LOOKING BACK

We’ve been conversing about other times, simpler times, my friend Janie and I, and of the things we miss in this fast-paced, ipod, texting, wheatgrass, flashmob, WarGames, CGI, please hold, Muzak, next, please, sugarfree, non-fat red tape Bluetooth white flag greenpeace black Monday Yellow Pages agent orange purple Jesus twitter tweet world.

You can follow her list, with photos, in her blog: http://southernlagniappe.blogspot.com/2009/12/reminiscing.html

During our e-mails today, she added these, as well:
Ice cold Cokes in the little bottles (it never tasted so good!)
Wurlitzer jukeboxes with the pretty lights
Sonny and Cher
Flip Wilson
Father Knows Best
Old time tent revivals with rickety wooden benches
Burma Shave signs
Full service gas stations
Crinolines and bobby socks
The Smothers Brothers tv show
Debbie Reynolds in the Tammy movies
Tommy Sands
I’ll concur, and add a few of my own, since we’re reminiscing. I MISS:

Grady Nutt---Miss Minnie Pearl---Walter Cronkite---Gladys Taber---church bells--- Christopher Reeve---Beah Richards---chenille spreads---Pam & Jerry North---the scent of the earth at First Turning---orange popsicles---Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific---Kraft Theater---going caroling---Richard Boone---All-Day Singin's and Dinner on the Grounds---screen doors with springs---Andy Williams---letters in the mailbox---Martha Rae---mud pies---snow cream---caftans ---the scent of burning leaves---Rob and Laura---vanity skirts---John Ritter---Plum Nuts ice cream--- throwing bread to the bears---hayrides---Vacation Bible School---watermelon cuttings---black telephones---TAXI---those prickly Christmas corsages with artificial greenery and pinecones---Gilmore Girls---Andy Sipowicz---pink Desert Flower lotion---individual iced cakes at parties---crew cuts---wooden ironing boards---real clothespins---Alfred Hitchcock Presents---Mr. Rogers---the scent of Coppertone---Imogene Coca---Fred Waring---Alice at Tea in My Cup---jerky, screechy black-and-white Julia Child on Saturday afternoon---Miss Frances and Ding Dong School---Twilight Zone---mercury thermometers---the REAL Monday-Night lineup which included Designing Women and Hearts Afire, and culminated in Northern Exposure.
Reaching into a cooler or a Coke-box---the kind with lift-up lid and the vague scent of salty metal, with the arctic water and floating ice surrounding the little glass bottles of Coke.

The old pump-organ which occupied one whole wall of my Mammaw’s “middle room,” with its furbelows and fancy carvings, the old rough keys yellowed as horses’ teeth, and the decades of layers of hanging hats, pincushions, ribbon, bias tape, seam binding, tape measures, Cardui calendars, tussy-mussies, hatpins and dogtags giving it the look of a melted closet. I know I dusted the thing---I REMEMBER dusting it---I just can’t think HOW. I’d sit on the floor, put both feet onto the pedals, and pump madly for a moment, then hop up onto the stool, and quickly one-finger through “Ju-ust As I . . .” before the air supply wheezed silent.

Our little corner “caffay” with the floor of inch-square black-and-white tiles, where the eight turquoise boomerang-formica booths and six counter-stools served thousands of those sublime mustard/pickle/onion crinkle-paper hamburgers over the years, and a little steel sherbet-cup of vanilla ice cream with a string of Hershey’s syrup was the most elegant dessert on Earth.

And speaking of ice cream---there’s nothing to compare with a hot Sunday afternoon out under the mimosas, cranking up a freezer or two of banana ice cream---Eagle Brand, whole milk and a big hand of smooshed bananas---to serve soft and rich into wide soup bowls. I can feel the dust-heat and hear the scrape of those spoons.

Net or organdy or dotted Swiss skirts on kidney-shaped vanities. I coveted one of those with my whole heart; the trendy teen across the street had one, with a chair to match---it looked as if our town seamstress had made a housecall to stitch Spring formals onto both pieces of furniture.

The ladies-in-black at the really elegant clothing stores in the larger towns. I imagined they had a training school for these take-no-prisoners, brusque women, like some sort of college with courses in “No-nonsense” and “Abrupt.” They all wore their glasses on chains around their necks, had crisply-permanented or upswept hair, and wore thick-heeled old-lady laceup shoes; every look at you seemed delivered through a lorgnette. Thank goodness I was only there to hold Mother’s purse.

