Memories

It’s Alright Baby

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“Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Story Girl

Memories are odd as I am finding out. Memories will turn a frown into a smile or, just as quickly, a smile into a frown.

I am fortunate. I am surrounded by memories. I am also cursed. I am surrounded by memories. I can’t turn around without bumping into something that reminds me of you. As painful as it is, I don’t think I want it to be any other way.

To paraphrase your favorite NCIS character, Mike Franks: When talking about ghosts. Franks said to Gibbs, “But the memories we make. We fill the spaces we live in with them. That’s why I’ve always tried to make sure that wherever I live, the longer I live there, the spaces become filled with memories.”

My space is filled with memories but Franks said nothing about the emptiness that shares the space. The space I live in is filled with both memories…and emptiness. When you left me, you left behind wonderful memories but there is a tradeoff. There is a huge hole of emptiness where my heart once was.

Franks didn’t mention the bad memories, either. The last eight months have been hell on earth for you…and for me. I watched you fight and struggle. How many times did you try and uplift me? “It’s alright baby.” Those memories try to elbow their way in and are too successful.

I found an old flash drive with a folder labeled Photos and decided to relive the memories from days past thinking that if I filled my head with those, there would be no room for the bad ones. There would be no room for the emptiness. I was wrong.

I found out that I am a lousy photographer and that you just didn’t smile enough. You smiled for the photo but it was your fake smile. Your “say cheese” smile. You had a wonderful smile when you let yourself go, when the camera caught you unawares, playing with the grand babies or the puppies, smelling a flower or showing me a butterfly.

As I ruminated, I went to the more recent photos and videos, the bad memories, and found that you smiled more when you were at your lowest, when you were trying to convince me, “It’s alright baby.” You lied; it is not alright. Not alright at all.

So many mornings I came in to your hospital room and you smiled. Your true smile. When a visitor or a nurse came in, you smiled and tried to convince us that “It’s alright baby.” Even those terrible shots in the stomach earned the nurse giving it a, “It’s alright baby.”

I don’t know what to do. I try to busy myself but you elbow in between the words that play in my head. I spent thirty-seven years trusting you. I’m going to trust you one more time. I’m going to allow the memories to sustain me until “It’s alright baby.”

***

Thanks to all who attended and participated in Linda’s Celebration of Life. It was a special celebration for a special woman.

Oysters….

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“He was a very valiant man who first adventured on eating of oysters.” – James I

I do wonder what the first person to crack open an oyster thought. “Look, Look, Look! A slick, gray loogie! Let’s eat some.” Why in the world would he or she decide to put it in their mouth much less chew and swallow…must have been very hungry.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad they did. I love oysters…raw, roasted, smoked, fried, with spinach in Oysters Roc, and the oyster dressing I wrote about earlier. I especially like oyster stew which is what I am craving at this moment. It is a cold New Years Eve, a fine night for oyster stew.

Oyster stew has been a New Year’s tradition in our house since we began celebrating it by sleeping through the midnight ball drop. That tradition is on hold as Linda recovers.

A history lesson. “Gather ’round chilin’s!”

Had it not been for the oyster the Jamestown colony might not have held on during the “Starving Times” of 1609. Jamestown prevailed only because sixty or eighty of the First Families of Virginia dragged themselves downriver from their original swampy landing site where they subsisted on little but Crassostrea virginica, the native American oyster.

The English weren’t fans of the oyster…Europeans in general weren’t fans. The generation that founded Jamestown regarded oysters as poor fare. Shakespeare described oysters as “foul” and linked them with the poorhouse. King James I is the earliest candidate for the authorship of the assessment that “he was a valiant man who first adventured on eating of oysters.”

I agree with James I but am so glad all of that changed…it took a while for me to jump onto the bandwagon. I know some of you are not fans, but the lowly oyster has gone from “poor folk” food to being coveted by the rich and everyone in between.

I get triggered by memories, but I am unsure where this one came from…well, it is a cold evening, perfect for oyster stew.

When I was a kid, my mother would sometimes make oyster stew. It was very basic. Butter, milk, oysters, salt, and pepper. My father might add a bit of hot sauce or catsup to his. I didn’t find it particularly filling unless I added half a sleeve of crushed soda crackers to it and to be honest, I wasn’t a fan of oysters at that age.

My grandmother would never make oyster stew, she would make salmon stew. It was much cheaper than oysters, came in a can, and fit in with her Depression Era frugality. I was probably a bigger fan of the salmon stew but used a half sleeve of crackers with it too.

Thinking about oyster stew, I looked at my bride who was snoozing. She is recovering from her sixth chemo treatment and a week later stroke and needs to be snoozing. As a blustery wind blew, I thought about a raw and blustery night some thirty years ago on the coast of Carolina. It seems some of my most perfect memories occurred on raw and blustery coastal nights.

We have a love affair with the coast of South Carolina. I thought we would end up living there…we had our chances, but they never quite panned out. The timing was always wrong. Now we have found our little piece of heaven to be as far from the coast as we can be and still be in South Carolina. Not so far that we don’t have access to oysters…mountain oysters.

This day began with a football game at Myrtle Beach. The North-South Allstar Football Game is played there, and I was lucky to have an athlete honored. It was gray and misty and by the time the game was over, dark, and cold.

We had decided not to spend the night and would make the four-hour trip back home afterwards, but one does not come to the coast without sampling the coastal faire and it was a perfect night for oyster stew.

