Hiraeth--A Repost

                                                                      

Hiraeth (heer-eyeth) is a wonderfully evocative Welch word. It's defined as a homesickness for a place to which you can never return; nostalgia or yearning for the lost places of your past. 

The picture above, taken from Google Earth (2007), was the home of my maternal grandparents. The size of the yard is distorted -- it looks absolutely huge -- but in a way that's appropriate because in my earliest memories, it was huge -- a great, green grassy empire that was all mine. 

When I was very young and my father was in that mysterious place known as ‘overseas,’ my mother and I lived for a time with my grandparents. And later, when my father came home from WWII, I continued to spend time here.  My family lived just around the corner but I spent a great deal of time at my grandparents' house -- I even had my own bedroom.

The new owners seem to have made very few changes -- at least when this picture was taken. I can look at the picture and remember so many different times -- much like Miss Birdie's hall of doors I posted about on Christmas Eve 2014. (HERE) But here the memories are all good. 

My earliest memory is of lying in a crib between the two big beds in the master bedroom upstairs while my grandfather in his bed held my left hand while my grandmother in hers held my right . . . and the fresh smell of pillows put to air in the sunny eastern windows . . .  and later when my younger brother and I were both there for the night, how we would sit on little stools in the big bedroom and eat apples while we listened to the Lone Ranger on the radio . . .

Above the garage was a bare room, in the late Forties and early Fifties home to a ping pong table and my grandmother's treadle sewing machine --  remodeled in the early Sixties into an apartment where I lived while John was stationed in Japan a year after we were married.

I rode my bike along that sidewalk when I was a gawky pre-teen and later my grandfather took my older son for walks there. I looked out those windows to the right of the front door and saw John (only a classmate and acquaintance at the time (8th grade or thereabouts) driving his go-cart on the sidewalk across the street.

And from the breakfast room windows to the left of the garage, I would watch for John when he came in his Model A to pick me up during our senior year of high school. And our wedding reception was held here and we ran down the front steps in a flurry of rice in 1963 -- just as my parents had in 1941. . .

Of course the memories of this beloved place have crept into my writing. A Christmas post a few years back about an incident when I was young (HERE) surely contributed to Miss Birdie's Christmas memory (though without the bitter part.) 

And while I do, indeed, have hiraeth for this lost paradise, I know that I'm where I belong and where I want to be. But I still love prowling that hall of memories. . .

Cracked Vessels-- A Miss Birdie Repost

                                                                  

Miss Birdie, Dor'thy , and the Cracked Vessels

 

Why, honey, how good to see you this fine spring morning. Look at that old pear tree, just a-busting with blooms. But this wind’s right chilly—we best go in where it’s warm. Git you a chair and we can have a nice visit.

That sign or whatever it is down at the church? Now what about that! Spray painted right there on the bridge PLEASE GOD FORGIVE. Now there’s a right quare story about that. I first saw it a few days back when Dor’thy was carrying me to the store. I asked her if she knowed how it come to be there and she said, ‘Well, it happened after the revival preaching.’

                             

‘Well,’ says I, ‘you uns have revivals several times a year, don’t you?’ and she said this time there was a new preacher from somewhere in Tennessee and he had brought the Word like one thing. She said that he was a lively somebody and he leaped and jumped about and flung his arms around and cried and sweated and got red-faced till she thought he was like to have a stroke.

‘But what about that sign? I asked her. ‘Did that preacher paint it?’

“Now, Birdie,’ says she, ‘I’m getting to that. The preacher’s text was something about how we are all sinners--cracked vessels, standing in need of redemption, and how our only hope is to ask the Lord’s forgiveness and mercy. And then he went on to tell of the fiery lake and everlasting torment waiting for them as weren’t saved.

‘By the time he was near done, most all of the church was crying and sweating and calling out to the Lord for mercy. And when church was over, we all went home, and I was the last one to leave because it was my month to tidy up and turn off lights and such. They wasn’t a soul left when I come out and I know those words weren’t painted then.’

 ‘But Dor’thy-’

‘Let me tell it, Birdie. I come back to the church early the next morning to sweep and run a mop and there were those words. So someone had come in the night and done them. I did my work, wondering all the time who would have done such. And when I got back home, I got on the phone.’

