting might turn out to be a not-unpleasant crunch.

But then came the True Crunch: the famed Cornflake Chicken. But they were out of cornflakes, it seems, so the hostess made do with the next best thing in the cereal cupboard: Grape-Nuts. Now, Grape-Nuts, on a good day and in its natural state, perhaps with a little pool of milk and a scatter of blueberries, is a passably pleasant breakfast. But those hard little nuggets, already baked into a shelf-life of ninety-nine years---well, baking them further still---that was not a good idea.

After the surprise of the first bite, we cut and scraped and managed to eat the INSIDE of the chicken pieces---the outsides resembled wallpaper flocked with BB's. Hoping to avoid a trip to the dentist for repair work, we did some meticulous carving and managed to carry on a conversation, all at the same time. Even after all this time, I can remember trying to separate those little stone crumbs from the tender chicken, corral them in my cheek, then swallow them like aspirin with a few sips of tea, whilst maintaining a conversation.

Side dish was a lovely platter of baked sweet potato surprise, another favorite au courant on the hairdryer circuit. The recipe included mashing the potatoes, then forming them into a ball around a marshmallow, then rolling the balls in: (developing a theme here) TADAAAAAAAA!!! Cornflakes.

Repeat chicken chorus ad lib, with a nice gravelly coating of Grape-Nuts around those mooshy sweet potatoes---like a mouthful of sweet aquarium rocks. How anyone could have thought TWO dishes rolled in cereal would make a balanced meal is beyond me, but the Grape-Nuts carried both recipes to heights undreamed of by the original cooks.

I think of that nice lady occasionally, how she opened her home to us, set her table nicely and cooked us dinner, and how ungratefully snarky my memories are. And I don't think I ever told the story from that day to this---it just seemed so ungrateful, somehow, after all that effort, and not befitting the hospitality.

But I still can't pass the cereal aisle without thinking of that chicken.

YORKSHIRE PUDDING, REDUX

 

When I went to England for the first time, I had a list of things to try and see and do and buy and experience, quite a few of them food-related. I wanted a bowl of porridge in Scotland (related in another post), Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding, treacle tart, a real afternoon tea with scones and cream and jam, and several other traditional things (all of which were accomplished and enjoyed very much).

So the first night on the road, we had dinner at our little hotel, and it was the only buffet of the trip, save for the bountiful breakfasts for which England is so famed. As I passed the gentleman who was "carving the joint," I asked for the beef. He misunderstood and carved off two hefty, steaming, juicy slices of the pork instead. I just accepted it, went right down the line, retrieved the nice muffin-pan shape of golden Yorkshire pudding, poured a bit of the rich brown gravy from the silver boat onto both, and had one of the best dining experiences of my life. It was rich and salty and BEEFY with the essence of the meat.  That sauce/gravy moat was the very embodiment of generations of Dripping, and would have been worth five hours' turning of the beef spit in the fireplace by small boys in the kitchen.

Later in the week, we stopped for lunch in the Lake District, and Yorkshire pudding was one of the features of the day in the restaurant/souvenir shop we were ushered into. I thought I'd try it one more time, and it was a bit different from the first. My plate arrived, or at least I hoped there was a plate under the weight of that huge bowl-shaped piece of browned dough holding its pint of gravy. The gravy was not so rich this time, nor did it have that tang of good meat essence nor the satisfying flavour of anything but browned flour and whatever liquid was used to make it. But it made up in quantity.

It was enormous. It covered a dinner plate, with just room on the edges for the server to get a tiny thumb-grip on either side. It looked as if a brown cake-pan had been appropriated from the kitchen, filled with brown liquid, and sent to table, its little ridges of sides barely holding in the flood. It sloshed when it was set before me, and the quandary arose: dip a spoon in that bread bowl and eat gravy soup until the ramparts could be breached, or cut right in, thus granting exit to enough brown sauce to flood the pretty tablecloth and perhaps flow back toward the kitchen. I'm a generous cook, with a lavish hand with the groceries, but I think I've served MEALS without that much gravy on the table.

