Feed those poor starving kids some spinach!

Where or where can Miss Etta be? It has been too long since she joined us on the porch! I may have to send out a posse to find her!

Lawd, I gotta tell you my mind was jumpin' all over the place, just like those crickets, when I read your entry Miz Vul! I have food tales to tell for sure!

My Mama told me a story of when I was so small I was still in a high chair. She had plopped a whole bunch of nasty spinach on my plate and I was refusing to eat it. We locked horns and I have to tell you, I was much more stubborn than she. We went round and round until my dessert privileges were in dire jeopardy.

Just in the nick of time someone knocked on the door and she left to answer it. She wasn't gone but a few minutes, just long enough for my plate to get cleaned up real nicely. She said I was just barely talking and walking and she had no idea I was such a sneaky little devil until she was cleaning up AFTER I had my dessert reward for being so, so good. Guess what was in plain view in the middle of the trash can? Yep, of course you guessed long ago I had done something with the spinach other than eat it!

She said she had no idea I could even get out of the high chair, much less figure out that the spinach needed to go all the way across to the trash. She never did figure out how I thought to do it so fast and then was able to accomplish the dastardly deed in the short time she was gone. I don't remember the incident so I have no idea how I managed.

And those poor starving children I had to clean my plate for? I never did understand why it mattered about those children in China or Vietnam or Africa (depending on her mood). I would have been delighted to ship them a package every day of the stuff I didn't want to eat.

I am still a very picky eater, although I have grown to like spinach. I can't abide the taste of collard greens and turnips, which I know is almost a sacrilege down here in our south.

You must have a very interesting family Miz Vul, one that I think I would very much like! If I gave anyone, and I do mean anyone, in my family chocolate and paint brushes they would head to the freezer to find the ice cream as they asked which package had the paint to go with the brushes. I'd rather drink before noon than have to try to explain what they might want to do with the paint brushes and chocolate if it just so happened I didn't have a can of paint and ice cream!

I rather enjoy poking at my family sometimes. It is so easy to just tip toe over the line of decorum and have them looking at me all askance! I may be invitin' you and Miss Etta to our next family gathering. After I've had a couple of pitchers of adult beverages, I think I would enjoy it immensely.

That reminds me of the fella in school that I used to delight in embarrassing. I sat behind him in one of my classes. He was a big old football player and everyone just swooned over him. But my, oh my, was he shy! I would lower my head and get as close as I could reach and whisper something to make him turn red just when I thought the teacher was swinging her hear in his direction. It didn't take much. All I'd have to do was tell him that everyone thought he was so cute or some similar sentiment!

I have a little bit of an impish nature! My Mama just says I'm trouble on two legs, but most times she says it with a smile.

Well, it's Friday night, the snow is coming. I hope we have at least 3 or 4 inches although I understand the weatherman has tempered the prediction to possibly one at most. Oh well, I can always hope.

Hope you enjoyed your Little Debbie Miz Vul, and hope to hear from you soon Miss Etta!

Miss Faye is headed to the refrigerator while we still have power!

Chocolate On My Mind

Hey Miss Faye,

Glad you gave the chirpers a listen. Hope you listened to the slowed-down version 'cause it's amazing how much their slowed-down version sounds like humans making beautiful music. Makes me wonder how much better we might all sound if we slowed down just a smidgeon, you know what I mean? Hope all that cricket music didn't make you have to bring out the calamine lotion last night.

So you don't like to feed one breathing thing to another, eh? Sure do wish more people felt the way you do - especially when it comes to breathing human beings. Non-breathing humans, too, for that matter, tho' I've found that as a rule, folks are much kinder to dead folks. It's also interesting the transformation that takes place when somebody dies. But we'll save that for another day's posting.

I'm with you on the boiled okra. Blechdkdt. It may taste fine, but the texture is what keeps me from partaking. And I don't really see how anybody could tell how it tastes cause it's so slippery it likely slides right on down without waking up the taste buds.

I am what's known as a picky eater, and now I'm old enough my mama can't make me eat anything regardless of the condition of those poor hungry children in China. And I don't have to hide things under the sofa either, thank goodness, cause now I am the one that has to sweep out from under the sofa.