                                                             

Dor’thy do go on, don’t she? But she was like a dog worrying a bone, trying to figure who it was wrote them words. She said it was because that person likely needed prayers and she would do her best in that line but, betwixt you and me, honey, Dor’thy’s a right quizzy somebody. She should have been one of them detectives on the TV.

Now the first person she called was Rhody Payne who said that she thought Hensley Phillips probably done it for he had looked right sick during the preaching, and everyone knows he’s been carrying on with that Roberts woman and his poor wife pretending ain’t nothing the matter.

But then, later on, Dor’thy got a call from Rhody’s sister who said she reckoned it was one of them Burtons for the spray- painted words was the same color as the spray-painted name on the Burton’s mailbox. And the Lord knows, them Burtons is cracked vessels, ever last one of them—cock-fighting and worse. But ain’t none of them ever set foot in the church, said Dorothy, so how would they have known about the preaching.

Ay, law, honey, folks is bad to gossip, ain’t they. By the time the day was out, most every woman in the church had called Dor’thy to say who it was they thought had painted the words. Everyone of them was sure it was a man, though Dor’thy said when Leota called, Dor’thy could hear Hobart in the background hollering that it was likely Almira for everyone knowed about her. But Leota reminded him that Almira hadn’t been in church that evening and that shut him up right quick.

By the time the week was out, Dor’thy weren’t no nearer to finding out the truth of thing. What she had found out, she told me, was that the church was plumb full of cracked vessels, every one of them standing in the need of prayer.

‘And Birdie, honey,’ she told me, ‘I reckon I’m one too—just a nosy old woman who could have prayed for that sinner ‘thout having to know their name. Now it looks like I got most the whole church to pray for. I'll likely have to give up watching my story, it's gonna take so much time.'

                                                        

Dent de Lion (repost)

  

Is it a weed or a wildflower? Dandelions are showing their cheerful sunny faces all over our farm just now.

Its jagged edged leaves, which account for the name “Tooth of the Lion,” pop up in gardens and lawns everywhere. Perfectionists deplore the dandelion but herbalists  value its diuretic powers. (An old name for dandelion was ‘Piss-a-beds.') 

In earlier times, the young leaves were a welcome Spring addition to the diet as a salad (or 'sallet' in the old time speech)or briefly sautéed with bacon and seasoned with a little vinegar.

And, of course, there's dandelion wine. It sounded so magical-- all summer in a bottle--in the Ray Bradbury tale of the same name but was truly foul in my one (failed) attempt at making it years ago.

Have any of you ever tasted -- or made dandelion wine?

 

Miss Birdie's Christmas Memories--repost from 2014

 

Why, how proud I am to see you here on Christmas Eve! Come on in and get you a chair.

Oh, my, is this some of your cranberry bread? I’ll have it for breakfast tomorrow before Bernice’s boy comes after me – I’ll be eating Christmas dinner with them like I always do.

You like my little tree? Don’t it smell like the woods? It ain't but a little cedar that sprung up in the old pasture over yon –they ain't not good for much but they do make a nice Christmas tree. Them little bows is from ribbons I saved from Christmases back of this and I made the paper chain with color pages out of magazines. That feller at the dumpsters is good to save me magazines with lots of bright pictures.  How my Cletus used to love making them chains – one year he made one so long that we looped it round the tree and just kept going all round the room.

No, we didn’t have Christmas trees when I was growing up. My mama was a widder and she didn’t have the money nor the spirit to make anything much of Christmas time. And she had quit going to church when my daddy was kilt. So Christmas was mostly just another day – except . . .

Except this one time I remember – back when my Granny Beck had first come to live with us. I was the least un and all the others had married and moved off. So it was just the three of us, Granny Beck and Mama, and me. My granny, oh, she was the sweetest thing – she was crippled bad with arthuritis and couldn’t hardly walk but me and her was best friends. She told me stories of all kinds – Cherokee stories about the Yunwi Tsundi – that’s the Little People in the woods-

Oh, yes, Granny Beck’s mama was full blood Cherokee. And her mama’s daddy, he had told my granny all manner of Cherokee tales when she was little. She passed them on to me, alongst with Bible stories like David and Goliath and old Noah and his ark. And stories about Jack the Giant Killer and his rascally ways.  She told me about Santy Claus and his reindeer too and Joseph and Mary and Baby Jesus in the stable.  Ay, law, her and me had us a time . . .

But this one Christmas Eve, she told me that iffen I was to go out to the barn at midnight, I’d find the old cow and the mule kneeling because the critters in that stable long ago had kneeled to do honor to the baby Jesus.

