EUREKA !!!!

As I awoke this morning I had caffeine on my mind.
Miles of addiction came between my brew and fine.
Stumbling with grogginess my mission was intact.
Although it was Halloween-----somehow I missed that fact.

Billows of aroma saturated every thought. Full attention to
The deed, my total being fraught !
As I waited patiently I glanced the mirror's way
And the creature staring back was frightful----
I must say !

That one scary instant settled Halloween's great choice.
" What a perfect costume", said my sleepy morning voice.
I'll be lazy, let things go; not dress or comb my hair.
Take the day off, be a bum, a reason NOT to care.

Then at spook time when the goblins chant their "Trick or Treat",
They'll be startled, flee in terror----------
When my sight they greet!!
***
Jane- Ann Heitmueller

A Witch For All Seasons

A Witch For All Seasons

By Cappy Hall Rearick

"Eve nibbled on the apple because the serpent promised it would make her smart. If he had said, 'It will erase your fine wrinkles,' she would have buzzed through that Tree of Knowledge like a beaver."--Author Paula Wall

Father Time is my beauty consultant. He told me (and I believed him) that wrinkles are underdeveloped dimples. If one appears anywhere other than on both sides of my lips, I refuse to acknowledge it. My friend Betty, however, makes a habit of pointing out my imperfections. She scrutinizes my face as if she's on a mission from God. "I see you have not yet made an appointment with a cosmetic surgeon."

"No, Betty, I haven't. Plastic surgery, like marriage, should not be entered into unadvisedly or lightly."

She widens her eyes as far as the Botox will allow. Betty's baby blues get worked and reworked more often than she changes her shoes. "Girl, did you forget to pay your brain bill or what? Time is not your friend. You gotta do something about your roadmap face, or one more hour in the sun is gonna turn you into a Maxine cartoon."

I fish around looking for a mirror in my pocketbook. "I don't look that bad."

Miss South Georgia Big Hair tosses her teased, sprayed and over-processed blonde locks, and then grabs a wad of my own. "Pitiful," she says. "A woman's hair is her crowning glory, but yours needs to be attached to a Halloween mask."

Maybe my face does look like a map of Calcutta, and maybe it is past time for me to swap Babe's rusty dog clippers in for a professional haircut. But a gal has to draw the line somewhere. "Ouch! Stop pulling my hair, Betty, or I won't be the only one needing a surgeon."

Betty's snide Halloween remark brings up a memory I'd just as soon forget. A teenager dressed like that Gabrielle slut on Desperate Housewives came to my house Trick or Treating last year. Giving me a cursory glance, she wanted to know where I'd bought my costume. I wasn't wearing one.

She stopping texting on her cell phone long enough to exclaim, "Whoa! You are so Bree Van de Camp. So … like, so bland? Like that dreary wig is so UN-chung, so howling. Except like … you know, Bree is a redhead?"

I told the twit, "Wait right there," and then I raced though the house looking for something sharp and metal to bury inside a candy apple.

But, back to Betty Botox of the multi-lifts. Since her last treatment, she sports a permanent smile as if she just discovered the multiple orgasm. What with her eyebrows tattooed an inch below a silly looking transplanted widow's peak, even her grandkids have trouble recognizing her.

"Look," I say to my friend, "the truth is, Babe doesn't believe in plastic surgery."

That's a lie, but I know if I woke up grinning like Clarabelle the Clown the way Betty does, Babe would make me wear a burqa to bed. Besides, I'm not dumb enough to grin before he's quaffed down three mugs of Starbucks. Mama didn't raise stupid children.

With a grotesque grin permanently etched on her face, Betty's overworked eyes glare at me. "Please tell me you did not ask Babe's opinion on face lifts."

Her recently implanted red cheeks look like over-ripe tomatoes. Longing for Audrey Hepburn cheekbones, she took a little trip down to Implants-R-Us and wound up looking like Alvin the Chipmunk, not Hepburn. You get what you pay for.

"Betty, Babe says he loves me as I am. When he wakes up each morning, he wants to recognize the drooling woman in bed with him."

She snorts like a horse, shakes her mop of over-bleached hair till it nearly breaks loose from two pounds of gel and hairspray. "If that is true, then there's only one thing left for me to say." She sighs with more melodrama than Hepburn could ever have mustered even if her butt was on fire. "If you're not planning to get work done, then you best make friends with that Desperate Housewives wannabee before Halloween. Otherwise, she'll recognize you."

"So what if she does?"

