Finding a Fro

We went to a flea market to find a fro.
“For what?” you say, “did you go?”
Is it a hairdo for curly hair,
Or a direction, as in “to and fro?”
Well, my friend; you’re not even close
To both guesses, I’ll answer, “No.”

When Jack showed Richard his fro,
Richard began to lust for one.
He wasn’t sure what he’d do with it,
But it seemed like it would be fun.
While showing this old-time tool to friends,
Male bonding would be done.

Then Jack was on a mission
To find a fro for his friend.
And when Jack begins a project,
He won’t rest until its end.
Richard now possesses the tool
Whose purpose is to mend.

You see, the old-time roofs
Were protected with wooded shakes.
But how does one replace the ones
That develop cracks and breaks?
A fro is the wood slicer
That this job ideally takes.

John loves to work with wood,
Even while he’s on vacation.
He whittles in every port of call
As he and Mary travel the nation.
A fro for the workshop at his home
Would give him great elation.

Hence the trip to search the stalls
Of vendors of antiques and junk.
We searched, and asked, and perused
The contents of many a trunk.
We finally found a flawless fro --
Well, the flawless part may be bunk.

But John is happy as a pig in a pen
He’ll be able to play “Stump the Chump.”
How many of his Midwestern friends
Will even have a hunch
About this tool from Appalachia?
Quite the game to play at lunch.

Maque Choux and Faux Barbeque

It’s wonderful having guests who are open to anything, but not addicted to activity. Mary and John have been sleeping in, as one would imagine one should do while on vacation. This gives me and Richard the opportunity to also catch up on our beauty rest after staying up later than my bedtime gabbing and guffawing. Of course staying up late and sleeping in is easy here in the summer when darkness doesn’t descend until nine in the evening and the sun doesn’t come over the hill until nine in the morning.

After they were here for a couple of days, we figured it was time to introduce our northern Great Lakes guests to some of our mountain folk. We started with Jack and worked our way over to Mamie. These encounters went well, so we decided to have a bit of a dinner party, even though we only have six kitchen chairs. John and Mary are boaters, and John enjoys classic cars, so we invited Deborah and Charlie over to join us for supper. We all enjoyed swapping tales of automobile escapades and bragging about boating. The boating blunders were at least as entertaining as the bragging.

Even though our guests are from Wisconsin, I figured we’d introduce them to something that they can only get from a Cajun cook. On a pre-BP-oil-spill trip down to Louisiana, I’d brought home forty pounds of Gulf shrimp for our freezer. It was time to put some of them to use, so we had barbeque shrimp (which never see a barbeque grill) over some of Tellico Bakery’s fabulous sourdough bread. The sauce resembles a barbecue sauce in looks only; it’s really mostly a bread dipping sauce of butter, olive oil, paprika and other herbs and spices. We accompanied this with some of the stewed corn dish called Maque Choux that I make by the vat during harvesting season and one of Richard salads, this time with many of the ingredients also grown by him.

Richard outdid himself with the preparation of desserts. In addition to the brownies and homemade fudge sauce that I already had on hand, he whipped up a batch of shortcake with strawberries, blueberries, and custard sauce. Because the custard sauce called for a bunch of egg yolks, he had a lot of leftover egg whites that he baked into a meringue. This gave me the opportunity to wallow in one of my most favorite desserts, floating island, which consists of a puddle of creamy custard sauce topped with a fluffy pillow of perfect meringue. Others at the table got very creative with the ingredients presented. John and Mary’s concoctions resembled banana splits, minus the bananas – shortbread topped with the various fruits, a generous slather of custard sauce and a cloud of meringue.

I thought of asking Mary to sing for her supper, since she is a professional classical singer, but I didn’t want to push my luck. I did, however, inform Charlie and Deborah that before the next time our “Cheese- head” friends come south, we should send Mary some Bluegrass music to practice for her Coker Creek debut.

Violins and Vittles

We began the day’s activities with foraging for food;
Several stops off the mountain were made for this endeavor.
Tellico Grains provided pastries; Kats -- riverside lunch.
With Barn of Plenty’s sweet corn, our supper came together.

After dining, we shared a bit of classical culture;
As we floated together through lovely music by Bach.
We watched violin concert greats and organ masters online
Spending our evening with Grieg, Procofiev, and Itzhak.

I can’t help but wonder how they’ll feel about our Bluegrass,
Where even Stradivarius violins are called fiddles.
I console myself with the thought that it will be okay,
Because I know at least they’ll like our music night vittles.