We went to the Sea Captain’s House because we knew of its oyster stew was great or we went because it was close by. The key was that we went. The stew was oyster and artichoke. The company was great and that probably made the stew great.

This was the mid-Eighties and the Sea Captain’s House hadn’t been crowded by tall hotels yet and gone through modern renovations and enlargement. During those days it was truly an old house.

We sat in what once was the old residence’s Florida room and watched as the sea birds rode the waves in the light cast by the spotlights on the side of the house. It was quite romantic. Holding hands listening to the wind rattle the storm windows and sitting hip to hip watching a fire roaring in the fireplace…life’s little and simple pleasures. Oh, and there was oyster stew too.

We stayed too long…or not long enough and didn’t drag ourselves home until four in the morning. I miss the years when we were young and foolish. I am making a promise. I will be old and foolish just as soon as my bride recovers her strength.

Reality check: I made the mistake of pulling up the Sea Captain’s House’s website. They no longer offer oyster and artichoke stew and judging from the prices, we couldn’t afford it anyway.

Basic Oyster Stew for Two

Ingredients

One pint of oysters

Four cups of whole milk (For creamier stew substitute half of the milk with half and half)

¼ cup of butter

Salt and pepper to taste

Crackers (Oyster or Saltines)

Parsley

Directions

Put a colander over a bowl; drain oyster juice and reserve juice.

Rinse oysters gently in a colander to rinse away any shells…be sure to check for pearls.

Melt the butter in a soup pot or large saucepan over low heat.

Add rinsed raw oysters and gently warm for a few minutes never taking heat off low. Let the oyster edges curl.

To the oysters and butter, add whole milk, oyster juice and stir.

Gently warm soup (low simmer), stirring occasionally until heated through. THIS IS KEY: Do not boil and do not scald milk.

Add salt and black pepper to taste.

Garnish with parsley and serve with oyster crackers or saltines.

Don Miller’s works may be purchased at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Images from Canva and Shutterstock

A Little Piece of Heaven

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“Is it possible for home to be a person and not a place?” ― Stephanie Perkins, Anna and the French Kiss

“Home isn’t where you’re from, it’s where you find light when all grows dark.” ― Pierce Brown, Golden Son

“Outside the Front Gate”

We were separated from our “little piece of heaven” in the foothills of the Blue Ridge in the late summer of 1987 by a chain link fence and a locked gate with a puppy dog emblem on top. To ensure we didn’t venture in was a huge, bearlike dog. He was quiet but eyeing us warily from what I assumed was a garage but could have been the Blue Ridge’s largest doghouse. We didn’t know at the time that this would be our little piece of heaven but there was a sign on the driveway saying, “For Sale.”

“Sometimes you don’t know you are lost until you are found.”

We were out making memories as we did back then. Driving unknown roads hoping to get lost on some winding pig trail. Gas was cheaper and our car a steed to find adventure. It would be the beginning of many such adventures but none as important as this one.

We talked about the need to move into something larger. Something rundown we could renovate…a couple of acres of land to surround it. Somewhere we could spread out a bit. Something better for two people and three puppy dogs than a condominium. Somewhere to make memories. This was it we just didn’t know it at the time.

My bride exclaimed, “This is perfect.” “Not so fast” my Lee Corso voice said in my head. That’s not true, I didn’t know much about Lee Corso thirty-six years ago and don’t think ESPN’s Game Day existed. What was true was that there would be many pig trails and switch backs before it became “our little piece of heaven.”

 “Not so fast!”

My bride made the phone call as soon as we got home. When she gets something in her head, she takes the bit in her teeth and will not be turned even if it means galloping over a cliff. The realtor was nice but told us a couple was signing a contract on the property the following week. My bride was deflated. I wasn’t sure what I was.

He told us 3300 Highway 11 was an old farmhouse sitting on the front right corner on eighty-seven acres fronting Highway 11. We found later it was populated with eighty-seven acres of pines, oaks, mountain laurel, black walnuts, and hemlocks. It was cut by seven streams with the scattered remains of moonshine stills littering their banks. Some foggy mornings the smell of sour mash still permeates the air.

Old as in built in 1890. It was described as gently rolling but that was a lie. It was cut with streams that left deep ravines to be navigated. Significantly more land than we needed, and I took the realtor’s word as law and immediately forgot about the eighty-seven acres and the old two-story farmhouse.

A phone call later in the week brought it back to the forefront of my pea head. The realtor let us know, “The owner, Mr. Copeland, would like to meet you and would be willing to take you on a tour.”

Linda immediately jumped at the opportunity and the rest is history. After a day of being walked into the ground by a seventy-seven-year-old retired Methodist minister, Mr. Copeland walked out of the scheduled closing simply saying, “I like them better than you.”

“Through the Front Gate”

I don’t know how many times I’ve walked through our front gate but I’m always glad to be back. I feel like this is where I want to be…need to be. It is where that special person is and where darkness always turns to light.

Despite the trials and tribulations of the past thirty-seven years, this is home. Despite the concerns of getting too old to keep up with the place, no matter how run down or overgrown, this is home. This is home because Linda Gail is there along with the ghosts of people and puppies now gone.

Weekly Update

Linda had her second treatment. She is a little “wired” from the steroids but was able to get some sleep the night after. Two days removed from the chemo she looks like she sat too long in the sun and her bruises are more apparent due to the blood thinner she is on. She is weak as a kitten.