"Duh!" Betty gives me a look. "Have you been sniffing Babe's aftershave again or what? Surely you remember the trauma you caused that po' child last Halloween."

Tossing my limp head of hair, I try to look offended. "Trauma? I did not put anything in that girl's apple. I only thought about it."

"Then why did she hotfoot it down the street yelling bloody murder as if the Prince of Darkness was after her? Word gets around."

I fluff what's left of my bedraggled, unconditioned hair, force a smile and hope that my unbleached teeth will make my vertical lip lines appear less noticeable. While I bat

my untightened eyes. my oversized, hot pink nose twitches like a bitch-kitty.

"That TV besotted bubblehead needs to mind her own business, and so do you, Betty. I intend to grow old gracefully."

Betty blows a bunch of air through her puffy lips, rolls her over-taut eyes and shakes her big platinum hair. "FYI, girlfriend. Aging gracefully became a No-No when Baby Boomers hit forty and invented computers, collagen and botox."

"Boomers invented computers?"

She sighs heavily. "Help me, Jesus. There is absolutely no way for me to fix you. We might as well drink."

I'm on it. When it comes to wrinkles, my philosophy is that a dry martini, if sipped very slowly, can make those undeveloped dimples completely disappear.

www.simplysoutherncappy.com

Go see the Dew Book Reviews!

Click on logo to go to the Book Review Section.

FYI - Please be patient with the sidebar - I've got a bad link somewhere that is slowing down the loading of pages and I'm going thru each link trying to find it. So things are missing at the moment.

Pecan Festival Queen Celia Rivenbark!

The 14th Annual Pecan Harvest Festival - Whiteville, North Carolina

Have lunch with a queen and enjoy some of Whiteville’s most beautiful homes during the 2007 Pecan Harvest Festival’s Queen’s luncheon and Tour of Homes Friday, November 2nd at 11:30. The Baldwin-White house, on the corner of Jefferson & Franklin Street, will host the luncheon followed by the homes tour.


Pecan Festival Queen Celia Rivenbark, author of Bless Your Heart, Tramp and We’re Just Like You, Only Prettier will be in attendance as will Anne Grimes, owner of “Annie’s Old Fashioned Flat Dumplings.” It all promises to make the luncheon interesting and lively.

The always popular house tour includes seven of Whiteville’s attractive and interesting homes.

Call Pecan Festival Headquarters 910-642-4299 or Sara Thompson 910-642-7761 or Suzanne King 910-642-9732 to purchase tickets. One of the best buys for your money, the prices are: $25.00 Luncheon & Tour, $20.00 Luncheon Only, $10.00 Tour Only. Only a limited number of tickets are available and will be sold as a first come basis.

_____________________________________

Additionally - Celia will be on Good Morning America's Saturday Edition tomorrow - October 27th!

You can watch it here: http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=3784353

Old 82 - Part I

I was sitting front and middle in a brand new, four-door, aquamarine 1965 Pontiac Catalina. I was sandwiched in between my dad, who had been driving all day, and my mom, who was skimming the pages of Life. I was thinking about a motel pool, Magic Fingers bed, and Kentucky Fried Chicken mashed potatoes. To my right, the air conditioning vents were aimed up and over so Granny and my older brother could get some circulation in the back. To my left, the speedometer was pushing seventy for the first time in a long while. Straight ahead, the dashboard crucifix had the centerline in the crosshairs. I was sporting black PF Flyers low tops, newly cropped cutoffs, and a fresh summer crewcut. I held a Scrooge McDuck comic in my lap, but I wasn’t looking at it. I was up front because I had to see where we were, where we were going. I was eight years old.

