Although you could never set your clock by him, the farmer has a thing for clock ownership. A psychologist would probably have a heyday with my husband: a collector of clocks who is oblivious to time.
No sooner did we get married than the farmer said we needed a tick tock. So his parents gave us an antique rooster head clock that may have been a kickback to a mule trade. The clock didn’t run and looked as though the mule had stepped it on. My Daddy, who had taken a liking to the farmer, repaired the clock for us.
For several years the clock perched safely on top of our piano. Then our boys learned to climb the piano, because like Mt. Everest, “it was there.” And the clock threatened to become an endangered species.
For the next 32 years, the clock survived 4 boys and 4 moves: from the trailer to the farmhouse, into town, and back to the country. It still holds the place of honor on the mantle over the fireplace. We go to sleep and wake up to its striking and ticking – its pendulum ticking away our very lives.
You can see why this rooster head is our primary clock. But over the years we have added others.
My passion is cuckoo clocks. I reckon this goes back to memories of the small cuckoo clock my Grandma had acquired as a Smoky Mountain souvenir. After 25 years of wishing for a cuckoo clock to call my own, one day while in the home of a clock collector, I bought an 8-day cuckoo.
“We need a backup,” I rationalized, “in case the rooster head goes out on us.” So the farmer dutifully hung the cuckoo clock on the wall, balanced it, and pulled the weights to get it started.
It also goes tick tock, and cuckoos on the quarter, half, three quarters, and full hour.
But that’s not all. Several years ago, a friend and antique collector said she had a clock we ought to buy. “This clock was on the mantle the day some of your family got ax-murdered in Fallston,” our friend explained. “I’ve always known that by rights y’all should have this historic clock.” She even threw in the newspaper clippings from the 1916 event.
The farmer jumped at the chance to buy it. Thank goodness clocks can’t talk. But this one does faithfully strike the hour and half-hour and ticks off the minutes in between.
While home for Easter, our third son asked, “How do you and Daddy stand it -- these clocks ticking and striking at all hours of the day and night? The racket really gets on my nerves. Can’t you use the clock on the microwave instead?”
When I mentioned this to the farmer, he said, “Oh, Spencer’s an engineer, so just wait till all three clocks strike midnight at the same time. That will really impress him.”
Certainly it’s an epiphany, a miracle. But Spencer was not impressed.
“I already gave you and Daddy what you need: an electric clock with giant, lighted numbers. It’s quiet, efficient, and accurate.”
But how do you explain to a twentysomething that, once you’ve gotten used to the sound of real tick tocks, electric and digital clocks seem so, well, untimely?
The Bible has some scary teachings. “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,” is straight out of the Kings James and is right on the money.
As a Sunday School teacher, I am apt to quote this verse on a Sunday morning.
Confessionally speaking, this verse also applies to Saturday mornings, the morning when I set my alarm clock for 4 AM. Why so early? It’s off to the yard sales to search for treasures.
I had considered giving up yard sales for Lent. Then I remembered, with tremendous relief, that being Baptist means not having to do Lent.
How do you know if you, too, might be a yard sale junkie? Answer these questions truthfully: Do you brave the elements to go to winter yard sales? Do you count the days until spring because of the return of yard sales? Do you study the newspaper and list the advertised yard sales in order of their likely success? Do you go to the Internet and map out the neighborhoods? Do you consider the shortest distance between two points the distance between 2 yard sales? Do you lie to your spouse or significant other about how many yard sales you hit in a single Saturday? Do you skip work to go to Friday yard sales? Have you ever bought something at a yard sale that you would not want your friends to see you buying? Have you ever called in sick to a Saturday event so that you could go yard-saleing? Do you have yard sale bargains stuffed under your bed?
If you have more “yes” answers than “no” answers, you need either help or more yard sales to go to. And face it, you will soon need a bigger storage building and/or garage. There are verses in the Bible about bigger barns, but we won’t go there.
Personally speaking, I’d assumed I was in control of these yard sale impulses.
Then my sister e-mailed, saying she was driving to Mama’s for the weekend. Would I drive over as well, she asked? “We can play Scrabble Friday night and Saturday morning,” she tempted. “And we can visit Mama and enjoy her home cooking.”
The farmer said, “Go. You need to get away. You need a break. You need to see your family.”
Then it hit me: you’ll have to scratch the yard sales this weekend. This weekend – the first really warm one of the season, with over 43 sales listed in the paper. The tension mounted; sleep would not come. Should I cancel the visit and the Scrabble games?
In the end, family duty won out. “Maybe I can sneak away to a yard sale in Spencer on Saturday morning,” I rationalized. “I could sneak out of the house at 5 AM and be back in time for breakfast and Scrabble and no one would be the wiser.”
Two weekends ago I landed a 2001 Thesaurus, hardback edition, for $1 at a yard sale. It says that synonyms for “lunatic” include “peabrain” or “cabbagehead” or “basket case.” Which may be where I’m headed, if I can’t get a handle on buying more baskets, even if they are just “4 for a dollar.”
It all seemed such innocent fun when I decided to play hooky from work. The farmer had taken a week’s vacation so he could “doll the place up.” “Don’t you worry,” he said, “you’ll like what I’m doing around the house.”
Easter week, there I was trapped in the office, imagining the farmer merrily at work planting a bush, perking a pot of coffee, going “upstreet,” catnapping, planting another bush, pouring out the old coffee and starting all over again.