Earlier bloodwork indicates positive results so we are hopeful that the chemotherapy will put her into remission. Her hair is falling out and it has been a bitter pill but Linda being Linda has added colorful scarves, one her grandmother wore, and a floppy purple hat.

She was also gifted a beautiful wig. Thanks for all the prayers, cards of concern and good Ju Ju, and support. Special thanks to Kristen Coward for the beautiful, knitted throw and Christin Bennett for the beautiful wig.

The blog image is at the front gate looking in through Japanese Honeysuckle. It also served as a cover photo of the book, “Through the Front Gate.” It and other books and novels can be purchased at https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Famazon.com%2Fauthor%2Fcigarman501%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR0G8ELuHBR-zAMdiSZ_Z9GoeW5Psc0S14PJw504LpXFf52Jks6KPrEQaRQ&h=AT2IgW5Kbd1ZtAc4wst-zIreyxAHAKtKLouaz6WV3uU4HpYHAY8ein7iMLZ1tAGtutYNPRNJ-Osf6jiN7_6o5okZBWh-zAESJSSmXOdrud3JDHqu2HYvwGecM2OtWP_wdYT_QI-qUUsXgW1B-_qdtw

Walk of Life

/ cigarman501 / 7 Comments

“If you seek creative ideas go walking.
Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk.” ― Raymond I. OD Myers

I am sitting here, coffee in hand, waiting for the angels to whisper and watching the glow of the impending dawn.  I am up for no reason other than I woke up, but my creativity is still asleep.  My alarm is set for 6:00 but it never goes off. It is set because there are medications to be dispensed but I wake up ahead of it.

Every day at 5:00 plus or minus fifteen minutes I meet the day.  “Bright eyed and bushy tailed” or as a coaching friend used to yell to his charges “Another day in which to excel.” The puppies, now awake, look up at me as if to say, “Another day, already? Can you at least feed us?”

During better days, I would be off and running or walking in the dark, my headlamp bouncing and holding back the monsters I might encounter along the road. My own form of “the walk of life.” I was creative during those runs. I don’t know if it was angels whispering or trying to think about anything other than the hill I was about to climb.

My bride, Linda Gail, and I greet the day differently.  I am up and ready to go. “Hit the decks a runnin’ boys and turn those barrels around.” (From an old Johnny Horton tune) She on the other hand is “sorta” awake and pissed off about it.  Linda Gail likes to ease into the day…over an extended period.  “Bring me my coffee and then shut up!  Do not talk to me!”  Thirty minutes later I check on her…with another cup of coffee to replace the one now cold on her bed side table.  Thirty minutes later, she is ready to talk about everything she has been thinking about the last hour. 

When we retired, I decided to use her “ease into the daytime” time as my exercise time.  As you might surmise, I am ready to go to bed about the time Linda Gail is hitting her second wind and fighting sleep like the child that she is.  Sometimes I don’t understand how we have survived each other.

I once used my running and walking to declutter and silence the voices in my head. I also used it for creativity, going over plots in my head or waiting for divine enlightenment from my angels of creativity…until Linda Gail got involved. The way we meet the day really wasn’t as big an issue when we both worked…well it was when we decided to do our exercise walk…together…before we went to work…in the dark…while she was pissed off.    

At first it was due to her fear. I had a heart attack and for six months she was fearful about letting me walk and run alone. During the summer it was not a problem but when the school year began our schedules had to change. I would ease out of bed at four-thirty. I would then wake Linda at five-thirty, bring her coffee and a banana and take off for a thirty-minute run with a plan to meet her for a thirty-minute walk at six. A shower at 6:30 and plenty of time to get to school by 8:00.

That was the plan…which, like well-made plans sometimes do, went asunder.  Usually, I would continue to walk or jog back and forth over the short Airline Road until she showed up…fifteen to thirty minutes late, coffee in hand…and I did not dare make a comment.  The one time I commented did not go well.  On those mornings she showed up early I knew I better be quiet and just walk.  It didn’t matter, any day I should just be quiet and walk until she began to initiate the conversation.  “Why are we whispering?  Are we afraid we might wake up the bears?”

Linda Gail and I didn’t exactly walk for the same reasons.  She walked totally for her head to battle depression…with a cup of coffee in her hand and with frequent stops to point out plants, animals, or reptiles.  In other words, a stroll to “elevate her mind.”  I did it for my head too, but I also walked for exercise.

We haven’t been walking together lately…despite being “yoked” together for thirty-seven years. The brutality of life has intervened along with the brutal heat; our walks have slowed almost to a stop. We finally ventured out to the path around the lake at Look Up Lodge.  A nice slow, reasonably flat stroll on one side of the lake.  A short walk to build up her strength. It proved what I knew, “I have missed our walks.”  I have also missed our talks although I did ask if I had her permission to chatter…old habits, I guess.  Comfortable old habits.

Update on our Walk of Life

Linda is much stronger but battling her neuropathy and foot and leg swelling that sometimes accompanies chemotherapy. We saw a cancer surgeon who muddied the waters a bit. He feels she has been misdiagnosed as to the type of cancer and has scheduled a new and different type of biopsy next week before her next chemo treatment the following week. I’m unsure as to what this means if anything. The plan is the same, continue the “walk of life” as long as possible and as long as it is a quality walk. To all who sent their support and cards of encouragement, thank you. They mean a lot.  

Obviously, this has nothing to do with Dire Strait’s “Walk of Life” but why should I let that bother me? Thank you, YouTube. Besides, I’m not even sure what Dire Strait’s song is about. Enjoy.