A job in science brought me to the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, and as a function of that work I regularly roam the countryside sampling both stream water and backwoods barbeque—though directly consuming only the latter. Not long ago, I was at a new site on a bridge over the Sipsey River, just west of the tiny West Central Alabama town of Buhl, leaning over the guardrail while straining to hoist a collection jug brimful of cool, liquid murk the shade of stiff sweet tea. An ambitious student, tagging along to gain precious field experience before making a run at graduate school, was patiently half-sitting the rail beside me. He handed me the first of two plastic bottles that would hold the portioned contents of the jug. We were deep into a discussion about something: football, cars, the scratch biscuits and salty red-eye at the Waysider, anything. I mindlessly filled the first bottle, traded it for the second, and then unconsciously inserted a pause into the conversation when I remembered that I hadn’t double-checked the labels. The undergrad, a native of the area, had written "SipOld82"—his code for "Sipsey River at old highway 82 bridge"—on the bottle I was holding. It flashed through my mind that the map and road signs claimed this segment as Tuscaloosa County Road 140. I started to raise the question, but when I looked up he was already halfway back to the truck—a distance that would reduce any communication to shouts and exaggerated gestures. I stared for a good minute as he walked down that straight, deserted stretch of cracked pavement. My focus wasn’t on him, however, I was absorbed in the whole scene; his silhouette was more like the shadow of a head at the bottom of a movie screen. I stepped to the center of the eastbound lane, turned toward its direction of travel, and mentally framed the road like a view through a windshield. The old surface in that setting peered back like a portrait, haunting me with the familiar eyes of a childhood acquaintance set deep in the wrinkles of an aged face. For a moment, the feeling was a mystery. But when I turned back around to the west, I saw it coming, knew what it was, and it hit me head-on. A vision and a revelation: 1965 Pontiac, a road remembered.

Uncle Bill and Aunt Melba built a house in Edgewater, Florida. My family made the trip to their place every summer and an occasional Christmas from 1962 to 1981. The annual migration had our Southwest Missouri hometown of Nevada as its origin and nearly always followed the same route: southeast to Springfield, West Plains, Jonesboro and Memphis; then due south toward Jackson. At Winona, Mississippi we left Interstate 55 and used U.S. Highway 82 East as a tether across three states to I-75 at Tifton, Georgia—after which it was wide open, four-lane, Stuckey’s and Howard Johnsons the rest of the way south. We did this for twenty years. We probably passed through Tuscaloosa fifty times.

No east-west non-interstate highway transects the South, both geographically and culturally, like 82. Start to finish it roams 1500 miles from Alamagordo, New Mexico to Brunswick, Georgia—literally points A to B—crossing the Pecos, Red, Mississippi, and Chattahoochee rivers along the way. From the southern tip of the Rockies to the South Georgia coast it loses two hours to time zones and 8640 feet to elevation. It is two-thirds transcontinental, but unlike other long federal routes it favors a rural course, shunning the multiple lanes of the big cities and the temptation to piggyback on a parallel interstate. In Dixie east of the Delta, the stretch I knew best, 82 wades through swamps, weaves around hills, and whisks by cotton rows. It brings students to Starkville, crops to Cuthbert, and revivals to Reform. It was a part of my youth as sure as banana seat bicycles and Dairy Queen dipped cones. So I decided to follow it again, west to east, Winona to Tifton, and not just as it is now. I wanted to see it as it was then.
Eastward view from Sipsey Road Bridge of Tuscaloosa, AL County Road 140.

Day One

On a sunny, late March morning, I purposely drove the 140 miles from Tuscaloosa to Winona wearing mental blinders. The objective was to mute everything of interest along modern-day U.S. 82 West until I turned around at Interstate 55, and it was easy—a testament to the numbing power of fast-food breakfasts, bypasses, and talk radio. Two and one-half hours later I pulled my 1992 Nissan Sentra into a Texaco next to the I-55 entrance ramp, filled up with gas, and washed down a two-bit bag of goobers with a Coke. Refueled, refreshed, and resolved, I paused for just a second to reset my trip odometer back to zero, and my course and curiosity back to the east.

The Mississippi Department of Transportation had made it easy—or so I thought. A week of research with vintage state and oil company highway maps at the University of Alabama Cartographic Laboratory verified that in most places where Old 82 runs estranged from contemporary U.S. 82, Mississippi calls it state road 182. The section of the old road through Winona must have been too short for them to mess with; all I had to follow was a hunch that the faded yellow lines leading east from the West Winona exit might be the initial divergence of the old from the new. I trusted my intuition and took the exit, then drove slow, surveying the landscape for clues. I did not have to look long or drive far. Less than one-half mile on the left was an older Citgo gas station—a holdout from the pre-convenience store era—looking as uncomfortable with its contemporary red and orange roofline façade makeover as Archie Bunker with a toupee. On a sign above the pump canopy was this garish, hand-painted affirmation:

82 CITGO

Two words over and two words under the CITGO formed this meek, heavily faded salutation:

WELCOME TO
WINONA MS

I went on east, confident of the route and content with a welcome that had not yet worn out.

