For a host of plausible reasons, this year I barely managed to work Christmas into December.
My intentions were good. This year would be different, I vowed to myself, rolling out of bed at 4 AM the morning after Thanksgiving to stand in line at the store. My sister agreed to help me fight for the best gifts. And after snatching the first come, first served bargains, Cynthia said, “As long as we are up, why don’t we do some more shopping?” Her persistence appeared to serve this procrastinator well.
Looking back on it, having a few loose gifts rolling around in the car trunk gave me a false sense of accomplishment. “Yes,” I could chime in to holiday conversations, “I’ve about completed my shopping, too.”
Two cameras and an American flag, however, do NOT constitute “completing Christmas shopping.”
When the reality of that hit me, with 3 shopping days left, I put on my Santa suit and jumped into my sleigh. I shopped till I dropped, checked my list and was only half through. There was nothing to do but eat more chocolate, drink strong coffee and keep shopping.
I bumped into people who admitted they really weren’t shopping for anything in particular, people who explained that they had finished their shopping in August but had come out because they liked to be a part of the crowds doing their last minute shopping.
If I had finished my Christmas by August, I certainly would not have gone to town on December 21st for the heck of it. No, I would have stayed home and put up the tree. But that’s another column.
Friends sometimes intimate that shopping for men should be a breeze. Just the opposite is true. What do you get men who have everything they need, in every shade of camouflage? What do you get extra tall men, who do not wear normal clothing sizes? Regular socks and ties don’t fit. Sometimes I’m not sure even about the handkerchiefs.
In desperation, as the sun set Saturday night, I drove to Spartanburg. Surely a big South Carolina town would carry the kinds of gifts my country family would need. But, alas, once inside the mall, in store after store the answer was the same.
“Do you carry Pointer jeans,” I would ask, “in tall?”
I knew we were in trouble when clerks asked me to elaborate. “Pointers are a country kind of work jeans,” I explained. “They call ‘em Pointers ‘cause there are pointer bird dogs printed right up on the labels.”
It hurts your feelings when folks in South Carolina look at you as though you are backwards. “No,” they would say, condescendingly, “we have painter pants, but we have never carried the garments that you are describing.”
It was time to call in a few favors with the farmer and put him on the trail of Pointer jeans. In fact, why couldn’t he shop for the remaining items on my Christmas list: rutting deer calls, knife sharpeners, and Army cots?
When folks say you can find everything you would ever want or need for Christmas in the mall or at the large discount stores, I get jealous. Frankly speaking, the men in my life are just not that easy.
We were one of the fortunate families spared personal inconvenience by the Ice Storm of 2002. Our trees, on the other hand, did not escape.
Our youngest son, “Chainsaw” Miles, was in exams at NCSU. When we called to describe the devastation in the pasture, Miles was so excited. He begged us not to touch a limb till he could get home.
For my part, I was glad to leave Mother Nature alone. For his part, the farmer said he had enough such work as part of his grounds job with the Shelby City Schools.
Indeed, when the came in last Thursday evening, he seemed overwhelmed. “I had a rough day at work,” he began. Then he asked, “By the way, have you seen my wedding ring lying around anywhere?"
Finally the farmer admitted that he had lost his wedding ring – that he didn’t know how, when or where. “We were cutting limbs, stacking them, and raking leaves at Graham School. As I was taking my work gloves off and on, my hands were so cold that the ring must have slipped off."
For the first 20 years of our marriage, he had not worn the ring for fear that it would get caught on a cow milker or some other piece of farm equipment. He had just taken to wearing the ring in midlife, which had surprised and pleased me greatly, so I was not about to start a sermon on negligence.
After all, it was a plain ring, a simple wide band. I remember our selecting these wide matching bands at Blanton’s Jewelers in Shelby in 1970. Mine cost $50 and his, being larger, cost $100. We had had them engraved with our initials, our wedding date, and the “I love yous.”
Remembering our vows to tough it out, I told the farmer that the ring was not that important, that we would still be married, that nothing had changed. “Now I know what to get you for Christmas,” I added.
The farmer, always an optimist, said, “Don’t go out and buy a new ring. The old one will turn up, either in my truck, or somewhere down at the barn, or over at Graham School. Besides,” he added, “the ladies at Graham School know what has happened. If anybody can find it, they will.”
Now the farmer is of the opinion that the Graham School “ladies” can hang the moon. They do pull off miracles by the dozens, but I reckoned this would be too much even for them.
Later that evening I considered praying over the lost ring, but figured this might be too much, even for God. Or, on the other hand, if it wasn’t too hard, it would surely be too trivial. The ring would be mourned – and replaced.
The next morning, the farmer called. “Great news! One of the guys at work was walking around the pickup truck and just happened to look in the truck bed – and guess what he saw? My wedding ring. Can you believe it?”