Richard Does It Right

I should post a plaque on our wall that says, “If you want it done right, ask Richard. If you’re willing to wing it, ask me.” In preparation for the visit from Sweet Mary and Big John, I asked Richard to clean his shower and tub. I knew he’d do a good job, as he does on any task he tackles, but I wasn’t prepared for the sight that met me as I passed the bathtub cleaning-in-progress. There knelt Richard with the usual chemicals and cleaning supplies one would expect to see -- and an open tool box.

To the casual observer, this may have seemed excessive. I hadn’t asked him to remodel the bathroom; I had only asked him to scrub the tub. Well, you know how any job you begin can become what Richard calls, “the infinite regression of steps.” It seems that when Richard started the cleaning, he noticed that the water was draining slowly. This led him to diagnose the problem as a need to remove the hair that clogged the drain, which required a screw driver, needle-nose pliers, and maybe several other tools; hence the need for his tool box. I’ll tell you that tub is clean, right down to the bottom of the drain.

While Richard wallowed in hair balls, I cut huge bouquets of hydrangeas and arranged them in a vase on our hearth. I was so proud of the wealth color from our garden that would greet our guests that I was moved to write a bit of poetry in honor of the occasion.

Is there anything as opulent as
A bouquet of fresh cut flowers,
Especially when you’ve grown them
In the garden in your yard?

My pride lasted about an hour when all the blooms started hanging their pretty heads. I had put in plenty of clean well water, and the air conditioner was keeping the house at a reasonably cool temperature; so, what could their problem be?
I consulted the infinite wisdom of the internet and found that I should have burned or boiled the ends of the stems before placing them in water, and then misted their delicate heads. It was too late for the burning or boiling, but I did give them a good misting. Our guests were greeted by soggy, droopy blue and pink pom-poms instead of the opulent arrangement of my dreams. Who knew that any cut flowers needed to have their capillaries heated before taking a cool dip? At least the hydrangeas on their bushes were still stunning for our visitors’ arrival. And, to welcome them, we did have the wonderful aroma of bread pudding wafting out of our oven.

We began our repast with guacamole and chips and chorizo and cream cheese stuffed jalapenos. Richard followed this with one of his sensational salads. I contributed a pork tenderloin with a brandied cherry sauce and orange zest flavored butternut squash. We accompanied this with a colorful array of caramelized onion, yellow pepper, one of our homegrown zucchinis, and a ripe, red tomato. Richard had also run down to Tellico Grains Bakery for one of their wonderful artisanal breads. We finished with the bread pudding with a bit of bourbon and butter sauce. Good friends and good grub, you can’t beat that with a stick.

Pity Party

I had a grand pity party all by myself when I went out to tidy up the RV. I had put it off as long as possible; it had needed doing since January, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. My magic carpet, that had kept me and my Richard safe for all those months after the hurricane wiped our neighborhood off the earth, needed cleaning. I could put it off no longer even though I knew it would spark a storm of emotion in me.

I had purposely peopled our home on wheels with pictures of our life on the lake. As the nieces, nephews and grandchildren, glistening with wet from sweat and swimming, smiled back at me, all I could do was sit and cry. This was the life I had dreamed of; this was my grandma house where we had legions of lizards, spiders, and all manner of squirmy thing carried through and simply laughed about our good luck.

We celebrated everything imaginable in this house on these waters; we also mourned everything imaginable.

These were the deck boards that grandchildren’s little baby feet had blessed as we watched our two naked one year olds in a baby pool full of birdseed. Our first visit from our youngest grandchild happened here, and I‘ve been told that it was also where she was conceived. We lived here when the pregnancy was announced.

This was the flower garden where we practiced my son’s second wedding with our oldest granddaughter as the preacher, while the two that had played naked as babies, giggled through the vows, and the youngest danced down the walkway casting rose petals from our bushes upon the path. We taught our grandchildren how to live off the “land,” bayou style, with our endless rounds of catching crabs off our back door dock. Our oldest learned the hard way by casting herself into the water along with the crab trap.

My family gathered here to celebrate our lives after saying goodbye to our oldest brother and his ashes. This was the home that held my son’s family as they handled the initial shock after the death of his wife’s mother. It was into this house that I entered when Richard was in the throes of the near-fatal heart attack, after which he endured a ten-day coma. These were the windows looking out on the waves that carried my cares away while waiting for word on whether Richard would get a new lease on life that only a new heart could provide.

Not only did I have the memories staring out at me from the photos, I also unearthed remnants of the Holidays in the Holler bacchanal that was our last gathering here. So many memories, so much mourning for a permanence that can never be in this life. Every time I see my loved ones, I’m overcome with gratitude for their being. And every time I say good-bye, I feel like I’ve lost a part of me.

Neighbors and Nesting

We’ve just completed a forty-eight hour period of neighbors and nesting. Some days are so perfect that it’s hard to find anything to say about them. I know that’s a good problem to have, but it sometimes leads to puerile poems rather than pithy prose.