Personal travel proverb number one: Seek not the least sinuous path, for each bend in the road is a flex of the mind. From Winona to Kilmichael, Old 82 has been lost forever to fourteen miles of four-lane, restricted-access, minimum-speed, grade-stabilized, modern antiseptic automotive monotony. The scenery reminded me of the backdrop in a 1970’s vintage Hanna-Barbera cartoon, and I was a frustrated George Jetson in a compact coupe de cosmos whirring past the same asteroid over and over again. My attention started to drift, so I turned on the radio in search of something regionally unique on the far end of the dial. Nothing but hiss, static, and syndication. The sound and the futility of tuning triggered a flashback from the old road, however. I remembered Dad as desperate for some midday news, and in a time before search buttons he was manually surfing AM when he hit on this noteworthy local announcement:

It says here that there was a bad tornader in (a town with a name that I can’t recall) last night. Tore things up pretty bad. Nobody was kilt, but a bunch were sure boogered up…

At Kilmichael I avoided the bypass and turned onto Montgomery County Road 413, which followed the path of 82 on the old maps. Still no sign of 182 yet, but a fractured remnant of pavement cut the corner of the right turn I had just made, so I trusted its jaywalking lead and carried on east at the point where it dissolved into a newer surface. Immediately I passed through the business district; one compact city block fronted with a quaint patina of softly weathered brick, glass, tin, and townspeople, all seemingly leaning on some component of the other. It was a charming southern setting—which I had absolutely no memory of whatsoever. How could that be? Did I nap at this exact geographical location twenty years in a row? First the contentment of a timely welcome gets kilt on an asphalt treadmill, and now Kilmichael was boogering up confidence. Demoralized, I retreated to the bland homogeneity of the bypass.

Wide and fast funneled down to narrow and tedious east of Kilmichael, where the original roadbed forced four lanes of traffic to tiptoe on two for a while. At the Webster County line, 82 angled north to test new asphalt, and I caught myself rubbernecking to the south where the old pavement lay quiet, waiting to be exhumed. I saw a section where the edge of the road had been sliced away, exposing a clear cross-section of the entire blacktop, so I stopped and walked across dry, cracked clay to get a close look. The original concrete was visible under three dark, distinct seams of overlying asphalt, each approximately eight inches thick. As I squatted to scrape at the outcrop, it struck me that the strata could be dated much like a geologic road cut; with the oldest layer at the bottom and successively younger deposits on top, it was an artificial bedrock and synthetic sediments representing very real epochs of highway history. I studied each layer, guessing when it was exposed and which of our family vehicles may have left imperceptible footprints on its surface. The thought gave me an idea for a classification system. The first layer probably predated any car I knew, so it was from the Precatalinian Age. The rest, from oldest to youngest: Catalinian, Deltaceous 88, Fordivician Van.

One mile later, Mississippi 182 appeared for the first time and beckoned me to Eupora. Entries from my notebook as I drove this stretch:

2 fisherman w/straw hats & cane poles
welcome from Lions, Rotarians, and Methodists
old National Guard armory
old natural gourd aviary
white, half-buried passenger tire planter borders
no filling stations-turned-tanning parlors
no portable signage w/pulsing arrows
retrospectively pristine
@ stoplight—building—straight ahead—?????

The sign on the window said CENTRAL SERVICE GRILL. As I waited at a red light, I clearly remembered the character, but not the chronicle, of this building. It was a brick structure with odd, rounded angles—sort of like a square with one corner sanded not quite flat. There was glass across the front, a metal awning over the glass, an old clock centered above the awning, and up on the roof, art deco lettering that—like an old mouth minus some molars—had lost a couple of C’s and E’s from each side but still managed to spit out NTRAL SERVI. The hands of the clock had been stilled at a 4:55 from who knows when—a moment in time in which I, too, was stuck. Had it been a service station? An old garage? A car dealership? The car behind me tapped the horn. The light was green.

Dee Dee was real busy. Besides being the only waitress, she was also working the cash register, where we were both standing. Without looking up, she counted change to a paying customer, grabbed an order pad, pulled a pencil from behind her ear and said, "To go?"

"Actually, I was just needing a quick answer to a short question." I realized it was straight-up noon. The place was packed. She handed me a menu, still without looking up. "I’m sorry, I’d just like to know what this place was before it was a grill," I said.

She looked up. "Oh, uh, well, it was a car dealership—but you know, you really oughta talk to Cindy because she’s the owner. I’ll go get her." After about thirty seconds she came back and told me Cindy was really busy but Henry was sitting over there, and I really oughta talk to him because he’s the owner. She pointed toward a head in a booth at the far end of the room.

