ETSY SELLS EDGING

Yes, they do!   In a circumscribed, roundabout way I discovered this today, whilst hunting a photo for responding to a comment from two friends' comments yesterday that THEY, TOO, make up little stories and vignettes about folks they see out and about, or sitting in the dentist's office, or across the room in line at Panera.    They see more than that lady in the ill-kempt wig, or the stylish trench-coat, and travel light-years with a couple merely dipping their fries at Wendy's---we go right to where that person might be going, or what they're going home to.   It's a bit of a curse with me, I guess, for I get so carried away with my mental note-making and phone-fumbling to tap out a few hints for later (NEVER A PICTURE), I miss hearing my number called or how I should be pushing my buggy forward to close up the line.   

I expressed happy satisfaction that there were TWO like-minded souls admitting that quirk of the imagination, and the propensity for silent, never-uttered gossip about innocent strangers just awaiting some caffeine or the next bus.  (Thank you, Merry and Jeanie)  (Hearing an imaginary organ chord here, from my childhood radio "stories," when the SHADOW KNOWS ...).  

And in my silly way, I likened our common trait to having the same hobbies or crafts that created a shared kinship of mind.   I confessed my own lack of any hand-held skills or crafts, and my stumbly child-and-teen attempts at embroidery and crochet, to the dismay of my Mother and Mammaw Jessie---both whiz-bang at anything regarding thread, and their hardy efforts to help me learn.   No such luck--I'd even set my dusty-butt shorts onto a small chair, take up thread and needle and tee-ninecy stork scissors, hold my knees together beneath my Imaginary Jane Austen skirt, and  scratch away at the blue edges of ironed-on pattern ---I used the proper color Coats & Clarks, but only yielded a first-graders' swoops and swirls of their initial encounter with paper and crayolas.  

Mammaw would gently and valiantly take up my tatty mess and in an hour, have a queen-worthy inch of exquisite border trim all around the dresser-scarf/pillowslip edge, shaming its shambles from my needle.   I was not worthy.   But my Hope Chest (a handsome cedar trunk-on-bun-feet crafted by my high-school sweetheart-husband-to-be in SHOP) was repository of all those efforts-at-style, along with elaborate lacy trim around every one of the several dozen pairs of pillowslips from our wedding shower.    

The successive decades have occasioned many a careful removal and re-stitchal of almost every one of the beautiful skeins to countless new pairs of pillow cases from when we briefly lived in Shawmut, AL, home of West Point Pepperell, and known far and wide for "lady weekends" to shop at all the local outlet malls.    I can at least match the color and stitch wee, almost invisible stitches to reattach the lovely old laces.   I hope some of the five Grand-Daughters will like some of these---two are avid knitters, with one a genius at drawing with thread.    

And I can still smell the scent of my Mother's Estee Lauder and Coty on those long-ago linens when I open that cedar chest.  Funny turns a story can take, but that's what Wednesdays were made for.  

IMAGINE THAT

 

As we rode through the long olive hills of Kentucky a while back, I glimpsed a lady at the mailbox, comfortable in a yellow sleeveless blouse and jeans, putting in a handful of envelopes and swinging the small red flag to Attention.

So insignificant and so everyday was that small, familiar gesture, that I imagined her day there in that green spot, that immaculate yard with its baskets of petunias swinging on the porch, as she went back into the house, into the orderly rooms smelling of breakfast.   The Dawn bubbles in the empty sink are long-gone, along with their kin from the Purexed single wash-load, gurgled out and down into the faraway ditch in the field.  The almost-done clothes are now perfuming the hall with warm Downy air from the dryer.

She’d washed up the the few dishes “real quick,” except for the black skillet where she’d fried the bacon.   It’s sitting still on the stove, gleaming with bacon grease, for the supper cornbread she’ll bake later.   She’d written a few checks with her first cup of coffee, sitting there at the table in her duster and slides, and soon as she was showered and dressed, she’d run out to the mailbox to get all the bills in before the carrier comes by. 

She’s completed all her little morning rightenings---beds made, yesterday’s Bluegrass Press, well read before supper and folded in the can, and her long shelves of African Violets given their weekly feed of Miracle Gro beneath their blue-light awnings.   Her husband rode off early after his third cup of Folger’s, away to the Co-op to check out those new butterbeans that cook up like speckled ones, into a big pot of purple-brown pot liquor and soft, rich old-fashioned beans.   He’ll be back with the seeds, and probably a lot more, and put the hills in before suppertime, coming in smiling and muddy-handed, pants-legs wet up the shins, from giving the rows a good drenching with the hose. 