Unable to resist spring fever, by 3 PM, I plotted how to sneak out the office’s back door. Sneaking out is a challenge when you are having a bad hair day in a chartreuse suede skirt, black hose, and jangling bracelets.
“You deserve a mental health day,” I rationalized while sailing home.
Before hitting the back door, I could smell the coffee, but the farmer/gardener was nowhere to be found. “Probably out checking to see who’s gotten the most rain in his rain gauge,” I reckoned. Secretly I was glad he was gone. That meant I could bolt for the woods and choose my own project. I’d been wishing Someone would haul the rotten limbs and fence posts out of the woods at the edge of the pasture.
But Some of us have diametrically opposed philosophies when it comes to the woods. The farmer says that if a tree falls in the woods, be quiet and let Mother Nature take her course. I say if a tree falls in the woods, do something!
Feeling truant but not guilty, I traded the chartreuse suede for Tough Man gloves and a long-sleeved shirt. Since you can never tell about copperheads, I put on thick socks and heavy sneakers.
The bigger danger, however, turned out not to be the Serpent but the rusty barbed wire. With my gloved hands, I twisted wire after rusty wire off the rotting fence posts. By nightfall I had reached my personal goal: the old fence was down, and I had hauled out enough trees for a two-day bonfire.
I also had two worries: how to explain the scratches criss crossing my arms and how to recognize the symptoms of tetanus.
At suppertime, the farmer sauntered down to the woods and burst my bubble. He said, “Shucks, it takes more than a few trees to impress me. Why, I could have taken a chain saw, my front end loader, the dump truck, a winch, and a tank of diesel fuel and cleaned the woods in no time flat.”
Life is not fair. If the spirit moves him, he has $48,000 worth of equipment to tackle any outdoor project. I, on the other hand, have second hand gloves, 55-year-old muscles, and stubbornness.
One week later, these middle-age muscles are about to stop twitching. But the itching may last forever. I battled barbed wire and won. I pulled medium size rotten pine trees out of the ground. But when I challenged the poison oak, the poison oak won. Hands down. Up one side and down the other. If I could raise my arms, I would surrender.
It’s a jungle out here, all right. And Mother Nature, not Mother Couch Potato, rules.
Next time I play hooky, I’m going where normal working women go: the grocery store.
When a business associate from Charlotte, by way of New England, asked about driving over from the office to see our new house, I nearly fell into a Southern swoon. He had taken me up on “Y’all come!”
“Maybe I can pick up a few ideas from your new home,” he said, explaining that he and his wife are building a French country home on a golf course.
As we drove over to Hot Water Town, I wondered what a Northern swoon might be like. I was certain my associate had never seen the likes of Big Red, our 1965 International dump truck; and Big Red would be parked on the premises, possibly in the front yard. At least Big Red has “Poughkeepsie, NY” painted in faded letters on one of the doors.
“My wife would like to live on a horse farm, too,” he observed as we drove over. Could this associate envision that the pair of dapple-gray horses in the pasture around our old dairy barn really would look classy when the farmer washes Cleveland County’s red clay off of them with Wisk?
I was scared stiff that the billy goat would bolt from the pasture. My associate has a lawn service: I have a farmer and a billy goat.
As we rounded the curve, you could see our dairy barn with its grain bins and falling-down tool shed. “This,” I explained, “is my husband’s ‘headquarters.’”
“Headquarters?” my associate asked. “Headquarters for what sort of endeavor?” If you have to ask, you don’t need to know, I thought. But the Southern magnolia in me drawled, “Oh, it’s the headquarters for his carriage business.” I decided not to add it was also the headquarters for catfish fries, hog killings, deer dressings, ad infinitum.
Next door is our house, a Southern Living cottage to which we have added our own touches. Like Cracker Barrel’s green plastic frog by the back door that croaks when company arrives. “The farmer thought it was cuter than a bedbug,” I explained.
Inside there were the ladybugs, crawling by the 100s over our windows. There was nothing to do but hope my associate was also a tree hugger. I pointed out that, “according to Roberta Wilson, garden columnist for the Shelby Star, these ladybugs are an endangered species, worthy of preservation.”
Changing the subject, I pointed to the view of the pasture. That’s when I noticed it – what’s left of the original outhouse. The outhouse is gone, but the concrete facility is a permanent sign that we might be rednecks. I tried to pass it off as a new-fangled plant container, making a mental note to dynamite the relic one day when the farmer is down at “headquarters.”
My associate liked the living room, observing that theirs would be similar but with 3 strategically placed chandeliers from up North. Our lighting consists of 3 lamps: one from Ebay, Aunt Louise, and a gift shop in Saluda, home to Coon Dog Day.
As a grand finale, we went upstairs. Upstairs: Miles’ bedroom. Decorated with 16 caps hanging from the bedposts, symmetrically arranged 4 per bedpost.
My associate enjoyed the tour, saying it was very “authentic.”
I am not familiar with Northernspeak, but I think this means we won’t be in Southern Living any time soon.
You know the routine: first the ACC tournament, then John Deere Day, and then the NCAA Final Four. And, while we’re inside watching tall guys shoot hoops, Mother Nature is outside, refurbishing our world.
You would think that, after a half a century of living, the coming of spring could become old hat. Taking a quick glance out the back window the other morning, I marveled not only at the beauty of spring but at its perennial power to surprise us. Oh, the glory of Spring! It’s time to step outside, breathe deeply, and divide the monkey grass.
I’m on the horns of a dilemma. I work for a multicultural company; i. e., not everyone is a Baptist. With no time off at Easter, you have to work the transformation of your life into everything else.