I’m still rejoicing.
Which reminds me of the greatest scriptural teaching of all: that upon finding something precious, something that is pure gold, you want to share the joy. At this season, may you find again and anew the rich joy that is the meaning of Christmas.
Several readers have wondered whether my failure to produce a column the last two weeks was a sign that the farmer and I were iced in. (“All froze up” for you oldtimers.)
Actually, thanks to this summer’s assault on our country trees by the power company, we were spared all but the briefest of power losses. In retrospect, we did July’s tree-trimming guy an injustice by calling him “Atila the Hun.” As it turns out, our Atila was really Rambo in disguise.
So, no, it wasn’t the weather that brought this column to a screeching halt. It was the necessity of gearing up, i.e. cramming, to pass an important licensing exam at work. In addition to cramming by night, by day, despite the ice storm, I drove back and forth to Charlotte to attend a test-preparation class.
Scared out of my wits by the prospect of a 6-hour exam at my age, I was barely cognizant of the weather as I drove with the truckers on icy interstates. And while listening to audiotapes on taxation, I maneuvered Charlotte’s busiest intersections without working stoplights. If necessary, I would have ice-skated to Charlotte in order to get to the class.
The night that our power did go out was the night the teacher had given us “too much homework.” Couldn’t the instructor, “Atila” Bowman, lighten up due to the weather? At 56, whom do you call to complain to when you have too much homework?
I called Mama. And I whined -- ‘cause my only light was coming from a Yankee candle and a kerosene lamp, and I was so-o-o cold, and all I had to wrap up in was the farmer’s buggy laprobe, and my teacher was not treating me fair.
Being of the truly old school, Mama simply said after doing my homework to be sure to practice the piano, to get to bed early, and to figure out a way to cook the farmer a good breakfast, without electricity.
Mama concluded by saying that she expected me to make an “A.” There would be no excuse for doing otherwise, she added, since I was getting this test out of the way while still young.
Should a fiftysomething complain about the only person who thinks you are still a twentysomething? As for the class, had they had given out awards for the oldest student, I would have qualified. You didn’t have to draw me a picture of the recession of 1987. And, thanks to the influence of my mother and grandmother, I’ve lived vicariously through the Great Depression. (Of 1932, not 2002.)
The class ended about the time the ice melted. So how did the ice storm affect us? I plowed on, literally and figuratively.
Back at home, the farmer was doing his part. He was tabulating the weather, doing the math on the ice storm, determining the ratio equivalent of ice to rain, and the resulting effect on the water tables – and more importantly, the Broad River.
If only he were the one taking next week’s test for me. Surely he could calculate the present value of the intangible drilling costs of an oil and gas limited partnership where 80% of the assets are frozen.
Assuming he would make my day, a young coworker sent e-mail this week with snapshots depicting women drivers. What prompted this e-mail was my recent reference to my driving into the farmer’s pickup while parallel parking at the Snack Shop.
What John didn’t know was that this subject -– the role women play in driving -- is a subject about which I am rightfully and historically touchy. Though none of my driving exploits have caused serious injury or large claims, a website based on my driving exploits could be created.
John asked, “You mean there’s more than the Snack Shop episode?”
Another coworker quickly added, “In my opinion, the funniest episode was when Kathryn parked her new car over a burning luminary at Gardner-Webb’s Festival of Lights.”
You could tell the office was impressed.
That Christmas, the red Mercury Cougar was fixing to ignite when I smelled the smoke and backed off.
That car was indeed a survivor. Later, Baby Miles shot an arrow into the air and it fell to earth smack dab in the middle of the Cougar’s hood.
Eventually, the Cougar met its match when it got into a scrape with a Tiger. Always keep your distance from Lincoln Continentals with Clemson PHD bumper stickers.
A number of driving mishaps took place during 4 memorable pregnancies. While driving my brand-new husband’s brand-new Bonneville to the OB office, I sideswiped another pregnant lady’s car.
Later, that same car and same driver would run off Highway 221 into the side of a mountain. And, as sort of a grand finale, I ran a stop sign and drove that car into my sister-in-law and her children.
We sold the Bonneville for scrap metal, and I began again. Within short order, I had driven up in freshly poured, wet cement in front of the Boiling Springs Town Hall, giving that car a permanent undercoating and myself a permanent reputation as a crazy outsider.
As a young mother, I ran over the only Schwinn bicycles the boys ever had – and over their indestructible John Deere riding tractor. And, after having asked the boys to tie the dog but without giving specific instructions as to where, I drove up the road with Spot tied to the radio antenna. He survived; I was not sure I would.