I started toward Henry, sidestepping tables and excusing myself through conversations while scanning the scene. The place was nostalgically trendy, using lots of memorabilia and era-appropriate décor to take full advantage of its mid-1900’s automotive roots, but I was finding it difficult to look behind the theme for clues of the original layout. I passed by a couple of state troopers slumped over their food, all four elbows on the table, hands working forks from the back of the plate. Some people say the presence of more than one policeman—especially highway patrol—in a roadside cafe is a sure-fire indicator of good food. I’ve heard the same thing about calendars. In our midwestern travels, Dad and I documented the existence of a positive linear relationship between the quantity of bowling trophies and the quality of diner fare. Edibles grew exponentially savorous, however, if there were bowling trophies and a refrigerator—preferably old, without glass doors—located in the dining area containing JELL-O salads. We never ordered a square of lime JELL-O with diced pineapple and pear on a lettuce leaf. We just wanted it around.
Henry Ross standing in front of the Central Service Grill, Eupora, MS.

I hated to bother Henry Ross; he looked wrapped up in his paper, The Wall Street Journal, which was spread out across the table. On top of the editorial page, a red plastic basket lined with wax paper housed his barbeque sandwich between bites. At that moment, the sandwich was being held aloft in his right hand, poised for a pause in the print. Not a drop of sauce was on the paper or his shirt, which happened to be the whitest, most perfectly starched oxford cloth long-sleeve button-down that I had ever seen. Henry looked to be in his mid-forties, no noticeable gray and only a slight retreat of hairline at the part. I introduced myself, apologized for interrupting his lunch, and asked about the history of the building. He looked up through round wire rims and offered a seat. He then pointed to a framed newspaper that hung on the wall above the booth directly across from us.

"Well, just about everything you would ever want to know is in that article. It’s a pretty good summary of the business conducted in this building."

I couldn’t read the headline, let alone the print, and the booth below it was very occupied with four people in a very animated conversation. Henry noticed my apprehension of the prospect of another personal lunch space encroachment.

"Well, let’s see—I might be able to come up with a few events and dates…." He proceeded with this brief summation:

"The building was originally a Ford dealership—Central Service Ford—and was operated first by my grandfather. My father, Joe Ross, ran it together with my grandfather for several years until ’59 when Dad took sole possession of the business. Not too long after that, the Jameson family bought the dealership—although we retained ownership of the building—and kept it going until ’68. I know I’m skipping over a bunch of years, but it bounced around between proprietors until Ford finally closed it down in the late ’80’s—like many small town dealers, it couldn’t match big city prices and inventories. The grill opened in June of 2000."

He anticipated my next question. "We are now sitting in what was the parts department. The open area to your right was the showroom, and the kitchen was the garage."

I had to ask: "So you’re the owner of the building, and Cindy is the owner of the business?"

"That’s right."

That cleared up the double-owner dilemma. I told him about my experiences traveling on old 82, how his building was a familiar icon from that era, and my goal of retracing the old route.

"Well, yeah, this was a fixture on that highway, up until November of ’98—when the bypass around Eupora opened." He thought for a minute and then asked, "You going to write about all this or something?"

"I started out just trying to scratch an old itch—but if the whole thing gets interesting enough, I might take a shot at it." I didn’t feel like much of a journalist—I had to borrow his pen and one of Dee Dee’s Guest Checks to get everything down.

He said, "You should. I know of a guy who took a chance on writing, and wound up doing quite well with it."

I bit. "Who’s that?"

"John Grisham was a law school classmate of mine at Ole Miss."

I smiled and nodded. We sat quietly for a minute until Henry caught me stealing a glance at his sandwich.

"You had lunch yet? It’s pretty good."

"No, not officially. It does smell really good, but to be honest, I didn’t anticipate stopping anywhere for more than a couple of minutes, so I filled up on snacks." An egregious violation of a basic barbeque tasting tenet. I thanked him, shook his hand, and promised I would come back sometime to try a sandwich. Who knows? Maybe a pair of troopers trumps a full house of trophies.

State road 182 dissolved into four-lane 82 a couple of miles east of Eupora. Just like that—gone. I cranked the Sentra back up to seventy and pouted my way under the Natchez Trace and through Mathiston. It was not long before construction crowded all traffic onto the original two-lane where it was narrow, congested, and rhythmically rough from the steady cluh-clump, cluh-clump of front, then back tires hitting seams. The familiar cadence paced me on through Adaton and into the city that is the home of Mississippi State University.