Even Easter meals are a challenge. Last week, I panicked, fearing the annual run on ham. So I ate a quick apple for lunch, using my lunch hour to make a grocery run for Easter lunch.
I hate to burst your bubble, but the truth about holiday meals is not found on the covers of slick magazines on the grocery checkout aisle. If you want to know the truth about holiday meals, observe grocery shoppers.
Without a list, without forethought, without even coupons, I sailed through the store, grabbing eggs, congealed salad ingredients, and a ham. I envisioned the pantry shelves back home, wondering if it was time to restock celery seed and mayonnaise for Easter’s potato salad. Fifteen minutes later, I hid the groceries in the car’s trunk, praying that the frozen strawberries would not melt all over the recycling before I could get home from work.
In the nick of time, the workday ended and I flew across the county to our church’s Maundy evening service. If the ham had survived the afternoon, it could make it through Maundy Thursday.
Sitting in the pew, I was taking deep breaths so that I would have enough oxygen for the responsive reading, which I had noted, wearily, was a long one.
The farmer breezed in, grinning, wondering why in the world I was stressed out. He, like the other half of America, believes the myths on the covers of glossy magazines on grocery checkout aisles: he believes that holiday dinners just happen and he’s invited.
Sometimes you really want to clobber your husband, but Holy Week at church is neither the time nor the place. The responsive reading began, “Forgive us, O Lord, for our transgressions. For running ahead and trailing behind; for squandering money and abusing time…..” The farmer had the audacity to nod and then nudge me.
Sometimes the truth hits home, especially at church. Earlier in the week there had been a devotional on the radio about Mary and Martha. “Listen to today’s Martha,” the devotional began, and you could hear her tires squealing, her brakes slamming, and her heart racing. Guilty.
To be sure, I’m guilty of worse, but what a tragedy to lose Easter in the details. The devil may indeed be in the details, distracting us, driving us crazy with foolishness, causing exhaustion.
The truth of Easter is that the Lord knows our weariness, much of it self-induced, loves us anyway and wants to renew and remake us. May it be so this Easter.
When our midlife crisis took hold and drove us to build a house on our old dairy farm, the farmer and I chose a plan designed to blend in with the landscape. The plan, Southern Living’s Brookgreen Cottage, had been built as a model at Myrtle Beach’s Brookgreen Gardens. We visited the coast several times, just to check out the house. Indeed, the house did blend in with its coastal, formal garden environment. The cottage looked, as the architect wrote, “as though it had emerged from the earth itself.”
Emerging from the earth itself is a lot prettier in a formal garden than it is on a Cleveland County dairy farm. What emerges from the earth itself around here are rusty trucks, hunks of tin, and fat fishing worms.
As our building project progressed last year, we knew if our house stood a ghost of a chance of blending into the environment the brick would have to match Cleveland’s own vibrant red clay – and also the grayness of overcast days and giant granite rocks; and the brownness of rich dirt and dead poke weeds.
The house is up and we’re in. But one key part of the project remains undone: the landscaping. The house looks as though it rose out of red clay and then stopped. How can this be, you ask, when your family is blessed with equipment, horticulture degrees, and piles and piles of prized organic material unique to animal husbandry?
Philosophically speaking, I am a victim of that old cliché about the “cobbler’s wife having no shoes.” In my case, “the groundskeeper’s wife has no shrubs.”
What is the holdup? To put it bluntly, we don’t like the same shrubs. The farmer likes Burford I. hollies; I prefer grape leaf mahonias. The farmer likes pink dogwoods; I prefer river birch. Thank goodness we both like St. John’s wort. And, though we both love rhubarb, I can’t bring myself to submit to his suggestion that we line the driveway with rhubarb.
“Why, we’ll kill two birds with one stone,” the farmer argues. “Just think, we’ll have enough rhubarb to share with our neighbors; and the rhubarb will make a showy display as you drive up to the house.”
I don’t know about you, but aesthetically speaking, rhubarb reminds me of glorified dock weed.
A week ago, while harmony prevailed in the Hamrick Household and Youngest Son Miles was home for spring break, the farmer announced, “Well, I was thinking, uh, that we might, uh, talk about what to set out in the yard. Then you could cook, and Miles and I could plant the yard.”
We made progress: we talked. My girlfriends, who know how horticulturally disadvantaged I am, have wisely advised: “Bow out and shut up.” They cite as evidence my sundial fiasco.
While shopping for a sundial to decorate the yard, I complained to the storeowner about the shoddiness of his imported sundial. “Just look,” I said, “the dial is broken. The blade won’t even turn.
“Lady,” he said, “it ain’t a blade, and it ain’t supposed to turn. The earth is.”
Which reminded me of a greater truth: I ought to count my lucky stars that my husband, wiser than I in the ways of Mother Nature, appreciates both rhubarb AND me.
Not all college students head to Mexico for spring break. No sooner did his break officially begin than our youngest son headed for paradise on earth: Boiling Springs.
Why would he want to go anywhere else? Why not come to Cleveland County, with its wealth of choices of things to see, eat, and do. It runs in the Hamrick genes. That’s why the phone book is full of Hamricks – they are birthed into this world with a “come back home” chromosome.
Eating is just one of the reasons our youngest is spending spring break with us. Here he can load up on home cooking – mine and the Snack Shop’s. I don’t mean to come off as a braggart, but Miles likes my recipes. In fact, he likes them so much that most every e-mail from him includes a request for a favorite recipe.