Then we looked around us. Whole families were chowing down on plates of the kiddie-pool-sized servings. Twig-sized young women were tucking into the stuff with the gusto of lorry-drivers, and small children had their OWN great moats of brown in front of them. It was amazing. This was food for hearty hikers, tramping into the house in Wellies, beaming and rosy-cheeking their way through great trenchers of heavy food and gallons of steaming tea. Flour and water were the order of the day, and we were all consuming enough carbs to bankrupt Atkins several years early.

The pudding appeared to have been baked in a pieplate or cakepan, with inch-high sides which rose up and held its juicy burden, and the bottom was just about the depth of a piecrust, though springy and tender. I shared spoonfuls of the gravy all round the table; my companions scooped up spoons and bowls of it. One lady had no receptacle save her plate, so she lifted her teacup to the tablecloth and accepted a saucerful.

We all dipped and slurped and it made immediate "English dip" for the hearty sandwiches of all others at the table. I managed to down about a third of the rich eggy bready pudding, saturated as it was with the salty sauce, and passed samples to fellow travelers at other tables. When we finally lugged our stuffed selves out and back onto the bus, we left one semi-circle standing like a dough map of Stonehenge, listing toward the gravy. The stuff could have made a Biblical legend, a story passed down through whole families as they gathered on Friday nights, with children for generations asking, “Tell about the gravy which never ran out.”

When we left to go trekking through Wordsworth country, there was STILL a great moat of gravy left on that plate, with the golden pudding swelling and growing limply pale in the light of the grey afternoon.

TOUCHING THE PEN

 

 In a note just now to my friend Monique in Canada---she of the delightful and sumptuous La Table de Nana, now closed down and sorely missed, I mentioned an old custom which I think of now and then.   Letters often used to begin: I take my Pen in Hand. . .   And a lot of people DID take that for true, especially some of our town residents who had the misfortune of having never learned to read or write.   And so,  I had a few patrons who counted on me to read their letters from family and friend, as well as to WRITE them.   As I took down their words,  quite a few of them would finish the little session by a hesitant touch of my pen.   It's as if the writings were some unspoken RITES---a sacred ritual to the words, in which touching the pen, though they could not write nor read what I was putting down---that conveyed some sort of power to the words, and made them theirs.    

Even folks who came in and could only write their X on a note or document---that power of touching my trusty Parker 51 Gold-All-Over---a graduation gift which has lasted me decades---those folks trusted in the POWER of the touch, and the proof of their being there in that moment to vouchsafe their word and their agreement.    And even Wills and Deeds were treated with the dignity of their "X" if I had written in their name, and BY: racheld.   The confidence in that touch was solid, legality was confirmed, and the courthouse understood.  

I think of those long-ago folks, the ones who never learned to read or write, whose education probably stopped in third grade when they had to Quit School and help with the farming or sawmilling or road-upkeep, and my heart weeps in retrospect for what they missed and I partook of so freely and unthinkingly.   I coached several would-be drivers through the little Mississippi Highway booklet and all its rules, and once I was allowed to go to a formal required test for a friend, reading him the questions from the page about parts of engines and carburetors and flywheels and such, so he could mark A-B-C-or-D on the long answer sheet for a mechanic's certification.   They knew I couldn't coach him and certainly wouldn't cheat.

   

And the TIME---the time that they did have free---when they could have been transported into that magical world of BOOKS or even hunting magazines or the Commercial Appeal--I grieve for the wasting and missing out on all those colorful, exciting, heart-touching tales and interesting news and facts which I could pick up and set down at any moment.   I'm sure their pride in their children and all the recipients of those letters was bittersweetly great, for their own loss. 

But those dear folks, those with the concrete confidence of stone for the Power of the Touch---I wonder if there are any who still convey their faith into that simple small ritual of Touching the Pen.

A CHRISTMAS MEMORY, REMEMBERED

 

I've long-missed my friend John in Vicksburg, at MISSISSIPPI GARDEN. He faded away way too soon from the blog-world, but I look back often to see his lovely garden, and equally lovely way with words.   It's been more than fifteen years, and the memory of his sweet, lyrical, poignant prose has been a lasting wonder, and his title-page still on my side-banner.  