Once I went to work, my driving skills greatly improved – either due to experience or due to not having to drive while breaking up 4 fighting boys.
However, I was not home free, as I learned the day I locked myself in my own car. This happened on a college campus, where fortunately I was able to attract a lady pushing a baby stroller who had sympathy on a grandmother holding up a sign in the window that read: “Help. I’ve locked myself in my car and can’t get out.” When it occurred to me that I could open the doors manually, I waved and quickly got out of Dodge.
To my credit, I have made driving history. That occurred the day I successfully drove a rental red Ford Crown Victoria through a flooded highway in the deserts of Arizona, a flood which even the watching (and admiring?) truckers were afraid to ford.
My opinion of e-mails concerning women drivers? As long as I’m not in them, whew!
Apparently I have gone through a metamorphosis: after 50+ years as a night owl, in the year 2002 I have emerged as an early bird.
Is this moral progress? Is it a delayed answer to my mother’s prayers for me to please lie down in my crib and go to sleep? Is this a sign that my biological clock is fixing to blow?
If a leopard can’t change its spots, can a night owl change her identity? The surest sign that this has happened is that I can now view a sunrise without thinking someone ought to take a picture of this once–in-a-lifetime experience.
However, being a night owl certainly served me well over the first half a century. As a young parent, it was during the shift after the 4 baby boys were in bed that I put the house, and myself, back together.
Those were also the years when we lived in a Civil War farmhouse whose sole heat came from a Warm Morning wood stove in the kitchen. In the good ole days, evidently you could get away with false advertising like that.
If you want to have a warm morning in an old cold farmhouse, you had better throw mixed dry pine and oak in the contraption on the half hour. My staying up past 2 AM and the farmer’s getting up at 4 AM meant that we avoided Frozen Mornings in at least one room of the house.
This went on for 16 years, until my 40th birthday when I had had enough of the good ole days. We moved to the Town of Boiling Springs. We met our neighbors – and they were within hollerin’ distance.
We may have lived uptown but we were still country. I always intended to hang curtains and/or blinds but never got around to it.
Our neighbors said that they could sleep soundly at night, knowing that were something to happen, someone would be up at our house. We were 24/7 before 24/7 was cool.
This went on for 10 years, until the farmer’s 60th birthday, when he had had enough of city living. We built a house and moved back to the farm. After we had been in the country a few nights, the neighbors came serenading. It was not the gunshots that took me aback but the comment from one of the neighboring coonhunters: “Kathryn, don’t you ever go to bed? No matter how late we stay out treeing raccoons, you are up working on something!”
His comment was true, and it was my wake-up call. I was at a crossroads. Either I should go to bed with the chickens, or I should invest in curtains.
I chose the former – and that has made all the difference.
What enables one to make such a life-changing choice? Usually it’s a change in perspective. I no longer see any value in staying up late to polish silver we never use. And why bake a pound cake at midnight which you have to fight the urge to eat it? And why stay up late mapping out yard sales when you can get up early and be a dreaded early bird?
After half a century, it’s exciting to discover one is never too old to change. If you wish to talk about this, however, please call before 9 PM.
The day of last week’s Crest-Burns showdown dawned as just another TGIF, until my hairdresser asked, “What are you going to fix for your tailgate party over at Crest?”
When I told Ann that we weren’t into tailgating, she seemed to take this as a sign we were over the hill. “Oh,” she said, “from what I hear, everyone else will be there.” This comment from a gung-ho Shelby High fan should have raised a red flag.
During the rest of last Friday, there was the usual swaggering about which county high school, Crest or Burns, would field the best team. By 5:30 PM, the weather was so cold and dreary that I escaped the office early and headed to Boiling Springs.
I was absolutely unprepared for what happened next: No sooner did I merge onto US 74 than I got caught up in Gridiron Gridlock. My hairdresser was right: Everybody who was anybody was en route to the Crest-Burns game.
So I called the farmer on my cell to see if he would like to tailgate the game.
“Are you nuts?” he asked. “Why would we want to tailgate when we can open a can of tomato soup here at the house?”
The more he talked, the more I had to agree with him. And I remembered the condition of the pickups at our disposal. The white Ford 250 was loaded to the gills with water barrels, oil drums, firewood and bales of hay. That would be seasonal, but also unsanitary and probably insane.
The Ford 150 was a totally different story. That tailgate can no longer be lowered, on account of a recent bump up. It happened the night I parallel parked on Main Street in Boiling Springs. Caught in a tight squeeze, I put the Toyota in drive and rammed the back of my husband’s ’88 Ford 150. Onlookers in the Snack Shop flew to the window and announced: “Cline, your wife just drove her car into the back of your pickup.”
Such is life, I thought, and walked in, head held high, and ordered a hamburger steak.