One of his latest requests was for “Joan Parrish’s Lasagna,” a well-known delicacy in these parts. It was 5 pm in Raleigh when Miles decided to prepare this dish, a whopper that serves 15 males. An hour later, Miles called to report that the grocery store tab for the ingredients, including spices, cooking wine and baking dish, came to $52. I made a mental note NEVER to mention this to my mother. Or anyone.
At 9 pm, he called to report that his lasagna experiment was a success, but “it didn’t quite taste like Mrs. Parrish’s.”
How do you explain to the children that no dish will ever taste as good in adulthood as it did when they were at home? First Miles had to learn about Santa Claus, and now, Joan Parrish’s lasagna.
So I was a sucker the other night when I dragged home from work tired and the farmer handed me a cast iron skillet. “Make cornbread,” he ordered. “Miles has the idea that nobody can make cornbread like you can. Even though your cornbread recipe is not as good as the cornbread my mother used to make, Miles likes yours better.”
After a long day at the office, I thought of other uses for that skillet. Then Miles grinned and I turned to mush.
Taking the now seldom-used skillet, I wondered: what could be the secret ingredient? In fact, what were the basic ingredients? As I started concocting, from scratch, hit and miss, my cornbread juices began flowing. If I ever had a recipe, I don’t know where it is. And how do you explain that cornbread is just something YOU KNOW.
To go with the cornbread, Miles browned a slab of ham, the farmer cooked turnips and we opened a jar of our home-canned tomatoes. This is not a slap on Raleigh and/or NC State, but Miles said that no restaurant in Raleigh offered anything tastier than our home-cooked meal. And that included Burger King, Wendy’s, and the Raleigh Farmer’s Market.
Which reminded me of the plaque the NC Highway Patrol Department has posted in the Raleigh Farmer’s Market restaurant. That plaque proclaims: “2nd Place Award For Home Cooking.” In little print, the plaque explains, “The First Place Award will always go to Mama’s.” I reckon that makes it official.
It all started when the farmer upgraded our cell phones. As I write this, his cell is most likely misplaced in a coat pocket, under the seat of his Ford F250, or in a bucket at the barn. When he needs his cell, everyone helps him search for it.
The phone, of course, is for HIS convenience – for HIM to call you. The rest of the time, the farmer wants to be “out of pocket.”
My cell phone helps me stay “in pocket.” The farmer is my most frequent caller, checking in daily to find out about supper. It’s all so romantic; it’s what I live for – thinking what he’ll have for supper.
Imagine my surprise the day he had a brand new cell phone delivered to the office. If he could go to town and buy a phone for me, the least I could do was learn to use it. Night after night I read the manual. I practiced. I was tutored by the children and the young folks at work. They programmed the phone and turned me loose.
Next, Mama and I drove to Greenville, NC, to visit a cousin. The first few cell calls didn’t faze Mama. During the fourth call, she announced: “Most states have laws against car phones. You are not supposed to be talking on the phone while you are driving.” From the tone, I knew she was fixing to send me to my room.
Remembering my tutoring, I discreetly switched the cell from ringer to vibrate only.
Our cousin lives independently at Greenville’s United Methodist Home. When we arrived, I slipped the cell phone in my pocket and forgot it. That evening, cousin Mary Hester gave us a tour of the mailroom. In the corner were stacks of 2001 phone books, which the residents were recycling. On the top of the heap was a huge phone book, with these words embossed in silver metallic letters: “Talking Phone Book.”
Being from the country, I was clueless. As I approached the phone book, imagine my surprise when I heard it buzz. The closer I got the more it buzzed. What should I do? Should I alert my 80-year-old companions as to what was taking place? Could they explain how a “Talking Phone Book” worked? Did they know how to answer one? I decided against calling attention to what was going on and possibly alarming the residents.
What else was there to do but pick up the phone book and try to answer it? When I did, the buzzing stopped. I put the Talking Phone Book down, and made a mental note to call our sons, who could explain its features to me.
Our sons! The ones who were going to call on my cell phone and possibly arrange a drive over from Raleigh.
v Sure enough, I retrieved the cell phone from my pocket, and the phone was blinking, “Missed call.” When I returned the call, Spencer said, “Mama, I just tried to call you and the phone rang and rang. Where were you?”
How can you explain to a twentysomething that you mistook the vibration of your cell phone for a Talking Phone Book?
When I finished, Spencer simply asked, “Mama, IF they let you out of there, how about leaving me a voice mail?”
Faced recently with a long drive to Greenville, NC, to visit a cousin, I invited my mother to ride shotgun. I needed a copilot to keep me awake.
Mama would have lots of discussion topics, like why in the world I pay good money for pottery to set on shelves. And since my mother thinks of me as 55 going on 15, our visits temporarily take 40 years off my age.
When I stopped in Spencer to pick her up, Mama couldn’t wait to show me her new and improved piano. At 79, Mama has decided it’s now or never for her to master Bach’s preludes and Wesley’s hymns. Her busy schedule mandates a minimum of one hour a day of practicing.
The old upright, purchased after World War II for $200, has survived 4 children and life in the parsonage. But moths have eaten the pads, pencils have gotten wedged amongst the keys, and some of the ivories have come off. Therefore, Mama has just spent twice what the piano cost to get it overhauled. “Just think how much pottery you could have bought with this money,” I thought but didn’t say.
Instead, I gave her new and improved piano a thumbs-up.
