Homecoming

Sweetie and I returned home this afternoon after visiting my family for Thanksgiving, and as much as I love going home to see Mom and Dad and my two brothers, I really love to get back to our house with our knockabout clothes and our TV channels and our snacks in the fridge. But with that sometimes comes the feeling that the places where I grew up might not really exist anymore. I mean the same house with the same brown paneling (geesh!) is still there. But now the soybean field across the road is sprouting about 30 little vinyl sided houses and it's hard to find a place where you can look back and forward without seeing a subdivision in the car mirrors. Well this weekend I found out that I was thankfully wrong.

Sweetie and I are junkers. We love to find little flea markets or antique malls and hunt for stuff. I love books, old photographs and postcards. Sweetie is straight up military collectible stuff. Predominantly WWII era stuff, and I am actually getting pretty good at spotting ammo boxes or patches in glass cases. Well as we were about to head home this morning, Mom and Dad mentioned a place called the Wagon Wheel. It's in the town of Scottsville, KY, which you can imagine very easily. Rolling hills, with a little town winding around the top of one or two little rises in the road, and lots of places to get cigarettes or a tan or rent a video. People drive awfully slow and there are a lot of mailboxes with the same name next door to each other. But it's also covered in flags and yellow ribbons, because it's towns like Scottsville that send their young men and women off to the Armory all the time. I know Scottville has one major draw and that is Harper's Catfish and Paylake. I'm too squeamish to eat catfish from an Allen County paylake. But I never met a baked potato I didn't like. Anyhow, the Wagon Wheel.

We spent the better part of Saturday crawling all over this place. It was like Sanford and Son, I swear. Stuff piled up and hung from rafters and the best part was in the barn but you had to find the door behind the huge boiler. I got a couple books, and Sweetie found an Army electrician's toolbox and a Navy gunner's helmet. Inside the shop--which seems to have been built as they thought about needing an extra room--I found a rifle bag for a saddle mounted rider which looked pretty cool. I talked to the lady behind the counter while Sweetie was dragging in the electrician's box. It was typical Kentucky stranger talk. They saw us with Jefferson Co (Louisville) tags and figured us for city slickers, but when I mentioned I had kin from Bowling Green and family in Scottsville, well we had to swap names and see if we were related. Of course if you talk this way much you know never admit kin until you find out about the other person. It can take all day. But we got some pretty neat junk, filled up the trunk of our car and headed out to take state highway 101 to I-65.

Have you ever seen an old brindle bulldog? Their fur is mottled brown and tan, and when they roll on their belly they have a little tuft of fur like a seam that is usually white. Well just about every hill in Allen County looks like the belly of a brindle bulldog. All the fencerows have scrub growing chest high, but the fields are eaten clean by cattle and burros. The landscape is reflected in the cobbled names of the towns we sailed through--Halfway, Clifton, Meador, Smiths Grove. It was overcast and deep November with the dull gray-barked maples and ashes standing naked against the highway escarpments. We finally reached the on ramp to I-65 north which meant we were headed back to our house. But it was good to feel that those old hills were still behind us and not all claimed by rows of McMansions. Sure, every radio station we could tune in (not many) played either country or gospel. My cell phone had no tower for miles. And there's nothing in the way of theater or art unless you travel to Nashville or Louisville. But it's where I am from and that makes it stand for something. Home.

I hope that each of you reach your home very soon. And if you are already there, be thankful and also mindful of those who are off tonight, protecting it. They are probably dreaming about their own little wide spot in the road and counting the days until they see their own mailbox on the horizon.

It's Time For My Holiday Special

I think I should write a holiday special for real people.
No one would wear a new sweater to family dinner. The only candles would be the ones in the bathroom for the uncle who refuses to turn on the fan. There would be visible cobwebs and more than a spot of dust on the formal furniture--none of which matches. And of course there would be the best part of all--the food.

I never saw anyone in my family bake a pie with those cute little dough cutouts in the top. My grandmother did make cherry pies with handmade lattice tops that had a crispy sugar crust, but that era recedes in my memory. My mother and aunt are the big cooks in our family nowadays. We alternate holiday dinners, with my mother always hosting Thanksgiving and my favorite aunt holding forth for Christmas. There are the must haves, like turkey and dressing, broccoli casserole, corn from our garden, and the cranberry jello fruit mold that I could hide with and eat the entire bowl before anyone caught on. But it doesn't make it onto china platters or antique soup tureens. There is a beautiful collection of dishes that no one else might appreciate but which come to symbolize the meal itself for our family. And it might make Miss Manners shudder, but it must be done, just like this.

On the large crackled finish platter with a picture of a turkey from my grandmother--goes the turkey. Into the aluminum bun warmer painted red and now peeling--go the cornbread sticks. The pinto beans have their own stoneware bowl, ivory with a goldenrod yellow band around the rim. Always. Mashed potatoes belong in the white serving bowl stamped "Vintage Rose" with a barely visible painting of a bouquet of roses in the bottom. The potato bowl has a chip under the rim and Mom tried to hide it one year telling us it was broken, but when I looked for a replacement dish I spotted it on the bottom shelf and we had to have it. This can alternate as the gravy bowl at breakfast time, but for dinners it is always for the potatoes. In the big yellow electric skillet, you will find the home grown corn, cut off the cob and simmered to comforting buttery goodness. And the dressings, handmade in their own little muffin cups so each person gets some crust on the edge, make themselves home on the oval Corelle platter that matches Mom's dishes. The two tray Tupperware dressed egg container is always there, and yes they are dressed eggs even if Yankees call them deviled eggs. And the big brown pitcher--it's actual name is "Big Brown Pitcher"--sits at the end of the kitchen counter (the bar) filled with sweet tea. The odd assortment of forks and glasses get passed out, we form a general semblance of a line which wraps around the kitchen door and into the living room where my brothers and cousin are laughing about something they probably shouldn't be, and Dad says grace. Then it is Katy bar the door and such a collection of clinks and clanks and spoons clattering and ice cubes rattling and chairs squealing with indignation and hearty laughs and Remember the Time Whens and Oh I Forgot to Set Outs all roll themselves into the sound of my family Thanksgiving.
Most of the year I get by pretty well being separated from my family by a few hours worth of interstate. But when the air is cold and the pumpkins go on clearance I start to think about all of my family and I love them. Warts and all.

Planoamy

Oh no,
I have not fizzled away.
It's just that I have
nothing to say.
Well, not nothing--
just not
something.
And sometimes something
is worse than nothing
if it's just anything.
This sloppy old computer room does not induce thoughts
of verse
or creativity.
More like to-do lists and unfinished chores.
It bores
me to think
about what to think about.

sorry

Some days I bore myself.
I have a ton of chores that could be done.
I did straighten up the guest room (unfinished project storage room.)
We had a bad storm last night, with hail, but thankfully are fine.
I folded some clothes.
My feet are cold but I have some socks here...just a minute...ah that's better.
I want to eat everything in the house to entertain myself.
It's so pretty outside, just a little windy still.
I don't want to spend any money but I want to have fun.
Ho hum.
I already put away all of the Halloween decorations.
Tomorrow is my Weight Watchers meeting so I can't eat snacks.
Although I can actually hear the frozen french toast sticks in the freezer right now, taunting me in their little french accented voices, "Hanh hanh! She veel not come een here an microwave us!"
I can't let a french toast stick talk to me like that.
I'll be back later.