The first Christmas of my blog, he had posted a piece about his favorite modern Christmas story---Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory. It's also one of my own, for the times and circumstances so nearly mirrored my own raising, with Mammaw and a group of Aunts all chiming in on my welfare and manners and grooming, though they did not actually RAISE me, in the sense of every day looking-after.

And Y'all know I very rarely repeat a post, but this little book bears looking at, bears reading, for a real and stark and stunning picture of a little boy's life in the South of his day, with the devoted, fierce woman who took him in and did her absolute best for him, despite her own meager circumstances. And the almost-zany zeal with which she carries out her own odd Christmas tradition---that bespeaks a Southern woman's determination and grit and sheer strength of will to overcome and outlast and follow through.

I love Aunt Sook, as I loved and remember fondly all the odd group of Aunts of my own---the Aunt who DIPPED and traveled hundreds of miles on Greyhound to come spend summers with us, ferrying tiny Ayres and Avon samples in her vast suitcase---oddly enough, from the big city I now live in.  Then there was the one whose livelihood got her tossed in the calaboose for the activities of the scandalous houseful of young ladies she was "counseling," and the  tall slim one whose quiet, spare reserve sent her deep into the beautiful realms of paint-by-number to escape the constant humming hive and bell of the six-days-a-week dawn-to-dark little country store they owned. And always, my Mammaw.

And so, from LAWN TEA---scarcely a jot on the internet scroll, Christmas, 2008---Reflections on A Christmas Memory:

One blog featured Capote’s “A Christmas Memory” in a daily post, the stark words re-read this morning with my first coffee. I could feel those cold Christmas-morning planks of the bedroom floor, see the hard-won clumsy homemade gifts and tree decorations, smell the scents of Winter-long bacon grease and Vicks in that drafty grim house.

The faded gray tones of the accompanying picture echo those in my own scrapbooks and albums. Little Truman squints and gives a tentative smile into the sun, as the limp skirt of his spare, gaunt kinswoman hangs beside the pants of his short white boy-suit.

I know that woman---called “Aunt Sook,” though she was some distant cousin, as unwanted and unwelcome in the household as the quiet, brilliant little boy. You can see the arthritic clench of her hands which had just made thirty fruitcakes, chopping and stirring, sending them to the Roosevelts and other dignitaries, as well as neighbors and friends---she'd saved every coin and dollar she could spare for the year, hiding them in a purse beneath the floorboard under the chamberpot beneath her bed.

Those same wiry hands had chopped down a Christmas tree, wrestling it home past bayou and brush, for that beloved child, and decorated it with bits and bobs of anything pretty she could scrounge.

I know that scraggy porch, the one “turned” post standing valiantly against the sag of time, the rattly boards of the steps, the GRAY of the whole thing---the house and the porch and the prospects and the people and the time. There are plants on the porch, and contrary to my Mammaw's first porch, the one of my childhood, with the big old creaky swing, there are no coffee-cans in sight. I'd have expected at least one, holding a cutting of something-or-other, to coddle into flourishment in that ripe Alabama climate. Mammaw's Folger's and Maxwell house cans held mostly coleus---plural to her, I suppose, for if she gave you ONE, it was a colea. Just like one amaryllis was an Amarillo---I never GOT the difference til I learned to read, and seed catalogs were some of my favorites.

We have pictures of that hollow-faced woman, lithic as Lincoln at Rushmore, in our own handed-down flaps of Kodak-cardboard; the deep, wise eyes, the scrunched-back, sparse hair, the best-dress for the honor of the event, the still stare captured in its simple eloquence. She even LOOKS like my Mammaw and her sisters, though four of them, including Mammaw, were definitely not slim, spare ladies. They were bright, laughing women, whose conversation and dress and daily doings were not of the gray sort.

And so, his Christmas Memory. Very unlike mine in content, but so similar in locale, in persona, in clime and in women whose lives were of that time and place. My own memories lean more to scratchy dresses and a big noon dinner with kinfolk at Mammaw's house, with her own small tree set on the living room/bedroom dresser and her own bed behind a curtain not six feet from the dining table in the "middle room."

