"Getting a Leg up on Thanksgiving", as published in the Pickens County Progress on Nov. 24, 2011

            What are you doing for Thanksgiving? I’m trying to choose between haunting the movies in Canton and hiding with the cat, between the mattress and box spring. Too many empty chairs surround the table these days. That mattress sandwich is sounding pretty good right now.

            My friend’s three-year-old heard her talking about Thanksgiving. He asked, “Momma. What are we going to thank about?” (In the hilly regions of North Georgia, “think” is pronounced “thank”) Leave it to a wise young fellow to use “think” and “thank” interchangeably.

            Last century, I was a three-year-old myself. It was a long wait for that Thanksgiving meal. My Aunts were desperate to keep me occupied, so they started the Leg Crossing Game. One Aunt would randomly and violently switch her hefty legs to cross the other way. Her sisters had to do it too, or be “out.” I couldn’t believe my little eyes, or wait until it happened again.

            If this sounds like nothing much to you, it was certainly something in 1966. Ladies simply did not show their slips. To my horror, I saw a flash of “snow down south” with each tectonic shift of thighs and taffeta.  And not one drop of sherry was ever spilled.

            My friend Cathy has a similar story. She’s from Alabama, where the tide rolls red, and they call their parents’ sisters “Aint”. So the anticipation of Thanksgiving dinner was almost too much for big-boned Aint Rita. At first, she tolerated with a light foot-tapping. Then she went faster until her leg bounced up and down hard enough to make the floor shake. When the houseplants jiggled, Cathy’s Daddy would announce, “Aint Rita’s leg is really going now! It must be close to dinnertime.” And guess who was locked and loaded to be first in line?

            Sometimes we need to be reminded where we came from, in order to act like we know. Empty chairs can be filled. I’m thankful for all of my new friends, especially that wise young fellow. To quote David Cassidy, “I THANK I love you,” Owen.

Unforgettable Irene

As published in the Pickens County Progress

Natural disasters aren’t funny, but I had to smile just a little at hurricane Irene. As newlyweds, we lived next door to an Irene. She was the type of older lady who wore a bathrobe as a dress. Well, Irene had a thing for my husband. When I was at school, she’d knock on our door, wearing her bathrobe, to borrow a cup of sugar. (I’m proud to report he never gave her any).

One day, Irene and her husband, Mr. Irene, got into a brawl. She left him, but didn’t go far. The condo above theirs had long been empty so she went there without asking anyone’s permission. Mr. Irene wasn’t happy. Every week he bought a googly-eyed fish from Harry’s. He fired up the grill and smoked the fish Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Then he chopped it up to mulch the bushes. The smoke wafted up into Irene’s place, compelling her to lean out of her window and scream down at him.

This went on for about a year, until the bank who owned the condo succeeded in getting her out. Actually, it was the Sheriff Department who knocked on her door with a battering ram. It took six of them to hog tie and carry her to jail, and guess what she was wearing?

Ah, memories. But that season of my life is long past. It recently became necessary for me to move from the “rich side” of Jasper to the “poor side.”  It was a healthy decision, though. The house I left was too empty and creepy. The new apartment is cute and easy to clean. Almost everyone in my building is young.

 The other day I was headed out to buy groceries. Out front, there was a car covered in toilet paper and shaving cream. The windshield said, “Git her done.” So somewhere in the building, we must have a pair of newlyweds. Folks think I’m embarrassed to use food stamps at the grocery store. I tell them, it’s not embarrassing when you’re hungry.

Think of those widows of Afghani soldiers on TV, be-shawled and begging for food. Their government is too young to have anything in place to help them. We may not be perfect, but God bless America! On my first grocery trip, I worried that Uncle Sam wouldn’t let me buy Kool-Aid with food stamps. It’s not really food, is it? If you sprinkled unsweetened Kool-Aid on the sidewalk, would it even draw ants? But the electronic EBT card (which is really what “food stamps” is nowadays) approved it.

I’m glad I remembered to buy sugar. The world doesn’t need any more Irene’s.

Be kind to your fair-weathered friends

When my stories are printed in the Pickens County Progress, my suspicious friend Donna asks, “Did that really happen?” Yes, ma’am. True life is much stranger than fiction and needs no embellishment from me. The job market is so competitive right now, that getting a job, and keeping it, is a whole other job in itself.

Yesterday, I was down to my last $30.00 and decided to finally apply for food stamps. At the DFACS office in Jasper, the doors were locked. The sign said they were “closed for furlough.”  Another sign said to apply for food stamps online, at the local library. But before I could use their computers, the library lady said I must pay a year-old fine. (My daughter’s kitten had delicately nibbled around the edges of her library book on Aviation, more specifically “U.S. Fighters.”) It cost me $30.20, with fees.