Marlee has done all the chores with the TV on louder than usual, for she’s been following along with that awful trial way out there in the West.   She’s followed it all the way through, missing in only a few places when she had to go out to help with the Missionary Luncheon, or the days she takes her Mama to the doctor, and she’d give anything to haul off and slap the smug smirk off that murdering hussy’s face.  Her and her "apostle" boyfriend and their unforgivable spree of mayhem---Marlee's just had about enough of the primping and smiling and lying, and she broke down completely yesterday when the family spoke about their lost brother and friend.  

Marlee is a good Christian woman, and does right by everybody, but she knows, sure as she knows her shoe size and all the grandchildren’s birthdays, that SOME FOLKS just Pure-D need killin’.

BUTTER SCOT PIE OR THEREABOUTS

I love my Cookbook shelves, "curated" in my fashion over the years from gifts, hand-me-downs, yard sales, Goodwill shelves, Half-Price--Books' lower tiers of immense coffee-table volumes with photos like portraits---those last ones retailing for the price of dinner at Ruth's Chris, and marked down to a shameful $3.00 remainder.  I treat them like novels, avidly turning pages, soaking up the scents and color, or marveling at some of the combinations or language.   They vary so widely as from "Now, skin your rabbit," to caramelization color wheels like from a paint store, and I love them all.   And, save for a few baking directions (the science of THAT gets into rocket science sometimes), I hardly ever use a recipe.    I've read over the ones that seem promising, and then I just improvise on the ingredients and taste combinations---my slipshod concoctions have turned out to be palatable, and some, including a crustless quiche that I improvised one Sunday morning in the Sixties, has probably spread over five counties, from word-of-taste request at a hundred weddings and parties over the years.    

 I still re-read sections of my Larousse just for the beauty of the words and images, and just bought a 1926 French edition of a generic Larousse, which I've been meaning to get to all Summer. Might be nice to see what it shows in the translation.

My favorite of all, I think, is the little spiral-bound cookbook by the ladies of our little church in Alabama. The small church volumes with the cardboard covers and little plastic spiral edge contain fourteen recipes for Green Bean Casserole, all printed so as not to hurt anyone's feelings. There are omissions, transpositions, and hilarious typos, in addition to some really outlandish combinations and seasonings.

But the little books contain the best of each cook's repertoire, gleaned from old McCall's and Farm Journals and from under the hairdryer. Mammaw's recipe for pound cake and Sawdust Salad, Mrs. Pund's uncooked fruitcake, the various alchemies which convert a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom into veloute, bechamel, whatever is required---those are the foundation of a kitchen and a cook's reputation. They represent the downhome, solid, family-around-the-table values which are disappearing like vapor from our homes and towns.

The little book I love most was in our little rental house in over on the Alabama/Georgia line, along with everything else which had belonged to the owner, an elderly woman who had gone into a nursing home. We slept in her beds, gathered the clean, fragrant sheets from her clothesline every week, ate from her cut-glass sherbet dishes, read her books, watched the children's almost-Easter-Egg delight at pulling radish after radish from the little garden rows of that one Spring garden we cultivated.   

When we were leaving, I knew her son was to auction off all the household goods, so I asked the realtor if I might buy the little cookbook with its margin-filled writing from its owner's hand. She gave it to me, and I've had it almost forty years now. I smile every time I look at the flyleaf---in her beautifully-formed letters taught to scholars in another time, in the shaky, still-elegant script of an eighty-year-old hand---thin, pale brown scribing, as slender as the trail of a hatpin dipped into a rusty inkwell, it reads:

BUTTER SCOT PIE. LOOK ON PAGE WHERE PIE ARE.

It's sitting there on my shelf, with its "Cream of Chicken Soup" right up there with all the gifts of Ripert and Bouchon and Escoffier's lingering aromas of demiglace and Poulard, and Anthony's timeless way with the Kitchen Language---that scuffy small brown book is a tiny parvenu whose provenance befits royalty to me.  

And snugged in-between in the pages of one of my Mother's "Taste of Home" annuals are the cardsfrom her recipe drawer for Squash Pickles and her Karo Pecan Pie, both in the elegant left-handed back-slant of her 1940's Sheaffer (her Valedictorian prize at graduation).    

Anyone else just "read" them like novels, and just enjoy the having?   Y'all have any treasured and tender souvenirs in your Cookbook shelves?

SCONES ALWAYS REMIND ME . . .

We had scones for breakfast---an odd, quick thought as I perused the shelves for something kinda special for at-home-on-a-cold-morning. We had Bisquick, which we never seem to have, but this was left from making the sausage balls for Christmas morning. And I'd been telling myself to try out making muffins to use up that quart jug of  eggnog left from Christmas---we never seem to drink it, but you just BUY ONE to be sure.  

So that's what I did; I measured out the Bisquick and threw in two teaspoons of sugar, then the custard, and stirred it all together. A handful of dried cranberries, and dropped from two spoons onto the silpat---a scatter of Turbinado sugar sparkles, then oven 425 for 20 minutes. A quick brush with melted butter, a few slices of bacon out of the microwave, and we sat down. It was lovely and different---I DID sprinkle a bit of cinnamon over the last two bits of dough in the bowl before I dropped them, just to try the different taste, and they were quite nice.