Men sat on the porch, came rumbling in to eat, lifted toothpicks from the tiny vase, and rocked back surfeited, into that tw0-chair-legs teeter which we knew to be the province of Uncles and Grandpas, but never young ladies; they soon vacated their places for Second Table, went outside, smoked, talked, kicked car tires and smoked some more. I think---for they were as peripheral to my ken as I to theirs.

But, like Truman, I DO remember the Women. Christmas and every day of my life.

WHAT IT WAS, WAS FUDGE!!

Reminiscing this bright-on-the-snow cold morning about days past, when we were so energetic and eager to get to the Christmas preparations.   Just about now would be the stocking-up of sugar, of chocolate chips and butterscotch and brickles, the solemn small blue jars of marshmallow creme, and a lot of butter.    It WAS FUDGE TIME!   We had a lot of folks in the local area, family and clients and just friends acquired over time, and we loved to surprise them with at least a pound every Christmas.  

I wish today was Fudge-Making Day, so it could just BE, cooling and being cut and wrapped for delivering around town to clients, so I’m “fudging” with the posts and using  this one from Christmas, sixteen years ago.  Wish I still had as much energy as I did then, when I was looking after a two-year-old three days a week.  She’s quite adept in the kitchen now, herself, and I’m sure she could show me a thing or two 

THESE ENLARGE WITH A CLICK

Here's the tableful of goodies for clients and friends---not nearly all of what we made, but it looks pretty, all arrayed like that. We swap the pretty cloths for an old red vinyl picnic sheet, and use a lot of Windex on the two glass tables, for candy-making is messy work.

Clockwise from One O'clock: Cappuccino Fudge, Plain Fudge, Chex Mix, Chocolate Chip Drop Cookies, Kahlua Fudge with Chocolate Coffee Beans, Rocky Road with the little cut marshmallows showing, more cookies, and a plate of Kahlua Brownies.

And I'm the candy-making Elf---Kahlua Fudge, with a couple of shots of Espresso Syrup and Kahlua:

Cappuccino Fudge, with a shot of Espresso syrup in the recipe:

Just plain Fudge, creamy and chocolatey---I love its color and shine:

Reese's Loaves---the bottom is the old-fashioned recipe for Peanut Butter Fudge, with extra-crunchy, left to sit in the pans til cool and firm, then a small pour of plain fudge on top.

One more look at the original, from whom all recipes spring---cutting those precise, sharp corners.

I wish you all a Christmas Season as sweet as these past

SWEET TIMES!!

MY FRIEND KARLA KAY

In this special season of THANKFULS, I'm doing a lot of remembering of Things Past---those softly-remembered moments and years and people who shaped our selves and beings along the way.   One very thankful for the past few decades has been a mist-softened memory of a childhood friend, whose life we all coveted, I think, in our youthful ways of thought.

Do we all know someone whose life we wished could live---someone with a family whose life together we envied, or who had a talent we’d like to have, or who even just had THINGS which we longed for and never obtained?    Mine was Karla Kay---she of the always-tanned perfect complexion, eyelashes out to THERE, and even longer slimslim legs which made white short-shorts into what they were meant to be. She lived in a house with hardwood floors and beautiful scatter-rugs in front of couches and a long strip of one down the hall to “the girls’ rooms” and an immense thick one beneath the real dining-room table. Our dining room was the end of the kitchen without cabinets, with a round maroon formica table and six matching vinyl chairs.     We knew each other from age four until early in this turned Century, when she passed away and was mourned most deeply by her loving family and friends.   

Karla Kay had long dark curly hair, washed with CONTI shampoo---the drift of scent from her curls was the fragrance of flowers; ours was Halo and a vinegar rinse and whatever was on the shelf at Fred’s. She always smelled of fresh-ironed cotton and the vaguest whiff of her Daddy’s cigars---he drove her and her sisters to school, and since he had a job with the CITY and could leave his office whenever he wanted, he picked them up and took them home for lunch, then was waiting after school to take them home or to the library, dentist appointments, or the drugstore for a Fountain Coke.