No, even if we had wanted to tailgate to the Crest-Burns game, it just wasn’t in the cards.
But we too have become Friday night football fanatics. We just enjoy the games from the comfort of our den. If we want a cup of coffee, we perk a pot. If we want a snack, we get the peanut butter and saltines. If the action slows down, we turn down the radio and doze off. And we can doze soundly, knowing that the farmer will get the morning paper at 5 am and read us the game results.
Although the farmer and I are not equipped to tailgate, our sons have apparently caught the fever.
For the next day, youngest son Miles called to report in. When we asked where he was and what he was doing, he answered that he was in the parking lot of NCSU’s Carter-Finley Stadium. “We’re tailgating, and Mama, you would be so proud. I’ve fried a gallon of pickle chips and have barbecued a whole hog.”
When we asked how the game was going, he asked, “What game?”
Is this “normal,” I wonder, even for a Crest boy at NC State?
Imagine my surprise when Janice, my youngest sister, inquired how I planned to dress up for Halloween. I guess my youngest sister can get away with trick or treating – she’s the baby. She’s just 49 years old.
And she lives and works in Raleigh, where I gather folk are a tad more progressive. They also must have more money in the state capitol. Dressing up and otherwise going nuts over Halloween costs money.
Most of all, it takes nerve. Assume for a moment that I would be brassy enough to dress out as a Dixie Chick, Jennifer Lopez, or the Jolly Green Giant. Where would I go trick or treating, in Cleveland County, in such a get up? To Ingles? To Wal-Mart? To the Court Square?
The more I thought about it, the more weak-kneed I got.
No, I confessed to my sister, due to age, nerves, and money, the world would just have to count me out this Halloween. Therefore, instead of a costume, I wore basic black to work, changing into basic black stretched jogging pants when I got home. As a concession, I did remember to put on the Halloween sweatshirt the farmer had bought for me in 1995 from a lady at a gas station.
My sister was not discouraged by my apathy. In fact, she flaunted her youthfulness by buying and wearing black and white spiderweb hose. I know, because she sent over the Internet digital pictures of her Halloween self. Our Daddy would have been so proud. Thank goodness, Mama’s not on the Internet – yet.
The hose were to go with her basic black evening dress. For Janice, like the rest of her coworkers, dressed up for Halloween 2002 as Miss North Carolina 2002.
Didn’t I get the irony of it, Janice asked? No one seems to know who the real Miss North Carolina is, so the ladies at her Raleigh office were going to lend assistance to the pageant by competing for the title in their own ways.
My sister Janice is a big girl. Surely she realized that not everyone could win. Nevertheless, like all beauty contestants, she approached Halloween with a painted-on smile.
As for her talent, Janice should have won that portion hands-down. With 2 master’s degrees in music under her belt, she breezed through Chopin’s Nocturne, Op. 32, No. 2, on the piano. For their talent, the others managed to lip-sync their way through “Wind Beneath My Wings” and “Amazing Grace.”
As an added advantage, Janice said no one would be coming out of the woodwork with photographs that could jeopardize her tiara. In fact, the slides taken in our youth primarily featured the 4 of us siblings posing by the signs of the various US states our father drove us through.
Did my sister, with her talent, her innocence, and her get-up earn the Miss NC title for her office? I am happy to report that they all won!
In fact, the state might as well start printing vanity license plates for each of our wonderful Miss NCs. For my resume and for my Toyota, next year I might even go for Miss NC-#246!
Four of us, classmates at Wake Forest, Class of ’68, got together Sunday in Boiling Springs. We drank hot tea and iced tea. We reminisced, looked at old and new pictures, and owned up to our differing approaches to gray hair. We talked just as honestly about husbands, with one of us a new widow, one divorced, and two of us with husbands present.
I had stiff-armed the farmer into joining us. “Ok,” he’d said, “I’ll eat lunch with you, but then I have more important things to do than sit around and listen to a bunch of women talk.”
At 5:30 PM, the farmer and the significant other men who had joined us for lunch were begging us not to break up the party. Our son Spencer, who had planned to leave for Raleigh right after lunch, drove off at 6 PM, mesmerized, saying he wouldn’t have missed the show for the world.
What kind of show can 56-year-old girls put on, you wonder, especially nerdy nice girls who majored in Latin, French and Spanish?
It started with lunch, which I did not cook for our invited guests. Going out instead of cooking from scratch breaks all the taboos for girls from our generation. I did not prepare a chicken casserole, a broccoli casserole or a congealed salad. Even more radical, I did not apologize for not having done so. As one of them said, “We’re old enough now to be honest. Kathryn, if you tell us you can cook a great lunch, we believe you.”
Part of the fun of being with middle-aged women is that the blinders have come off. We don’t worry one whit about being “sweet.”