I go back often and read a little excerpt from a letter from my dear Cousin Sandra, gone from us way too soon---her imaginary, wonderful life filled with warmth and love, as was her REAL one:

 A rosemary bed interspersed with basil, lavender and multicolored zinnias lines the porch front.  We watch the sunrise and smell the scent of fresh baked scones bursting with blueberries to be painted with cream and sugar and eaten with cheese scribbled with honey, and some sun-kissed figs. We sit sipping coffee and telling our stories.

I will bike to the town square and open my little bookstore and knitting shop around midmorning. The sitting and chatting and loving each other is the first and most important part of our days.

The old worn stone pathway leads from the back door to the

kitchen garden where we gather hands full of herbs, baby field greens, yellow and orange tomatoes, tiny carrots, and pencil thin asparagus for shared meals.

The fresh laundered cloth gives off a faint lavender perfume as it is spread atop the farm table.   A vase of old garden roses sits amongst the just lit candles. The room is filled with the laughter of friends and kinfolk and little ones, and all will be blessed.  And all will be blessed.

We will sit on the porch in the evening and watch the rosy leavings of the sun. This pink-washed peace is for all of us. How I wish I could give away a piece of these days like loafs of warm bread.

As the day draws to a close, we kneel together and bow in adoration with thanksgiving, praying---O Lord, support us all the day long, until the shadows lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed.   Then in Thy mercy, grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest.        Amen.

Always together at last light, we will hold hands and hug and grow young together in this place.

ANNE SHIRLEY WOULD HAVE LOVED MY DRAPES

 

Who has had Miss Sandy's curtains??   You know---those heavy Laura Ashley/Rachel Ashwell chintzy-folds and loops with corner swags like Princess Diana's Weddin' sleeves?   Surely somebody knows someone, or has viewed a prospective house that gave you an itch to grab down those great dollops of fabric and go SHEER for life.

I confess to a thoughtless moment of that loopy frenzy, in the last-house-before-we-bought-this-one:   It was a tall-front-steps leading in to MORE tall steps up to kitchen and bedrooms, with a small mezzanine effect between floors, carpeted and with double windows looking out front, like where a visiting suitor might sit with his hat on his knees til he was announced.      The carpet was a pale baby blue in that 8x10, perfectly sized for a Goodwill sofa we'd acquired, and since I had a bolt of baby-blue polished cotton stashed somewhere---that's all it took.    There were Sandra Lee kits all over K-Mart and WalMart, with all the snazzy do-hickeys to bend cloth to your will, but it was a lazy Sunday afternoon, everybody was gone to the movies, and I had the neatest little stepladder . . .  

I have mentioned quite a few times my absolute ignorance with anything that requires thread.   My childhood attempts at a Sampler would get you laughed off Antiques Roadshow, and any crochet effort became a Barbie hat in nothing flat.    And I didn't CUT the stuff, just rolled the bolt out on the floor til it looked like enough.     The curtain rod was a medium-heavy one, just round enough for a few good swags, with a long floor-length pulled to one side to get the proper "puddling," and surplus enough on the top corner for stuffing in a few dozen fluff-squeezed plastic grocery bags.   No rhyme or reason, no measuring---I just poofed them out to Anne Shirley's Dream of Glory.   They were big blue melony mounds on one end, and it took me quite a time to duplicate that over-blown swag on the other, but I got some semblance of it.    

Getting the "puddle" right on the other end, a big Rosewood vase of Chris' canes on the outer end, and we had a proper sitting room to befit a very unimportant manor somewhere.  It was indeed the mimic of Carol Burnett's Po'Teer dress, in a more modest color.    I smiled every time I went up and down those stairs, and sometimes would just stand in the kitchen and LOOK.   It was stylish at the moment, and I had sculpted CLOTH in to something recognizable, if not prim.   And it was the only place in the house that never had books or magazines or Coke cans or shrugged off sweaters lying about.   And that little bit of Serenity was worth it all. 

I took the whole thing down when we moved to this house, and used the yards and yards to wrap glassware, and have no idea where that great length of blue cotton went to.    I DO, however, have a decades-old little bolt in the front coat closet---happy little teapots on a pinkish sateen.    I just KNOW it will make a perfect cover for the cushions on the park bench in the up Sitting room, come Spring.   Better late than never, and I have some new rolls of duct tape.  

                                                                                                                                                                            

ABOUT GRITS AND BISCUITS

 

One of the glories of the Southern table--a Black Skillet of Biscuits.   This one was for a brunch, with Red Beans and Rice, and graced with the "Tomato Slice" utensil brought out only for special occasions and cranberry sauce.

