MARTHY TIDWELL'S THANKSGIVING LETTER

Dear Lottie Helen and all,

I hope this letter finds you all well.  We are all well as common, and yesterday was A BIG day around here.   We had 14 in all at the table, and it was quite a good dinner, considerin.    We borried a folding table from the church, and six of their chairs, and set it up in the side room for the kids.   I let your sister Letha Grace be in charge of that one, and she spread the whole thing with a roll of brown paper, like Kroger sacks, and laid out the crayons and markers and even glue sticks and little shapes of turkeys and punkins for them to make their own table.   It turned out real cute and sure cut down on rough-housin’ before we could get dinner on the table.

I made a big old pan of dressin and about a gallon and a hafe of gravy out of a big old roastin hen, two dozen devilled eggs, a great big pot of low-cooked snap beans, four pies, and a double-up of Miss Paula’s Pineapple Casserole, and they ate up every last scrape of that---Aint Lissie Tidwell said, “Marthy, you could fry Ritz crumbs in butter and put it on floor sweepins, and it would taste good!”   We all got a laugh out of that.   She brought that big ole blue roaster full of duck and dressin that everybody loves so much.

That was a real good thing, because your Daddy got it into his head to deep-fry a turkey this year.   He got out the shrimp-boil pot and the burner and set it up out on some concrete blocks out in the side yard about ten this morning, and all the menfolks gathered out there with their coffee.   What is it about menfolks anyhow, that you can’t get em in the kitchen unless their’s pie, and if they’re cookin outside, they have to all gether around in lawn chairs and watch it like TV? 

Well, you know how good a nice big sugar-rubbed ham is, comin out of the oven, and how good a turkey is when it’s smoked in honey-butter?  Well, he decided that that would be the way to go to make the turkey real good and moist.  He just figured one is good and a combination would be even better.   So he melted up that butter and honey, and he vaccinated that turkey all over like it was travelin’ to Timbuktu.   He musta been thinking that if you hit every spot once, and still have stuff left in the jar, better use it up. 

I watten out there, but I heard the commotion from clear in here when that hot oil roiled up out of the  pot like Pompei.  The men were yellin and a-whoopin and a-laughin, and your cousin Bertie Luke run and grabbed the big ole syrup dipper like we skim sorgum with, and started dippin up and dashin out big old ladlefuls onto the yard to cut down on the damage, but it just kept comin, they said.   

By that time, we were all out in the yard, and I wouten take nothin for seein that.  It hatten been in more than ten minutes, and the whole yard smelt like burnt cookies.   They lifted that thing out in about ten more minutes, and it looked like you’d dropped it down in live coals all over.   It had big old black spots ALL OVER itself, and looked worse than one of those blackened chickens that everybody was cookin a few years ago.    The holes went deep in that pore ole bird, and the wingtips was completely gone.

As it started to cool just a tee-ninecy bit, the pure-black drumsticks made little tick-tick sounds and crumbled plumb off onto the platter and shattered.   We were all laughin fit to bust, and on the video that Bertie Luke's grandson made, you could hear Aint Phemy sayin,”This GRYCE won’t never be the same, willit?”

We had a plenty a dinner, and thank goodness for those four mallards your Aint Lessie put in that dressin, cause that turkey was just a plumb purentee washout.   I just wish you’d a been here to see it.   Lookin to see y’all for Christmas,

Remember we love all a y’all,

Your loving Mama Marthy Tidwell

borrowed from the internet because it was the pitifullest one I could find.  I hope they had a ham.

LOVE TO YOU

Preparing for the Holidays and sending LOVE.

LEONARD COHEN

There are some men who should have mountains to bear their names to time...

(note on message board)

R. I. P. LEONARD COHEN,  1934--2016

On this eight-years-today anniversary of the day I sent out that first tentative blog post, there's a sad and glorious tenor to the day, for I've just learned of the passing of one of my very favorite people---Leonard Cohen.