We can poke fun at the girls we were and the girls we now are without apology. Caution: we call ourselves “girls,” but if you are our employers, you had better not.
And we can celebrate the outcomes in our lives that have run utterly counter to everything we had expected. Our parents sent us to Wake with the following life plan: to get a diploma and a teaching certificate, to marry Prince Charming With a Good Job, to have 2 babies, and through it all, to stay thin – and of course, “sweet.”
Three of the 4 of us ended up NOT marrying princes but rather holders of assorted NC State agriculture degrees. Two of us ended up members of Cleveland County’s farm community, and the third married a Wyoming rancher whose Ph.D. in sheep farm research landed them in Illinois. Our 4th classmate married and settled in Charlotte. Thirty-four years later, she laments the missed opportunities big city life has cost her. She said the closest she has come to an agricultural experience was touring Monet’s actual flower garden in Giverny, Normandy. She produced pictures. I gathered it was almost as exciting as getting lost in hip-high cotton in Cleveland County.
I couldn’t help but notice that the four of us were wearing pants Sunday – something expressly forbidden even in 1968 at Wake Forest. We’ve come a long way, and we have quit beating up on ourselves in the process.
Books often end up being written, with movies to follow, when aging college girlfriends get together. After Sunday, I understand why.
Folks often ask where subjects for this column come from. These folks don’t know the family I’ve birthed and/or married into.
But I can’t write about the farmer ad infinitum. The older ladies in the community, whose ranks I am rapidly joining, won’t let me. They tend to clean my plow when I poke too much fun at the farmer. Note: A man whose idea of a good time is milking cows at minus 7 degrees on Christmas morning can take it. My husband is not made of Teflon; he’s made of cast iron.
Sometimes column topics, family or non-family, just happen. Or they materialize out of thin air. Or they spring from conversations, as this week, when someone asked my take on the Corn Maze.
Let me clarify: the farmer and I have not yet taken a walk through the Maze. Personally speaking, I would certainly like to do so, but it would be easier to convince the farmer to go with me on an art crawl than it would on a corn maze pilgrimage.
You should have been there when the farmer first heard of the national Corn Maze Craze. He could not believe his ears. “What is this world coming to,” he asked, “that folks don’t have anything better to do than to go stomping through a corn patch? Think of the stalks that will be knocked down.”
As the farmer hyperventilated, I had a bad episode of déjà vu.
What I remembered were my personal corn maze experiences of the worst kind. Specifically, I remembered the summer of ‘83, the summer I was drafted into the cornfields, “because there wasn’t anyone left.” My assignment was to drive Big Red (a 1970 International) through the cornfield, following the silage cutter. Baby Miles rode shotgun. Toddler car seats for dump trucks had not been invented. More than once, though I applied the air brakes as deftly as possible so as not to knock down 243 stalks, Miles bounced off the floorboard.
For several sweltering August days, I drove Big Red through the Corn Maze, with corn flying through the air, Baby Miles sporting a huge “pump knot” on his forehead, and the farmer hollering back from the silage cutter about my driving.
What a relief to come back to 2002.
So, what are my qualifications for writing about the Corn Maze? “Been there, done that.”
Almost 2 decades later, I ask myself: did I find myself while out in the cornfield? Let’s say I did some serious praying the fuller the truck got and the deeper I got into the corn. As for Miles, the Summer of ’83 marked him for life. He has a subliminal reverence and affection for Big Red that has taken on almost mythical proportions.
Would city folks be able to find themselves by getting lost in a corn patch?
Probably would work. A corn patch can teach you life lessons you won’t learn at the spa.
Most likely, however, this is one place you won’t run into the farmer. Just when he had gotten used to the idea of Cow Patty Bingo, here came the Corn Maze Craze.
Maybe all he needs is a little space.
In the old days, the middle of the night phone calls involved our cows. “Your cows are headed toward the Snack Shop,” a neighbor would say. Or, more frustrating at 3 am, the caller would say: “We think your cows are black and white, but there are a couple of brown cows by the side of the road and thought you would want to know.”
Our cows were also guilty of daytime escapades. The calls went like this: “This is an emergency! There are 8 black and whites in our front yard, and we think they’re yours. Our children are terrified, so please hurry.”
How do cows get loose and terrorize the neighborhood? Well, if a cow can jump over the moon, she certainly can jump over sagging barbed wire.
During our 16-year years of dairy farming, thankfully none of our cows got into serious trouble while they were out on the town.
Of course, when the calls came, the farmer was nowhere to be found. “Rounding up cows is not in my job description,” I wanted to scream. I hadn’t been raised a cowgirl. Nor did they teach me this at Wake Forest. It wasn’t that I was scared of the Holsteins – I just didn’t know the calls and authoritative gestures that would get them headed in the right direction.