I just had a question from a friend on another continent, asking about grits and what's the difference in biscuits and Southern Biscuits, what are beaten biscuits and what about Hominy Grits. My answer in the "comment" section went on and on, as I am wont to do, so I just moved it here.

I don't know a lot about anybody else's biscuits, but almost all "Southern Biscuits" or Southern Style Biscuits are made by starting with a shortening---originally lard, and it's still used by purists and a lot of the new gourmet cooks. Now, Crisco is the one of choice mostly, and most cooks use Self Rising flour, even if they do add a little extra salt or leavening.

And Buttermilk is the Southern mixing-liquid, with or without "baking soda"---rare is the kitchen in the South which has not a box of Arm & Hammer in the cupboard, for biscuits and other baking, and for cleaning drains, freshening laundry, and keeping the fridge and freezer fresh and odor-free. Right in there beside the Argo Cornstarch and the can of Clabber Girl.   They're the Powdery Trinity of a Southern kitchen, right behind Onion-Bell Pepper-Celery sauteeing before the roux gets going.

Grits is a singular food, and I still think and say "Grits are" because of the plural sound. One would never speak of "a grit," but I know it should be followed by "IS," just as you would say, "Molasses is."

There's corn grits, white made with the white center of the corn, or yellow, with the whole kernel, ground more coarsely than cornmeal, which makes such velvety, wonderful cornbread.

And there's HOMINY grits, made with the "lye" or (dictionary word) nixtamalized corn. It's dried, ground, and can be advertised as Hominy Grits, the old fashioned kind.

OH, and beaten biscuits---I've made them. Once. Just as an experiment on a lazy Saturday morning. They're like a cross amongst a Ritz cracker and a dog biscuit and a Communion Wafer---the really hard, tough kind found in Baptist churches, which, if they weren't tiny enough to get back there and crunch between your back teeth, would do some serious dental damage. Or hang out like a mint until they melt sometime between Lord's Supper and "Just As I Am."

I had a recipe once for a cake, from way in the day before mixers. You were supposed to beat it for six hours with a wooden spoon---I cannot fathom what form or sentient life the mass must be expected to assume from all that brutal activity.   The recipe even had the audacity to urge bringing in the children, and letting them take an hour or two.   Unh unh. Not me. Just smacking that biscuit dough "til elastic" with the rolling pin one time was enough for me. And nobody would eat 'em, anyway.

Grits and how to eat them have caused more family dis-harmony than politics---butter or not; sugar or not; gravy or shrimp or syrup on top.

I cook the plain old Quaker Grits, right off the grocery shelf in the round cardboard cylinder---the cook-it kind. Those crinkly packets which dump dusty powder into the bowl and change to part-mush, part-crunch under the boiling water---not spoken of in polite company.   And a gift of the Gucci kind of grits from an Artisan Grist Mill on occasion is quite welcome, and enjoyed respectfully and with gusto. 

The pot simmers for a bit whilst the bacon and eggs cook; a big pat of butter is scraped off the knife into the pot, left to melt, and stirred in just before ladling a good hot serving onto everybody's plate. Then it's every man for himself---treat 'em as you will. No censure from me.

Be sure and run an inch or two of warm water into the empty pot and replace the lid til time to do the dishes, or you'll be chipping spackle off that thing for a week.

Jeff Foxworthy says that every single garbage can in the South has one fork with white stone between the tines, that somebody gave up on. And if the Egyptians had had grits instead of mortar, there'd be a whole townful of pyramids.

MY FUNNY VALENTINE

                                           Valentine Roses, 2017

The Fourth of this month marked FORTY YEARS since Chris and I met, one misty night at a little redneck Holiday Inn in Mississippi.  (I do it an injustice---it was the FIRST FRANCHISED Holiday Inn in the world, opened in 1954--the second one after the original MotherShip in Memphis) but it was still boots-and-jeans all the way.   I'd been a widow for fifteen years, and never considered that there might be someone special out there.   WAY before the Internet became such a Meeting Place, we met through the small-town version of that---in a much simpler way, a more innocent time---through a sweet little newspaperish magazine available in grocery stores, quick-marts and fillin' stations. Ours was called "Tradewinds" and spanned several states, I think; you could find lily bulbs, hound pups, parts for your '58 Fairlane, recipes, and nice people to chat with or meet.

A week or so after New Year’s Eve, 1985 into 86, five of us "girls" who went out together on occasion went to dinner---one brought a copy of the little newsprint-paper magazine, and we all dared each other to answer one ad. I chose Chris, and I think it was because of the sweet way he mentioned his children, his love of reading, and his intentionally stating that he didn't watch football on TV that caught my eye, and they’ve all held true all these years.

You wrote a letter, put it in an envelope, sealed it, and wrote the number of your choice on the front. That envelope went into a bigger envelope with three dollars, and was addressed to the paper. They sorted everybody to the right place, and a few days later, he called.