Jack and I were invited to sign and sell Jack’s book at the neighboring hamlet of Hiawassee, the proceeds of which will benefit their community center. I buzzed around meeting talented area artists while Jack showed off his book and the photos of his home and the wildlife surrounding it. Jack’s snapshots of snakes are always a successful draw.

Deborah and Charlie were there with one of their classic cars. Deborah’s presence led to me getting recruited to help at the barbecue pork plate concession. Jack sold, without my help, enough books to make our trip worthwhile, and I got to meet more very talented neighbors.

Returning home from the festival, Charlie and Deborah jumped into their more modern vehicle and transported me and Richard to a multi-ethnic restaurant on the Ocoee River and then to a community theatre where one of their dear friends was appearing in a musical comedy about relationships and religion in the mountains. As usual, Charlie took us on a tour of all the areas we passed on the way there and back. How he’s amassed so much knowledge of the area is beyond me, but there’s no such thing as a boring trip with Charlie. We arrived home way past my bedtime, so I definitely slept in the next morning.

Nesting in preparation for John and Mary’s visit was the order of the day when we finally rose from our slumber. As Jack says, we know it’s time to clean the house when we have to wipe our feet before going outside. This was one of those times.

Jack had given us all the spent stalks from his rows of broccoli plants. He had never heard of eating the stalks without the florettes, but this is our favorite part of this crucifer. Richard spent the day peeling twenty six gallons (two kitchen garbage bags full) of stalks while I continued to de-bulk the dirt that has accumulated in our house. Thank goodness, Mamie called first thing in the morning to invite us over for supper; this gave me an event to look forward to as I chased down the dust bunnies and corralled the cobwebs.

I made the mistake, about two hours before we were due at Mamie’s, of going outside to empty the vacuum cleaner. A cool, dry breeze was gently blowing, and the dappled sun was dancing through the leaves of the trees. I walked down our front steps to pull just one or two weeds from around our beautifully blooming hydrangea bushes. But the hydrangeas were fainting for a drink of water, so this led to another outdoor task. I had to be outside to continue repositioning the water hose, so how could I possibly return to vacuuming?

The vacuum cleaner still awaits my return, but Mamie was thrilled by a bountiful bouquet of multi-hued hydrangeas gracing her supper buffet.

Most Marvelous Marriages

We went to a party honoring Wanda and Ralph’s fifty years of marriage. I remember that it was not so very long ago that, in any couple married fifty years, at least one of the partners (usually the husband) had one foot in the grave. My paternal grandfather barely made it; within a week of their grand celebration, we were mourning the demise of his earthly shell – which, for over a year, was truly a shell of the man he had been. I still believe he hung on just so that Grandma could have her golden moment with her man.

Ralph and Wanda are still as vibrant as two people can be; running circles around us newcomers to mountain life. They exude good humor and a love that can move mountains; I just like basking in their glow. I’ve heard Wanda say that Aunt Mamie taught her how to work, so it’s no wonder she’s still so spirited. She ended our last exercise class with a demonstration of the mountains’ close cousin to Irish step dancing known as clogging. I know that, as a child, Ralph also hung out a lot at Mamie’s. He’s still working part-time at keeping the large retreat center in Coker Creek maintained, as well as being chair person for our Ruritan club’s huge Autumn Gold Festival – this is in addition to recording Wanda’s mountain music for posterity.

Mamie seems to be a big part of the rich soil system of a lot of sturdy family trees, and I know that she still misses her man who left his physical life almost forty years ago. I love to hear the stories of their work and play as a couple -- like when they had to plant their crops by the light of tractor headlamps upon closing their store after nine at night.

Jack tells of how his daddy came over the mountain with the Civilian Conservation Corps and married a gal in Coker Creek. They lived out their lives with no electricity or indoor plumbing, but Jack has such good memories of his parents’ lives that he preserves their lifestyle to this day. Jack’s mother and Mamie’s mom were great friends. He and his brother, Charles, still speak fondly about how they all looked and enjoyed after each other.

We’re expecting John and Mary for an extended visit. This is another couple who seem destined to reach the fifty years of marriage mark. He’s a big bear of a Renaissance man and she’s an opera singer; two more different people you would probably never meet in a marriage, except perhaps in my marriage to Richard. I just love it when Big John does something for his Sweet Mary, and with fluttering eyelids, she trills, “My Hero.”

Maybe what we all need to make marriage work, is to realize that family life is about heroism, humor, and appreciation. Richard and I are relative newcomers to marriage, with only twenty years under the belt of our relationship. We’re fortunate to be surrounded by such a steady group of supporters.