26 September 2017

Today is the Republican primary runoff, and a few, a sad few, registered Republicans are heading to the polls to cast their ballots for a candidate to represent their party in the November Senate election.  Now I won’t talk politics, because as a child raised in a deeply political family that dates back generations, I recognize that political discussions outside the tight familial circle is likely to get you into a heap of unwanted trouble, unless you are running for public office and, in that case, you asked for it!   This is especially true in my small town, where most people are related in some fashion or another to one or all of the candidates running for election, whether Republican or Democrat.  Silence is best, especially when you cast your ballot.

I learned this lesson when I was a young girl.  Before the Alzheimer’s disease ravaged her mind and locked her inside of herself,  my paternal grandmother, Nanny, took me with her to vote.  My hand in hers, she walked me to the voting booth, pulled the curtain closed, and turned her attention to the ballot.  When she was finished, I asked her who she voted for.  She told me it was a secret, her secret, and it was supposed to be so, otherwise they wouldn’t have provided the little booth with the curtain closure.

A secret.  For a young child, I was mesmerized.  A secret was a BIG deal, full of excitement and promise.  Like a surprise, blabbing it would only diminish it.

A few months ago, many of the old metal ballot boxes used in those past elections, rusted and worn from years of use and years of storage, were discarded, trashed.  Unassuming, but important, those tin receptacles had held the thousands, tens of thousands, of secret ballots cast throughout the years that had affected the course of history, not only for our county and state, but for the nation as well.  First ballots of the formerly disenfranchised descendants of slaves, ballots for Lurleen, Alabama’s first female governor, and lesser so, but important to me, those cast for both my maternal grandfather and even my own dear daddy.

I couldn’t bear to have them languish any further.  So barring any better idea, I decided to use them in my Fall display.  It is after all Election time, and it never hurts to have a tangible reminder of the importance of the vote and of keeping one’s mouth shut afterwards.

 

 

25 September 2017

I don’t make this often, but every now and again, I get a hankering for a food from my childhood–Sloppy Joes.  Sloppy Joes were a staple food at my school’s cafeteria.  I swear we had it every week!  Like square pizza, it was a food to look forward too.  Gelatinous red spilling out of a soggy bun, not even Manwich quality, but Good Lord it was good; either that or I have rose-tinted glasses taste buds.

Now I’m a bit more discriminating about my food choices (sorry Manwich, even you don’t make the cut), but on occasion I still crave this messy meal.  So I’ve tweaked a few recipes that I’ve tried over the years and have come up with this one to feed my family of four.

I hope you enjoy!

Sloppy Loos (because “Hey!  Why not name a meal after yourself?!”)

Serves 4 or more

Approximately 1 pound of lean ground beef
1 small onion, chopped
2 minced garlic cloves
½ cup plus 2 tablespoons ketchup
½ cup chopped bell pepper (yellow or red)
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 ½ tablespoons prepared mustard
1 ½ tablespoons vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste

In a medium skillet, over medium-high heat cook the ground beef, onion, bell pepper, and garlic until the beef is browned and the onion and bell pepper are tender. Drain and discard the fat.

While the ground beef mixture is cooking, combine the ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, brown sugar, mustard, vinegar in a separate bowl. Stir to combine.

Pour the ketchup mixture over the drained ground beef mixture. Add salt and pepper to taste. Once the sauce begins to bubble, reduce heat to low.  Cover and simmer for approximately 20 minutes.

Spoon onto hamburger buns, rolls or other bread of your choice.  I typically, use potato rolls, just because I like them!

For a truly American cafeteria-style meal serve hot with baby green lima beans and macaroni and cheese. YUM!

24 September 2017

Bedtime Story Time is still going strong even though I have failed to post about a single book that we’ve read since February, and there have been many:  Kathy Appelt and Alison McGhee’s Maybe a Fox; Marguerite Henry’s 1949 Newberry Medal winning book King of the Wind; Henry Winterfeld’s Mystery of the Roman Ransom, the sequel to the book Detectives in Togas that I wrote about on February 21, 2017; Miriam E. Mason’s A Pony Called Lightning; and the first three books in Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series.

In August, the boy child chose the 4th Percy Jackson book, The Battle of the Labyrinth, for story time, and then, upon its conclusion, coaxed his sister into choosing the fifth and final book, The Last Olympian.  With only half of the chapters remaining, we are certainly going to miss the adventures, antics and attitudes of the characters. Percy, Annabeth, Grover, Thalia, Nico, Tyson, and a host of Gods, Goddesses, monsters, mortals and demigods have made this series truly memorable.

A few years ago, my son began reading the first book, The Lightning Thief, and because I AM THAT MOTHER, I read it too.  Afterwards, he and I  both devoured the other four books in the series, watched the two movies that corresponded loosely with the first two books, and read Rick Riordan’s other Percy Jackson titles Greek Gods and Greek Heroes.  To say we enjoyed them all would be an understatement.  My son even got an orange Camp Half-Blood tee-shirt that he wore proudly in his school’s character parade and for nearly every week thereafter until he sadly outgrew it.