We chatted for probably two hours, and suddenly it hit me---I was sitting there on my bed like a teenager, forgetting that I was WAY late to pick DS#2 up at the bus-stop. I threw down the phone and FLEW, meeting him probably three miles toward home, walking that old blacktop road. I'd said, "I'll call you BACK!!" as I dashed for the door, but when I returned, I realized HE had called ME and I didn't know his number. He called back within a few minutes, and we talked til WAY late---somebody cooked supper, but it wasn't me.

We talked on the phone for a couple of weeks, and on Feb. 4, he would be calling on some clients close to my town, so we arranged to meet. I would not let a stranger come to my home, and I didn’t want him to know where I lived, so we met at the lounge at the local Holiday Inn where I knew several of the employees.

That brave soul walked into a redneck bar where he didn’t know anyone, carrying a long-stemmed red rose.

We had been talking for maybe fifteen minutes, when in strolled my two sons, who stood towering over him at the table. They swapped the new pickup for my big old car, to go pick up some friends, and since THEY had met him, scads of people had seen us together, and I had gone to high school or football games with half the police department, I figured I was probably safe. So we went to his room and talked until four a.m.

He had arranged the two chairs so that we sat facing each other almost knee to knee, and we talked all about our families and faith and friends, our home life, our lives and what we liked to read, and all sorts of get-to-know you stuff. He even had a bottle of wine stuck in ice in the sink, and he’d been to WalMart for two pretty glasses---I didn’t have the heart to tell him I HATE wine, so I sort of held the glass and sipped at it til it was warm and even more unappetizing.

The funniest part is---he also dislikes wine, and just thought it was the nice thing to do---have a glass of wine with a lady. We both choked it down, just to impress the other, I guess. Never again.

Then, when I simply HAD to go home, he walked me to the truck, and I couldn’t crank it---had never tried; we had just bought it that Christmas, and I’d never driven it. So Chris had to drive me home anyway, after all those stranger-precautions I took. And we were married that Summer---short courtship.

One funny coincidence was that one of my friends at work, seeing how well my experience turned out, placed his own ad, and met a lovely young woman whom he brought as his date to our wedding. She had answered Chris’ ad as well, but they did not get together because we had already met.

I still get chills at the "maybe not" of the whole thing, but he says it would have happened somehow. He subscribes to the theory that he'd have stopped to fix my flat tire, or some such happenstance. And we marvel often at the people we love, and the people we’ve met and had a part in shaping THEIR lives a bit, and they ours, as well as the Grandbabies who might be totally different people had we not met on that foggy night in February.

Life pays forward, and the far-reaching things we set in motion would astound us. For example, if we had not met, I would never have moved here, DS2 would never have come here and met the lovely young woman he married, their daughter would not be graduating this May, and another daughter would not have met her husband and added three more to the Family Tree.   How many lives have been changed and influenced by that misty night that we met and talked to 4 a.m.    We had thirty-four wonderful years together, all begun because of that one little magical magazine. 

SMALL BRIGHT MEMORIES

 

FROM EXACTLY ELEVEN YEARS AGO: 

 LAWN TEA 2-12-2015  I woke to the downstairs Party Room in full colorful array this morning; Chris takes great pleasure in keeping my love of any kind of colorful lighting fresh and new often. Thinking of Childhood Valentines:  

Wasn’t that an innocent, sweet time of our lives---before we reached even the lacy-card stage, unless we got into our Mamas’ treasured stashes of paper doilies, saved for Bridge Club sandwich trays and for displaying neat rows of Individual Iced Cakes for visits from the Exalted Grand Matron?   Those small flappy bits of three-colour primary frippery we passed around amongst ourselves were an annual treat; the buying and the making and the careful lettering and the giving were all small parts of a rite as old and as little understood as Love.   And our own childish bits of the ritual were taken as seriously as the two-handed meek offerings of any time-worn creed.

We saved, we shopped, we clipped and glued---those knobby glass bottles with the crusty rubber tops slid across edges and doilies and tabs, and the still-drying gobs and telltale smears of mucilage were a lovable part of the whole. Errant bits of paper, ribbon, lace caught up in the sticky mess have come down the years as dear additions to those eagerly-proffered, gladly-accepted creations from-and-of-the-heart.

We didn’t understand it yet---just our own little corner of the “Like” and “Looking at” world of the primary grades reflected in those three primary colours of the shoddy small Valentines we could afford.  But we were IN IT---Oh, Yes. 

We coveted those small slips of esteem as we did an Add-a-Pearl or an A on a report card---they MATTERED in some uncountable way.  They were the votes in a gaudy ballot-box of approval, though it was unheard of to leave off anyone from your list.

