Real Love

I have reached some strange milestone of adulthood where I express my love through food. Not in elaborate spreads or any kind of tastiness, but in doing things like peeling bell peppers because my grandma can’t chew them otherwise with her dull molars, and splashing myself in the face with the butter I was frying her egg whites in this morning...

Kitchen Cabinet Nostalgia

The closest I’ve come to having “my life flashing before my eyes” has been happening in slow motion increments while I’ve been tackling the herculean task of organizing our house since my moving back.  We have lived at 1001 Roland since the Mother’s Day after I turned one, and even in the years I wasn’t living here I still spent a lot of time, so I can't open a cabinet or sort through a stack of papers without getting smacked in the face with memories.  It makes it more bittersweet that I’m doing this alone since Baby (my grandmother) can barely move without getting out of breath, so there are a lot of questions I’ll never have answers to, or I’m afraid of asking and sending Baby into tears, and some answers I’m probably better off without knowing.  I started with the kitchen thinking that was the most practical thing and our cabinets have turned out to be an unexpected treasure trove. The finds read like strange riffs on the old “Baby shoes, never worn” short story however apocryphal that may be. A few highlights with accompanying stories are as follows, apologies that brevity isn’t my strong suit: 

A 1944 Roosevelt and Truman election button, in a fleishmann’s margarine tub full of change. 

A cake tin of things taken from me as punishment when I was a child. Tellingly they were all art materials: a muddied watercolor set used to the dregs, sidewalk chalk, an ink stamp mounted on a the feet of a troll doll.

Also tellingly, a paddle ball toy without the ball or elastic string, that delivered quite a sting to my behind when I misbehaved. Must have worked, Baby says she didn’t have to spank me past age 5. I guess she kept it just in case?

A receipt for rabies shots for Monk from 1982. Monk was the weimaraner Papa found wandering around a gas station and took home, that adored him so much she would eat anything she saw him eating including jalapeños. This won him lots of bets I’ve been told. The dog died before I was born, when they lived in another house, so how this made it to the kitchen cabinet is a mystery.

An ashtray in the shape of a cowboy hat (the wide brim style of silent movie cowboys), rather skillfully made from copper, from my great grandparents. I wonder if they brought it back to New Mexico after one of their road trips to California in a Model T in the twenties. (An aside: two of my favorite pictures from the family album are from those trips I think. One is Mema sitting on the center of a log in the petrified forest with the sun at her back so that she looks like a dark shadow with the silhouette of her wide brim hat obscuring her face, and another where she stands alone in front of a large butte in a desert looking more like a mirage than a person . Both unsettling, mysterious images that always stuck in my mind.)

At least 15 decks of cards and 4 sets of poker chips (there was another whole box full in the storeroom too...) including a deck that was a promotional item from Redman chew depicting a can as a mountain lake with trees all around “Reach for more outdoor flavor”. These were leftovers from the days when every Friday was poker night. I ruined a game one time after I had started to learn my letters, because I was scampering around the table reading everyone’s cards and proclaimed “Granddaddy has three Ks!” 

Screen printed cocktail glasses from the 1978 All American Futurity “The World’s Richest Horse Race.” My grandparent’s horse Clyde (registered name was Jet Railroad)  won a qualifying race that year and won $10,000. It was the horse’s first professional race. I found a copy of the photo finish a couple years ago that Papa had sent to Aunt Bert and immediately framed it, finally some proof of my crazy stories!  Mom said that in celebration Baby got tipsy and rode home stretched out in the backseat of their Lincoln, with her size 11 feet hanging out the window, the trophy in one hand and with the other throwing cheese puffs in the air to catch with her mouth. The trophy sits in our living room still. 

A guide to carpet care from when the house was renovated before we moved in.  Only notable because the cover has a picture of a couple in an expensive looking living room sitting on the couch, attired in very 80s clothes (shoulder pads, teased hair and all) looking on in horror as their robot butler spills wine onto the brand new light gray carpet.  An image that could only sprout up in that time and place.