Why, yes, I did go and look. Me and Granny Beck shared a room and she had told me the story and promised to wake me when it was near midnight. My mama was hard asleep – she took some medicine in those days that was so strong she’d sometimes fall asleep right at the table. She didn’t hold with stories and Granny always waited till Mama was somewheres else or sound asleep one to go to story-telling.

 Law, I remember it as good as if it was yesterday –  slipping out the door and hurrying to the barn in naught but my night shift and Granny Beck’s shawl. There weren’t no snow but the ground was froze hard and my breath was like smoke wreathed around my head. They had been a hard frost and it seemed like I could hear little ringing sounds all round. And the sky, oh the sky! The sky was just as clear and the stars – law, how bright they were – like great golden lamps shining down from Heaven. You don’t see skies like that no more along of all them old security lights folks put up.

 But I was telling you about the barn. It was some warmer in there and the smell of the critters and their manure seemed to make it even warmer and homely-like. It was dark as could be but I had brought a little battery lantern we had and when I opened the stall door and mashed the button, the first thing I saw was the bright gold of the hay in the manger and for a minute . . . now you’ll laugh at me . . . for a minute I thought I saw a little hand waving and I was just as sure as anything that it was Baby Jesus.

Just like Granny Beck had said, old Poll the cow and old Nell the mule was kneeling down and I stood there all amazed, kindly like them shepherds Granny Beck had told me of, the ones the great shining angel came down and spoke to.

Of course, I was just a young un and so ready to believe . . . I almost didn’t go forward, thinking that was I to turn off the lantern and go back to the house, Baby Jesus would still be there and I could hold that memory in my heart forever, rather than finding out it was a trick of the light or some such.

But at last I had to look. I held my breath and crept forward betwixt the cow and the mule to look in the manger. . . 

Let me wipe off my glasses on my apron – they’ve got fogged up somehow. . . 
You get to be my age, honey, and so much that you loved is gone . . . but for the memories. I picture it like walking down a long hallway and they's doors on both sides. I can go down a ways and find Cletus, cutting a shine over some new playtoy, or I can go back a mite farther and find Luther and me on a certain snowy night  . . .

Course, there's some doors I don't never open -- those lead to the bad memories -- but this one about my Christmas with Granny Beck is mostly all good. 

So this was the way of it. I tiptoed up to the manger and shone my battery lantern on the hay, dreading to find that what I’d thought was Baby Jesus a-waving at me was a possum or some other varmint. And lo and behold, when I got close enough to see right into the hay, I like to fell down on that hard clay floor.

There, laying in the hay, just like Baby Jesus, was a baby doll with one arm raised up. I just stood there staring, my mouth hanging open and the tears starting to come.

You see, I hadn’t never had a real doll – it was hard times, like I said, and there weren’t no money for play toys. I had made dollies out of old corn cobs that I wrapped in leaves for blankets but oh! how I had always wished I could have a real doll. And here one was, just a-waving at me.

Well, honey, I snatched that thing up and took off running for the house to show Granny Beck. I was so stirred up that I forgot to be quiet but it didn’t matter – Mama was in her bed and snoring like one thing. In the little back room, Granny Beck was setting up against her pillow, just waiting for me.

 I went straight to her. ‘Granny Beck,’ I whispered, ‘Poll and Nell was kneeling down, just like you said.’

‘I knowed they would be,’ she whispered back at me. ‘Crawl in under the covers with me, honey; you must be most froze to death.’

I crawled in beside her and showed her the baby doll.

‘And looky what was in the manger – the prettiest baby doll you ever did see – just like the ones in the wish book. Do you reckon Santy Claus could of left it for me? He ain’t never come here afore . . .’

Granny Beck put her arm around me and hugged me close. ‘Why, child,’ says she, ‘I’m as sure of it as anything . . .’

Now as I grew older, I begun to wonder how that baby doll got there. I knowed for certain it weren’t my mama’s doing and, even if somehow she had made out to order that doll, Granny Beck weren’t able to walk as far as the barn. I asked her about it a few years later -- not long before she passed away but she just said she didn’t know a thing about it. And I reckon it suits me to leave it at that.

