To me, the perfect picture of summer happiness is this …
… vine-ripened tomatoes. The color, the smell, the taste and the memories of tomato summers gone by.
The above beauties went into my okra-tomato gumbo.
Come on over!
Tomato Joy
Tag: My Thoughts
Pot Pie Smiles
One of my earliest joyful memories as a kid finds me meandering off, on warm summer mornings, to the community playground near my house in Cochran Field, near Macon, Georgia. My best friend Billy and I would play until our mothers brought us chicken pot pies and sweet tea. Sitting at the weathered, wooden picnic tables, we would gobble down our pot pies in their little aluminum containers (which we repurposed as treasure collectors).
I have always loved the creamy texture, the flaky crusts, the green peas and carrots, and the homey, Mama-ish warmth of chicken pot pies (or turkey pot pies but NOT cheesy or veggie pot pies). Of course, they were FROZEN SOLID forty-five minutes before I had all those lovey feelings as a child. And back then, I didn’t realize that our mothers were watching The Price Is Right or Queen for a Day instead of preparing fresh, homemade lunches for us boys.
So after buying organic vegetables from the local farm-to-table community market (doesn’t that make me sound health-oriented and grounded yet hip and on-target?), I decided to make a homemade chicken pot pie. HOMEMADE
First of all, do you have ANY clue how long it takes to chop carrots, celery, peppers and potatoes? Boil the corn and then scrape it off the cob? Finely cut the rosemary? Roll out the dough? (Okay, okay, all I did was roll it out of the carton, but still.)
But, oh my goodness, what fun! I may become a famous TV chef or something!
Delicious!
Swanson’s may do it faster, but not better!
10 Reasons I Loved My Little Trip to Visit My Folks
Early yesterday morning I drove up to my north-of-Atlanta hometown of Ball Ground for a short visit with my mom and dad.
My dad–Harold or Tub–is 89 (90 in November–come to the party!), and my mom–Geneva–turned 86 in May. I can’t even begin to tell you how much fun we have when I visit. They taught me (are still teaching me) to laugh, to enjoy life.
Here are Ten Reasons I loved my little visit.
1. The early dinner that awaited me upon my 11 am arrival. Okay, for some of you this will be a bit confusing, but in Ball Ground lunch is called dinner, and dinner is called supper. (Breakfast is called Hardees.)
My favorite meal in the whole wide world consists of 1.) my dad’s creamed yellow corn. 2.) My mom’s fried sweet potatoes. 3.) A tomato and an onion.
The corn is scraped, raw, from the cob and meticulously cooked stove top, stirring constantly to keep it from scorching. It has the taste of heaven.
These sweet potatoes look a little burnt, and they should. That gives them the carmelized flavor. Cooked in a large cast iron pan, there’s nothing better. One stick butter, one cup sugar, sliced sweet potatoes. Orange joy.
Oh. My. Goodness. Thank you, Jesus.
2. The bird clock in my parents’ bathroom.
I like it best when the batteries get old, and the hourly bird calls become eerily elongated.
3. Walking around my folks’ small house (which my dad built BY HAND 34 years ago), looking at the bushes and trees.
4. Eating supper at Cracker Barrel. During the meal a very overweight but jolly lady came over to our table and said to my mom, “Honey, can I give you a hug? You remind me so much of my little grandma.” “Why, of course!” Mama replied.
“”Our hugs come in twos,” my dad said with a laugh. And then was amply rewarded.
I thought about saying, “What about me? Three’s company.” But my mouth was full of turnip greens and chow chow.
5. My mother repeatedly getting her supper choice, “eggs in the basket,” confused with a meal she had about forty years ago at IHOP called “pigs in a blanket.”
“Now what do you call this again, Neal?”
From the Cracker Barrel menu: Eggs in the Basket–Two slices of Sourdough Bread grilled with an egg in the middle of each, cooked to order and served with smoked sausage patties, turkey sausage patties or thick-sliced bacon and your choice of Fried Apples or Hashbrown Casserole.