A pocket sized can of tear gas, in the highest cabinet, next to a bottle of lighter fluid.  Why this was needed, why there, any of that, I have no idea. Baby had never seen it.  She rejected my suggestion that I take it to the police to dispose of it, on the grounds that they might think I had brought it back from South Carolina and I would get into trouble. I rejected her idea of burying it, because how terrible would it be to be minding your business digging a hole and hit a can of tear gas with a shovel? Back it went into the cabinet to befuddle me further when I do all this again in another 28 years. I’m beginning to think between the tear gas and how many guns I’ve found that Papa’s policy was to have a weapon concealed in every room in case the Commies dropped in. 

An empty box from a pharmacy in Fort Sumner, New Mexico with a prescription for a great-great aunt in 1954. Two capsules for rest, repeat every four hours if necessary from Dr. Fikany.  Says at the bottom of the instructions “Be loyal to your doctor, follow his directions with the same exactness we have used in compounding this prescription.” Damn, they didn’t play around.

A xerox of an article in the Amarillo Globe News about the time Uncle Johnny (my great uncle, Baby’s brother) found and returned a wallet containing $1,285 from the floor of the Taylor’s Food Mart.  The article queries “What does one do when one finds a billfold with enough money in it to buy a used car?” Uncle Johnny: “You don’t say nothing. You just make sure it gets back to where it belongs.” I can almost visualize him crouching down as if to tie his shoes and tucking the wallet into the pocket of his overalls. 

My grandparent’s Franciscan Ware wedding china, with a great mid century modern/atomic age pattern of star bursts in blue and green.  Includes a matching ash tray.  I have a picture of Baby and Papa at their wedding shower with the dishes on the table in the background.  If I ever get to the point of reorganizing the china cabinets, the dishes will get a bath and as prominent a spot as the two sets of china from Uncle Ken’s mother. 

A little circle of metal that appears to be a baby bracelet with a delicate pattern incised into the surface, looks to be old and has a clever mechanism to fasten it.  No idea on its origin, it was just sitting on a the highest shelf with globes from light fixtures we don’t even have in the house anymore.  

Every lung function test print out from when I had histoplasmosis at age 12, as well as half the report cards I received between ages 12-18. They are predictable, high As in English and Art, hard won mid Bs in math and science... Stacks and stacks of all kinds of receipts and papers too. My grandparent’s logic was, why throw something away if there’s an empty drawer you can throw it into?

A package of Bridges family photos Aunt Bert sent Papa a decade ago, that i only remember seeing once then wondering where they went.  Great photos of Papa and his nine siblings at various ages, of his parents, him freshly home from the army.  A picture at around age 13-14 that looks identical to one of Uncle Carey at the same age. What a different life would we all have had if he’d never left that valley in Tennessee, and thank goodness his sister had moved to New Mexico for her husband’s lungs and another had followed and worked in the same grocery store as my grandma. 

By the time I finished the kitchen organizing I had taken out 7-8 bags of trash, unpacked and stored about 15 boxes of my kitchen things, taken 3 boxes to the thrift store, stashed away all the oddities and treasures for safe keeping. It took the better part of a week.  I’m left wondering where I will get the “intestinal fortitude” (an appropriate Babyism in this instance) to handle the rest of the house, garage, barn down the street, two city hangars we lease, the tools from the hangar Papa sold about a year ago....

Ben & Jerry’s

Finding the exact ice cream to satisfy Baby’s craving has been a task; the offerings of Blue Bunny, Dreyer’s, even the cream of the local crop Braum’s have been weighed and found wanting.  Finally a winner has pulled ahead: Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia, but she only picks out the cherries and presumably eats about a tablespoon of ice cream in the process.  I dutifully buy 4-5 pints at a time and finish whatever is left. 

“As pretentious as a flea crawling up an elephant’s leg with rape on its mind”

Entry #14

“She looks like she’s been ridden hard and put away wet”

Entry #13

“Talk is cheap, but it takes money to buy whiskey.”

Entry #12

“He’s so broke, he can’t pay attention”

Entry #10 & #11

I’m back in Texas! So let the crazy sayings recommence!

“Go grease up a knot hole!”

This is another way to tell someone to f%^k themselves.  My grandmother was telling about a friend of hers going through menopause, and in the middle of having a hot flash, the friend’s husband tried to jokingly put the moves on her, to which she replied “go grease up a knot hole.” 