No, I don’t have that doll anymore. I kept it hidden for a time but one day Mama found it when she was rummaging around after some old clothes. She took on something awful, saying I must have stole it. . . .  I tried to tell her how I found it but she called me a liar and a thief and threw my baby doll in the fire. I cried to see it swivel up and turn to ash. . .

Oh, honey, now don’t you cry too. I shouldn’t of told you that last part. But what you got to see is that I still have what matters . . .

I still have the memory of that night – the way the stars hung so low, the sparkle of the frost on the dead grass and the bare tree limbs, the smell of that barn stall, the sound of the critters breathing, and the wonder and the magic of it all. 

And I can still feel Granny Beck’s arm around me and how nice it felt to lay there warm beside her with my baby doll from Santa . . . ain’t no one can take that from me.

Cletus and the Baby Jesus--a re-post

                             I'd meant to have a new Birdie story, but things got hectic . . . Anyway, this is one of her favorites.         

Well what about that! That there's the old place my Cletus called the Baby Jesus house.  . . and now the vines has near took it. Sad to see but hit weren't much account back then and that was nigh on fifty years ago.

Iffen you don't care, just stop here a minute. Ain't likely no one'll come along. This is a lonely place . . . it always was. Which I reckon is how come that girl to hide herself there. Such a pretty thing she was . . . 

Yeah, boy, there's a story goes with it. Onliest thing is, it don't rightly have what you could call an ending. But I'll tell you the way of it.

Back when me and Luther went to church pretty regular, come this one Christmas when Cletus wanted to be in the Christmas play. They always let the young uns act out the Christmas story with the preacher reading the words. Now you know that Cletus was kindly simple -- the sweetest young un that ever lived but he couldn't learn to read nor to count much beyond five. 

Howsomever, he loved the Christmas story and wanted so bad to be in the play. He was going on thirteen then and big for his age, but Luther and I studied on it and figgered that if they  would let him be the second wise man, with one ahead for him to follow and one behind to whisper at him if he was going wrong, why then he had ought to be able to get through the play without no trouble.

Myrtle Plemmons, who was the lady who ran the play, was a sweet somebody and she said she would be proud to have Cletus be a wise man and she found him a robe to wear and some shiny cloth to wrap around his head like a foreigner.  They had a practice or two the day before the play and once Cletus learned that he shouldn't talk while he was being a wise man, she said he would do just fine.

Oh, he was the happiest thing. And me and Luther was fit to bust when the day of the play come. We was sitting in our places just waiting to see our boy.

 Debbie Davis and Travis Goforth was at the front of the church kneeling by the manger where they had a doll baby all wrapped up like the Baby Jesus. The angels had come and sung their piece and the shepherds had straggled in with Dayton's white dog on a leash for a sheep. And then it was time for the Wise Men.

Myrtle had rigged a big gold-painted star hanging from a shower curtain ring on a piece of wire stretched the length of the church from back to front and she had tied some of that invisible fishing line to the star so it could be pulled along for the Wise Men to follow. 

Harley Freeman was crouched behind the piano tugging on that line while his mama was playing "We Three Kings of Orient Are" and we all looked up and there came that star, bouncing along overhead and then, through the door came the three boys with Cletus in the middle grinning like one thing. His head was tilted back, and he didn't take his eyes off that star till they got to where the Baby Jesus was and he ran into the boy in front of him. 

Then the preacher told how the wise men gave the Baby their gifts. The first boy had a fist-sized rock that had been spray-painted gold and he set it beside the manger. Cletus had a blue jar with a gold ribbon on it and he stepped up to the manger and set it down just like the other boy had.  Luther reached over and squeezed my hand and was about to whisper something when Cletus heisted up his robe and reached in his back pocket and pulled out a hickory slingshot he'd made. 

"This is for you too, Baby Jesus," he said, and laid it in the manger.

Well, the play went on and didn't no one fault Cletus for speaking out. As a matter of fact, preacher called him a good boy for giving the Baby something of his own. And me and Luther both had to wipe our eyes when preacher spoke those words.

                                                              

No, I ain't forgot the story about this house. I was just trying to show you how it come about.

Well. The church play was several days before Christmas and for the next week, Cletus would dress up in an old overcoat of Luther's and wrap a towel around his head and play wise man, walking solemn up and down the yard carrying a flower pot before him.

It was a few days past Christmas and one evening after supper that we missed him. He had et his supper, still in his wise man duds, and then he had gone outside -- to the necessary house was what we figgered. But when ten minutes or so went by and he didn't come back, Luther went to look for him.