Some neat 80’s sports bloopers as a bonus.

Don writes at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Relics of the “Good Old Days”

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“One tatty old man in jeans—what was he thinking? Jeans are for young people.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

I stood in front of my closet staring at racks of pants, neckties, and dress shirts that I wore when I fought the teaching wars. I’ve been fully retired for nearly a decade, and these are nothing more than relics from those days. Several suits and old man Fedoras that I once thought were cool are among those relics.

I haven’t worn these clothes in a while. I’ve turned into the old man who wears shorts or blue jeans and tee shirts…occasionally a flowered Hawiian if I really want to dress up. If I can’t get away with those choices, I rotate between three dress shirts and two pairs of dress trousers…both khakis. If I must go somewhere that requires a necktie I don’t go.

Why do I keep these relics? I have no intention of going back to teaching. Someone could use them if they weren’t concerned about this year’s fashion statements, the width of my ties, or the sweat stains on my fedoras. It must be the memories of the “good old days.”

“When we think of the past it’s the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

I’ve heard too many of my peers express their feelings about the “good old days.” Waxing poetic about how the days of our youth were so much better than present days. I’m sure it is due to a lost relic from our past. The relic we once called our youth.

I am a Boomer. I was born in 1950. I mostly enjoyed my childhood. I was, as were most of my friends, blessed with a family that extended far outside the walls of our homes, a family that included those with different surnames and DNA.

The African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child” was a truism even if the village I grew up in was far from Africa in both location and thought. The saying emphasizes a child’s successful upbringing is a communal effort involving many different people and groups, from parents to teachers to neighbors and grandparents.

If these are the “good old days” you wax poetically about, I am in total agreement. They were as good then as they are gone now.

“Glorifying the past because we like the story better isn’t history; it’s propaganda.”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

The good old days are person specific. Just because you or I remember our childhoods as wonderful doesn’t mean everyone remembers theirs that way…and I doubt everyone’s life was wonderful all the time. It is easier to remember the drunken party fun and forget the blinding hangover the next day.

There seems to be much debate about our youth. I hear that when we were kids, things were different. Things were better. Things were less politically correct. There was more freedom. The world was safer. I agree it was different but argue it might not have been better.

Safer? No seatbelts, riding in the back of pickup trucks, riding bicycles without helmets, lawn darts, cigarettes everywhere, drinking from rubber hoses…get my point? I survived but have many scars to remember the “good old days.”

Maybe you heard your own parents talk about how kids (you) used to be better behaved, how when they were your age, they worked harder and had their act together. I heard this in 1969 when my first semester grades were reported to my parents and found to be quite lackluster.

Think our youth are worse? Here’s a quote from the Fourth Century BC, over 2500 years ago. Credit Plato or Socrates. “What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders; they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets, inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?”  This was during the Golden Age of Athens, Greece.

Truthfully, the quote is more of a summary of the period and Plato’s and Socrates’ thoughts, but the summary is now over one hundred years old. The facts are, kids have always alarmed their parents, new generations are always vexing to the generations that came before.

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt

You might want to ask the question, “The good old days were good for whom?”

Black people, Indigenous Americans, “ethnic minorities”, the poor, women, people with a disability, gay people? The trouble with this question is it is often answered in a straight, white perspective that is decidedly masculine. The Sixties were populated by protest and the growing pains those protests fostered.

Today, most of us are fighting on some side of the culture wars but the Fifties and Sixties were fraught with minefields for the “others.” Civil Rights, the war in Vietnam, The Cold War, assassinations, riots, gays forced to stay in the closet lest they tempt being rolled on a Saturday night. Women’s rights? Women couldn’t apply for a credit card without their husband’s permission. The disabled didn’t even have a way to the table much less a seat. Oh…those good old days.

In some ways, the more things change, the more they stay the same. We are fighting the same battles today. Only the battlefield names have changed.

“There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.”
― Sophia Loren

So why do we look back on those days of yesteryear with so much fondness? Why do we save the relics of our past? I have a theory.

At a certain age it is easier to look backward because we know the story on the road already traveled, and the road we now travel on is much shorter than it once was. We make the road we once traveled warm and fuzzy and slightly out of focus instead of facing today’s grim reaper we see closing the gap in our rearview mirrors.

I believe Sophia is on to something. My body creaks and cries out in protest every time I think about cranking a lawnmower or chainsaw, but my mind wants to be creative and active. My mind makes me go on and crank the lawnmower or chainsaw.

Where there is creativity there is youth. Afterall, Anna Mary Robertson Moses, better known as “Grandma Moses”, did not start painting until she was 76 years old. Even though she had no formal training, she painted every day for 25 years and produced thousands of paintings.

I have hopes that I’m not just a relic from times past. I have hopes that I can still contribute…Maybe I can HELP make these the “good old days” for another generation instead of lamenting how sad things are now.

Don Miller’s works may be found at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Another Father’s Day

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“That was when the world wasn’t so big, and I could see everywhere. It was when my father was a hero and not a human.” ― Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger

Its Father’s Day and I can’t help but think about my father.  I don’t have enough memories…I’ve now outlived him by over a decade.  He died when I was twenty-six as I was just beginning my own pathway to adulthood, a sometimes twisting, bumpy pathway that he might have been able to smooth and straighten out.

