From Here to There and Back Again....

Blog #3: 11/5/2017

Growing up in a small town in the deep south where hoop skirts, antebellum homes, southern drawls and mint juleps abound, I learned some vital lessons such as a true southern girl NEVER uses dark meat in her chicken salad, because that's just plain "tacky".

We all knew the difference in a regular fork and a pickle fork and all the varieties of serving spoons like the jelly spoon. Oh! the horror of making the mistake of stirring one's coffee with the jelly spoon. And the china and silver patterns we chose before gettin' hitched was crucial to a long term marriage. The River Roads Recipes Cookbook and Helen Corbitt's Cookbook were main staples in the kitchen.

One thing I did notice when I went to friends' homes is that their mothers didn't have to write "Do not eat" on the outside of the box that her tulip bulbs were delivered in so "those boys" (meaning my three older brothers) wouldn't eat them.

When I left Mississippi to attend college in Texas, I still lived in a bubble. I was a ballet major, pledged Kappa Kappa Gamma, and was shocked to find out that bars in Texas actually close at 2am AND they didn't have "go cups". After changing my major more times than Carter has liver pills, my Daddy gave me an ultimatum...I had one more semester to figure it out or I was going to have to pay for it myself. OMG!!! WHAT?!!! I ran to my professor and told him what horrible thing my father had said. He laughed until I thought I was going to have to start CPR.

Anyway, I completed my degree in Kinesiology which wasn't as popular a field of study back in the day. I was the only little sorority girl wearing a hairbow the size of a compact car wrapping football player ankles. Most of my friends were education, fashion merchandising, interior design, and Home Economics (yes, it really did exist) majors. We graduated and most of us proceeded down the traditional path of marriage and pursuing the second oldest profession, motherhood.

I enjoy going home to Mississippi. I drive by my house I grew up in and remember games of kick the can, crawfishing in the ditch, riding my horses along the river (at the ripe old age of 9 when mamma would just send one of the dogs with me), riding bikes behind the "foggin' machine, catching lightenin' bugs in a jar and setting them loose in a dark bedroom, backyard football games, our annual formal Christmas Eve party ...

AND...then there was the day, the horse ran off pullling the boat and trailer through town flattening out mailboxes and street lights...or waking up to a metal sign swinging in our front yard that read "Uncle Sam wants YOU to join the US army" and then there is also the beautiful memory of "whatever happened to my billy goat?", my big brothers fightning over who was going to do the riding lawn mower and who was going to do the push mower only to see my little mamma, aka Miss Kitty, wappin' them with a broom to break up all that the fussin' ...aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...good times.

LOL! Oh, Miss Kitty!...I've recently quoted one of her sayins'..."Daaahlin', I'n just doin' the best I can." I still have a plaque of my mother's that hung in the laundry room. It reads, "Four things a woman should know...How to look like a girl, How to act like a lady, how to think like a man and how to work like a dog."

Quote of the day: "If ya' can't say anything nice about somebody, come sit by me."- Clairee Belcher/ Steel Magnolias :)