Pretty quick, here comes Luther. "Miss Birdie," says he. "Roy Meadows just passed by and said he seen the boy headed up the Worley holler. I'm going to take the truck and go after that rascal; it's nigh dark and getting colder every minute."

Well, I grabbed my coat and went with Luther, not wanting to have to set back at the house, alone and worrying. 

It was one of them clear winter nights, with the sun fading in the west and the eastern sky all pink and lavender just above the mountains and turning to deep blue and purple like velvet beyond that. The big old evening star was hanging there, bright as can be and we could see it clear as we traveled up this very road.

Our truck bumped along slow, with us looking hard for any sign of our boy. Every so often Luther would stop, and we'd call out, "Cletus, Clee-tus," but never a sound did we hear.

And then we came to this same house and saw a light inside. Luther stopped the truck and I leaned out my window and hollered for Cletus.  There weren't no answer but all of a sudden the house door swung open and a young woman was standing there. 

"Your boy's in here with the baby," she called, and smiled the sweetest smile I ever did see. "I'll tell him you've come after him."

Well, I have always been of a curious nature, and I wanted to get a closer look for there hadn't been no word of any new folks moving in. And I have always loved babies. So I was out of the truck and hopping up onto the porch and through that door before Luther could say a word.

She was standing in the doorway with a blue shawl over her nightgown and as she stood to one side, I stepped into the room. And there was my boy setting on the floor beside an old chest of drawers. The bottom drawer was pulled out and I could see the baby, all wrapped up in flannel blankets and holding on hard to Cletus's finger.  

There was an old wood stove giving off a good warmth, a table and a couple of mule back chairs, and a pallet of faded quilts on the floor next to the stove. The place was clean enough but so bare . . . Still and all, there was a sweet, homely smell about it and the crackle of the flames took away the lonely feel. I found myself thinking how welcome any shelter is when the weather is bad and feeling awful sorry for them as has none. 

I said who I was and thanked the girl for letting my boy in. All the while I was looking around for any sight of her husband but seeing none, I up and asked," Honey, are you here all alone?"

"No ma'am," says she, looking toward the babe, "not alone no more." And she smiled that smile again and I begun to wonder if she was like Cletus -- a little simple. 

The wood stove was putting off a world of heat and a kettle that she had atop it was beginning to steam to where my glasses got all fogged up. I remember thinking they must have been some kind of herbs in the water because the little room was filled with a sweet heavy smell that made me kindly swimmie-headed. 

I pulled off my glasses to wipe them on my apron -- for I had come off in such a hurry that I still had it on-- and suddenly it seemed to me that the room was full of the strangest folks and that they was all singing . . .

Just then Luther honked the horn. I put my glasses back on and I told Cletus his daddy was waiting and we would have to go. He pulled his finger loose from the baby and reached out and touched the baby's cheek, just as gentle. . .

The horn sounded again and I took Cletus by the hand. "We got to be going, Miz . . ." 

"My name is Miriam," she says, "it was nice to see you." And she opened the door to let us out. 

The cold air cleared my head some and at the sound of the door closing I wondered what it was had come over me back in the house. Cletus was loping towards the truck, and I hurried to get in.

"I followed the star," he was telling Luther. "I followed the star and found Baby Jesus."

Luther just reached over and patted his knee. "Next time, son, you best tell us before you leave." 

I had all but forgot the quare spell I'd taken in the house and was busy with thoughts of coming back the next day to visit Miriam, to see was there aught we could do for her. I figgered her for a girl who'd gotten in the family way and maybe was afraid for her folks to know.

But as Luther got the truck turned around, I looked back at the house and it was all aglow.                                                         

"Luther!" says I, grabbing his arm, "look at the house!"                                                     

"What about it, Miss Birdie? There ain't much to see, dark as it is."

I rubbed my eyes and looked again. The house was as dark as the inside of a hat. I shook my head and told myself that I'd been seeing things and decided not to say aught to Luther about it.

Oh, yes, I went back the next day. I took Cletus with me and a big basket of baby things I'd saved, thinking to give them to Miriam. We pulled up in the yard but there weren't no smoke coming out the chimney. My heart sank, worrying that something had befallen that poor girl, and me and Cletus hurried to the door.

It swung open when I rapped on it and I could see that they was gone. Everything was the same -- the table and chairs, the pallet, and the open drawer. I felt of the wood stove, but it was cold. So was the kettle but there was still a faint sweet scent in the air.