“Foss” was a small man who, at least in my own memories, cast a much larger shadow…a shadow that gets larger as I get older, I’m sure.  He was five feet six in his shoes but now seemed much taller. I don’t think I ever viewed him as heroic, just a solid everyman. Being solid can be heroic.

He was stoic…to a fault and had a dry sense of humor. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the twelve-year-old me pondered aloud, “Shouldn’t we be getting a fallout shelter?” My father looked over his reading glasses and quipped in pure deadpan, “You know where the shovel is. Come get me when you think it is deep enough.”

A member of Tom Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation”, he kissed my mother to be goodbye and went off to fight fascism and militarism with MacArthur’s army in the Philippines.  Like everything he did in his life, he did it the best way he could, without fanfare, with a wrench in his hand instead of a rifle, keeping landing craft afloat and moving troops and material to the beachheads.  Not very heroic or as flashy as a Thompson sub-machine gun but just as necessary.

Technical Sergeant Ernest R. Miller

I asked him once how many enemy soldiers he killed in the war. Again, delivered deadpan, “None. Never shot at one but I did hear gunfire once and our own artillery kept us awake at night.” In another question-and-answer period he admitted that his maintenance battalion normally went ashore just after the nurses. Later he would follow the nurses ashore at Okinawa and as part of the Japanese Occupation Force.

According to him there was a near miss when an unexploded bomb went off due to a trash fire built in the hole the bomb had made. Lucky for me he was behind a nearby building when it exploded.

After the war, he made a living the same way, with a wrench, as a loom fixer for Spring Mills, toiling in grease, lint, and heat.  I still have the thirty-year pen he proudly wore on his suit coat lapel.  He and my mother provided a home and everything that was necessary for my good life…not everything I wanted, but everything I needed.  A good life I find meandering back toward in my mind as I settle into my own autumn years.

I’m most proud of the way he treated my mother…yes, they had their battles, she was a red-headed Scot Irish lass and had the stereotypical temper to go with the hair.  Her explosions were thunderclaps that abated quickly, and Ernest usually absorbed them stoically.  I was always surprised when he didn’t…whether it was reacting to her or something stupid that I had done.  While I never heard him say it, I’m sure he loved her.

Later, when she was diagnosed with ALS, he was there.  Physically and emotionally, he supported her every way he could while attempting to keep body and soul intact.  He didn’t do it alone, but he was there for us all and I’m proud of his efforts.

I shouldn’t make this sound like our relationship was idyllic…there were moments, especially after my mother’s death when he remarried. 

I have a note he left me one morning, a cherished bit of memorabilia.  It stated simply, “The lawn mower has been in the front yard for three days.  Either use it or put it up.”  He was a man of few words and actions did speak louder than words…although when he sat me down for a “talking to” I would have rather he just hit me and get it over with.

It’s been forty-seven years since he died, in the cotton mill he worked in… a cerebral hemorrhage.   I remember the phone call from my brother. 

Like most sons, there was much I wish I had told him when I had time…I just didn’t take the time.  I did receive a bit of closure.  In a codeine-fueled battle with pneumonia, he came to me in a dream.  With him sitting at the foot of my bed we talked.  I was able to tell him things I had not.  I was able to tell him I loved him.  The dream was too real to have just been a dream.

Don Miller’s author’s page may be accessed at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

Dancin’ Machine with Two Left Feet

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“The job of feets is walking, but their hobby is dancing.” ― Amit Kalantri

She glided into my arms with invisible angel wings. It was a fraternity formal and The O’Jays were singing a slow song. We were “slow dancing, swaying to the music”, my arms around her waist, hers around my neck. She was a vision of loveliness in an emerald, green empire-waisted gown that complimented the deep red hair piled high on her head and the emerald, green choker around her neck. I inhaled her pheromones…perfume and stood no chance. I was smitten.

As I gazed into her blue-green eyes I noticed the freckles splashed across her nose and felt my heart squeeze. I was smitten again. I leaned in to steal a kiss, but my “second” left foot failed me, making solid contact with the instep of her high heel encased foot. I was left with duck lips kissing air as she bent over in pain.

My “feets” had failed at their hobby as badly as the relationship failed five years later. At least she left me still on my feet, staggered but standing.

Someone shared a video on social media, and I made the mistake of clicking on the “twist contest” from the movie Pulp Fiction. It wasn’t so much the dancing of John Travolta and Uma Thurmond but Chuck Berry’s “C’est La Vie” that got me “chair dancing” in my recliner. I am now one of the old folks who say, “it goes to show you never can tell.” I also dance better sitting than I do standing but that has always been the case.

I must have been in a good mood. An old song making me want to dance, even if it was in a chair. It triggered memories from a half century ago. I quickly put the redhead out of my mind and fell down a rabbit hole. Further YouTube “research” led me from thoughts of bobby socks and poodle skirts to mini-skirts and Go-Go boots and from Weejuns, starched button downs, and khaki duck trousers to lime green leisure suits and “catch me, f*ck me” shirts accessorized with gold chains.

Having two left feet didn’t bother me in my teen years that began in the early Sixties. The novel dance crazes of the day were less scripted than those practiced by the previous “Swing” generation. The “Disco” craze was still most of a decade away. We had dances with descriptive names like “The Jerk”, “The Watuzi”, “The Mashed Potato”, and the dance everyone could do, “The Twist.” I could stand in the middle of the dance floor and mimic Joe Cocker stepping on a live wire, and no one would notice.