6. Still at Cracker Barrel, as my dad stood in line at the counter paying (he INSISTED), another lady just finishing with paying her bill, saying to my dad, “Here, sir, let me pay for part of your meal with the rest of my gift card. Happy early Father’s Day?” And my dad, a bit confused at first, trying to PAY her for the gift card, before she finally hugged him and said, “No, no, I want to do this for you for an early Father’s Day present!” (While I stood over to the side between the pulled taffy and the Brad Paisley cd, unsuccessfully holding back laughter.)
As we finally left Cracker Barrel, my mom said to my dad, “You sure are hugging a lot of women today. I gotta get you out of this place.”
7. After loading mom’s walker in the trunk, and getting us all in the car, my mom, saying, “Tub, you should have asked that lady what days she usually eats at Cracker Barrel,” sending the three of us into giggles for two red lights, when I said to them, “I wonder if she would like to adopt us as her other family,” (which really wasn’t all that funny, but still got us roaring all over again, in the way you sometimes do when laughter is in the air.) Pulling off the Ball Ground exit from I-575, my dad said, “Those hugs were a pretty good way to spend an afternoon.” Because, of course, it was only 5:00 and we had already finished supper.
8. The feeling, even at my age, of being HOME.
9. The difficult but important discussion we had on this trip about what my mother would do if my dad died first.
“I just hope to goodness I go before Tub.”
“Now Neever (his version of Geneva), we can’t control those things.”
“What I really wish is that we could just go at the same time,” my mom said with total sincerity.
“Well, that might be possible,” my dad said with a twinkle in his eye, “the way I’ve been driving lately.” And we all laughed, at something so unfunny.
10. Experiencing irony as I was leaving Ball Ground the next day, stopping by a convenience store for a Yoo Hoo and a lottery ticket. The long-time teller printing out my ticket, as she mouthed, “straight to hell,” the lyrics of a country song blaring from the radio, and then handing me my Power Ball and saying, “You have a blessed day, sir!”
A joyful, blessed trip.
Learning and Teaching from The World’s Smallest Lady
August–the time of year when school bells ring again. Teachers everywhere commence their incredible annual charge of encouraging students to develop their true sight, their true voices, and their intellectual joy. School at every level should be a haven where young learners want to be. And the teacher, though underpaid and overworked, is key. Some years back, as I spent a summer month participating in the Georgia Southern Writing Project, I was asked to write about what birthed the teacher in me. I knew immediately the answer: The World’s Smallest Lady.
The World’s Smallest Lady
As I dialed the telephone recently to check on the condition of the terminally ill father of a childhood friend from my hometown, I kept trying to keep the memory from surfacing. I hadn’t thought about it in ages. An incident from several decades ago surely didn’t still have the power to take control of my thoughts, to interrupt my life. But the truth is, that memory is too powerful to ignore, too embarrassing, too haunting to dismiss. And as I listened to Ricky’s phone ringing in one ear, the years faded, and the jumbled noises of an old Cherokee County Fair started sounding in the other, accompanied by reminiscent sights and even smells, which are such an integral part of a southern autumn carnival…
…I was thirteen, old enough to know better. Ricky, Fred, and I had just staggered off The Bullet and found ourselves walking down Freak Show Alley. Outside one attraction, a hawker was shouting at passersby to “Step inside and see The World’s Smallest Lady! Only twenty-six inches tall! For only a quarter!” So, laughing, into the tent we hurried, just the three of us.
And there, surprisingly close to us on a small black round table, stood what indeed had to be The World’s Smallest Lady. She was dressed in a little gaudily sequined gypsy outfit. A short screaming-red skirt revealed two chubby stumps of legs. But she wasn’t a child, even though she was so tiny. Her face looked old, and I could see wrinkles beneath the cheap, garish make-up. It was her very large head, however, topped with a gaudy, shiny gold crown, which really captured my attention. I couldn’t stop staring, and why should I? I’d paid my quarter.