I don’t know exactly what the allure is, since we are now almost finished reading the entire collection for a second time, only this time aloud and with my daughter, but I think it has much to do with the wit and the sarcasm of the author.  The mythology of the Greek Gods, with all of their bad behavior and familial intrigue in tow, as well as the tales of their oft-times doomed half-human progeny have new life breathed into them.   There is nothing dry here, just a rollicking progression of mishaps and monsters and monstrous mishaps that pique your interest for the ancient myths and give you a hearty chuckle on almost each and every page.

These are great books to read aloud, especially if you have a penchant for voices, since there are many, many characters that you will have to give voice to.  But the benefit of all of these characters is that there is someone, or in many cases some thing, that everyone can relate to: the nature lovers, the book nerds, the underdogs, the neglected, the handicapped, the special and on and on and on.  My daughter’s favorites are the studious Annabeth and the artsy Rachel Dare.  Mine and my son’s, the simple but crafty one-eyed Tyson.  My husband’s–well he is not presently here to ask!

We are cheering on the half-bloods as the final battle against the Titans draws close.  And even though we don’t know if the heroes will be able to stop Kronos, or if the Titans will once again reign supreme (well my son and I do), reading the books in the evening before bed has certainly slowed time down for my family, even if just for a short while, and given us many nice memories; and for that, I am and will always be eternally grateful to Mr. Riordan, Kronos and the fighting demi-gods of Camp Half-Blood.

6 September 2017

Today’s Wednesday Word is Irma.  Irma is a name that has its origins in Old German, but whether it means “universal” or refers to an ancient Saxon warrior-deity is beyond my realm of knowledge or concern.  What I do know, is that the World Meteorological Organization has been compiling and maintaining lists of Atlantic storm names since the 1950s and Irma was ninth on this year’s list.

On 30 August,  somewhere near the Cape Verde Islands, a spawning ground for baby swirlers, a daughter of Typhoeus issued forth and quickly grew into a monster of proportions  worthy of her mythological daddy. Gaining the moniker Irma, she raged and roiled her way toward North America, becoming a category 5 storm along the way, with winds reaching 185 miles per hour.  Currently, this dervish is within fifty miles of Puerto Rico, her eyes now set on mainland United States.  She’s bad, as bad as they come.  All we can do now is wait and watch and prepare.

When I was young, only 3 years old, I experienced my first big hurricane.  It was named Frederic, another good German-derived name!  My maternal grandparents along with my elderly namesake had gathered at our newly-built brick home to ride out the fury…a newly-built brick home right smack in the middle of a stand of very large pine trees.  Of course, in their defense, pretty much every house in our county was similarly situated among the pines, theirs just happened to be further up in the woods than ours did.

I remember the darkness (Frederic struck at night) and the winds whipping the trees in impossible arcs. I remember that we didn’t have electricity, and that my parents had lit several oil lamps to pierce the gloom.  I remember that the large windows in our living room were covered in frogs, suction-cupped to the glass their backsides blocking the view, and my mother yelling at my grandfather when she discovered that he had left the “safe zone”  in the hallway and found a cozy sofa to sleep on, directly in front of  that wall of living room frog-bellied windows.  I remember the deep quiet when the storm had passed, when nothing moved, not even the air.

And I remember the excitement.  Hurricanes are exciting when one is three.  They are not so much as you grow older, although there is something still eerily exhilarating about preparing for and then waiting on a storm’s arrival; hoping that the electricity doesn’t fail until at least the second pot of coffee has been brewed and praying that the tree right outside the window doesn’t decide to give up its ghost and come crashing through the house.

I’ve experienced many hurricanes throughout my life in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana since Frederic, some meek and mild by the time they reached my neck of the woods, others full of wrath and vengeance.  Which one, Irma will be once she reaches the southlands still remains to be seen, but from all accounts she is projected to be a terror.  So I wish anyone in its path good luck.  Prepare as best you can and find a safe place to hunker down, preferably not in front of a wall of windows.  And if they tell you to evacuate, don’t think twice, leave.

Godspeed…I’ll see you in the quiet on the other side of the storm.

 

 

 

5 September 2017

Just over a month ago, I wrote about an ongoing project that I am working on (See 2 August 2017), transcribing old editions of The Washington County News, the weekly newspaper of my home.  While it is imbedded with little snippets of humor,  most of which I won’t even claim to understand because I guess you had to have been there to get it, some of the funniest entries I’ve come across in the papers are the medical ads.  Yes, that’s right, the medical ads.