I’d carefully laid each little paper inside the pages of my Arithmetic book---the wider of my two textbooks, for safekeeping in my book satchel.   All the way home, we’d pause and take out a few for more admiration.   When I arrived home, Mother was out at her Missionary Society Meeting, and so I excitedly took them over to show to Mrs. P, who was sitting out on her porch.  

We walked out into the sunshine for better effect, and I laid them out, one by one, on the fenders and hood of Mr. Shug’s Jeep as we admired them again.  She'd read the front, then look at the name on the back, and now and then ask something like, "Now, is THAT Miz Eller Freeman's Grand-Boweh?"   Then, instead of stepping into my house and setting them down, I stacked them carefully, and laid them just inside the open back of the Jeep to pick up as I passed going home.

I can’t remember why we went into the house, but when I came out,  the Jeep was gone, and with it my beloved stash of Valentines.  I went running out the drive, looking everywhere, and turned onto the blacktop road which led to the big river-bend where he went fishing.   Way up ahead, I spotted a few colourful flutters on the road, and found three or four, much the worse for having been run over.  They had great punches from the rocks, and the imprints of tires, and I can remember the searching on and on with the tears running down my face, looking and picking up the few which I could find.  I went on and on, following the bayou, and could see several floating on the green water like lily pads.   I didn't dare step out into the swamp to retrieve them, and so they were lost to me as if they'd sunk. 

The next day when I came home from school, there was a brand-fresh unopened pack, just like the one I’d so carefully lettered and “sent” awaiting me, from Mr. Shug, who felt really bad about scattering my Valentines “from here to Sunday,” my Mother said.  A little balm for the loss, and every year at this time, I think of that sweet man, sputtering heedless down that bumpy road, trailing a little contrail of colourful cards like Love Propaganda---scattering my childish dreams into the wind.

And now I'm remembering another sweetest man---the one who remembered EVERY Valentine's Day, every birthday and holiday and Just Because It's Tuesday for all the thirty-four years we were blessed to have together.   He lit up my world, and I'll never stop missing his happy presence.  

SWEETHEARTS AREN'T JUST CANDY

Young and sweet and innocent as these small images are, this must have been an ADULT Valentine, or at least meant for teenagers, when I was of the send-one-to-every-person-in-your-class age.  If we first, second, third graders had come to school with such a racy message in hand, ready to stash it in the big red box covered just that week by our busy hands in construction paper and streamers of crinkly red crepe, we, as well as the object of our momentary affection, would have been teased beyond bearing.   It was absolutely NOT DONE to verge into romantic territory at our tender ages, despite the heart-strings of the holiday.  You'd have been hearing about tree-sitting and K-I-S-S-I-N-G til the cows came home.

sOur little twenty-for-a-quarter packs of the small bright die-cut sentiments were painstakingly chosen for just the right person, though the lack of variety at Leon’s Drugstore limited us all to buying identical crinkly red cellophane packages, with perhaps five designs total. They came in small swinging rectangles, hung from the neat hooks on the SUNDRIES aisle which at other seasons might have held corn pads or cards of needles, and the Valentines were cushioned in a thin grey cardboard frame, like the cut-off bottom of a small cheap box.  The whole thing was sealed in a thick, almost indestructible sheet of cellophane impervious to most fingers and even our blunt-nosed scissors, though we were not above employing a quick nip with two eye-teeth to start a little slit for tearing.

I assume there was an unwritten law that you HAD to write out your Valentines the night before, for I cannot remember any earlier contact save for the buying, though I was known to lay them out like a gaudy game of Solitaire on my bed in the days before, choosing the receivers by pattern or poem or whim.   I was also not above putting an unobtrusive small penciled number on the back, with a corresponding name on a line in my notebook, until I could make that final important decision.  I hope that I remembered to erase all those furtive numbers, for I fear that more than one of us knew that trick.

We’d carry our carefully-lettered little flaps of colour up to that big fancy box, inserting them one or two at a time into the slot in the top with everyone avidly looking on, hoping for a flash of their own names to appear as a card was slid into the box, or for the glimpse of a secret crush, revealed to all as the card disappeared between the ruffly overlay of the mail-slot.

Occasionally one or two of us would have had a splurge at the Ben Franklin two towns over, and might just have lucked onto a little cardboard platter from another company, with quite different pictures and quotes inside the red cello cover.  But most usually, when the giver-outer of the Valentines stood reading off the names, and we’d go forward and receive our mail, it was more like dealing out a big stack from a four-card deck, as the little sailor dog and the bird in the tree appeared over and over, interspersed with small Shirley Temple clones and windmills and mice.   But oh, the heart-pounding moments as you waited, heard your name, stepped forward with a trembly hand outstretched, and received another of the showy little slips.  I never looked at mine til the calling had finished and the teacher took off the lid to see if any errant Valentines might still be caught inside.   I’d made sure that every single one of mine was safely clutched to my front like a nervous gambler, with the white side hidden so no one could see who did and didn’t send me one. 