July 7, 1986, was our last day to milk cows. As grief-stricken as we were to surrender the cows to the sale barn, at least the farmer said that the late night calls from law enforcement would stop.
“I can’t wait till I get the next midnight call and get to tell the deputy he is barking up the wrong tree,” the farmer said.
This reprieve did not last long. The pastures’ emptiness was unbearable, so the farmer began adding a carriage horse or two. Carriage horses have a lot of giddy-up; and they are noted for their willingness to travel. Indeed, these horses develop enough self-esteem so as not to be frightened by Porsches, honey wagons or Harleys.
Barbed wire isn’t good enough for such horses; we had to electrify the place. Nevertheless, our horses are prone to “cut a rusty,” as the farmer refers to their misbehavior.
Last week, the town fathers called as I was headed for work. ‘Seven horses are loose in uptown Boiling Springs,’ the official said, and could I come get them? This official was rightly worried about the safety of the citizens first and the horses second.
The farmer was “away from his phone.” No one knew for sure, but they thought he was on a tractor somewhere.
Finally I reached our oldest son, who said he would round up the cattle trailer, round up help, and round up the horses. “Go on to work,” he said, adding that the police had the horses corralled uptown behind yellow tape.
Thank goodness the tape held and the horses were safely rescued. To prevent a recurrence, the farmer spent the weekend riding the fences and repairing them.
That’s the way it is with pastured animals, it seems, always seeking holes to jump through in order to break free.
I admit sharing their itch to run free. But freedom includes having enough horse sense to rein ourselves in. And there’s the rub.
At our house, going to The Fair is as much a ritual as the coming of Santa Claus. Early in the year, I place 2 important dates on our calendars: the dates of The Fair and the Annual Session of the NC Baptist State Convention. Some years it’s a tossup as to which is the most fun. At both, you can expect to run up on old friends, see fireworks, and eat a red apple.
In my younger days, I not only planned my schedule around The Fair, I planned my annual grapefruit diet for early September. It was important to look as slender as possible while chowing down on elephant ears.
But, if I can be confessional, The Fair is becoming more problematic. It takes a Herculean effort to squeeze into new jeans and come up with “Cleveland County Fair Look.”
This year I cheated and wore stretch jeans I had bought at a yard sale for $2. The September day I pull on elasticized polyester pants to go to The Fair is the day I will have reached official Senior Citizen status.
The farmer, on the other hand, is clueless about “The Fair Look.” When he was younger, he made sure he and our sons had new caps to wear. This year he selected whatever cap could be found on the top of the pile in his pickup. No forethought, no symbolism whatsoever.
What still leads good folk to plan their fall wardrobes, diets and schedules around the Cleveland County Fair? How, in this day of technological entertainment, can one explain the powerful pull of the fair?
For some it’s the farm animals. Ancestors would be proud to see dressed- to-impress Moms pushing toddlers through the turkey house. The Fair allows children to catch a glimpse and smell a whiff of their heritage.
For the younger generations, the appeal is the rides. Or, more importantly, the people you meet in the vicinity of the rides.
For the older generations, the appeal is the agricultural exhibits. In Cleveland County, it still matters who can grow the largest pumpkin.
This year, the Miss Cleveland County Fair pageant drew our attention. Although I was the one selected as a judge, the farmer sat across the arena and sought to influence my vote by signaling with his John Deere cap. Didn’t he know that this was THE “Miss Cleveland County Fair,” not “The Price is Right?”
The farmer was highly impressed with the caliber of the pageant, ruing the fact that he had unwittingly been missing out on this, the best part of The Fair, for years. Should I be scared that he is telling our boys the Miss Cleveland County Fair pageant is just as exciting as the dairy judging event?
Obviously, The Fair has survived because it offers something for everyone.
But most importantly, it has flourished only because of the hard work of a host of individuals, many them born into fair families, and all determined to preserve this grand tradition.
When business required an overnight trip last week to New York, I had to do a lot of bribing to get the farmer out of Cleveland County. Basically I had to paint a picture of his wife, alone, lost in Manhattan, unable to speak the native dialect.
Once the farmer agreed to the flight, the next step was even harder: getting him to part with his pocketknives. He NEVER leaves home without them. Who knows when a man might need to cut twine or peel a peach?
The last challenge was getting us to the airport in time. Trust me, getting onto a domestic flight can take 2 hours. Once we finally inched through security, we ran as hard as fifty and sixtysomethings can go, catching the plane with 45 seconds to spare.
Once in New York, we hoped to grab a burger in the hotel but could not stomach the $18.95 tab. Apiece. Instead, we found a hole in the hall where English was not the native language and Southern food was not the cuisine. When the farmer heard the word “club,” he was obviously relieved.