“If it cost a nickel to shit, she’d have to vomit!”

This is for somebody who is extremely broke. In my grandma’s lingo this is even worse than not “having a pot to piss in, or the window to throw it out of.” Came up when my mother was discussing trying to take a trip she probably couldn’t afford.

Entry #9

"What the butt can’t tolerate, the mind can’t absorb."

This is a phrase I haven’t heard out of my grandmother in a loong time, but it basically means “if you’re too exhausted or too jumpy to sit still, you’re not in the right frame of mind to receive a talking to, or sit through school etc.” She used to use it more often when I was high school age, since that entailed hours and hours of this situation.

Older entries #6-#8 from the Summertime 2014

I wrote down a few phrases my grandma uses last summer, but didn’t manage to make a post about them, so here goes: 

"High hatting’

"I knew you when you didn’t have the watermelon seeds washed off you from one season to the next."

"Hide and watch me."

The first two phrases come from a story my grandmother told about a relative in New Mexico who was a little stuck up.  Apparently this woman would always dress to the nines whenever she went to the local grocery store, and one day she walks in past the group of old fellows sitting around a barrel playing checkers and smoking (this is probably in the late 40s-early 50s) and one who had known her since childhood pipes up and declares, “Don’t you go high-hatting me, I knew you when you didn’t have the watermelon seeds washed off you from one season to the next.” Which is to say, “Don’t act stuck up, I knew you when you didn’t have anything.”  The easiest explanation I can come up with for the watermelon seed comment is that any of those old timers in New Mexico probably grew up in little dugouts without enough water (or indoor plumbing) to waste on bathing, so watermelon seeds from the Summer still being on you whenever Fall came around may not have been uncommon.

"Hide and watch me" is a phrase heard often in our little household of bullheaded people; it basically means "I can and will do the thing you just insinuated I’m not capable of, or you forbade me to do, and you’re welcome to observe the demonstration of that fact." This phrase often earns me a laugh from friends in SC, but that is only because they don’t understand the defiance implied in its usage. 

Entry #5

"I'd pick chicken shit with the chickens before I did that."

My mother and grandmother were discussing my mother's dating issues, and my grandmother made the statement that if she was ever talked to the way my mother has been by men, she would pick chicken shit with the chickens before she put up with it.  I suppose the phrase comes from watching chickens picking out bugs to eat from their own shit in the farmyard...Which is a pretty miserable existence, so another situation has to be pretty miserable to prefer picking chicken shit with the chickens.

Entry #4

I'm back in Texas! Let the crazy sayings commence! "From appetite to asshole" What does this phrase mean in English? 4. My grandmother has used this phrase in two ways: the same way you would use the phrase "from a to z" since your appetite and asshole are the a to z of your digestive tract, and as a way to describe how somebody was opened up during a surgery, as in "that time I had to have three feet of my intestine removed, they opened me up from appetite to asshole."* *True story, which has other funny stories attached. You bothered to read the sidenote, so I'll tell you. When I was a child, my grandmother had to have 3 feet of her small intestine removed because she builds adhesions. That means essentially that she builds up internal scar tissue easily from injuries, surgeries etc. which can become thick enough that they bind organs together and can cause, in her case, things like your intestines losing blood circulation. I think she also had surgery relating to these issues when I was a baby, but I'm not sure which tales are associated with each instance. Anyway, these episodes make up quite a bit of family lore. In the weeks leading up to the surgery I remember, my grandmother was so sick she was in bed throwing up bile. I apparently wandered in to see how she was, looked into the trash can, observed that it looked like she had "eaten rotten salad" and went on my merry way completely unfazed. My grandmother says that was the moment she realized I had a "cast iron" stomach and would make it through life just fine. When they were trying to get her attached to a stomach pump (I assume to get it clear before surgery since her intestines weren't functioning) the nurse was having all kinds of trouble, and my grandmother was in a lot of pain. The nurse of course thought she was just exaggerating, but then they figured out that rather than the tube going from her nose and down to her esophagus like it was supposed to, it was CURLING UP IN THE BACK OF HER THROAT. Moral of the story is that my grandmother has gone through stuff like this, had two children without any pain meds, broken all the toes on one foot at once. She is harder than you or I will ever be. The funniest story is about my grandfather, who will turn green at even the sound of somebody else throwing up and can't stand any gross smells, so he has the weakest stomach of us all. Apparently after my grandmother had part of her intestines removed the doctor brought them out to show to my grandfather, but nobody else in the family was there to witness it! I think we all have a personal vision of what his face looked like, and how he must have quietly snuck away to the nearest toilet. None of us knew this happened until several years after the fact, so for all we know he may have passed out. Also, was (or is) that a thing?!? To bring out for show and tell what you've just taken out of somebody?!?! I guess it was in the early nineties. My grandmother's response to this was basically, hell I wanted to see, why didn't he show me! The other great story out of all this was when my mother and I went to visit her in the hospital. We walk in to see my grandmother standing with her head and right arm out of the window, left arm holding her iv stand, hospital robe flapping in the wind exposing her behind, trying to smoke her first cigarette in a week. This was all in the middle of her 10 days on nothing but ice chips until she healed enough to digest food. That is determination.