Sample sizes. The tiny lipsticks, usually white plastic, about as big as a good squeeze of toothpaste, with a teensy real cover and a tiny cylinder of real lipstick---the ends usually flat on two sides, like a roof on an elf-house. The little pots and jars of real cold cream and moisturizer and astringent, and wee stoppered drams of cologne---the real stuff, not those magazine tear-outs or those nose-clogging “cards” foisted out by brittle women in Nordstrom and van Maur.

Dishes in products---many a little home kitchen was furnished with one-at-a-time wheat-pattern dishes from boxes of Duz, and I once had quite a nice collection of pale blue glassware---goblets to juices, extracted carefully and excitedly each week from boxes of Rinso, the powder as blue as the glass. Gas stations had dish-a-week giveaways, too, with a fill-up.

Cartoons and newsreels and the Saturday serial at movies. This new practice of  filling up the gaps before and between shows with thunderous car and Coke ads, and the seat-shaking noise of “trailers” for twenty minutes just isn’t the same, somehow.

Waitresses in uniforms, especially pink ones---nylon a bonus. Extra points for Dr. Scholl’s shoes and a pencil through the perm.

The scent of old-time grocery stores, with hints of spice and onion skins and the arid crisp dustiness of dried beans, the pungent hit of flyspray, the exotic float of musk from the big hanging stalk of bananas, and the sweet vanilla/licorice/chocolate mingle of the candy case. All enhanced, of course, by a flappy screen door with a green-painted metal “Nehi” or “Grapette” guard-strip just at hand height. Bell optional, but gratifying.

It seems I must have had a word-quota to use up, and I’ve just flung them all out amongst you on this last day of the year.

They come with warmest thanks for dropping in, passing by, speaking out, or in any other way participating in this odd and wonderful possibility called the Internet.

I look forward to the days ahead, full of promise, and wish you all well and warm and happy in the New Year.

rachel

'GEDDI---THE OLD KIND

Not so quiet today---there's a brighter cast to the sun on the snow, though the NINETEEN shining from the little weatherchip spot on my screen tells me why my toes are tingling---I went out with all the Christmas trash and the leftover bits and pieces of all the holiday food. I warmed beans and dressing and dry muffins and croissants and all the heels-left-in-the-bags and poured on some saved-in-a-fridge-jar oil from frying fish, stirring it into a strange amalgam of breakfast for the birds.

I put on long socks, coat, gloves, and battered pink clogs, and spied out the landscape of the garden for an unnatural shape in the snow-blanket. A slightly-not-of-nature circle caught my eye, and I unearthed and tipped the snow from a big plant-pot bottom in the garden, one of several I kept filled with water all Summer for the little creatures outside. I found a spot of uncovered grass for setting it down, and poured in the warm mess, hoping the little fellows would spy or smell or somehow intuit the good nourishment and belly-filling warmth before the cold stone dish congealed the lump.

Up and down the drive in the sole-squeak of the snow, putting my toes into the last set of steps, so as to avoid the in-sift of freezing flakes into the hole-pattern in my rubber shoes, toes beginning to complain and vision flashes of Yuri Zhivago's cold trek with his frozen moustache.

As I locked the glass door, a tiny flurry from the snowy bushes dropped little showers, as a whole covey of hidden birdies left their perches in unison, like the Doors-Just-Opened-At-Denny's morning coffee crowd.  They're all serious business in tiny spokes around that big pot-dish, delving in for quick warm bites, and I fancy I can still see a bit of steam rising from their midst.   I hope so---nothing like tucking into a good hot breakfast made by somebody who loves you, on a snowy day.   I'd love to know what they're thinking---if it's just accepted as what-should-be, or if there's a brain cell in there amongst survival and danger and that great instinct to nest and nurture the next generation---maybe there's one tiny synapse whose job it is to feel gratitude for such unexpected largesse.  

Now, I'm in---dishtowels in the washer and the big fluff of my bed linens in the dryer, with the scents of Clorox and Bounce and the can of Hunts Four-Cheese Spaghetti Sauce competing in the kitchen. Chris makes all our pasta sauce, and we keep several quarts in the freezer, but the snow-shopping on Sunday led my hand to an old favorite from Southern snow-days: Plain old spaghetti---the regular size---with the plainest-of-the-plain jarred sauces. The spaghetti's been cooked and drained, put back into the hot pot with half the warmed sauce poured in, stirred, and then a shower of grated Farmers Cheese on top, lid on to meld and melt.