Such a Voice for the Age, those sepulchral, deep tones echoing spare truth and hard ideas in such evocative words and phrases.    We lost one of the Great Ones on Monday, as he whispered away into that smoke-hazed, music-filled stage which must have been his Dream of Heaven.

But the words he left---oh, the WORDS.   The love-saturated SUZANNE, the capriciously-serious CLOSING TIME, and all the genius of the other starkly real songs he created around so many subjects---and the sheer poetry of the lyrics.  You can hear the voice of personal experience, as well as his Johnny Walker Wisdom and empathetic soul.   There was such a vitality, such an absolute MAN-ness to him, in his voice and his expression, and the vivid harsh-and-gentle of his writing is too severely beautiful to describe.   The music is echoing off my walls this moment, as I think of his life in the dark colours of his clothing and his themes and his deep-shadowed face as he sang through the years.   What a legacy, and what a gift, in all the permutations of the word.

His writing and composing WERE the Crack in Everything, and also the Light getting in, in such an exultant, beat-driven, gritty way that the shine hurt your eyes AND heart.   I just thought he’d always be there, and can’t imagine a more sublime way to live on, than through such glorious music.  

And if he’d never opened his mouth but once, if he’d never put pen to paper and hands to piano or guitar but the single time, in all that long life lived in such solemn exuberance, then HALLELUJAH would have been enough.

Lord a'Mercy, THAT’S PLENTY, and overflowing the cup.

  

HELENA'S CLOSET

Y’all KNOW I don’t do politics or FASHION, so little knowledge or interest I have in either, but sometimes . . .

I have an almost-everyday delve into an incisively-witty, fun blog by two smart, savvy fashion mavens, TOM AND LORENZO. They mercilessly skewer the pompous and self-involved, the old-enough-to-know-better and the rich-enough-to-hire-advisors, and are so clever with their words, I cannot resist peeking in, though as you know, I’m NOT THERE FOR THE CLOTHES.   It's the writing and the sumptuous bons mots and witticisms flying faster than light. 

ANNNNNDDD . . .They simply adore Helena Bonham Carter.   There’s just a sweet spot in my heart for her, in ANY role.   She simply has such a flair for being herself, such a self-confidence and blasé disconnect from What Would THEY Think? (the absolute standard on which I was brought up, sternly conscious of other folks’ opinions and standards of decorum and dress, and though I’ve breached them one and all on several occasions, at my age now, I require only that my attire be clean, preferably cotton, and good coverage. Perhaps that’s why I love her slapdash, outlandish outfits and devil-may-care attitude so much.

I once wore a “pair” of shoes like this to a fairly formal party in college.  Mammaw had insisted on my getting both colours of the pumps I particularly liked, so I just wore each on a whim to an afternoon tea at the Chancellor's House. 

This is just like me (well, sans purse and shopping---I have an abiding hatred for both).   But I am known to wear two-pairs-at-once on my head, and wander around searching for them.

And I wonder what her closet must be like---I imagine it’s an enormous closet---a cavernous closet, with an inconspicuous door opening inside a charming apartment, and stretching

out and back into the distance  like the Weasleys’ Quidditch tent.   The theme is inordinately dark, whimsical, lit by torchieres and glowing eyes, and all the dresses move idly in the dim breeze.  Daywear is held  suspended from the beaks of crows, with evening attire the ravens’ domain, and an entire wing of the cavern is populated by small blackbirds, whose delight in life is to organize and maintain the vast drapings of jewelry, eyeglasses, shades, glasses-chains, belts, whimsical hats and gloves and scarves.     

 Griffin-doorknockers hold long rows of purses, swaying  like small sides of beef in the cool keeping-room, and shoes make their own way back to their allotted stairs, reaching out of sight above the raiment below.  And fully a hundred mighty rocs suspend the hangers for the fabulous, the fun, the frayed and the fanciful coats awaiting.  And somewhere in the darkest high rafters hang flights of wistful small bats, each responsible for the keeping of a forlorn little sweater---cardigan---jumper, to hug close around her body as the eyes and lenses of the world assail her spirit.