I owe an apology to Starkville, Mississippi. Sometimes the old southern two-lanes were indifferent to monuments of wealth or culture; they buzzed through town on a beeline, snubbing the boulevard with the mansions and museums. U.S. 82 passed through some of the poorer sections of Starkville, and for years I was convinced the town took its name not from a brilliantly heroic officer of the Revolutionary War, but from a brutally honest adjective modifying -ville. Flashbacks: shotgun houses, sagging porches; an LTD with a shredded Landeau top idling blue-gray smoke; blanched curtains wafting from wide-open windows; a blank expression in the back of a school bus. Maybe some memories turn cruel over time, because it was not nearly as bad as I had remembered. Still, as I crept with traffic by THE DERBY and UNIVERSITY MOTEL signs—two rusting neon relics from another commercial era—I decided to take a detour through the heart of town. I turned right on Montgomery Street, toured the business district, cruised through campus and a few neighborhoods, and—for the first time in forty years—gave the town the good looking over that it sorely deserved. Please accept my sincerest apologies, Starkville. You have a nice place, here. I’ve passed you on the street a few times, said hello, but we’ve never really been properly introduced.

Twenty-three miles to Columbus, and 182 materialized again to slice straight across the Black Belt—a crescent-shaped spread of ancient prairie earth so named because organic and mineral amendments from native grass and stone have turned the soil dark, friable, and productive. The road relaxed with the terrain, recumbent now with gentle slopes, easy curves, and wide aspects. The tranquility was short lived, however, because soon 182 was ordered to heel; except for a short section dug up for the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, it was leashed tight to four-lane 82 as a service road the rest of the way into Columbus.

I remember three long, narrow bridges we used to cross while travelling on Old 82. The first spanned the looping channel of the Tombigbee River at the lap of downtown Columbus. I found it there, still intact, as the centerpiece of a city park. Traffic was no longer allowed by axle or ankle on the old bridge (a much newer one was just to the north), so I trudged up to its west approach, halted only by a sorry wire fence succumbing to thick braids of still-dormant kudzu. The old steel structure looked pitifully decrepit, but I was glad they left it. As a child I imagined it as a long, narrow drawbridge over a steaming, monster-choked moat. We would race across; barely slipping through groping tentacles, just sliding through two massive, shutting wooden doors set in the mossy stone walls of downtown Columbus. You can call me hopelessly nostalgic or declare my venture wildly hallucinogenic, but there was a kind of strange synergism between these slow, muddy rivers and this old road that made memories flow fast and clear.

Old 82 was Business 82 through the heart of Columbus, and just up the hill from the bridge the route passed through downtown and by the birthplace of a great American playwright. To be honest, when I was young, I knew more about Tennessee Tuxedo than Tennessee Williams, so I wasn’t much impressed with his connections to Columbus. While on our 1971 Florida trip, however, I read Eudora Welty’s latest book at the time, Losing Battles—and I let the passing sights of rural 82 illustrate the settings of the story. Her descriptions of fictional backwoods Banner, Mississippi and the antics surrounding Granny Vaughn’s 90th birthday party/family reunion became as real to me as the view out my window. I was hooked. Anyway, I noticed on the dust jacket that Ms. Welty attended the Mississippi State College for Women (now Mississippi University for Women) in Columbus. That’s what impressed me about this town. Business 82 passed within a couple blocks of the campus, which catches the eye with two architecturally unique towers that project above the surrounding residential landscape. I took a short side trip to get a closer look at the tall, perfectly round, painstakingly prim, red brick spires. If you stand facing the university’s main entrance gate, then turn forty-five degrees east, the tower on your left features a large clock and a roofline shaped like a Hershey’s Kiss. The tower on your right seems built to house a large bell and skewers the sky with a lid that looks like a dunce cap. There is a passage in Losing Battles where a main character—Gloria—is asked to describe the college where she was trained as a teacher:

"Two towers round as rolling pins made out of brick. On top of the right-hand one was an iron bell. And right under that bell in the tip-top room was where they put me. Six iron beds all pointing to the middle, dividing it like a pie. When the bell rang, it shook us all like a poker in the grate…."

In 1971, the experience of reading those sentences, then seeing these structures, rang a bell that shook me, too.


* * *

Kevin Pritchard is a Research Technician in the Center for Freshwater Studies at the University of Alabama. He lives in Tuscaloosa with his wonderful wife, and they have two fine sons in college. This is Kevin's first published work of creative writing.