Teen’s dancing novel dances badly

My two left “feets” would not become an issue until the late Sixties when I thought I needed to learn how to “Shag.” The cute little blond took my hand and pulled me onto the dance floor at The Cellar as “Carolina Girls” began to play. “Come on, I’ll teach you,” she said. She got over her injuries quickly and we remained friends. There were too many nights spent at The Celler chasing the elusive female beast to the tunes of The Catalinas not to learn to shag. Ample nickel drafts didn’t help the dancing but reduced the inhibitions that tended to cripple me.

Known as “The Carolina Shag”, it is a partner dance that requires dancing in concert with another human being to what is known as “Beach Music.” No, this beach music would not include The Beach Boys or Jan and Dean. Holding her right hand with my left, we stepped in and back, did a bit of a slide with one foot and then I got lost. Twirls are involved at some point giving me the opportunity to embarrass myself further.

I got lost a lot at The Cellar in Charlotte, The Barn in Rock Hill, and during coastal retreats to The Beach Club in Myrtle Beach, just to name a few. There were frat parties and, in the Seventies, discos to also display my two left feet. In the late Seventies, the movie “Urban Cowboy” and John Travolta turned us all into cowboy hat wearing line dancers and mechanical bull riders. Riding a mechanical bull was safer.

“Dancin’, Shaggin’ on the Boulevard” refers to Ocean Boulevard at Myrtle Beach. Alabama got their start playing at The Bowery on the Boulevard. I don’t remember the girls in 1968 or 69 dressing the way they dressed in the video.

I practiced long and hard to master the most rudimentary dance steps, sometimes with live partners, other times in the solitude of my room holding on to the doorknob to a closet door as a partner. At least a closet door has no feet to step on, but I did step in too close and received a black eye from the edge of the door for my efforts.

Disco? You are kidding, that was a death wish. I was hustled a few times but never did The Hustle. Thankfully, there was The Bump, the most fun I had had with my hips since The Twist.

It took my graduation into a new century to realize it didn’t matter. It would be 2001 before William Purkey would say, “You’ve gotta dance like there’s nobody watching, love like you’ll never be hurt, sing like there’s nobody listening, and live like it’s heaven on earth.” It would take me a while longer to realize he was right.

Unless you are an exotic dancer it really doesn’t matter if you dance like someone electrocuted. No one really cares unless you step on their foot. Dancing doesn’t come from your feet; it comes from the heart and the music contained there. Just don’t ask me to waltz.

Side note: I once found myself on the dance floor with an exotic dancer. A very…flexible and demonstrative dancer, she danced as if she was in search of a stripper pole. She did manage to keep her clothes on and still get the attention of everyone in the venue.

***

The Mad Southerner’s (Don Miller’s) author’s page can be found at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

His latest release is a historical romance novel, “Thunder Along the Copperhead.”

Of Fish Camps and Hush Puppies

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“Good food should be joyful. There should be laughter and chatter, not people sitting there like they’re in a funeral-parlor waiting room.”- Jim Harrison

I’m having a moment. My wife brought me a meal from a local meat and three. Bless her heart. I applaud her efforts but the BBQed chicken gave its life for naught it would seem. The cabbage slaw, way too sweet. The hush puppies were awful, hard on the inside and even harder on the outside, but they triggered a memory which led to a pig trail. I’m sure there is a rabbit hole to fall into at the end.

Hush puppies are fried balls of seasoned cornbread batter. I like mine sans sugar with finely chopped onion and garlic mixed into the batter. A Southern staple served alongside anything fried or BBQ, they should be a golden, crispy brown on the outside and a creamy, moist yellow or white on the inside.

Supposedly hush puppies were fried up and fed to dogs to keep them quiet while fish were fried on the riverbanks where they had been caught as friends and family fellowshipped with each other. Thus, the name, “Hush puppies.” (According to Wikipedia, the name “hush puppy” or “hushpuppy” first appeared in print in 1899)

An alternative theory, a theory that is just as likely to be true, is that escaping slaves used fried cornbread to silence pursuing hounds and to throw them off their scent. Both work for me but the first theory follows better with my pig trail.

At some point hush puppies became a fish camp side dish, and my rabbit hole led me to a seafood platter featuring deep fried flounder or catfish fillets and Calabash shrimp along with mayonnaise slaw and hush puppies.

Fish camps gained popularity before World War Two and owe their beginnings to gatherings on the side of rivers or coastal shores, “creek camps” if you will. Everyone chipping in with fish caught that day, deep fried in seasoned batter, or pan fried after dredging in a seasoned cornbread and flour mix. The main course was served alongside cabbage slaw and hushpuppies. Simple food prepared cheaply, and might I say majestically, with a good dose of fellowship to go with it.

Enterprising souls saw a business opportunity, threw up rough structures, and served up deep fried fish on Friday and Saturday nights. As roads and transportation improved local catfish, carp, and crappy were replaced by flounder, shrimp, and oysters. The ocean’s bounty was transported to the upstate and served on Fridays and Saturdays.

Fish camps once were numerous on both banks of the Catawba River where I grew up. Cute names like “Catfish Cove” or simple ones like the Riverview Inn were prolific. The Riverview Inn featured its own pirate, Captain Windy, complete with a real peg leg but missing the eyepatch and parrot on his shoulder. I really don’t remember it as an Inn and my family was not there for the view. They once served a ton of flounder over one weekend.

In the Carolinas, upstate fish camps were tied to textiles and families. Many were family-run businesses that opened on weekends after the shiftwork of the week was completed. Textile workers flocked to the fish camps and visits to the fish camp became as routine as church on Sunday.