So we gawked and snickered, three carefree young teenagers at the fair, secure and even innocent in our youth, our health, our futures, our “normality.” Then Fred loudly whispered, “Damn, y’all, look at the size of that head compared to the rest of her body. And her butt is bigger than mine!”
But it was Ricky, the member of our inseparable trio capable of doing and saying anything for a laugh–who, in reckless teenage cruelty, did the unimaginable. Before anyone had time to react, Ricky stepped over the velvet rope, reached out to The World’s Smallest Lady, and jerked her gypsy skirt down to her ankles. He ran out of the tent, followed by Fred, giggling and yelling, “Neal, let’s get out of here!”
But I couldn’t. My feet were glued to the sawdust, and for a second or two, my eyes looked directly into those of The World’s Smallest Lady. The dimension of time ceased, no one existed except for her and me, and those humiliated, prostituted, tiny eyes took away my innocence and my security. As I stared, and stared, the plates beneath my small, comfortable, well-defined earth were shifting, ever so slightly, quaking. Finally, as she reached down, pulling up her skirt to cover her nakedness, The World’s Smallest Lady spoke in a voice that seemed more resigned than angry: “You boys can just go to hell.”
As I hurried out of that tent and away from that sawdust and those piercing eyes, a startling transformation occurred, the full impact of which I wasn’t aware at the time: a sideshow midget, a twenty-five cent carnival attraction, a freak, became a regular human being with regular human feelings in the frightened yet awakening eyes of a thirteen-year-old boy.
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I learned from my encounter with The World’s Smallest Lady the danger and horror of living in a world where we construct walls which establish the category of “other”–with ourselves being the privileged, the truly knowledgeable, the valuable, the ones who really count, the normal…and “other” being defined by gender, race, class, IQ, physical disability, sexual orientation, etc. I learned that when we cast our dominant “gaze” patronizingly on others, we diminish ourselves as human beings as well as do violence to those we belittle. I also learned–years later and after much reflection and life experience–that a teacher is one who refuses to allow the binary of “us/them” to operate in (or outside) the classroom.
May the new school year be one of JOY for students and teachers the world over.
Welcome to My Backyard, the Alley of the Angels
Welcome to the alley of the angels
Hey, they say your eyes can gleam
When you can a just tell the truth all night
(And you can chase them dreams all night)
Welcome to the alley of the angels.
— John Cougar Mellencamp
Places–I love the poetic resonance of that word. Some places are special; you had them growing up, of course you did. And do now. Magical places. Special because of their cocoonishness, or their broad openness. Their smell, or their connection to friends or family. Their lightness, or darkness. Their safety, or risk.
So I was aghast a few years back when I attended a writing conference at the Sea Turtle Inn in Atlantic Beach, FL, and one afternoon decided to skip the meetings and drive down memory lane. I headed south to Jacksonville Beach to find the motel where my family and I vacationed from about the time I was six or seven till I went away to college. It had those wonderful beds where you inserted a quarter into the headboard, and the mattress vibrated! For fifteen minutes! My mother, father and brothers would all hop on. Who needed the Ritz?
I knew exactly where the Horseshoe Motel stood. I had been there SO many times as a kid. But I started to doubt myself when I passed the lifeguard station and came to the ridiculously sharp turn in the road far beyond my memory motel location. I can be dense, so it took me at least three to-and-fro trips before I realized (admitted?) that the place had been demolished for a condo. Sad. A childhood place gone for good.
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I live in beautiful downtown Savannah, smack-dab in the middle of the nation’s largest historic district, to be exact. I can hear the huge freighters blowing their bass notes at night …
… as well as the clatter of horseshoes as carriages tour past Colonial Park Cemetery across the street.
