Gary makes me hungry.
tweet this
I had a long, fun conversation with my friend Gary the other day, Sunday actually, over the telephone, and we quickly started talking about food, as our conversations tend to do. Gary, now a famous playwright/critic, who spends most of his days on a plane, as opposed to by a plate, always wants to hear about what Nana has cooked, created, invented, resurrected from her kitchen shelves. Nana’s kind of magical that way. And she has become something of folklore in my social circles, and many of my friends eagerly await for my Sunday dinner details. (I can think of one person who...
That’s how we bring up all children in our family: by ear.
Filed under: Deep South, Everyday, family, health, life
I like to think I'm a good uncle. Even though, I don't really know my "real" nieces and nephews. I've seen Millie, once; I've seen Auden, once; I've never meet Vinnie. So, to make up for this: I give all my grand uncle-ness to a series of young cousins, whose mothers I grew up with, as my nieces, being the baby of the adopted family I claimed with their grandmother, who I took as my--- You know what, let me scratch that. It's too confusing. My family tree, you know, is really just an assortment of random branches that were blown down during a storm, and happend to fall around...
I can't die here, not this close to the Mennonite bakery.
Filed under: Deep South, faith, family, food, health
I think I almost died last Friday morning, right outside of Macon, Mississippi. The weather was atrocious, as it has been for the past two solid weeks; the rain was torrential (FYI: that's a word on My Favorite Words List, which I keep in my glove compartment), the wind was ridiculous, and the roads held pockets of watery vengeance...but that's not what I thought was I dying from. Because I'm a fairly safe driver. It's one of the good qualities I inherited from my father. I kept my cruise control right on 60 mph, stayed in the slow lane, and I'd successfully...
Because hands can do everything but lie.
I don't always know what to do with my hands. You might find that ironic for an actor, even more so for an educator. But, it's still the truth. It wasn't anything I ever really noticed until a few years ago. I began to realize that my Nana was fascinated by the frequency with which I used my hands to animate my conversation. She would look less at me and more at my gesturing. Over time, I became so concerned with how I might physcially be telling my story that I began to grow flustered at the dinner table. I didn't know how...
The Art of the Dirty Word.
There are a few things in this world that I would wish on everyone: among those are good friends, Chinese take-out, and a Nana. Everyone should have a Nana. I'll just get that out, right upfront. And everyone should go with their Nana to the doctor and spend the whole day eating ice cream sundaes, getting lost on the way to the doctor's office, and making a sidebar trip to an outlet store for a new pair of Sunday shoes. This is but one important thing that makes a Nana so wonderful. To name another would seem like bragging. And that's just not...
He'd just always wanted a hearse, he said.
U.L. and I like to take Sunday drives, after dinner, each week. There's no rush to this ritual. We enjoy a long dinner with the rest of the family; we gossip, we share news (even the made-up News, an old habit we used to do when I was younger, that's found some way to stick, even to this day). What you do is, you mute the TV, you guess at what's being said by looking at the graphics, and then you tell your version. It was quite a shock, for instance, when I realized that Bush had actually been re-elected, and even greater still,...
The Dollar Bill Incentive, Or, Being Good For Nothing.
I was always an "A" student. I had a memory like an elephant. I never needed a curfew, and I went to church almost more than I went home. Yet, I was terribly, awkwardly naive. A bookworm straight out of the solid core of a ripe apple, I didn't read people as well as words, not until I was much older - and oh how I wish you could shut people up the way you do a book, one flick of your wrist and back they go on the shelf. But me, no, I never questioned authority, and let me tell you that came to backfire...
She could smell me, couldn't she?
I don't mean to brag, but my hometown has what appeared to me, yesterday, to be the cleanest and most organized landfill ever in the entire world. At least from inside the truck. I'd taken the day off and driven home because, ironically, I'd not managed to make it there on Sunday for Nana's cooking. I intended on staying an hour at most, a quick lunch, a few updates, etc. but instead, I found myself at the landfill. Here's how it happened. I was making myself a sandwich from porkchop leftovers. Nana and U.L. were under the carport cleaning. I have never...
You can go home again…it's just frustrating.
Thomas Wolfe wrote, "You can't go home again." (At least, I think he did). But you know what: you can. I do it every Sunday. Mainly because I don't want to miss Nana's cooking; it's in a class of its own...and I love going home, I do, but you want to know a secret: It's also quite often very aggravating. Why is that? Why is going home such a frustrating experience? Sometimes, I think, it's because as soon as I open that front door and step inside, I'll see that nothing has changed, and I'll feel like I haven't changed either. And I hate that feeling. Despite...
I prefer to shop alone. But let me tell you why.
Not so very long ago, I went shopping. It's usually a love/hate recreational blood sport, for me; when it happens, under the guise of shopping with others, I like to get in, get done, and get out. No holds barred, no time for stragglers, and definitely no time for Buckle employees. I'm not so keen on "group shopping", or "couples shopping." For whatever reason, truth be told, I prefer to shop alone. I can become rather delusional, in my personal shopping, not knowing when to say when. My previous attempts at shopping with others is probably a more normal cycle for a shopper: ...
Advertise With Us