That afternoon, I had to take a cab to a legal firm. Hailing a cab is not as easy as it looks in the movies. Eventually, a kindly policeman said he would help. He knew just the gesture that would land me a ride.
Once in the right skyscraper, I landed in the elevator with another lady also dressed in New York black. Attempting to blend in, I had not dressed in my favorite jade green outfit with silver rhinestones.
Taking me for a New Yorker, my elevator companion asked, “What’s going on in the city today? I hear there’s been a shooting around the corner, some guy going postal on us. What about you? What have you noticed out of the ordinary today?”
I answered, “My goodness gracious. Why, I haven’t noticed a single thing that’s ordinary since I got here!”
The New Yorker immediately realized what she had here was a serious case of mistaken identity. I explained I’d just flown up from NC and didn’t think I’d witnessed any murders. Turning sympathetic, my companion said, “It’s nothing. Don’t worry. You are perfectly safe here in New York. Don’t you worry about a thing. You will be just fine.”
As it turned out, there had been an unfortunate murder-suicide around the corner from where we were.
I panicked, thinking of Cline out on the sidewalks of Manhattan, trying to blend in wish his baby blue shirt, white Dockers, and boots. On second thought, maybe he would blend.
After the business matter was behind me, I found Cline had indeed enjoyed his afternoon in the city. And we both agreed we wanted to make a pilgrimage to Ground Zero.
By now, of course, the 16-acre site is eerily clean. But what a monstrous hole in the ground, giving testimony to the even bigger hole in a nation’s heart. What moved me very much was the sight of the mangled cross that had emerged from the ruins. It’s a powerful symbol of faith, hope and love – life-giving forces that survive the worst that man can do.
Bucking the trend away from dinner on the grounds, our church (Boiling Springs Baptist) recently asked the ladies of the church to cook an ole-timey meal in observance of Founders’ Day.
The completion of our air-conditioned, comfortable family life center certainly made it easier to re-institute “dinner on the grounds.” There would be no flies in the egg custard; no slipped iced cake layers; and, most of all, no wilted church members.
The charter members would have had to sniff their smelling salts had they been able to witness the frenzy as the lady of our house oversaw the preparation of 2002’s ole-timey dishes.
The farmer suggested that we fix ole-timey fried chicken, but quickly backpedaled at the prospect of wringing the chicken’s neck. I was secretly relieved, worried that our Fry Daddy wasn’t large enough to handle a whole fryer.
What kind of meat would we cook, the farmer and I wondered early Sunday morning as we watched the doppler radar on the weather channel? We nixed meatloaf, that being a 1950s creation as opposed to 1850s. We almost settled on country ham biscuits, but the Wal-Mart country ham in the freezer didn’t smell right.
“Let’s do a platter of liver mush!” the farmer decided, and he set off for the grocery store. Just 15 years ago, he didn’t even know where the grocery store was.
In the meantime, I started on our favorite dessert: blackberry cobbler. Thank goodness for the frozen cultured blackberries grown by column-reader and friend, Bobby McSwain. Bobby may have helped Mother Nature with the blackberries, but I was on my own with the pie dough. After rolling out the dough, there were enough scraps for ole-timey stickies, which I did NOT take to church.
By now the farmer had returned with 4 pounds of liver mush. Sensing that I was near meltdown mode, the farmer did something no male ancestor would ever have done: he volunteered to fry the liver mush. So he sharpened his knives with Pa Pa’s whet rock, sliced each block, lighted the big gas grill, and grilled the liver mush!
Back in the house, I wondered what sort of authentic vegetable we could fry. Then it hit me: OKRA! This year’s crop was especially authentic, since it had been watered with branch water pumped out with a generator and hauled to the patch.
But who would cook the okra? Why not youngest son, Miles? So I rousted him (as Pa Pa used to say) out of bed and volunteered him. While I sliced okra, Miles went to the barn for his fish cooker and propane tank. It took just a few minutes, and $10 worth of oil, but we fried a whole bucket of okra for Founders’ Day lunch.
Our last contribution to the meal was cornbread sticks, baked in Grandma’s cast iron corn stick pan. Thank goodness for Pam Cooking Spray. The cornbread itself was from scratch, since the farmer got on his knees and begged me NOT to add foreign ingredients, such as sour cream or canned Mexican corn.
With our authentic ole-timey meal thusly prepared, we checked the doppler and the Internet one more time, raced to church, and thanked God for our goodly heritage.
Surely on the Sunday before September 11, it is appropriate to remember the dead, to honor living heroes, and to reflect on truths learned from our national tragedy.
We recall with clarity where we were and what we were doing when the news of the terrorist attacks reached us. But how much clarity do we have a year later as we remember this tragedy?