Being limited to twenty when there were sometimes twenty-five people in our class was no problem either, for quite a few of us girls would make special ones for a few good friends, all festooned in hand-cut little hearts still bearing the center-crease from the folding-to-cut, and with perhaps a little slip of a ribbon bow or some of that squiggle-ribbon which curled when you pulled the scissors blade down the length of it.   So we never truly left out anyone, despite the limit on “bought” cards, and I can remember only perhaps two girls who went around the room asking cattily, “And how many did YOU get” or crowing “Eye got Twenty-NINE!” when we all know perfectly well there were not even that many people in the class, and the handwriting looked mighty similar on at least five of them (and similar to HERS, at that).

Oh, for something so anticipated and pleasurable and fraught with delighted dread as those little cheap, primary-colored bits of childhood. Weren’t we innocent?  Weren’t we small?   I know I’m smiling.

BUTTERNUT WISDOM

The garage roof and that of our neighbors were crusted again in their generous sifting of the powdered-sugar snow overnight, like two vast teacakes awaiting a Brobdignag fete on the lawn.   We've had the last week's foot or so still unsullied on both lawns, and only dark strips down the drive for the trash bin and tire tracks of my sweet neighbor who ferried me to Kroger last week.   It's hanging on like we live in Maine, and these insulated, warm days of sweaters and Beloved Pants have reminded me so of Gladys Taber's life and writings that I've been reading again some of the books.    I still have to look out the great leather file of her columns, collected by me in my first young married life, cooking and home-keeping like a New Englander in our wee house in the HOT South.     

I've just learned today that the columns that she published in Ladies' Home Journal back in the Thirties and Forties were a popular, comforting presence to GIs overseas during World War II.   I'd never thought of that---those sturdy, stalwart soldiers seeking such a tangible taste of Home in all that strife and uncertainty.   Can't you just see a recipe for Apple Crisp or Brown Betty hanging in the barracks beside those coveted pictures of Betty Grable, or folded in a worn wallet beneath a sweetheart's photo?   It's sweet to think that their cold bodies were warmed by the apple-roasts-by-the-fire of the Taber hearth, kindling memories and thoughts of HOME when time and place held so much to fear, and no comforts in sight.     I take that into my heart as the most wonderful thing I've learned in a long time.   Stillmeadow imaginations all the way to the Eastern Front, and her small domestic ramblings set down in such evocative stories as to bring them life and warmth in the cold, stark battlefields.  

It's the BUTTERNUT WISDOM columns that I have shelved away somewhere, clipped from the back of  Family Circle for years---engendered by my childhood's great longing for at least one Summer Camp in Maine, with swimming before breakfast, after sleeping in a comfortable lattice-array of cots on a screened Sleeping Porch.   AND TO HAVE BEEN THERE FOR GETTING SNOWED INNNNN!   That would have truly iced the cake.  

She woke to birdsong or snowcover, drank her strong stove-perked coffee, and stirred up some sourdough pancakes from her own decades-old starter. Butternut Wisdom, indeed. They're country books, walking-the-woods-with-a-dog books, pot-of-beans-simmered-all-day-while-writing-her-columns books. I love her line, "I think beans in any form are elegant."

The books are dated by their devices, their appliances, the cutting of wood for the kitchen stove and the hold-your-hand-in method of judging the oven temperature, as well as the political references and topics of the day, but I still re-read them and the great three-ring of her columns I clipped for years from women's magazines. There's a great peace to the telling, day-to-day happenings small as a new-found bird nest, and the immense quiet of a snowbound week with a full larder, a woodbox to hand, and the sure knowledge that no one could break the solitude before the melt.

The hometown eloquence of Mrs. Taber's stories stands so vividly still today, that generations of readers have sought their comfortable ramblings, for the recipes or the memories or the general aura of such a gentle life, lived so simply and with vigor and exuberance in her quiet way.   And Today's just the day, after the umpteenth sifting of snow onto everything in sight, and the 27 promising to drop its trousers to unspeakable chill---a warm cup and comfortable chair will be a perfect afternoon with snow sparkling through the sheers, and a book-load of Taber stories.   

PS:  I went to Amazon to see if many are still in print---our love of them still prospers:  The first one  I saw was Butternut Stories, with a price of $470.   What a lot of Beans that would buy!

YEA OR NAY?

 

  My friend Keetha used to say "Books are somehow more personal to me than clothes."    She writes of her reluctance to part with any book, no matter how old, how read or unread---even the ones she had tried repeatedly to read and lost interest or just downright disliked. I find myself echoing her quote above, for I’ve had a lifelong Love Affair with books---all kinds.