Unfortunately, fish camps are as scarce as hen’s teeth in my part of the world in the foothills of the Blue Ridge. Coastal Carolinas and Georgia have the fish camps, I’m sure Florida does too, but inland fish camps have dwindled into obscurity or become the pricier seafood restaurants.

I’ve been to some of the local ones claiming to be fish camps and if there are good ones, they remain hidden to me…nothing cheap or majestic about their offerings. My taste has changed or I’m still looking for the one perfect fish camp that existed in the late Sixties or early Seventies.

My fondest memory was a wreck of a building at the end of a hard-packed dirt road. A graying whitewash lapboard building covered by a rusty metal roof. Picnic tables with holes in the middle over a trash can to throw shrimp tails or oyster shells. The choices were simple; shrimp, fried or boiled, oysters fried or roasted, and the catch of the day which this day was deep fried flounder fillets. Sides were cabbage slaw, fries, and hush puppies with a hint of onion fried into them.

Squeeze bottles of tartar sauce and spicy cocktail were spaced conveniently around the table along with cheap paper towels to wipe your hands. Sweet tea or iced down PBRs washed it all down. Boiled shrimp and roasted oysters were served on newspaper, the rest in paper “boats.”

I remember a couple of “church” fish fries as a child. My humble Methodist church was a bit more “hellfire and brimstone” and had taken a page from our Baptist brothers. The best way to gather new members was through their stomachs. We just drew the line at requiring a casserole dish to enter Heaven’s Pearly Gates.

From down the road from my home, if the winds were right, late summer would bring the smell of fish frying during the annual camp meeting at the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church that sat just off the Catawba on one of the creeks that fed it. Later, snatches of them making a joyful noise unto the Lord would be carried by the same breeze. Judging from the smell and the sound, they knew the way to heaven, even if it might have been heaven on earth, deep fried and seasoned by angels from generations past.

Fish camps and their predecessor, “creek camps” bode to a simpler time. Life revolved around work, family, and friends. Fishing was a form of recreation in addition to adding protein to the table. It was also a form of creation as many stories were told on the riverbank about the one that got away.

Combining necessity, recreation, and fellowship can’t be bad. Throw in a “jug band” and a bit of amber liquid and you might have hit on something.  

Don Miller’s Authors Page https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

One More Super Bowl Sunday to Ponder

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Numbers to ponder, some humor, and a bit of Super Bowl history.

“The truth is the Super Bowl long ago became more than just a football game. It’s part of our culture like turkey at Thanksgiving and lights at Christmas, and like those holidays beyond their meaning, a factor in our economy.” — Bob Schieffer

Inflation be damned, according to one national news organization, Americans will spend some 1.6 billion dollars on their favorite team’s apparel, food, and drink as they celebrate this year’s Super Bowl. That’s Super Bowl LVII which translates to fifty-seven in numbers we recognize. Over one hundred million will tune in to watch the game, one in three Americans, the commercials, and the halftime extravaganza. It truly is more than just a football game and the jury is still out whether that is a good thing or not.

Here are some numbers to ponder. Americans will eat some 1.4 billion chicken wings during the Super Bowl Sunday festivities. It is predicted that we will consume some three hundred million gallons of beer to wash down those wings, and advertisers will get rich as they charge seven million dollars for a thirty second commercial.

If you are in the stadium, a beer will cost you $13-$19 dollars and a hot dog $5. Times have certainly changed.

Last year one billion dollars was wagered legally. It is estimated another six billion was wagered illegally.

The Super Bowl has grown into something Vince Lombardi would not recognize. I watched the first Super Bowl.  I’ve watched all the Super Bowls.  I guess, unless I go blind, I will watch them all until the “sands in the hourglass” run out.

The first one wasn’t called the Super Bowl.  It was the AFL-NFL World Championship Game back then.  Not only has the name changed, and you can blame Lamar Hunt for the moniker, but the game itself doesn’t resemble the first one. 

More cameras than there are angles, scantily clad cheerleaders instead of pleated skirts, Bobbi socks and saddle shoes, commercials that were sometimes more interesting than the game itself, half-time extravaganzas instead of marching bands and different rules that the officials continue to blow.  The only thing that hasn’t changed is me…laughing, are you?

Ticket prices for the first Super Bowl averaged $12, the game was not a sellout—the only non-sellout in the game’s history. The game drew 61,000 fans to the Rose Bowl and was televised to twenty-six million viewers by CBS and NBC. The cheap seats in Sunday’s Super Bowl will set you back $3000 by comparison.

Yes, the Super Bowl has changed, but my love for the game of football and the Super Bowl hasn’t changed…even though I don’t recognize it as the game I coached and played for three and a half decades.  It is a more fun-loving, less brutal, still brutal game than the original “three yards and a cloud of dust “version.  Much more fan friendly, I guess.  Blame the old fun-loving, more offensive minded, pass-happy AFL.

As a young child, fall Sundays were reserved for church and a single football game on CBS.  That’s correct…one football game and nine times out of ten it was a Redskin contest.  We did have a thirty-minute highlight show of the previous Colts game.  It came on just before the real thing, just after church and Sunday dinner, what we Southerners call lunch. I’m sure my father prayed that there would be no long alter calls on those football Sundays. and that any visitors would stay away till the game was over.