Libraries are supposed to be quiet, but I kept on hearing a loud tapping sound. The culprit was a red bird. Outside the big picture window, from a high perch in the crepe myrtle tree, he kept flying straight into the clear glass. I walked over to get a closer look. Someone had hung a big fake owl in the tree branches. Worried, I alerted the library lady. She smiled a tired little smile, as if this was the ten-thousandth time someone had mentioned it. “We hung the big fake owl there to make the red bird go away. It worked for about five days, but he came back. ” She explained, “He sees his reflection in the window and thinks it’s another male bird in his territory. Then he lunges at it.” She leaned in and whispered, “You know how men are.”
Then last night, a bird-brained solution came to me: The library lady could open some smelly cans of tuna and set them around the base of the crepe myrtle. After all, if a tiny kitten could keep me away from the library for a solid year, think what a contingent of starving cats could do to clear the airspace of one red bird. I’ll suggest it to her today when she lends me a glorious, towering stack of books. God bless the public library! In good times and bad, it’s free …if you borrow responsibly. Now, that’s food for thought.

Thank you

Mah "little" girl

Sheriff Explorer at 17 years old

photo taken last Friday

I was proud of her for participating in the memorial flag raising at the Sheriff's Office last week. It's hard to believe she's the little seven year old I checked out of school the morning of September 11th, ten years ago.

They raised the old flag from ten years ago, the one that flew 365 consecutive days after the attack. It made us think, for the first time in awhile, about exactly what happened that day. Then they lowered it and raised a new one. It made us think about the future.

Everybody needs a Berthy

Bettina at age 5

(not normally this neat and clean)

Two doors down from my childhood home lived a large family with two working parents. Day Care Centers weren’t thought of back then, so the parents found themselves looking for a housekeeper. What they got was a “Berthy,” fetched all the way from Toccoa, Georgia to join their household in the Atlanta suburbs. Maybe her given name was Bertha, and some little child mispronounced it as Berthy. I don’t know, but the unusual name was perfectly matched to the strong-minded little woman. She made it clear from the get-go that she was not hired-help. She was a member of that family and her word was the law, for their chilluns and the neighbor’s too.   

After breakfast, our mothers sent us out to play so they could do their housework. Unfortunately for Berthy, we all went to interfere with hers. It was exciting just waiting for her to unhook the screened door, to get a look at her spiky hair and wrinkled skin. She dipped snuff, and every part of Berthy was the exact same shade of nut-brown, including her teeth. She never minced words and shot them quick from lips that barely moved: “G’MORNIN’!” Almost always, she raised a skinny arm to let us come inside.

In colder months, we played in the basement. Our usual choices were Monopoly, school, or house, and this took place just a few feet from Berthy as she did her ironing. In nicer weather, we jumped off the roof of their garage onto the grass below, testing the wind resistance of various umbrellas and makeshift capes. She was certain we’d break an arm bone but nobody did. It may have been the only time Berthy was ever wrong about anything. The little boy who lived there broke his ankle.

In the summertime, the fenced back yard was divided with several clothes lines running parallel with the house. We played between the lines of sheets, towels, clothes, and blankets. (Berthy pinned the ladies’ unmentionables inside pillow slips so we couldn’t see them, but the boys giggled and pointed at the braziers’ shadows). In wintertime, she moved the whole apparatus indoors. Naturally it was damp and dusty, as basements go. This made the clothes dry musty. She spent hours ironing everything fresh again, with starch out of a sprinkle bottle. These days, if I walk into a Dry Cleaner’s, the smell reminds me of Monopoly and the tiny flatiron playing piece I used to be like Berthy.

We were expected to go home for dinner, so whatever wonderful-smelling thing Berthy was making was never sampled by the unfortunates who didn’t live with her. We’d sit reverently at the kitchen table, watching her stir. Sometimes she remembered we were there, and poured some Kool-Aid for us into tiny plastic cups. If it wasn’t too close to suppertime, we got an orange pop-up ice cream. It wasn’t much food, and our tummies grumbled for whatever it was she had bubbling away in that big pot on the stove.

One of her specialties was what she called “homemade helper.” Berthy wrinkled her nut-brown nose at “store-bought,” and cooked strictly from scratch. It was tough to walk home with the delicious garlicky oniony fragrance in my clothes and hair, knowing I would never get a taste. Here is my best guess for what Berthy was making on those bright afternoons:

“Berthy’s Homemade Helper”

Cook 1 lb. of wide egg noodles according to package directions. Drain and toss with a generous pat of real butter. Set aside. Sauté’ 2 lbs. of ground beef (or turkey) with the chopped white and green parts of one bunch of spring onions. Drain off fat and return to pan. Add the noodles, and 32 ounces of Hunt’s Italian canned diced tomatoes, with the can-juice. Add salt and pepper to taste. In a bowl, mix together 16 oz. of Philadelphia cream cheese, softened, with one tub of nonfat cottage cheese.

*To serve from the stove top, stir cheeses into the meat mixture and heat through. Enjoy with crusty bread and a salad, and an orange pop-up ice cream for dessert.