We still were not ready to go, for Mama wanted to show me the results of a second but unrelated project: the Pecan Project. I had noticed hulls underfoot and black fingerprints on the light switches. She opened her freezer compartment, and lo, it was full of containers of shelled pecans. Mama said, “In addition to these, I have shelled and given away at least 10 pounds of pecans this year, and I’m going to give you a gallon when you leave.”
“Great,” I said. Then it hit me. Mama does not have a single pecan tree on her property. Had my mother, the preacher’s widow, turned into a pecan thief?
Mama, who has just come through a dementia screening with flying colors, was in her right mind, so I respectfully asked, “Mama. Tell me about it. You don’t have any pecan trees. Where are you getting all these nuts?”
Which brought us to another obsession: her daily 5-mile walks. Mama confessed, “Every day while I’m walking, I fill my pockets with pecans.” When I questioned whether this was moral and/or legal, Mama said if pecans don’t fall on personal property, they are up for grabs.
She added, “Some folks along my itinerary have come out of their houses and invited me to pick up the pecans in their yards as well. Another man, whom I had never met, whistled at me from the front door and hollered, ‘Pecan Lady,’ I’ve got 10 pounds of nuts for you.’”
Mama closed the freezer and remarked, “So you see, Kathryn Mae, this is living proof of the Scripture that says ‘give and it shall be given unto you: good measure, pressed down, and shaken together and running over.’”
When we got to Greenville, our cousin said, “Kathryn Mae, you should be very proud of your Mama. There are not many 79-year-olds who are into as many things as she is.”
The farmer agrees. But he also worries since, as he says, “the nuts don’t fall too far from the tree.”
Although the year was 1984, it doesn’t seem so long ago that our oldest son became a teenager. Frankly speaking, the farmer and I were scared to death.
This week, after nearly 2 decades of having teenagers in the house, our youngest son turns 20. I don’t know whether to ask the church choir to sing the “Hallelujah Chorus” or my favorite mother’s hymn, “I’ll Fly Away.”
During our boys’ teenage years, the farmer and I had no theme song. Nor did we get a chance to enjoy “our kind” of music: 60s, classical and gospel.
For one of the rites of passage for teenage boys is receiving their own stereo boom boxes. That means that since 1984, the farmer and I have been subjected to a long-running and steady diet of Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, Earl Scruggs, and George Strait.
Although I am not a medical person, I suspect that nearly two decades of boom boxes may explain why the farmer can no longer hear a thing I say.
In addition to the pounding music, what else I remember about this extended teenage era was a bulging refrigerator. I’ll never forget the afternoon our first teenage son came in from junior high school. He was starved, totally starved. I suggested he snack on a pack of nabs. Jason had other ideas, and devoured a whole can of Starkist Tuna, and to satisfy his sweet tooth, an entire frozen Sara Lee pound cake and a container of Cool Whip. This did NOT spoil his supper.
Although I am not a weight gain guru, I suspect that nearly two decades of pizzas, French fries, cakes, Oreos, Fritos, and Cheetos may explain why I can’t get into even my old maternity clothes.
And of course, no sooner does a country boy turn 13 than he expects the keys to the pickup. In those early years, when their father needed them to make quick runs to the barn, thank goodness the boys wore caps. It gave them height behind the wheel.
City mothers dread the day 15-year-old sons become old enough to get a driver’s permit. I was ecstatic when our boys became eligible for their permits.
Among other things, I am not a crook, so I welcomed the day our sons became legal.
But what stands out most about their teenage years were their science projects, term papers, and geometry problems.
Although I will never have enough children to become a parenting expert, I had read enough to know that the children’s assignments were supposed to be their responsibilities, not mine. That theory, like the Pythagorean theory, looks good on paper. But in real life, in the house after supper, we know that homework is one of the reasons God created mothers.
The farmer and I are diehard supporters of public education and teachers, and Shakespeare and calculus. And although I sat very quietly and circumspectly in my seat in the Crest stadium as our sons’ names were read from their diplomas, inside I was shouting “Yes!” “You go, boy.” “Atta boy!” “Praise the Lord.”
I think the Lord understood.
So now we’ve come full circle. Come Tuesday, we will be plum out of teenagers. At this stage in life, I don’t see any reason for the farmer and I to become depressed. We have memories a-plenty – and we have grandchildren.
Evidently I struck one of the farmer’s raw nerves the other Sunday by hinting that we were aging, citing as evidence our turning into “Saturday Night Lawrence Welk Groupies.” About the only adjective I didn’t use in that column was “boring.”
The ploy worked. The following Saturday, the farmer actually asked what I would like to do in lieu of watching Lawrence Welk reruns. It occurred to me that at 50-plus years of age, if I were ever going to say what I would like to do, now was the time.
So I summoned the courage and said, “Sit down, listen, and don’t say ‘no’ right off the bat. Do you really want to know what I want to do? I want to go to the Concord Mills. I want to go see a movie that probably won’t make it to Shelby.”
You could see the color drain out of the farmer’s face. We had not been to a movie together since I had dragged him to “Raising Arizona” in 1989. The farmer not only did not think “Raising Arizona” was funny, he said the movie was a sign that America had gone to the dogs.
To his credit, once more the farmer summoned his courage and asked what movie we’d be driving to Concord to see. “It’s ‘The Shipping News,’” I said, assuring him that this was neither a comedy or a chick flick.
He asked whether the movie had any redeeming values, such as car chases or gun fights.” Although I’d read the book, I pled the Fifth Amendment. “You’ll enjoy the movie,” I said, “since the setting is in Newfoundland.” Newfoundland, as I reminded him, is where we wound up on our 25th wedding anniversary.