She had records and a big record player in the den, and a smaller one in her room; the big one was for when she “had boys over” and we danced in our socks---the closest I ever came to that was on several Saturday mornings when I’d put Johnson’s wax on all our own hardwoods, and was encouraged to call my girlfriends to come over to polish. We’d all wear a clean pair of Daddy’s old socks and dance the floors shiny to Elvis and Jerr’ Lee, and put on a Connie Francis, for long, skating strokes to smooth the boards. 

 

They went on vacations to Rock City and Destin and Mexico; they had subscriptions to Highlights For Children and National Geographic and later, Seventeen; they had girls over to spend the night, and they slept until ten or noon (once I went to a slumber party, and my Mother woke everybody up when she came to get me at eight to come home and tend to my sister, when we were supposed to go for Huddleburgers for lunch for KK's birthday). Her parents belonged to the BOMC and her mother smoked Old Golds with a little short white holder, the smoke drifting lazily up into her premature salt-and-pepper hair. They had a wonderful life.

I ran into Karla Kay and her husband in the ER one night in the Eighties, when I had to take my MIL in; she barely spoke, sitting leaning against him, as he whispered, “one of her headaches.” A couple of years later, same circumstance, same ER---his whispered, “We’ve come for her SHOT,” explaining all. I knew then that the coincidence was too far-fetched, and that she must have been there like clockwork;   Marjorie exasperatedly confided later that they made the rounds of several counties---one hospital here one night, another on another.

She wasted years of her life, her beautiful family, her own lovely existence, on a haze of nightly oblivion. And they adored her, lost her much too young, mourned her with fierce tears, and still speak of her as a saint who bore her travail with grace and honor. I remember her as a beautiful young friend whose life seemed to outshine mine. But not forever.

Anyone care to remember THEIR Karla Kay?

MY MOUTON JACKET

 

A question on another blog: What did YOU covet in high school?

Beginning about the ninth grade, I coveted a Mouton Jacket---the softest, smoothest, dig-your-fingers-into-that-lush, cut pile garment that ever came off a sheep. They weren’t for school---oh, No. they were for church and special dates and other VERY special occasions, and I longed for one of those beautiful things for YEARS. Even the linings were slipper satin, a fabric reserved only for wedding dresses and the finest fur coats.

We'd sit in Sunday school or BTU, in the folding chairs ringed round the room, and nobody, no matter what the temperature, would take off their Mouton. Except maybe Karla Kay, who would casually shrug hers off over the back of the chair so her fancy embroidered monogram on the inside left would show to advantage. Hers was even richer with the redolence of her Daddy's cigars, which seemed to permeate their whole lives and lend an air of added elegance to the soft fur.

And I finally got one---Christmas of senior year---perfection, with my own initials in gold-outlined-in-red-satin-thread, right there inside on that smooth chocolate lining. I cannot tell you how luxurious it felt, that piece of sheepskin and satin, cut and sewn to fit. There was more magic in that fluffy garment than in a dozen glass slippers or invisibility cloaks. I felt beautiful---just showered and made up in the best Revlon and Woolworth’s had to offer, hair gleaming and eyes bright, looking and smelling marvelous, feeling the nervous, happy anticipation as a sweet succession of nice young men arrived at my door to escort me out for a lovely evening.

I wore it all through college, as well, and once, at a fraternity party, I got the wrong coat. My date George had handed it over at the little check-table, and in the flurry of all leaving-at-once to get back to the dorms for curfew, the young pledge handed me the wrong jacket.

George did the obligatory holding; I slipped into it and slid my hands into the pockets. The size was right, but It was like picking up the wrong baby---It was not mine. It didn’t hang right, my hands didn’t fit right, and it was just OFFF. I flipped back the left side---no initials. The coat-check guy headed for the big front windows, pointing to a brother holding the car-door for his date. “That must be it” he said. “It’s the only other one I handed out tonight.”

Old George ran for the door, with my little red pumps in twinkly pursuit---he flagged down the car, we ran up and explained things, and then he opened the car door.