Alternative: For a make-ahead casserole, layer half the noodle-meat mixture, then all of the cheese mixture, followed by the other half of the noodle mixture into a well buttered 13 x 9 x 2 oven-safe pan.  Cover with heavy duty foil and refrigerate for 2 hours, or overnight. Bake covered, at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. Uncover and bake ten to fifteen minutes more, until bubbly.

Wizzywig ... or, "What you see is what you get!" as published in the Pickens County Progress on Thursday, July 14, 2011

The married couple next door hadn’t seen me in quite awhile. They were afraid that living alone had made me nuts, just because I talk to myself and kiss dogs square on the mouth.

So the husband rang my doorbell and said point-blank it was time for me to start dating. He told me to “friend” him on Facebook first, and look at pictures of all his “friends.” If I saw one I liked, he’d introduce us. My neighbor is a Fireman, so I felt pretty sure I’d like his “friends.”

Firemen are usually big, with big hearts and even bigger moustaches. The late, great Lewis Grizzard was having his own moustache trimmed when his barber explained why moustaches don’t bother most women: “They don’t mind going through a little briar patch to get to a picnic.”

 I agree. So I did what was asked and looked at all the pretty Firemen on Facebook. One had a particularly nice Sam Elliot vibe, so I messaged him. We met for dinner. At least, I think it was him. The man who greeted me at the door was completely clean-shaven. “Where is it?” I asked. “Where’s what?” He said. “Your moustache,” I answered. “Oh, that thing’s been gone for months!” He said.

I had a nice time, and he was good looking, no doubt. But he may have been disappointed with me. My Facebook photo was a quick self-portrait. I had to crop it tight to get the toilet bowl out of the background. So needless to say, Sam Elliot never called me again.

It’s awkward now, because the matchmaking couple next door is afraid to come outside. I haven’t seen them in quite awhile. We even take turns going to our mailboxes. One day, when it was my turn to go, the mail lady had left me a catalogue. Guess what the cover said? “L.L. Bean men … Summer 2011 … shipped for free … guaranteed to last … no minimum order.”

Well, heck. Facebook didn’t make promises like those. I began looking, but most of the Bean collection was too permanent-press for my taste: mama’s boys, all of ‘em, standing idle on front porches next to hunting dogs that won’t hunt.

Bean did have a ringer on page 9, with tousled black hair and sun kissed olive skin. He wore the summerweight poplin shirt in blue plaid. It hung on him to perfection. So I decided to hang onto page 9 and place an order.

Now my heart skips a few beats every time the doorbell rings. Soon the ringer from page 9 will be standing on my front porch, holding a picnic basket. I’m sure he’s on his way, because his poplin shirt got here yesterday.

Honeydew you love me? Yes, but we cantaloupe!

Ashley Banks, Amberly Brooks (sister of bride), and Tim Banks

June 25, 2011

photo by Bryan Abshear

Maybe you know this and maybe you don’t, but grocery work is grueling business. All that stuff doesn’t place itself on the shelves. My old job at the Jasper Kroger used to keep me covered in bruises and liniment. I didn’t know how the working students found the energy. But then I met Tim. He made our Produce jobs palatable with his sizeable imagination.

When we took the garbage, he pitched to the dumpster lid with rotten fruit and veggies. We discovered that pre-slitting the avocadoes yielded 75% more goo than if they remained intact. And he rolled the trash can funny, too … hobbling along like Igor, hunched over and dragging one foot. He invited me to “walk thisssssssss way …” So I did.

 It was Tim who first noticed sweet potatoes often look like seals and ducks. He drew faces on them and put them back in stock. Then he invented a new toy, the “Mr. Sweet Potato Head” using little pieces of broccoli and cherry tomatoes for eyes, noses and mouths.

When he assisted Crystal, the fruit cutter, Tim gave cantaloupes jack-o-lantern faces. If I was in a bad mood, he’d make me giggle flapping open a blueberry container and talking like Arnold Schwarzenegger: “put me in your muffin! Do it now!”

 Management soon tired of Tim and me, suggesting we find employment elsewhere. So we did. I completed the cosmo course at tech school, and Tim is on the cusp of college graduation to become a history teacher. I feel sure he’ll give it a spin that his students will never forget.

 Tim reminds me of other mild-mannered introspects like Bob Newhart; and even the loveable “Chandler” from Friends.

He’s so quiet at times it’s easy to forget he’s there, sitting on a pallet of bananas, eavesdropping. This is how he learned all about female hormones and the medicinal properties of chocolate. Such information helped him be a better boyfriend to Ashley, his then-sweetheart: who's a gorgeous blend of Pocahontas and Natalie Portman. She’s just as pretty on the inside, too. There is nobody nicer.

They were recently married by Tim’s eighty-something year old Grandpa, who wandered off-task a time or two, but effectively joined them together in the end. He asked, “Do you Tim take Ashley to be your wife? Now you say yes.”  And the smart boy did. Tim didn’t just fall off the turnip truck, you know. 

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“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” – Galatians 5: 22, 23