Neither one of us were prepared for the challenge of movie going in the big city. First we had to get off I-85 at the Concord mall, a feat which made taking the McAdenville exit on Christmas Eve seem tame. We inched our way toward the mall, and then circled the monstrosity, looking for a place to park.
The farmer was not amused at our half-mile hike, saying this was his first and last trip to the mall. He was certain I had read the paper wrong. “There won’t be any movie house inside a gaudy mall like this,” he said.
He was right. There were 24 theaters inside, and one line to serve them all. The farmer and I looked like extraterrestrial or Ice Age clones. We didn’t have spiked hair, body piercings, or tattoos. My midriff was showing, but not on purpose.
The guy at the ticket booth winked and gave both of us senior discounts.
We were too bamboozled to order popcorn. Besides, who wants to run the risk of having another tooth crowned?
Surprisingly, after nearly a decade, it was great to be at the movies together. The farmer even stayed awake.
The children were flabbergasted. “Ya’ll? Ya’ll? Ya’ll went to a movie?” they asked.
We had to prove to ourselves that we could, I thought to myself. For a sure sign that age is gaining on you is when you hear yourself announce, and proudly: “The last movie my wife and I went to see together was ‘Jaws.’”
Or worse, “The King and I.”
On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the worst, the virus that hit me this week was a 9. After 18 hours of throwing up, I only wished I felt well enough to go the emergency room. By nightfall, the virus still registered a 6 on the Richter scale.
Thank goodness for the farmer, a veritable Floyd Nightingale. Just when I thought I had heaved my last, he perked us a pot of coffee. Although neither coffee nor conversation was on my mind, he had lots of questions, such as “What do you think you have? Food poisoning, E Coli, or just a virus?” Bored to tears, he asked the whereabouts of the phone, the phone book and the family’s telephone numbers. And, of course, he wondered what he was supposed to have for supper. It was almost a relief the next morning when he replaced his nursing cap with his CAT cap and left for work.
That was the first 24 hours. The next 24 hours I rested. I had forgotten that 5 minutes is a very long time when all you have to watch is the clock.
Then I remembered the invention of daytime TV. But after 15 years in a daytime office, I was in for a rude awakening.
The morning news shows were ho hum, though the personalities take some getting used to for those of us who are not morning persons.
Eventually the morning news ended, and the talk shows started. To think that I have ever worried about revealing too many personal details in this column! I can’t hold a candle to the folks on “talk trash” TV.
If I drank a whole bottle of Pepto, no way could I stomach these shows! To pass the time, I looked out the windows, counted ladybugs, and catnapped. At noon, there was another round of TV news -- followed by the soaps, on which youngsters acted out what the folks on the morning shows had talked about.
At last I realized what men have always known: This is why God made remotes. After checking out 98 channels, I settled on what appeared to be the best of the daytime lot, HGTV.
Crafts, decorating, gardening with Martha Stewart, and cooking -- these segments led to my emotions overcoming me. Confronted by all the quilts not made, the pillows not stitched and dyed, and the potting soil not made from scratch, I shivered with guilt. Maybe it was simply a classic case of post-intestinal virus depression.
Whatever, this channel took me back to those happy years when I was “just a housewife” -- when survival meant making it from scratch and scratching for the materials you’d need.
When Floyd Nightingale returned, he was less interested in playing nurse and more interested in going out for Chinese – a suggestion that nearly triggered a “backset,” a country medical condition.
Marriage being an 80-20 plan, we compromised. We ate lime Jell-O, then watched his program: the Weather.
Ah, the weather. Now there’s programming that won’t poison your mind, stir your stomach acids, or make you feel less than a Total Woman.
The farmer claims the weather is the best stuff on TV. Could it be that Father Knows Best?
Before launching a family tradition, one should consider the consequences. I did not look far enough into the future when, in 1986, I invited the family down for our first annual Scrabble tournament. That tournament was an immediate success, complete with shooters (to welcome the guests to the country), certificates (to award those who played all 7 letters), and fried okra (to keep them coming back.)
In its infancy, our family behaved like Scrabble nerds, no one wanting to interrupt a game in order to eat. Fifteen years later, the challenge is how to interrupt the eating in order to get a game in, with peanut shells and cake crumbs falling all over the Scrabble board.
Last weekend, when my mother, sisters and brother came to the country to play Scrabble, we only squeezed in three games. I’m not going to say that my sisters were sore losers, but they did grumble about being culturally disadvantaged on account of my trip to India, where I had picked up such words as “sutra,” “svaraj,” and swami.” Indeed, one of the benefits of travel is that it introduces you to the other words in the 3rd edition of the Scrabble Dictionary.
For her part, our 79-year-old Mama simply did not have time to join us in a game. Her daily ritual includes one and a half hours of piano practice, two hours of walking, and three hours solving the crossword puzzle. Therefore, while her offspring duked it out around the Scrabble board, Mama walked to Boiling Springs and back, serenaded us with selections from the Baptist Hymnal, and solved the crossword puzzle using several of our Scrabble words.
As hostess of the event, I was somewhat disadvantaged. For in between plays, there were biscuits to be made, pies to be baked, and potatoes to be mashed. The family kept saying, “Get out of the kitchen!” but in the next breath asking, “When are we having our next meal?”
“What role, if any, did the farmer play as host?” you wonder. As usual, he appeared for meals and disappeared in the interim. In fact, during one of these interims, he threatened to upstage the Scrabble tournament altogether. For at his headquarters, down at our former dairy barn, he hosted horse rides for the family, while our oldest son hosted a fish fry with all the fried trimmings.