The other girl feigned amazement that she might have on my coat, staying firmly seated, doing that hugging-shrugging motion that hugged it and herself, running her hands up the neckline and preening herself in it like a satisfied cat. She even pouted a little bit when she stepped out of the car. I reached and flipped the front to show my monogram, and she gave a resigned sigh as she took it off and handed it over.

SHE KNEW. And I knew she knew---she’d almost got away with my beautiful coat, and left behind a lesser version, thin and cheap as her intentions, with a stiff lining and no beautiful satin frog-loop at the waist. There was even the nasty scent of her Intimate cologne all around the neck fur, and I had to go sit up on the big old widow’s walk sunroof atop our dorm, with it blowing in the breeze two cold afternoons before the traces of that awful smell were gone.

I wore that coveted coat all through college, and its slightly-shopworn remains are in the guestroom closet upstairs, still in its Goldsmiths bag. It was the only thing I ever really aspired to HAVE in all my high school years, and it took three each of hopeful Christmases and birthdays before it finally appeared, for I was never one to press for anything. If my parents said, "No," it meant no. If they said, "We'll see," then you could live in hope, but you'd better not mention it again.

That gleaming lining is only a soft whisper now, but the initials still shine. I just go hug it sometimes, and I swear I can smell a long-ago spritz of Woodhue, and recapture the luxury of that young time---the evenings of a shining pony-tail  and bright eyes, of stepping out into a fun evening when all things were right, and a mere coat made my small, circumscribed World perfect.

"WHO SHOT J.R.?"

 

(A very close facsimile of the Original cake, which was 14" across)

• Leah and I have been harking back to some “old” TV shows in the past little while, and just now we mentioned the “Who Shot J.R.?" DALLAS episode that everybody in the audience was so avidly awaiting.   The seasons were different, then, in 1980 (yes it was 45 years ago), and usually consisted of 25 or 26 episodes, then re-runs for the off-season.  And the last season had ended with J.R. lying bleeding on the floor, with nary a glimpse of the culprit. The plot was discussed in pool rooms and beauty parlors,  at school events, ball games, and even 
• out at the smoking spot outside the Methodist

Besides, I'd seen the havoc those new TV series could wreak, with the tale of two ladies at the Beauty Parlor tying up over a magazine with Nick Nolte from Rich Man, Poor Man.   And I'd personally witnessed the time at P.T.A. meeting when the long, lanky Town Alderman tried to step OVER the folding chairs between him and the aisle to get his wife home on time about three weeks into THAT show.   Rumor was that he had to wear an "appliance" for a couple of weeks, but I wouldn't know about that.    

 Well, we had been hired to cater a small Wedding Dinner for a young couple---I don’t remember which one had been married before, but they didn’t want a “Big To-Do,” just a nice evening at the Country Club for about thirty friends, with a pretty Fall-decorated cake and delicious Cornish-hens-and Dressing dinner.  

As time went on toward the date, I was asked quite a few times at the office about timing re: getting home to see the show, and once, “When you gonna let us out of there?”    Since I was certainly not in charge of anything but the food, I had no answer for them.

But I DID think of one thing that might calm the waters and assure that no one missed the show.  We put together a little Movie Night plan, carrying both the new AirPOP, the old popcorn popper, several BIG salad-bar bowls, a big package of quart-sized Dixie cups, several flavors of popcorn salt, and  several pounds of Orville's Best---all unbeknownst to the Bride and Groom.

 

As the dessert was being served, and some folks hitting the dance floor, we started the poppers to work, with butter melting in a big pan and all that unmistakable scent of POPCORN in the air, filling those enormous pans and hoisting them to the warming shelves on those big Franklin ranges.

 When it got on toward nine o’clock, everybody had suddenly decided to stay on and watch in the big lounge, and a surge of refills at the bar and tea pitchers and Coke Machine preceded the crowd into the TV room, with chairs and cushions brought from every room in the club, and all those folks in their evening finery lounging on furniture, the floor, several on laps and handy leaning-spots all over the room.