I love walking the Savannah streets, breathing history.
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I don’t really have a backyard, in the traditional sense of the word. But, boy, do I have a backyard! It’s really a small alley, which runs behind the building where I live.
Even though it is communal, and somewhat small, there are hidden crannies where one can sit and read, or laptop, or daydream. It exudes a trace of otherwordliness, a fragrance of excursion. I step into my “backyard,” and suddenly I’m in Europe–Florence, Italy perhaps, trying to decide on which trattoria to frequent. I sit to read in its botanical wealth and am lost, not just in the book’s maze, but in the place, the green, the leafyness, the nowness of nature.
This place calls me to look up, to pause and see.
To view from unfamiliar perspectives and angles.
A tremendous perk of having place appreciation is that windows appear, and open (or shut), and allow you to see just what you desire to see. Or simply, and deliciously, to dream.
There’s power in place.
Both growth and potential growth. Both static and kinetic.
Sometimes sitting is all that’s needed in life. To embrace “is-ness,” accept “am-ness.” Breathing in, breathing out.
A sense and celebration of place, our place, they gift us with calm assurance that we are where we are, for good reason. That rhythm and movement take us (or keep us) where we need to be.
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My backyard invites me to …
And such encouragement affirms the heart of this attempt at blogging.
Posted with BlogsyFinal Little Hallway Walk and GSU Retirementville
Office 2225B on the second floor of the Newton Building on the campus of Georgia Southern University. A second home. For a long time.
But my office is cleared out now, books all boxed and removed. Quieter than it has been in eons. Computer-humming quiet. My office phone suddenly shy, afraid to ring and disturb emptiness.
I’m retiring from full-time college teaching.
This evening, after my last set of finals is turned in, I will walk out my door and down my little hallway for the final time as a professor at GSU.
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The Walk.
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Goodbye, goodbye little hallway! Goodbye, goodbye GSU!
Hello, hello ….
Some of My Favorite Trees — Updated
I love trees, always have.
Trees
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth’s flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
— Joyce Kilmer
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I’m going to share with you some of my favorite Savannah-area trees. (I realize that March is probably not the best time to be taking pics of trees.)
1. The I’m Still Standing Tree. This is probably my very favorite tree around.
It’s not the most beautiful by any stretch. It’s not shaped evenly, and it’s not full–there are large openings in the branch coverage. So why is it my favorite? Simple. It’s still standing. If you take a closer look at the views below, you will notice that the IST tree is still standing in the middle of the paved parking lot at Savannah Centre at the corner of Stephenson and Hodgson-Memorial. And it’s the only tree around. It exudes courage, independence, feistyness. It beat the odds. It simply IS. I want its is-ness and its determination.
2. The You’re-Right-Outside-My-Office-Window-and-I’ve-Watched-You-Grow-from-a-Seedling Tree. You know how sometimes you’re buddies with a person due to geography, because she or he is just THERE, like Kramer was to Jerry on Seinfeld? Well, that’s how the tree below and I developed our relationship. I might not have necessarily chosen it as an in-your-face friend but am now so glad we were put together.
3. The Fake-It Tree. I like this fake bonsai tree which sits on my desk at work. A student used it in a class project several years ago, didn’t want it, and I adopted it. Most folks ooh and aah when they first see it; they think it’s real. Bonsy has taught me that if you aren’t, act like you are anyway, and most people won’t know the difference.
4. Slim. Enough said.
5. I saw the coolest and tallest Christmas Tree last Christmas in Charleston. You could walk right inside it! It told me that I could be a bit more open to people.
6. And this Lighted Palm Tree (who lights palms?), must have been talking about me with the Christmas tree above because Palmy told me that it’s okay to show off and show out from time to time-and be seen.
7. And finally The Candler Oak near Forsyth Park in Savannah. It demands respect due to its age, its continued growth.
Ttyl. I’m gonna climb it.
NealEnJoy 