I'll cut up a little bowl of plain old iceberg, to dress with a little of the homemade 1000 that we keep in the fridge at all times---the sweet, vinegary tang of the dressing is a lovely memory-contrast against the bland pasta. (And if I could have found one of those little Chef Boyardee kits-in-a-box, with the teensy clutch of Pick-up Sticks and the little flavor packet---add your own can of tomato sauce---that I used to "make" when the kids were young, I'd have been throwing that thing right in my cart).

Chris will be home tonight, but right now is for cozying in---a plain, old-fashioned comfort-lunch in my chair with his big wooly blanket over my feet, and the last hour of Brideshead on the TIVO.

Then back to the business of the day. How about Y'all?

HUSH

There’s a vast quiet in the house this morning---the hum of the refrigerator is a low accompaniment to the clock-tick and the rattle of my fingerboard keys, but that’s about it. A grunty little sigh now and then from FuzzyPup, over in the dark edge of the room in his soft basket. Perhaps he’s dreaming of chasing something in the warm-ago grass of his Georgia life, so far removed from this great whiteness piled upon the steps, the sidewalk, the drive, as we walk out, imprinting the ground with the first footsteps in the history of Time.

We crunched our path out to the hosta beds, snugged beneath a big blanket of leaves below the great white quilt, and he demurred on stepping in. We made our way out and around the drive, me in my long flannely gown and flappy cotton sweater, my loose pink clogs slapping on my heels, letting in the cold and the melting wet. He quickly saluted a plant-stand, a small prickly evergreen volunteered in the withered grapevine, the bag of small mesquite chips left leaned against Chris’ new Rolls Royce grill. Caro laughed from the door as Fuzz lifted against the crinkly plastic bag---“A new flavor to the smoke,” we said. “Mesquite-ureeeen.! Be on the shelves soon!!”

And the quiet is a soothe today, as yesterday was a get-out-in-the-snow day, and as Saturday was a hustle in the morning to get Chris underway for his trip South. He likes to TAKE things. The carry bag with his unders and socks and toiletries and hose to the breathing machine, the big black cloth market-bag for the back seat, with meds and book and glasses case and two big CD packs from the library---a Burke and a Grafton, for whiling the long I-65 hours.

He carried a flat box with pans of fudge, a bottle of homemade wine, a couple of gifts for the children. His immense old brown leather satchel, like a doctor’s case from the forgotten time of housecalls, held lots of things---needful things, just in case. And his pillow, his paper and soap bagged and tucked into the mix, the lovely cedar-wood flute in a beige-flannel bag for our California son, for his music ministry. A gift certificate for our youngest couple---a little weekend getaway to enjoy before our new Grandson comes in the spring, and half of Sam’s stock of snacks for plenishing his Mom’s larder.

He smoked a turkey on his new grill on Friday afternoon as the Christmas Dinner cooked in the oven---the turkey was cooled, Saranned up like ET’s death scene, and carted South, to go with Sam’s croissants, several cheeses, grapes, Aussie Bites, Brownie Bites, a flat of Mr. Otis S’s good muffins, and a fresh pineapple. It’s a blessing Granny Clampett’s chair won’t fit atop our car.

And today, as soon as last night’s dishes are done, in the quiet of this room with the sparkly tree lights and the slow-tick clock, I want to write down some things, some remembrances of the past year, of the season, of the gatherings and the days. There’s just a call for reflection in a day with no expected callers, no need to go for bread, and the moat of snow betwixt us and all save the postman. Perhaps his steps on the front lawn and ours on the back will be the only tracks left in the day, and they for the vanishing, so I hope to spend it wisely. Thoughts are swimming and jumping and will fleet away if I’m not quick. And I’m slower these days, with time and thought, but the day calls, and I answer.

Moiré non,

SNOWY SUNDAY

We went out and about today, in the slow, drifting-down flakes the size of cornflakes; their warm reception from the ground sent them melting the moment they hit. Dear Son #2 and I strolled the dampening aisles of the grocery store, in company with fellow-gatherers intent on those gallons of milk and loaves of bread.

And you know, that's our Southern upbringing---ten flakes past a window, and the school buses started carting the cheering younguns home, as their parents sought the earliest moment they could desert their own posts at work, to get to the grocery store. Milk, I always understood, but how all those clumpy soft loaves of Wonder Bread would save the day in an emergency situation was a mystery past my solving. During all my years of living below the M/D, only once did the power in our area go out for any length of time, and that was during an ice storm, in which the relentless freezing rain coated every tree and bush and shrub with unbearable weights of diamond-clear ice.