 I grab them up and covet them and browse shelves and stacks and tables at stores and sales, charity shops, people’s curbstones of set-out discards. No yard sale goes unscanned as we pass, for the piles and boxes of books yield treasures untold. And VERY few of my own can I ever part with. I’ll share, the borrowers will forget, and only I will have a small pang (or a lingering one---re: the childhood Nancy Drews) for the losing of them. I remember about three titles in all my reading history which I’ve actually walked to the trashcan and hurled them in.

And hurl I did, for only the most disgusting or Pure-D boring bear such treatment, and then, they have to go way over the top on either front, and those certainly did, thus the fling amongst the coffee-grounds and eggshells which buried the offenders and contaminated them beyond reprieve.

I do not believe that the books vs. clothes on the popularity scale is actually CAUSED by my own dislike of shopping---whether occasioned by the stern sales-ladies tsk-tsk sympathy for my Mother’s having been saddled with such a chunky little dumpling to buy garments for, or simply that I don’t care much WHAT I wear, so long as it’s clean and comfortable and modest as well as being reasonably appropriate for the occasion.

But oh, BOOKS!!! I like them---heavy, thin, wordy, spare, old and tattered, filled with margin-notes and highlighting, inscribed, autographed, well-read, or with that enticing smell of fresh pages, untouched before my hands, like a new morning brimming with promise. And so I’m with Keetha---with a small addition or two: Books are somehow way more personal (important, valuable, interesting, vital to my well-being) than clothes.

How do you feel about keeping/tossing/donating/sharing/parting with books? Are there some you’ve actually tossed in the trash?

DELIVER ME!!

I think we two ladies could get accustomed to all this stuff available for delivery to the porch.   We seldom order food, but other supplies are vastly welcome when the snow lingers for a week.    We have been  so accustomed to having to do all our own shopping and gathering, even though we have been in this city for exactly thirty-five years.   

Reminiscing from a long ago post back when LAWN TEA was new and I was just scattering thoughts to the inter-winds every day, it seems:  FROM EXACTLY TEN YEARS AGO:   

We had newspaper delivery when I was growing up, and after Sis was born, our milk was delivered by a milk-man in a snazzy little white truck.   And besides all the garden produce we planted and picked and canned and froze ourselves every Summer, and the "spoken for" quarter of beef, received from Mr. Neighbors' Meat Market in neat white parcels, all smoothed and creased with the artistry of those exquisite Japanese gift-wraps, we did belong for several years to the "RICH PLAN."   It was a sort of precursor to Schwann's and such, for they brought you frozen meats and vegetables, and oh, those frozen peach slices in deep cold January, rattling into a pie crust for a taste of Summer!

 





I loved looking at the crisp colourful pages of the thin "catalog" which pictured all that little toy food---the brightest peas in the history of peadom, the berries, each frozen whole in its little crust of ice, and filling your mouth with its popsicle Summer flavor, and all sorts of "made" stuff.   We'd always made every single item in our own kitchen---salmon patties and all our own pasta dishes and casseroles and breaded chicken, and there they were, each and every one more vivid and enticing than anything in the Betty Crocker book with its stylized outlines of fish and chops in their wee frilly toques and pictures of anemic pastel desserts less alluring than the spread at a Heckle and Jeckle picnic.

 

  Just the variety of Rich's shapes of pineapple, like little kitchen Legos, fascinated me with their infinite possibilities. 

 
   And those exotic Stuffed Crabs---our only exposure to the taste of crab was on occasional trips to the coast or Pensacola, and a day's "fishing" off the pier with a bit of chicken liver on a string, as the determined little crabs hung on to their catch long enough to be pulled up into the small dip-nets.   We'd have one night with a "crab dinner" in our motel kitchenette, cooking the little fellows in a huge pot Mother had brought from home (stuffed full of Sis's clothes and toys for economy of space in the trunk).  Those were messy affairs, with little hammers and the brought-along nut-picks and wet dishrags and bedtime showers for everyone after, especially after a day in the sun and 
sand---and the luxury of all that hot water at that beachside little motel, with nobody having to wait for the water heater to regroup and refill.

But The Rich Stuffed Crab, now---those were special, and Mother doled them out like ortolans, precious and rare.  They were probably a ratio of twenty parts bread crumbs to one part crabmeat, stuffed back into the strange little bony shells and baked til golden on top.  Those were my dreams of what Movie Stars probably ate, and I helped Mother make great occasions of the special dish---homemade tartar sauce and cocktail sauce and moon-smiles of lemon, and it seemed quite a grand affair, there at our little kitchen table so far removed from the ocean.  And no, I didn't eat them, but I was piqued by such fiddly, interesting ways to "do" food, even at that young age.  

What a silly morning, reminiscing about such far-ago things as crab shells and frilly little panties for lamb chops.  I'm sure that's partially where I got this odd tendency to gussy up food.  Oh. Well.  

Happy FEBRUARY to everybody!