We passed out cups of popcorn and lots of paper towels, set out the rest of the bowls and toppings, and went our way back to the clearing of tables, to hearty applause for our unexpected treat, and shouts to befit an Ole Miss/State game when the shooter was revealed.

 

I heard nice things about that unexpected lagniappe to the experience for years, and the surprised and grateful Bride and Groom remembered us with a handsome tip.      

PAXTON PEOPLE XXXI: DIANNA BRIGHT

 

Dianna Bright has a purple color scheme in her kitchen, with a bosom-swell of plums printed on the curtains, the tied-on cushions in the captain’s chairs at the breakfast table, and the little crocheted-hanger-on-one-end dishtowel swinging from the oven door.  She has two shades of purple placemats, which she alternates round the table, and sets the table for two anew after every meal.  She gets a fresh plate, bowl, cup and saucer out of the cabinet while the last ones whirl through the dishwasher, and puts the matching napkin back into a ring beside each plate. 

She’s house-proud and cookin’ proud and takes elaborately-concocted, wonderful casseroles and salads to Church Suppers and Missionary Society luncheons and can set out gorgeous tea-trays for Eastern Star, with all the tee-ninecy sandwiches spread right to the edge of the bread and lined up in pretty patterns and formations that she finds online.

 Somehow, after her “raisin’” in a very small shotgun house with three siblings, and the attendant lack of many grace notes in the discordant symphony of their days, Dianna has a flair for gracious moments, and she loves to have a pretty house, set a pretty (and lavish, as the occasion may call for ) table, and almost most of all, she likes things to MATCH.    None of the modern love for all things old, for her, nor a bit of rust paired with even the most exquisite lace would sway her, and she just doesn’t quite get the craze for the vintage items which cost more love and money now than they ever dreamt in their Duz-box and Kroger-giveaway beginnings. Except for matching "china," which she occasionally finds at yard sales or Goodwill.  

She likes SETS of things---full service for eight “Everyday” dishes stand in her left-hand kitchen cabinet, remarkably intact for the twenty-one intervening years since her Wedding Shower. 

Numerous small sets for four are arranged in the dining room's room-wide Hutch Wall, built by her husband Havlon, who is known best for the beautiful hutches and built-ins he creates right in people's dining rooms---any size, any space, with shelves and drawers and carving satin-smooth as fine furniture.  He has a habit of always signing his work on the back, even if it means just writing his name on a board he's about to nail on a wall. 

Dianna will trade dishes out for holidays and seasons, as long as all the salad plates and butter dish and cream and sugar are of the same pattern.   She keeps that table set, and it BRIGHTS her to look at it and know that things are in order.  It MATTERS.  

 

 And that mattering is a far remove from doing her homework at the old oilcloth kitchen table of her growing-up years, with its bottles of Ketchup and Tabasco atop the faded-pattern oilcloth flanking the long-used old steel “silverware” standing in the well-worn coffeecan, the small bristle of toothpicks in a silver Garrett snuff can, and the fluffy pouf of krinkly, translucent one-ply paper napkins in their stingy pinch-box with “UNITED GAS CO,” on its fading green plastic, allowing one thin sheet each for a meal.  

Diana remembers, and like she swore all her childhood and teens, she’s DOING BETTER.             

APRES LE DELIGHTFUL DELUGE

 

                             The Golden Light that seems to strike our lawn only during Halloween, with decor and candy courtesy of Leah, from a decade past.   (Looking back in after making lunch, and there appears an uncanny complete ME almost, with two sweater sleeves and a long black apron.   Several brooches (which I have several of, but Chris always knew I'd love them for the gift and the lovely of them, but they would reside on lampshades and curtain fringes).   Hold your eyes just right and there she IZZZ.

There's something about the light this morning---this crack-the-cusp and slide into November---that the door revealed as I opened it to the front lawn.   There were only leaves there---damply scattered though there'd been no rain.   Only leaves to remark the eager little hordes who graced our porch last night.   Something about those small beings---four hundred of them, usually, and surely that last night---they left absolutely nothing in their wake.