The valiant plants shouldered the burdens as long as they could, then with resounding cracks akin to the calving-shouts of the ice itself in colder climes, the limbs gave way and surrendered, tumbled, fell. The landscape took on the look of a vast planet on which giants had lumbered through, shearing off the tops of things and smashing the bits to ground, shattering away the sheathings crystal clear, and leaving the dark bones like some wasteland where old beasts go to die. Tarzan's legendary Elephant Graveyard must have looked something like our devastated pecan grove.

And as the layers grew on the harp-strings of power wires, they sagged ever lower in their ponderous glaze, in symmetry of drop-string on cakes I'll never bake, pulling the supporting poles with them into tinkertoy bows and bends. And the lights went out for miles.

Except mine. I'll never explain that, for the power people worked for DAYS, re-attaching and re-positioning and raising the poles, and surely SOMEwhere between us and the power station, there was a complete break. But we had lights at our house. The Grandparents and the Great-Grandparents had gas heat and plenty of lanterns and lamps and candles, and could cook and stay warm; they laughed and said it was just like "living back at Home"---the homes of their raisings---to have to spend an evening around the kitchen table, with only the glow of coal-oil lamps, and a jig-saw puzzle for entertainment. (Except, of course, for when DALLAS was on---then everybody came to my house, where we filled up the den and ate popcorn and jeered JR).

So today is nothing in the scheme of weather things. The snow fluff had taken on a new energy when we emerged from the store, whitening the streets and our driveway, and we crunched up the sidewalk with our bags, our hair full of drifty clumps and our footprints filling before we could return. We stomped in, put away groceries, changed to warm dry socks and soft flannel pants, and have been cooking a couple of old family favorite recipes for supper---the meatballs in "red gravy,"---not the pasta kind of sauce, but the raw peppers/onions/canned tomatoes layered in the covered skillet of browned meat with a good shake of black pepper, some salt, and a smitch of sugar, perhaps a bay leaf according to your whim. It cooks down into a fragrant hearty peasanty dish, delicious over rice or mashed potatoes.

I made a big Ziploc of the dry spiced tea mix DD2 likes so much---I'll send that tomorrow if the weather warrants getting out to the P.O. And now the house is again Christmas-perfumed of cinnamon and orange and clove, with a faint haze of goldy-tan upon the kitchen counters. Whisking all the dry ingredients together is an impossibility in the weights of things---the dry tea floats on the arid heft of the sugar and the Tang, and rises like lines of thin flotsam on the edges of a tide. I set the kettle, poured a cup, sipped the familiar old flavors of the Seventies, when Tang was a marvel of wholesome fare, and the dry mix stirred up in countless kitchens for a comforting cup at home, or for bringing out Mrs. Heafner's samovar to impress the visiting Grand Matron, as ladies in hats sipped dainty sips of the exotic, heady brew called "Russian Tea."

I also minced an onion, sweated it in a little knob of butter and some salt, then laid in about 3/4 of a pound of chicken livers, left from the giblet-gravy-making on Friday. I'd saved one boiled egg, as well, from the ones boiled for devilling, to make Caro her holiday favorite: Chopped Liver, to spread warm on little pita-points toasted crisp.

And I just finished cutting up what was always known in our downhome Meat 'n' Threes and cafeterias as Combination Salad---iceberg, sweet onion, bell pepper, a bit of cucumber, some grape tomatoes---to be served with the last of the pimiento dressing from the Christmas Eve slaw.

Caro and I are having a Girls' Evening---dinner on trays at five, and my choice from the big stack of "Classics" DVD's she gave me for Christmas: Austens, mostly, with Jane Eyre and Middlemarch in the mix as well. And since Middlemarch is seven hours, and we aren't going anywhere . . .

I'd say Let It Snow, but I'm not in charge of things. Thank Goodness.

CHRISTMAS EVE

On this day of preparation, for guests and for meals and for gift-openings and parties and so much travel, there's a nip of excitement in the air---the little ones who are old enough to understand and anticipate have that bubble of joy in their tummies, and can hardly stand still and wait for tomorrow.

It's been such a lovely year meeting all of you, and you've added immeasurably to the joy in my own life. And so, I wish you the Joy of the Season, the Joy of the Festivities, the Joy of the Birth and the Celebration and the Homecomings.

Thank you all---so very much---for dropping in and for commenting and for being such a part of the anticipation of each morning, of finding a new message from a friend, of being part of your day as you've become such a special part of mine. It's like opening a beautifully-wrapped gift each and every day, as I sign in and see the names and places---so very special and such an honor to have you here.

I wish you all the most wonderful of Christmases, and sweet dreams on this most Magical of Nights, with the bright promise of Tomorrow and all its meanings.

rachel