Even my city sisters crawled under electric fences in order to ride horses and eat Broad River catfish fried up and served up down at the old barn. I took pictures. Imagine what their city friends will say when they see the pictures of my sisters turning country!
The family has always felt a tad sorry for us, their country kin, worrying that we were the disadvantaged ones of the clan. For my part, looking out the kitchen window, smelling the fish, counting the pickup trucks, and hearing the laughter of those riding horses, I knelt on the kitchen floor and thanked the Good Lord for the unspeakable blessing of living in the country.
Most days, you could spell it “utopia.”
A handful of folks have mentioned catching glimpses of our family last weekend on Carolina Clips, a program that airs on cable’s Cleveland Community College channel.
This Hamrick segment was filmed in 1984 in the kitchen of our old farmhouse. It featured the farmer rocking Baby Miles by the woodstove – and me, beaming at my young husband and sitting, appropriately, in front of the avocado green washing machine. CCC’s Gene Cox hosted the segment, asking us questions about dairy farming and the effect it had had on my becoming a columnist. The answer, then and now, is “everything and then some.”
I was struck by several things while watching this 18-year-old clip. The scariest: I have almost no memory whatsoever of the filming. Way too much water has gone under the bridge.
The farmer and I were younger – and much thinner. To this day I have a wonderful husband, for as we watched that vintage clip he simply said, “I like you better the way you are today. Look at you back then, skinny as a rail. Today you have meat on your bones and fat on your ribs.”
What a guy!
Of course, we don’t need a TV show to warn us that we are getting older as well as larger. The signs are everywhere. Just the night before, we had watched another TV show together, and it had given me a strange sense of déjà vu. The show: Lawrence Welk. The sound: very loud. The mood: the farmer very excited as tap dancers danced and twin singers crooned “Peg O’ My Heart.”
“Is this what our Saturday nights have turned into?” I repeated for the farmer, who did not hear my question the first time.
“What do you mean?” he responded, puzzled. “What would you rather do on a Saturday night than watch Lawrence Welk?”
“For starters, we are watching reruns from the 1970s. The songs they are singing are not my kind of music. I’m a child of the 60s. And they are wearing, for Pete’s sake, orange polyester suits with vests and flared legs.”
“So?” the farmer asked.
Don’t you remember,” I asked, “how we felt in the early 1970s when we visited your parents on Saturday night, after we had been out to eat pizza? Your folks were rocking away, watching Lawrence Welk, the volume hurting our ears, and they were waiting for the sun to go down so that they could go to bed. We used to worry that this was a sure sign they were getting old.”
“In other words,” I sniffled, “we are becoming elder parents ourselves.” For his part, the farmer gazed out at the window and said, “You’re right. The sun has gone down and it is getting my bedtime.”
During the week, I had run into the Carolina Clip host, Gene Cox, who also had watched the 1984 reruns of the previous weekend. Gene observed, “What struck me about the 3 old interviews Channel 19 aired is that we are the only ones who are still living.”
Just barely.
Just when the winter blahs were beginning to take root, our gardening catalogue arrived. Once the gardening catalogue arrives, can spring be far behind?
Oh, how excited the farmer and I were! Just when I was considering taking the garden catalogue full of dahlia tubers to work, one of the youngsters asked, “Mrs. H., do you know how you can tell for sure that spring is around the corner? When the swimsuits replace the jackets on the racks at the mall.”
I can’t speak for other women, but when the conversation turns to swimsuits, my strategy is to get out of Dodge. Certainly maintaining a youthful attitude is healthy. But it’s hard for me to get worked up over any seasonal change that has me trying on bathing suits – even if they have boy legs, skirts, wires, and up-and-down stripes.
What excites each of us about the coming of spring probably tells a lot about our mental age. For some it’s the beach and/or the golf course; for others, it’s the vegetable garden and/or the flower garden.
Personally speaking, Myrtle Beach still beckons, but only if I can wear cover-ups.
Come to think of it, the last place I wore a bathing suit was to the garden to pick green beans. The farmer says that sending a middle-aged woman in a stretched bathing suit to the garden is as close to a scarecrow as you can get. I stifled myself and did not suggest he put on his faded fuchsia trunks, stand out in the garden, and count how many crows vamoosed.
We’ve been avoiding the issue, but without a doubt, it’s new bathing suit time at the Hamrick household. Because I’m not entirely ancient, my first instinct was to check out the Internet. If there are wonderful pottery finds over the Internet, why not bathing suits with boy legs, skirts, wires, and up-and-down stripes?
Whether you search with Yahoo, WebCrawler, or Google, searching for swimsuits over the Internet is to take a walk on the wild side. I was certainly proud that the farmer was asleep in his recliner the night I thought of buying a swimsuit over the Internet.
Now I’m really on the horns of a dilemma. If I don’t hurry, the best matronly bathing suits will fly off the racks. Which means I’ll have to wade through another summer in a faded, stretched bathing suit that isn’t stretched enough.
But even if I relished traipsing out to the mall in the dead of winter to try on a tankini, what about the other issues involved? Financially speaking, can our spring budget afford new bathing suits apiece plus the plants we wish to order from the garden catalogue?
I had dreamed of ordering a dozen rhubarb plants, 20 blueberry bushes, and several dozen dahlia tubers from Park Seed. But that comes to $278, not counting shipping. For his part, the farmer wants to order a sackful of seeds for Blue Lakes, Better Boys, and Sugar Babies. (Urban translation: green beans, tomatoes, and watermelons.)