 I firmly believe that somewhere WAY back in that closet, after many twists and turns, it intersects briefly with those of Miss Havisham,  Belle Watling and Miley Cyrus, taking one sharp turn at The Last Chance Goodwill. 

   Just one nebulous idea, one inkling of a look, a feeling for the day, and the mist stirs, with some garments whirling and sparkling,  and others creating their own black holes of darkness in the dim, as nine unrelated items magically whisk to the forefront, encircling her body more effectively than Stark’s red suit.

Or some days, she just runs laughing through the entire domain like a child under clotheslines, clutching and clasping and grabbing in glee, and emerges into the daylight a Thing of Wonder, beyond description, for ordinary mortals to ponder and discuss. 

LETTER FROM MARTHY TIDWELL

HAPPY FALL, Y’ALL!

Dear Lottie Helen and all,

I hope this letter finds you all well.  We’re all well as common, but your Daddy liketa had a little tumble comin’ in with the stovewood last week.   He caught the cuff a his shirt on that ole long doorknob, and stumbled several steps before he righted hisself.  Didn’t drop a stick, not even them little ole fat lighterd slivers.   Soon’s we seen he ‘as allright, we all laughed fit to bust at that little dance he done. 

Tonight’s Church Supper night, and I’m a doin’ my best to get some good Fall cookin done to take.  Well, I got that big old roaster-pan buttered up right heavy, and then I got three a them quarts of gooood peaches out of the freezer and let ‘em thaw a while.   Then I  takened, and I put them sliced peaches in the bottom a there, and sprinkled on a right smart a sugar---just enough to get ‘em goin makin juice ‘n’ all—and a big dash of verneller. 
Cobbler is always better if you dot a good lot of butter around on top of the fruit, too. 

  And then, I went out and got me about four a them good yaller-yawk eggs for the cake---nothin’ like a good yard egg for a good rich cake.

I got that old Sunbeam a-goin with them eggs and about a cup and a hafe a sugar, and just let ‘er rip til that mixture climbed up about three times its size and makin’ a ribbon when you lifted up the beaters.   So you measure out the flour and Clabber Girl and Salt, and melt you about a cup of butter in a different cup, along with a cup of milk with some good verneller stirred in.

You know, you hafta measure when you’re bakin’ cause it’s more like chemistry than cookin.  The right amounts of every tee-ninecy thing is the secret, especially the teaspoons of bakin’ sody or Clabber Girl, because they can play havick with all those good eggs and fresh butter if they’re off by even a smidge.   Nothin’ worse than a cake that squatted to rise, and baked in the squat, except maybe a real pretty one, all fluffy and golden, that wastes all those good ingredients and gets all the way to the table (especially if there’s comp’ny) so bitter with too much leavenin’ that the dogs just sniff and slink off when you throw it out in the yard.

I got the cake all mixed up good and light, and poured it real gentle over those peaches---it like to overflowed the pan, so I scooped out a cup or so of the peaches to keep it from runnin over in the oven.   Got it into a good smart hot oven, and then I put on three quarts of them good snap beans we canned when y’all was here in August.   Weren’t they fine? 

Just a big ole onion in the Dutch Oven sweated down some, and the biggest ham bone out of the freezer laid in with the drained beans, a good reach of salt and I crushed up almost a whole head of that fresh garlic we’ve got dryin out in the egg shed.  They’re cookin down right now, with some soy sauce, and does this house smell mighty fine!   Got a few dozen of the littlest potaters soakin to scrub to lay on top at the end to cook. 

I better go get my blue dress ironed.  I got so busy pickin up pecans and with the gettin-in of the last bell peppers and sweet taters so the boys could till the garden under, that I just laid everything crosswise on your bed til I could get to the ironin.

Remember we love all a y’all.

Your Loving Mama Marthy Tidwell