You may contact him at: khpritchard@comcast.net

Listen Up Chili-Heads

It's chili cookin' time in Texas, folks. Almost time for the world-class chili cook-off in Terlingua and big bowls of steaming red.

This year, 466 cooks qualified and 189 show teams are on the roster for the 2007 event.

 

We grow chili peppers so big in Texas, you only get one pod per pot!

With team names like "Dr. Dave's VooDoo Stew", or "Miasis Dragon", or "Asheep at the Wheel", this year is bound to be a heckuva lot of fun. There's even a "Hoochie Mama" and a "Dumb Blonde" team. Believe I would have to pass on taste samples from the likes of the "Red Cock Chili" or "Toad Chokin' Chili" show teams.

Because I love the Bend without a gaggle of fire-breathin' semi-drunk chili-heads, I expect the Kman and I may never experience this celebration. It's a nine hour plus drive to the park, and we get so few days away that I just can't bring myself to waste them watchin' people get wasted, though it looks like a lot of fun.

If you got nothing better to do on the first Saturday in November, I bet there's a patch of dirt in Terlingua with your name on it.

Kudzu Flowers

Many people do not know that kudzu blooms because the blossoms are almost always hidden beneath the thick leaves.

Photo and information from: Juanita Baldwin
Writer of several Kudzu and Smoky Mountain books

Go visit her site and see the good reads!

Banana Pudding

"One of the best Southern Desserts out there - served in practically every home and restaurant in the South. I love my 'naner puddin!"

Idgie



Recipe From Diana Rattray,
Your Guide to Southern U.S. Cuisine.

INGREDIENTS:

* 1 large pkg instant vanilla pudding, (6 ounces)
* 2 1/2 cups cold milk
* 1 can sweetened condensed milk, (14 ounces)
* 1 container whipped topping, (16 ounces)
* sliced bananas
* vanilla wafer cookies

PREPARATION:
Mix pudding and milk; add condensed milk. Blend well; fold in half the whipped topping.

Alternate layers of pudding, bananas and vanilla wafers; top with remaining whipped topping and a few banana slices.

Refrigerate overnight before serving.

Leaf Watch 2007 from Georgia State Parks

Georgia State Parks



I thought ya'll could use a little preview of Fall!

Idg

Uncle Hubert's Custom Cows

I was making the coffee this morning, glancing out the kitchen window and watching the occasional car make it's way to town for Sunday services when I saw one of Uncle Hubert's trucks going by with a cattle trailer. He must be moving his livestock between pastures, the auction yard isn't open on Sundays.

Uncle Hubert (not my actual "uncle") is well known around Frog Pond Holler for his cow breeding expertise. You see, the landscape surrounding our little town is dotted with farms, some of which have been in operation and belonging to the same families for generations. What sets these farms apart from those you find in other parts of the country is that they consist of very little flat land. I wouldn't describe the land as "gentle rolling hills" exactly, some of it is quite steep. If you're lucky enough to have a small portion of your property which is reasonably flat, you either build your house in that spot or plant a few rows of tobacco.

Keeping livestock in the steep, hilly pastures creates some unique situations, situations which Uncle Hubert's ancestors found solutions to and capitalized on. That's how "Uncle Hubert's Custom Cow Breeding" was born.

Hubert learned the craft from his daddy, who learned it from his daddy's daddy, who came from old Scottish stock, the family having bred cows this way for centuries. When Hubert first began in the business he tried new methods, creating his special "Frontloader" cows, for people who's property was very steep. These cows had shorter front legs, making it easy for them to graze the pastures, moving steadily uphill. He experimented with "Backenders" as well, having short back legs to make them better suited to go downhill. Eventually Hubert grasped the universal rule that "what goes up, must come down" and saw that there was a "flaw in the slaw," as it were. It didn't really register with Hubert until that incident when a Frontloader cow belonging to Sarah Hawkins entered into that period of time when she was prime for breedin' ... if you get my drift.. and a Backender bull over at Cletus' daddy's place caught a whiff of her amorous desires.

The resulting carnage was heard for miles. Cletus still talks about seeing those cows entangled in barbed wire and rolling down six acres of steep pasture eventually making their way on to the main drag through town. They say if you go down to the square in the wee hours of the morning and listen closely you can still hear the "moooooooo thump thump mooooooooooooo thump moooooooooooooo."