Now I’m pretty sure, or at the very least pretty hopeful, that these tonics, balms and elixirs pedaled in small-town newspapers across the country at the turn of the twentieth century,  were actually thought of as cures by their manufacturers and not grand money-making ruses.   But, viewing it from a “modern” vantage point, they seem pretty nonsensical; like Castoria that was touted to cure fever, sleeplessness, diarrhea and constipation in infants or Oxidine that was said to cure biliousness, fever, chills and even MALARIA!  Cure-all medications that could be conveniently mail-ordered or purchased at any local druggist for less than $1.00.

One of the advertisers of these wonder drugs that has repeatedly caught my eye is the Lydia E. Pinkham Medicine Company, who manufactured a vegetable compound for the cure of feminine ills.  Back aches, nervousness, sparks before the eyes, blues and even an impending sense of doom, apparently all documented symptoms of female weakness, didn’t stand a chance against this magic tonic.  See for yourself:

Advertisement dated August 2, 1917.

Advertisement dated August 23, 1917.

 

So when I came across an old Lydia E. Pinkham Cosco-sized medicine bottle in a local estate sale, its contents long-since drained by some haggard Southern woman,  I couldn’t help but smile, giggle, and immediately purchase the darn old thing.

Here’s to you Mrs. Lydia E. Pinkham and to your vegetable compound for still curing the blues almost 100 years later!

 

3 September 2017

Dateline Alabama September 3, 1910:

According to the Alabama Department of Archives and History,  Boll weevils were discovered for the first time in Alabama on this day.    Entering the state via Mobile County, Alabama, the pesky plague of the cotton belt soon spread across the entire state decimating crops and the state’s primarily cotton-based economy.

An illustration produced by the United States Department of Agriculture in an effort to educate farmers about the destructive weevil.  Photo: Public Domain, WikiCommons.

For the next eighty years, farmers, scientists, the Cooperative Extension Service and the USDA waged an all-out war against the miniscule muncher, finally eradicating the pest and arresting its negative economic impact on Alabama’s cotton crops in the 1990s and early 2000s.  Yet, even with all of the trouble caused by the wicked weevil, some good also came from his appearance on Alabama soil–the Land of Cotton was forced to adapt, and with adaptation came crop diversification.

While Cotton may no longer be “King” in Bama, having to share the spotlight with other row crops such as peanuts, corn, and soybeans, and, truth be told, may never ever be so again, it is still an important crop of the Alabama landscape, despite the devastation wreaked by a century of insect infestation.

For more information about the boll weevil, please refer to Ron Smith’s  2008 article in Encyclopedia of Alabama entitled, Boll Weevil in Alabama. 

 

 

2 September 2017

And if a man starts to weaken, that’s a shame!
For ‘Bama’s pluck and grit have writ her name in crimson flame!

–Yeah Alabama by Ethelred Lundy Sykes

It is that time again.  Pigskins are back.  The first games of the season have been played.  The Crimson Tide has taken the field and The University fans down here in Dixie are as happy as a pig in slop!  Florida State University has been defeated 24 to 7, and all is well ya’ll for at least another week.

Now I’m not an avid football fan, which is sacrilege in my neck of the woods, tantamount to confessing a disbelief in Jesus Christ, but I have to admit there is something exciting about the boys taking the field, even for a sinner like me.  The grills are lit, the chips and dip are set out, and the spirits, both of the beverage and emotional kind, flow.  Anticipation has built and like starving men in the desert, parched and delirious, fans gather to feast.  And to cheer!

So it was for us.  Along with my husband’s former West Point classmate and his family in their beautiful downtown historic home, where I’d like to think countless others before us had tuned in to first games on rabbit-eared televisions and wood-encased radios; we watched, we ate, we talked, we laughed, we smiled and Alabama was victorious!

My maternal grandmother would’ve been proud.  She was a FAN, having had two sons play for The University back in the sixties.  Viewing from her armchair in her cavernous den, she would’ve helped Saban coach those boys to victory.  I hope she was watching from her heavenly den!

The 2nd was also my hubby’s 45th birthday!  So it was fortuitous that we were able to celebrate his MANY years with friends who knew him when he was young-er and spry-er!  A turtle ice cream cake from Maggie Moos,  great conversation, an Alabama win and the day was a wrap.

 

 

1 September 2017

August has come and gone.  Where did the time go?

We had a phenomenal month.  Lots of travel, an eclipse, the construction of our potager-to-be, soccer, school and lessons filled our days.  Yet we also made time for a little porch sitting, a little star-gazing, a little visiting with our friends–savoring the season.

I know many are happy to leave the month of August behind.  Crazy weather, Hurricane Harvey ravaging Texas and Louisiana, flooding, tornadoes, strong winds.  So much devestation.  And I won’t even begin to talk about politics and the state of the wretched world in general.  But, here in our little dominion, all is well.

We look forward to September 2017 and all the endless possibilities it has to offer us.  There will be hectic moments for sure, life is full of them, but there will also be many opportunities to savor the sights, sounds, smells and people that surround us in this month of dawning Fall.