Cletus went right to the drawer where the baby had been. But there weren't no baby nor no blankets. Just a homemade hickory slingshot laying there. 

"I reckon he wanted me to have it back," Cletus said and he stuffed it in his pocket.

Naw, like I said, the story don't have no ending. I asked around but there weren't no one knew a thing about any girl named Miriam nor about no one living in that house. I never did tell Luther any more than that she was gone.

But I can remember that moment when I had my glasses off and saw things that wasn't there. And I think about that Bible verse about seeing through a glass darkly . . .

                                                                            

Snow Cream -- A Slightly Wistful Repost

We haven't had snow like this this winter and, while I'm not complaining, I'd sure like to make some snow cream ... this was originally posted on February 5, 2009.

 

Yesterday was a beautiful snowy day and at some point in the afternoon I remembered that Bo Parker had mentioned snow cream in one of his emails to me. I haven't made it it years, not since my boys were young, and, as I grew up in Florida, snow cream was definitely not a family tradition. But I still remember reading about the Bobbsey Twins making it and how magical it sounded.

And yesterday's snow was especially lovely, supremely dry and fluffy. I went out around four and scooped up a bowlful then rushed back to the kitchen and sprinkled a little sugar on it along with a dollop or so of vanilla . . .

. . . then stirred in half and half till it began to seem like ice cream. John and I shared the bowl and it was amazing! Pure and simple and very, very cold. So good, in fact, that after supper I made more.

Thanks, Bo! And thanks to the Bobbsey twins.

Always Use a Bag - Repost

I'm fascinated by the beauty of many natural things -- old bones, shells, rocks -- and shed snakeskins. It's amazing to me how a six foot plus blacksnake can slip out of his old skin so neatly, leaving behind a perfect ghostly image of himself down to the lenses that covered his eyes.

There's been ample opportunity to study these shed skins -- we have one blacksnake who leaves a skin in our greenhouse several times a year while others twine their discarded finery into the crevices of our rock walls.

Blacksnakes are mostly welcome around our place -- they eat rats and mice and are said to deter copperheads. Unfortunately, they also eat baby birds and on occasion, one has taken up residence in our chicken house, swallowing the eggs one after another. When this happens, I try to catch the snake, put him in a bag, and take him for a ride around the mountain to release him in a wooded area.

I didn't always use a bag. It just didn't occur to me. But came the fateful day when I had hold of a great large snake lumpy with just-swallowed eggs. I handed him to my 15 year old son to hold while I drove the truck to the accustomed snake release area a few miles away.

We hadn't even gotten down to our mailbox before the snake began to poop. (Somehow, I'd never considered this possibility.) It was pasty and yellow and smelled (no surprise here) like rotten eggs. Appalled, my son let go of the snake's body but managed to hang on to his neck. "Arrrgh!" my son shouted. "Mum! Look what your snake is doing!"

And now the snake was regurgitating the last egg he'd eaten. I stopped the truck. "Just put him out here," I said, trying to sound really calm.

Easier said than done. My son had control of half of the snake -- the head end. But the tail end had slithered under the truck seat and was firmly wrapped around the jack.

By the time I'd gotten the indignant snake loose, the completely indignant son mollified, and the interior of the truck cleaned out, I'd learned a lesson.

Always use a bag.

 

This is a snake, lumpy with something he's just eaten -- probably mice. and this is a re-post -- there were no comments on its first outing three years ago -- maybe everyone was just grossed out.

Silver Threads

This seemed an appropriate re-post from two years ago.
 

One of my favorite emails about my books was from a woman who said, "Elizabeth makes me want to quit dyeing my hair and be who I am."

Back in high school I had dyed hair-- my mother's attempt to make me more glamorous -- just to 'brighten up' my rather ordinary dark brown hair. Then I got into it -- in college I was various shades of strawberry blonde; when I got married, I could be fairly, if somewhat romantically, described as 'raven-tressed.' 

Then I got over it. What had been fun became tedious. Keeping up with roots showing was a real drag. So I got back in touch with my inner brown-haired girl just in time to watch her begin to go gray. (We gray earlier in my family -- except for my mother who became ash blonde.)