In the midst of the rubble, great truths became evident.
We’ve re-learned great lessons on freedom -- that freedom is worth living for and dying for. Our freedom gives birth to courage. It creates an environment that allows ordinary people to rise to heroism. In an instant. Our constitutional freedom is our most important national treasure, and is, sadly, what makes us subject to attack. For ultimately, our freedoms are at the heart of “why they hate us.”
We’ve witnessed, but may not have understood, the existence and horror of evil. Evil, coupled with fanaticism, is a powerful destroyer. We can not afford to underestimate the power of such evil, which all too often comes disguised in religious garb.
But, we’ve also observed that humankind is capable of profound goodness, compassion, heroism, and sacrificial leadership. We have come to a renewed hope about our country as we have discovered the presence of a deep reservoir of goodness and leadership, just waiting to be tapped.
And this reservoir does not end with our nation’s boundaries. Most of the world has shared our grief and has stood by our side as we dealt with the realities of September 11.
We’ve come to a greater celebration and acknowledgment of our diversity. Media coverage has brought into our dens visual pictures that Americans are what you get when the world gives you “her tired, her poor, her huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Our vision is broader; our tolerance is greater. These significant steps we are making in overcoming blindness and prejudice must continue.
We’ve learned practical lessons – that we are physically vulnerable; that we had better spend dollars and invest our talent in providing for our national security.
We’ve learned that patriotism may start with the proud display of our beloved symbols, but true patriotism quickly moves to service. Patriotism requires much of us.
A basic responsibility is that we be part of an informed electorate. Patriotism includes serving our country through dedication to our jobs and to volunteer service. For many of us, it requires that we answer the call to military service.
This national tragedy has caused us personally and as a nation to focus on those things that truly matter: people, country, work, worship, and a daily appreciation of life. We have re-learned lessons on gratitude. We’ve counted our blessings and resolved to be more alive. Many questions remain and some of the hardest will likely go unanswered.
But for most of us, during the last year, we have experienced and observed the power of faith. Our nation continues to need our prayers -- and our leaders have requested them.
May God guide us, preserve us, and grant our country, and our world, peace.
When the heat waves of summer were broiling, the farmer turned up the heat with his comments concerning folks with office jobs, including me. He believes that the biggest decision we face each day is whether to set the office thermostat at 71 or at 74.
I would never confess to him that, when you share an office with other people, there is more truth to that notion than one might think.
The farmer is probably not alone in thinking, year round, working in an insurance office would be noneventful. At least, the farmer says, my job really doesn’t expose you to the elements. It depends on what you define as “the elements.”
In reality, there are as many interesting stories to tell as there are people who walk through the front door. When I am safely into my retirement years, perhaps I’ll turn some of those stories into column topics.
And our work takes us out in the field, sometimes literally.
In homes, I’ve had to compete with loud TVs, louder toddlers, and on 2 occasions, talking parrots determined to take the floor. Here’s what I’ve learned: if the parrot knows all the verses to the “Andy Griffith Theme Song,” you are in deep trouble.
I’ve had to share space with all manner of family pets, from killer cats to ferrets to iguanas. Over the years, I’ve even run over a pet or two, which is never good for public relations.
I’ve been caught in snowstorms, downpours, and heat waves. I’ve driven through creeks and up to jumping off places. In the course of performing my duties I’ve been to the far corners – from Sandy Mush to Bethware to Gilkey -- sometimes within the space of a morning.
Everyone knows that regardless of the weather or the circumstances, the mail must go through. Though this wouldn’t play well in ads, so must the insurance.
On the positive side, I’ve been introduced to the very rich diversity of our population.
Just when I had thought I had overcome every possible situation in the line of duty, last week, in a distant town, I was greeted, again, by a very large dog jumping up and down for joy at the arrival of the “insurance lady.”
“Bubba” (the dog’s name has been changed to protect his identity) licked my hand profusely. As I wiped my hand as discreetly as possible, the client’s husband apologized for having to leave, saying an emergency had come up.
"He has to take Bubba in for a rabies booster shot," the wife explained. "Bubba was playing last night with a bat that got in our house. The bat appeared to be sick, so we’ve sent it off to be tested. Now we need to make sure our dog will be OK."
I wiped the dog slobber off my hand and suddenly found that I was lots more concerned about my own insurance than anyone else’s. Spotting antibacterial soap by the kitchen sink, I did ask for and receive permission to wash my hands. Thoroughly.
Back at the office, as I was relating this story to the reps, one of the best trained simply brought me back to business. “OK, Kathryn, that’s an interesting story, but did you get the check?”
“Yes,” I said, but when I tried to hand it off, they all ran for cover.