No abandoned beer cups, no wrappers or forlorn band-posters nor ticket stubs---yet-to-concert young 'uns assured the absence of emptied BICS and the limp exhaustion of light wands and necklaces---just the same grass with the same leaves.    The lawn was untrodden and smooth, with their wake pristine as water closing after a boat.  And there WAS a tide---in fact quite several, and perhaps a budding tsunami a time or two, but they honored the lawn, and scurried all the way to the driveway turn to get to me, between the two lanterns marking the walk-posts, and right to my lap with my feet dangling from the porch.   They had seen me in my gaudy glory, immense pink witch hat with veil, pink outfit from cardigan to slacks to clogs, with stripey witch stockings in between, as generations have seen me  and anybody else of the house, year-to-year, since we moved here in 1997. 

The schedule for the "town" is listed as 6 to 8, but a lot of Mamas have gotten the word about the rich pickin's in our little area, and a cavalcade of cars and SUVs begins before 5:30, when I'm usually out, in every weather but pouring, with handy carpet-panels aligned along the porch, for any sitting helpers who come along.   The firsts are some of the littlest---tee-ninecy ladybugs and small pirates and enough princesses to re-stock every Kingdom on Earth should there be a shortage.   One wee Buzz Lightyear so small as to be merely a happy lower-case "bz" strode his toddler steps up to me, grinning wide, and the plethora of comic and cartoon and HERO UNIVERSE and after-school TV and astronomically diverse little characters made their way into my heart. 

The tides DID ebb and flow, with little lapses when I just sat and rocked out to the EVERYTHING HALLOWEEK neighbor's soundtrack of Monster Music---I even stood up and danced to Time Warp one time when the lawn was not filled with Kiddos.  And Monster Mash---even the Next-Door Parents didn't believe I knew the words to Monster Mash and could approximate a bit of Boris's accent.

But when the surges came, they came BIG---twenty or thirty would come up the driveway, minding their manners, and a great colorful sway would be in front of me, almost every one with a Happy Halloween, or How You Doing? and absolute respect for the moment---nobody grabbing, nobody pushing---just a quick reach and drop into bags and pumpkins, and somehow the THERES were replaced with the Next In Lines, and it went so well, it was as if they'd practiced both approach and depart with precision.    The smiles and the happy faces at the shining silvery packs of sweets---and my waving up of all chaperones, caretakers and other grown-ups, with "Drivers always eat!"---what fun and shrill little thank yous, and over-shoulder shouts of thanks from that minimultitude---one of my high spots of the year.   I didn't hear a single protest or wail or loud voice all evening, save for the friendly greetings of the once-a-year recognitions.   

Shy teens-and teens-plus DID sort of shrink a bit til I always said, "You're NEVER TOO GROWN-UP" and then there were great smiles.  And some old familiars DID scan around the porch for Paxton, and inquire "Where's your TURTLE?" missing her presence from other years.   Every one brought a gentle pang, but the evening went on beautifully.    I stood up and carried the pan to the sidewalk entrance whenever I saw a visitor who might have trouble negotiating that small space, or toddler whose proud parent hung back and let them SHINE.  

And thus I met the COSTUME OF THE YEAR---I have at least one memorable one every year, and unless it's an absolutely Hollywood-perfect attire and makeup beyond the pale, it's almost always a thought-up or Homemade one that catches me.    The little family---two littles in charming costumes, and a Mom and Dad, with Dad trundling a full-size garbage bin, shiny with aluminum foil of its crafting on the dolly, and with a clever sign I cannot quite recall, with a tiny being inside who rose up on cue and waved his arms.   What a thought, and what a loving, albeit uncommon, piece of workmanship and deft navigating of all these crowded blocks, of that sweet Daddy for his child.

And so it went---not a whimper, not a scowl, not a blip---one more lovely Halloween in this little neighborhood.   We closed the doors and turned off the lanterns at about 8:15 and went in to have our dinner of two baked potatoes with fixin's awaiting in the oven.   Perfect evening, once again.  

    

                    From a Decade ago:   Sweetpea, grown too tall from her pumpkin of the years before, attended as a Jack-o'-Squash, and was astounded to meet Violet in our own front yard.