Ah, spring is around the corner, presenting us with fresh new choices. I don’t know about you, but the odds are that I’ll choose Clematis over Jantzen.
You would think that, after 50-plus years of experience, making and keeping New Year’s Resolutions would be a breeze. Not so.
Or you would think that a female my age could say, “New Year’s Resolutions? I don’t care whether the President of the USA and/or Ann Landers tells me to make resolutions. They can just ‘stuff it.’”
Indeed, possibly the kindest and gentlest thing lots of us feisty fiftysomethings could do for our country is to take our estrogen on a regular basis.
Which leads me to my 2002 New Year’s Resolution: Take Care of My Health. This resolution includes taking prescribed medicine as prescribed. This will be easier since we have quit farming, and the farmer won’t be urging me to take dog pills and/or apply cow ointments.
Of course, the real issue with health is weight control – the Year 2001’s Resolution that Weight Watchers is helping me keep. It’s blackmail: either I eat sensibly or I pay them money. And I have finally decided it’s more fun to buy a new bedspread rather than anteing up money a result of eating the whole box of fresh Krispy Kremes.
To fully keep this year’s resolution, I must develop an exercise habit.
Hopefully the guts for this is in my genes, for I have to look no further than my mother to find an excellent role model. At 79, Mama has 10-plus years of serious walking and exercising behind her -- a regimen she could package and market. Every time we visit, she brings out calendars and documentation to recount what the weather was on July 18, 1997; where she walked; how long; and what notable events occurred during her 5-mile walk from Spencer NC to Salisbury NC.
Therefore, the only step I should take to keep 2002 New Year’s Resolution is to imitate my mother – something I resolved in 1967 not to do! Thank goodness I have lived long enough to repent of earlier stupid New Year’s Resolutions.
A related resolution I’m making this year will be much more difficult to keep. For health’s sake, I need to reduce stress. When I ran this resolution by the farmer, he wondered what in the world could possibly cause me stress?
Christmas Eve, which should be the most peaceful evening of the year, provided a wake-up call on stress. As we were cleaning up following our church’s Christmas Eve communion service, a fellow ordinance committee member said, “Kathryn, I don’t want you to get overly upset because this is no big deal and everything is going to be all right, but you have your red sweater on backwards. The label is supposed to be at the back of your neck, not at your throat.”
From church, I dashed to my sister-in-law’s home – with not a split second in which to adjust my wardrobe. And after apologizing for wearing my sweater backwards, a niece said, “Well, Kathryn, I don’t want you to get overly upset because this is no big deal and you are going to be all right, but you also have your silver Christmas tree necklace on backwards. The tree is supposed to show, not the clasp on the backside.”
Simply put, 2002 calls for 2 resolutions: Get myself going and get myself together.
It’s going to be a long year.
Is it just me or did you think that Dan Rather and the rest of the world went berserk over this week’s Southern snowstorm? Though this snow was beautiful, I can remember other snows that were deeper and slicker for sledding. Based on the TV’s hoopla, however, I fully expected the Ice Man to show up at the back door.
Maybe the news angle was that the snow blanketed such a large part of the South. Maybe the news angle was that the storm evidently shut down all of South Carolina. Or maybe the storm gave a few Yankee meteorologists free trips to the South, and the hype was necessary to justify the expense.
What ticks off the farmer, himself a Grassy Pond, SC native, is that snowstorms apparently give the media another self-righteous reason to bash the South. “I’m sick and tired of hearing TV people say that, when it comes to snow, people in the South don’t have the right stuff.”
The worst blow of all, however, says the farmer are the media attacks on our driving skills. “*&^%,” the farmer said, “we know how to drive in bad weather. Take a look at our grocery store parking lots. They’re slam full of Southerners.”
Which got me to wondering. Did the non-Southerners in Buffalo not take to the store for milk and bread when they heard they were going to get a mother lode of snow? If they DIDN’T go to the store, I’d be worried about their intelligence, unless they have cows in their backyards, cows smart enough go to high ground.
The farmer reckons that Northerners say, “*&^%, we’re going to be snowbound for a few days. If we run out of food, we’ll get out Grand pappy’s shotgun and shoot us a squirrel or two!”
I started to mention that in the North, folks probably have enough bagels, sushi, and TV dinners in their freezers to see them through the winter, but I thought better of reporting this to the farmer.
As for driving in the stuff, Southern boys cut their teeth on driving through mud and snow. Southern men even purchase vehicles with our annual, 3-inch snow in mind. When our youngun’ went off to NC State, of course he had to have a truck with 4-wheel drive – purportedly for bad weather driving.
Thinking back on it, trips to the grocery store have given Southern women experience as well in bad weather driving.
So, then, what’s the news? It’s apparent that Southerners are not jaded by snow. It’s true that we don’t see as much of it as our Northern cousins. And we don’t have to shovel dump truck loads of the stuff in order to make our runs to the store.
But as long as we get to use “Snow!” as a reason to take an occasional vacation from work and school, Southerners are pretty smart to play dumb.
As I told my boss, “Lands sake, there’s no way I could possibly get to the office with two inches of snow a’comin’. Reckon I’ll need to stay home and watch it snow, make snow cream, work puzzles, and take a nap.”
Maybe the real news angle hidden under all the snow is that, when it comes to snow, Southerners know how to play it very smart. As Granddaddy would say, “We can sure use our noggins.”