Entry #3 & #4

"Ready to be put out to pasture"

"Kiss my foot three joints up"

What do these phrases mean in English?

1. "Ready to be put out to pasture" means someone has gone past their usefulness, or is ready to retire. Normally carries a bit of a negative connotation, especially when my grandmother uses it, as it implies ineptitude and a hint of senility when she says it..... Comes from putting an old horse out in a pasture to live out its days. 

2. "Kiss my foot three joints up" a more creative way to tell someone to kiss your ass. Helpful when you can't say ass because of small children and old people being present. My grandmother doesn't use it out of any concern for our sensibilities, just because it sounds more clever.  As she says the overuse of vulgar language "shows a lack of vocabulary."

As often happens in my family, tonight we were discussing a few of our many hilarious "When I was in the hospital that one time (implying more accurately: that time I almost died, but there was still opportunity for something funny to happen)" stories. This led to the usage of these two commonly used phrases around our household.  The first was in relation to the time when my grandmother was in the hospital after her hysterectomy, but had also had the nail removed from her big toe (a long story about the toe, it will be discussed later as it is a classic). A nurse had come in to help her turn over and managed to hit the exposed toe on the bedframe (OOOOOWWWWW) which led to my grandmother blurting out to another nurse that the one that hurt her toe "needed to be put out to pasture."  To top this off, her doctor overheard this and asked her later if she "had any other complaints about the hospital staff."  

Later we were talking about another time when she had been given enough morphine that she didn't remember anything from a Tuesday to a Saturday.  My grandfather (the king of smart alecks in a whole family tree full of them) said "Hell, how is that different from the rest of the time?" Which elicited the response of "kiss my foot three joints up." 

Entry #2

"Done or raw, we’re going to fill our craw!”

What does this mean in English? I don’t care if the food in the oven is not done, I’m starving and intend to eat my fill. 

This was uttered when she was tired of waiting for that delicious pan of enchilada casserole to finish cooking.  I’ve never heard her use this one so a rare exclamation. For people who don’t know what a craw is, it’s an old-school word for stomach.  You may have heard somebody use the phrase “He’s got something stuck in his craw” (something is upsetting him) etc. 

First post!

Entry #1

"Run like a ruptured duck"

What does this mean in English? To run quite quickly away from an undesirable situation, or other unpleasantness.  

She used it in the context of her advice to someone considering a bad business deal.  

This is one I've only heard her use a couple of times, so when she used it earlier today it caused me to imagine some grim scenarios involving ducks and pointy objects.  Are ducks made from the same materials as water wings, bicycle tires, and appendixes? Was she using the verb run as in the actual act of a duct waddling, or run in the sense of a dripping nose?  Inexplicably I now feature a ruptured duck being a little like a balloon filled with pudding that is popped at some sort of state fair booth.  Honestly I sleep a little better visualizing it that way, don't shatter my illusions.  I do know one thing, if my life were a Dickens novel, my favorite pub would be called the "Ruptured Duck."  That, or it would be the name of my favorite type of Christmas pudding.