Flush with Flowers

Around this time of the year, when there’s still frost on the outdoor dog in the morning and air conditioners run like a spider-chased schoolgirl in the afternoon, I like to venture down to the Lawn & Garden department at the local Sow ‘em & Grow ‘em Store. People who should never own fertilizer are wandering past the bags of peat moss, clutching pots of distressed dahlias, and murmuring, “Wonder if I need manure?”

It’s like Disneyland for clueless people.

All I want is a bird feeder. Winter and fat Cardinals have not been kind to the little plastic number that hung in my yard all winter, and I need someplace to leave the offerings for the sparrows that exercise the dogs by flitting around just out of Labrador reach.

Here in the South, whimsical lawn ornaments are popular among the population. By whimsical, I mean ugly and offensive. By population, I mean my neighbor (you know who you are, Danny) who used to borrow a goat the last week of every month so that he didn’t have to cut the two square inches of grass that grew beside his cultivated kudzu patch.

My other neighbor has a patch of lawn decorated by a wishing well, two wooden farmer misses bending over to show polka dot bloomers, a bevy of plastic geese, and a charming white toilet holding a cluster of cheerful daffodils. These folks may have lawn furniture in the family room, but the porcelain in the front yard holds a place of honor.

Driving back home with my tiny plastic birdfeeder, I can’t help but think about my own yard. I won’t feel comfortable calling it a lawn until there is something growing in it that didn't spring spontaneously to life over the septic tank. Algae doesn’t count as lawn, even the easy-care kind.

I guess everybody celebrates Spring in their own fashion. In Augusta, the Masters has acres of azaleas, not far away the peach trees are beginning to bud. But in my little corner of the country--just below the Bible Belt and just above the Sweet Tea Bag; we take pride in our pottied plants.

Red, White, & Oops

Independence Day is here, and as expected, celebrations of picnics, cookouts, and truckloads of rednecks fueled by the Big Boy sized beer setting fire to things that will blow up are in full force.

Nothing says Freedom like an intoxicated man named Bubba Earl flicking the long lighter and trying to set fire to a fuse the size of a tapeworm that's dancing in the breeze like amber waves of grain. Come dusk, hoards of folks will gather in the shadows of school parking lots to Oooh! Aaaah! and splash a pitcher of, let’s say, lemonade on the proceedings should the pyrotechnics or Bubba Earl get out of hand.

That’s what’s great about the South. It is legal to purchase fireworks in the state of South Carolina without presenting so much as an IQ score to the authorities. The people of South Carolina are perfectly within their rights to light themselves up like the space shuttle leaving for star-spangled skies, and other people have to content themselves with following safety standards and obeying the laws of common sense.

There’s something about not know whether the next bottle rocket will explode in the night sky in a sparkling array of gemstone colored glitz or skim down the pavement toward the spectators like a heat seeking ferret on steroids to make you appreciate what went on at the battle of Bunker Hill.

My apprehension might be due to a small mishap last year when a sidewalk-skidding bottle rocket came close to crossing my Reeboks at a steady clip and lighting up my inseam like a birthday candle. But after all, what is Independence Day for if not for celebrating with an impromptu break dance in the handicapped parking section of the schoolyard? I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say the Boston Harbor gang has nothing on me when it comes to open air tea parties.

Uncle Joe is revered around these parts as sort of an expert on the subject of fireworks, having set his leg on fire on at least one occasion in the time honored tradition, and is well-respected in the backyard pyrotechnic community. If this year goes according to tradition, we’ll have quite a few stories and a modicum of minor injuries.

Not too many years ago we shunned his backyard display for an extravaganza taking place just past the intersection and before the blinking red light on the edge of town. Luckily it was held at the fire department because when the pasture caught on fire and all the fireworks went off at once, we didn’t even get 911 dialed before Tiny and Pork Chop responded to the blaze.

So this year we’ll probably go back to Uncle Joe’s. At least he restricts the damage to his own self, as a gentleman should.

I’ll take along an extra pair of pants. And some bandaids.

Confederate Cooking

I don’t mean to speak ill of the deep fried, but sometimes in the South we get carried away. I’ll admit that there’s nothing like a pot full of oil crackling on the front burner to bring a tear to my eye, but it’s a fact that anything that will lay still long enough for us to roll in flour is likely to end up fried in enough fat to clone a cow.

Also, it’s important to know that there are just some things that were never intended to produce gravy. I had a friend who swore he could whip up a fine gravy from flounder drippings, but I just can’t imagine ladling fish juice over a hot biscuit on a cold winter’s night. Of course, I was doubtful about shrimp and grits, too, until I tried them, and now I’m an absolute addict, but it just doesn’t seem plausible to believe you can get a thick, rich gravy from a creature that lies as flat as a shingle on the ocean floor and has to have both eyes on one side to see.