Still, I became a fan…of Sonny Jurgenson’s lasers and Billy Kilmer’s wobblers.  It didn’t matter who was under center in the early sixties, victories were far and in between.  At least I had those replays of Johnny U and the Colts…but they weren’t particularly good either, except in ’59 and ’64.

Most every Sunday, late in the game, my father would make the same observation about the Redskins, “I think they have shot their wad.”  The Redskins would continue to shoot blanks until 1982 when they rode John Riggins to the victory in Super Bowl XVII. For clarification, shooting one’s wad related to old muzzle-loading muskets and not…your dirty mind.

In 1960 a new kid dared to approach the NFL block…an always snowy new kid led by AFL Commissioner, Joe Foss.  We would attempt to adjust our Sears rotary antenna to distant Ashville hoping the ABC affiliate and AFL game of the week would come into view.  Click, click, click, “Whoa! That’s too far, go back!” It didn’t matter, early September or late November, the games always looked like it was snowing in black and white on the old RCA.  Later the league would move to NBC, a channel we could pick up without snow and no longer in black and white.

These were the days of the New York Titans, Dallas Texans, Houston Oilers, and a few names that would still be recognized today.  No, the Dallas Texans were not the forerunners of the Dallas Cowboys or Houston Texans, but the Kansas City Chiefs, one of today’s Super Bowl opponents and one of the first Super Bowl’s opponents. 

The Cowboys were the first NFL expansion team and were briefly known as the Steers. They opened their first season in 1960 as the Cowboys and continue to break their fan’s hearts at every opportunity…at least this century. Da Boys…maybe next year.

The two leagues would eventually merge but not before the 1967 AFL-NFL World Championship played between the Bart Starr led juggernaut Green Bay Packers and the upstart Kansas City Chiefs with Len Dawson under center.  The score was close at half-time but a runaway by the end of the game.  Green Bay’s smash-mouth brand of football won 35-10 and began fifty-six years of futility as I repeatedly pull for the wrong team. I doubt this year will be any different…nah. Congrats Philly.

I’ll watch to the bloody end. Maybe the score will be close, or the commercials good.  Maybe the halftime won’t be controversial, but if it is I hope it is a “nipple gate” moment. I pray Chris Stapleton’s version of the National Anthem doesn’t draw the ire of Twitter fans who will type in capital letters, “JUST SING IT THE WAY IT WAS INTENDED!”

I’ll watch and heft a beer and toast my father…even eat a dozen wings in his honor.  I’ll use his favorite phrase when watching a fourth-quarter pass fall harmlessly to the ground…” Well, looks like they’ve shot their wad.”

The only thing to be decided is who shoots their wad and how many of those beers I heft.  Go Budweiser Commercial!!!! I miss the frogs.  

Don Miller writes in multiple genres. His latest novel is a fictional historical novel that focuses on The Great Depression and the labor unrest it triggered in the South in 1934. The novel is “Thunder Along the Copperhead” and may be purchased in paperback or downloaded at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BJYQ3SSV

Never Turn Down Dessert

/ cigarman501 / 1 Comment

“Life is short, eat dessert first.” –Unknown

Two and a half years ago I sat at a little “choke and puke” joint. I don’t remember which one. I have several on my list of places to eat. I just remembered warm cherry cobbler and vanilla ice cream a-la-mode were on the menu. I remember turning down the opportunity. “Man, I’m tighter than a tick on a fat dog. Don’t think I could eat another bite.” I wish I had. Lessons learned.

It would be approximately two years after the beginning of the Covid shutdowns before I got the opportunity to have dessert out again. There were several people who I would be unable to have dessert with after this period. I lost no close family members, but I did lose several close friends.

I didn’t have to wait that long; I could have rolled the dice. Others did with varying degrees of success. I just decided I checked too many of the bad boxes on my list of life to take the chance. As many of my peers and family members came down with the disease, I was sure I had made the right decision.

I know, an ice cream truck could drive through my house just as easily, dropkicking me through those pearly goalposts of life…probably not. Do you know how unlucky I would be to be sitting in my recliner and finding myself headed to my just desserts because a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream truck drove through my wall. “When it is your time, it is your time.”

As many were laid to rest, too many that I personally knew, I wondered, “Did they turn down that last dessert?”

I didn’t NOT have dessert for two years; I just didn’t go to my familiar haunts to have dessert. That BBQ place where dessert is an extra helping of fried okra, the taco place that features key lime pie to go with the fish and shrimp tacos, the cherry cobbler I turned down two and a half years ago at the “choke and puke.” I didn’t sit across from a friend, laughing at his jokes while I wrapped my tongue around a cherry.

For some reason, take out wasn’t the same. I remember sitting outside of my local taco “go to” waiting for the mask covered little waitress to bring out my fish tacos. I remember how they had turned into a yucky mess by the time I got them home. I had to eat them with a fork and having to “miracle” wave didn’t help. Who eats a taco with a fork? I’m guessing the key lime might have ended up the same way had I ordered it.

There is more to life than yucky tacos. I’m lucky I thought, I survived to eat dessert again. Several of my friends won’t have that opportunity. I don’t know when my days will be over, but I assure you, I will not turn down dessert again.

Note: Two and a half years of being careful, wearing masks and washing our hands, two Covid shots and three boosters later, both my wife and I came down with Covid. It was mild and we have both recovered. I ate banana pudding as soon as I stepped out of my self-inflicted quarantine.

If you are interested in reading any more of Don Miller’s works, go to https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true