The encroaching white hairs never bothered me -- and for quite a while they were limited to a streak or two at my temples. By the time I first heard someone describe my hair as salt-and-pepper, I was thirty years old, the mother of a toddler, and teaching full time with not a spare minute to be looking in mirrors. 

And then I was moving to a farm and milking a cow twice a day and having another baby and raising a garden and still not looking in mirrors. 

Somehow, by the time I'd taught both sons to drive on our narrow, winding, guardrailless mountain roads, my hair'd become mostly white. Imagine that!

Years ago a visiting friend told me that she'd like to quit dyeing her hair but in her job, she needed to look young. This puzzled me -- but I'd been out of the work force so long that I didn't argue. 

Then I saw this article in the NYT about a best-seller How Not to Look Old -- aimed at women over 40 worried about "professional obsolescence and economic vulnerability."

Oy! Why should looking young matter to a professional (unless you're in show biz or a hooker, maybe). Shouldn't it be about how well you do the job; not whether you still look like you're capable of bearing children? And why is it more acceptable for men to age? And no one expects them to wear lipstick.

There's nothing wrong with dyeing your hair and wearing makeup if you enjoy it -- but there shouldn't be anything wrong with not doing so ....

Here's the link to the NYT article -- and the comments are worth reading too, especially number ten, from the man at Attica State Correctional Facility.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/24/fashion/24skin.html?em&ex=1201410000&en=06b6899885b3f203&ei=5087%0A

Moonshine Revisited

A re-post from '08. It may be the continuing snow that has me thinking of strong drink...

I wouldn't know, myself, where to find moonshine for sale but thanks to the proverbial 'friend of a friend,' we were given a jar a few months ago. It came from Tennessee and, who knows, maybe even from Pop Corn (see Thursday's post) himself. Those are sliced peaches in the jar and I'm told this is a fairly common practice -- using fresh fruit of various kinds to flavor and color the white liquor.

We've been given jars of 'white' before this -- always from friends who swear they know the origin of the stuff and can vouch for its safety. We keep it around to offer a 'sup' to visiting flatlanders who are curious about this infamous local product. (It tastes a lot like tequila to me -- not bad but not something I'm crazy about.)

In the old days, the local folks didn't go to making whiskey out of a desire to break the law or to get drunk. It was a simple matter of economics. If you live in a remote mountain cove and your main crop is field corn, how will you make more money -- hauling bushel after bushel of dried corn down the mountain and to market to sell for animal feed or cornmeal -- or do you turn that same corn into distilled whiskey, using the knowledge and skills your ancestors brought over from Scotland and Ireland?

Whiskey was easier to haul, more valuable, and it kept well. One of the earliest 'value added' products.

Of course, with taxation, Prohibition, and dry counties, things changed and moonshining turned dangerous. And then, as the bootleggers used fast cars to transport their illegal cargo over twisting mountain roads (see Thunder Road with Robert Mitchum), it all led to NASCAR.

Aye, law.

I have no idea what folks pay for white lightning but I suspect it's not cheap. I've heard tell of the tour buses of country music stars lined up at one particular bootlegger's home and and the quart jars being loaded on by the case.

It's a nostalgia thing, I suspect.

A Wilkes County copper moonshine still
Courtesy of Applachian Cultural Museum
Applachian State University
Boone, North Carolina

For more information on moonshine, go here

Elizabeth's View

"The three big windows framed what could have been a delicate Japanese ink drawing -- all muted colors and simple lines, with hazy mountaintops poking through the low-lying fog like islands in a pale gray sea of mist." (from Art's Blood, p.411)

Our eastern view -- always changing, always gorgeous. In the morning the mist rises up from the river to produce lovely ephemeral scenes.

Being fortunate enough to live where I do, how could I not write about it? Elizabeth's house and farm are based on our house and farm -- 'write what you know,' they often say. And I have enough to remember already, with all these characters and pasts I've created; it's comforting to have to remember only (so far) that Elizabeth's house differs from ours in just two particulars. For one thing, Elizabeth has a mirror by her kitchen door (Signs in the Blood, p. 11).

Hey, it was my first book and I hadn't known that it's considered cliched and amateurish to describe a character by having him or her look in a mirror. Sorry. The other difference is that Elizabeth's sofas are still denim-covered whereas our denim-covered sofas were trashed by the dogs and have been replaced by leather. But then we have six dogs while Elizabeth, a saner woman than I, has only three.

This is a re-post from January 7, 2008.  Alas, I have only three dogs now.