On the other side of the cornbread, there are some items that turn up at the table with gravy that couldn’t have been come by naturally. Despite the boastings of “homestyle” gravy on every menu item from pot roast to potatoes, only some of these are the chosen few; those selections ordained to produce broth which is the fount from which scrumptious brown gravy flows.

As a dear friend from an undiscosed geographical location says as she lifts five pounds of ground chuck in the natural form of a free-range meatloaf (an 11 x 13 rectangle) from her oven, “grease isn’t broth.”

A Connecticut Yankee In a Southern Box Plant

I come from a place in the South where grease is considered a major food group, biscuits beyond breakfast are as common as watermelon seeds in July, and sweet iced tea is always in season. I’ve traveled extensively from Macon clean up to Roanoke, so I was convinced that these were universal truths.

That is, until I went to work as secretary in a corrugated container plant in South Carolina, under the direction of the Human Resources Manager, a transplanted career woman from Connecticut who said “car-mel” instead of “caramel” and couldn’t use “y’all” correctly in a sentence, even if I spotted her the verb. This wasn’t just a culture clash. This was culture wearing a striped shirt and plaid boxers with Girl Scout socks and a seersucker blazer.

Our differences stuck out like peanut butter on pintos. I thought UConn was a territory in Canada. She had to read the comics out loud to understand the dialogue in Snuffy Smith. We debated mightily about whether it was proper to flip, flick, cut, or turn on the lights. And although there were many times she was starting, getting ready or preparing for something, she was never, ever “fixing” to do anything.

She ate fried chicken for the first time when she migrated South to study for her Master’s at the real USC. When fall holidays drew near she reminisced about Thanksgivings on Nantucket where they feasted on fresh lobster with drawn butter, and rolled her eyes like a hot dog on the Speedy Mart rotisserie when I insisted that a proper Thanksgiving meal boasted at least fifteen different carbohydrates and was smothered in giblet gravy. When I tried to explain about collards and black-eyed peas at New Year’s, she looked at me like I’d suggested wearing hoop skirts to Yankee Stadium.

Extending the hand of Southern hospitality, I invited her to a fine restaurant nearby to show off the local cuisine.

“Everything here is either fried or covered in gravy,” she announced, wiping a spot of yesterday’s special off her laminated menu and peering across the vinyl tablecloth at my plate of chicken-fried steak.

“That’s not true. Some things are fried AND covered in gravy. Have some cornbread.”

“What’s in it besides corn?”

“Bacon grease.”

“No, thanks.”

We straddled the Mason-Dixon line without serious injury for four years, teaming up on everything from safety promotions to company picnics. I discovered that UConn was a fine educational facility, even if it didn’t have a feral feline or saber-wielding rowdy as a mascot , that I could “turn” on the lights without invoking the mental stress clause of my health insurance, and that lobster is a festive and tasty holiday dish, although it doesn’t make for very rich gravy.

And even though my new friend never learned to fry vegetables or to appreciate the subtle humor of Snuffy Smith, she developed a lasting affinity for iced tea.

Sometimes life’s little victories are the sweetest.

Key Issue

This afternoon as I fished hysterically in my purse for my stupid car keys that were hiding from me on purpose, I had an idea.

For me, having an idea is a bit like giving birth to a ten pound porcupine. It’s a tedious process, fraught with peril, but quite sharp in the end. What I need is a Global Positioning System that can tell me where in my Super Organizer Bag to find my car keys.

That way I won’t be late for the school pick-up line while I thrash around unsuccessfully in my purse for twenty minutes sifting through stale M&M’s and used Kleenx before attempting to unlock my door with a Number Two pencil and a Twinkie wrapper.

The GPS KeyFinder is sure to be a moneymaker if properly engineered, using language that normal people who don’t factor pi for a hobby can understand. None of this “proceed north past the checkbook for 6 centimeters, turn east at the lipstick, circumnavigate the compact” sort of thing.

My basic concept of direction is this: North is up, South is down, East is left, and West is right. My WWII Navy Dad cringes whenever people ask me for directions. He says if I were in charge of Japanese navigations, Pearl Harbor would have remained untouched. But those elves at the North Pole would still be rebuilding reindeer pens.

I need basic directions. “Plunge hand into the middle compartment with the zipper that’s jammed with the soccer sock. Bypass the garage door opener and orange TicTac, turn left at the chewed cinnamon gum wrapped in foil, continue for the length of the nail file, then shake purse twice firmly. Keys are affixed to the melted Snickers bar by hardened caramel.

I’m not even going to charge the GPS people for this millionaire-making idea. A simple thank you and the knowledge that mommies everywhere will make it to school pick-up on time will be my reward. That and some pizza coupons. And a car with keyless entry.

Now, if I could only find my cell phone, I’d call and tell them. I know it’s here somewhere in my purse. . .