Hubert stopped breeding Frontloaders and Backenders right after that and focused on breeding his more popular custom cow breed, the Sidewinder. Sidewinders are bred with either both right or both left legs a bit shorter than the others to make it easier for them to go round and round, encircling the hills of pasture land. In retrospect, Hubert realized that his daddy and his daddy's daddy knew what they were doing and he stopped experimenting with new breeds.
I guess I should mention that because Hubert has no formal education, he's no scientist by any means, there is the occasional mishap during the insemination process. When this happens and a calf is born with a short front left leg and a short back right leg, we call that a "Sprawl-legged," Hubert chalks it up to an act of the Almighty and the unfortunate bovine becomes the Sunday dinner special down at Bessie's BBQ Barn and Gift Emporium.

Written by: Mahala

Southern Festival of Books

A couple of dear old friends dragged my butt over to Nashville for this event back in the day and boy am I glad I went! The festival travels back and forth from Western to Middle Tennessee depending on who's got the primo hotel accomodations during the second week of October. There's always a full slate of accomplished authors wherever it lands. You can check it out here.

True Life: I'm a Southern Belle

True Life: I'm a Southern Belle

Do your friends and family call you a southern belle? Do you always dress to impress before leaving your house? Have you been practicing for cotillion or pageant? Do you swear by pearls for every occasion? If you think you are a true southern belle - however you define it - we want to hear from you...

We are looking for young ladies ages 16 - 28 who live anywhere in the US and consider themselves to be true southern belles.

We are very interested in girls who are preparing for a cotillion in October, November, or December 2007. We are also interested in any southern belles who no longer live in the south but still hold on to their southern roots and values.

Our website, www.leftright.tv is currently under construction. I know there is a posting on www.mtv.com under the section – Be on MTV.

If interested please email Ana Cordova at acordova@leftright.tv

Ana Cordova
Casting Director
Left/Right Inc. for MTV True Life
New York, NY

The Old House

When the old house was built was a mystery to everyone. It seemed to have been there forever. Surrounded by majestic old Oaks, it was very content hiding there from the passing cars. It was never painted, that was easy to see. But, that did not deflect from it’s proud looks. The weathered wood standing out, almost like that was the way it was planned from the very beginning. One of the unique places in the old house was the root cellar. It was always cool down there, even during the hottest days of summer. Shelves of dirt, dug into the walls were lined with Mason jars filled with the delicious results of the summers labors out in the garden. It was a rainbow running around the walls with the different colors of the vegetables that were preserved there.That was also where the old ice box was kept in the old days, before the wires stretched themselves out to Welti to provide electricity for refrigerators. The ice truck would run a couple times a week to deliver ice. And, of course, the driver would always chip off a little piece of ice for the kids.

There was an upstairs that was never used except for storage, and for the kids to play. But, the kids always had a little scary feeling about being up there. It was a little dark and always a little spooky, even in the broad daylight. The noises coming from up there could be explained by the adults, but the kids had other ideas about the strange noises. There was no history of anyone being murdered or dying up there, but that didn’t stop the imagination from running away with them. This only added to the mystic of the old house. The stories made up by the kids always added to the jittery feelings that they loved to have when playing up there.

But, what was best about the old house were the activities that always seemed to be causing a little excitement, especially on Sunday afternoons. All the adults would gather at the old house for lunch, some horse shoe pitching, and ice cream making, and of course the cousins would be there. Hid and seek and tag were two of the games the younger kids would play. And there were hundreds of places to hide which made the games that much more fun. Lunch was a big happening at the old house. It was a custom that the adults always ate first, then the kids would gather around the table for their turn. And, there was always plenty to eat, for everyone. But, the big event came in the mid afternoon after everyone sat around on the porch digesting the lunch, or the men had finished several games of dusty horse shoes out at the barn. When it was all done, everyone would gather on the porch for making ice cream. The men would take turns cranking the old ice cream makers and the kids would sit on top of it to hold it steady. They would sit as long as they could stand it, but finally the cold would creep through the short pants they all wore and they would have to jump up, only to be replaced by another one waiting his turn on the bucket. And the efforts were very richly rewarded when the ice cream was served up.

As the sun was setting on the old house, the men were resting on the porch, their bellies full of ice cream, the women were inside, maybe working on a quilt, and the kids were still running around, but with not nearly as much energy as they started the day with. The fun was almost over for another week and you could almost see the satisfaction reflecting from the windows of the old house. If a house can smile, the old house was smiling.

Written and owned by: Jack Aldridge
Photo property of: Jack Aldridge
jabassman@gmail.com