As for dunking things in chocolate, yum yum. I'll coat most anything with chocolate and call it good. Reminds me of the Christmas I bought a jar of chocolate and a coupla paint brushes for my father-in-law and his new bride. (She was That Kind of Woman, dontchaknow.) (And he sure didn't seem to mind. Not one bit.) Well, I ordered it out of a catalog, and as usual, I did my shopping early and stuck the presents in the closet as they came in. Then, when it came time to wrap presents, I couldn't find that chocolate anywhere.

I did eventually find it, though.

When my 15-year old teenage nephew boy opened his present (ordered from the same catalog), out rolled that chocolate followed shortly by the his 'n hers paintbrushes.

Nephew boy was mightily disappointed to find that it wasn't his, I tell you what.

Think I'll go see if I can find that Little Debbie chocolate thing I hid for just such a day as this.

Miss Etta, you doin' okay?

Till next time, Miz Vul

Boiled Okra and Fried Crickets

Well, Jimminy Cricket Miz Vul! I had to go out and listen to those crickets you told us about in your journal entry. I could not believe that the beautiful sounds could be those noisy little pests. It just goes to show you that there is good in everything.

Except I do have to wonder, like you, just how much time those people had who put all that together.

I listened to that and now I know I will be dreaming of crickets tonight. I saw there was a full one hour version of those crickets making music. I started itching while listening to the short version. My Mama always told me I had much too much of an imagination. Once I knew it was crickets I might be able to appreciate how beautiful they sounded but I could not help but think of those jumping little creatures trapped in a jar waiting to become fish bait!

Now Miss Etta may already know that I don't like to fish and I don't like taking God's creatures and feeding them to another. I'm never quite sure how much Miss Etta has learned about me as we share our thoughts in these journals!

While I might not like the idea of feeding crickets to fish, if I were hungry enough I suppose I'd be soon figuring out how to put them on a fish hook.

Do you know that in some places they put chocolate on crickets and eat them? At least I have been told that before. I have seen boxes of chocolate covered ants but haven't had the displeasure of seeing crunchy cricket delight yet.

In case you were wondering, it is not on my list of things I have to see before I die.

Have you ever thought about who in the world figured out that some foods were OK to eat? Who decided to boil okra? Who was brave enough to eat it first? I dearly love my fried okra but I have yet to acquire a taste for boiled okra. I like it well enough in a soup as long as there are plenty of other vegetables in there with it. Mix it up with some tomatoes and put it on top of rice and I am in my own little food heaven! Yet I will not eat it plain boiled.

Miss Etta I almost forgot! I surely did laugh so hard when I read your cousins saying about first babies! There are a lot of half-baked babies running around in this world today.

I'll be talking with you soon,
Miss Faye

So Glad To Be Here

Well, Misses Faye and Etta, aren't y'all the sweetest things? I sure do 'preciate that invitation. Just add another straw to that mint julep and scoot over cause I think I'll just take you up on it and come sit a spell on your v-porch.

As long as I don't wear out my welcome, that is.

Y'all sure are right about talent right here in our own backyard. Why just look at the Fayette Front Page. All those people doing all those talented things.

And it's nothing new to this area, either. Why this patch of red dirt we call home has been talented upon more times than I can count.

Take this one boy named B. W. Mersk. He hung around between second and third base on the school playground, leaning up against the little fence that surrounded the cesspool, separating it from the kickball field. Somebody'd really get their foot into a ball, and whoosh. That red school-issue ball would sail right over everybody's heads and thunk right into the cesspool. Quick as a flash, B. W. went wading in, treading where none of the rest of us dared to go. He'd fetch the ball, get back outside the fence, shake himself off pretty good, then roll the ball back to the pitcher and go on back to leaning and waiting on the next pretty good kicker to step up to the plate. That right there was what I call useful talent. Anybody who could go that close to the cesspool - let alone inside it - and not gag. Uh huh.

Now I got a husband who can tie a knot in a cherry stem with his tongue. And not even open his mouth too much. I been thinking about hiring him out for parties and such. He's a right outgoing type, and a little bit of pin money never hurt any of us. You know what I mean?

Got another relative who can lay down on the piano bench - her head close to the keyboard - raise her arms up over her face to the keyboard, cross 'em, and play the piano.

She really can.

Can play all sorts of tunes like that. That's not just talent - that's a nimble brain, too, dontchaknow.

Then there's my uncle who can make a dollar go further than from here to Australia and back. But I guess that's delving into a different column - one that's called something other than talent.

At least to hear his family talk, it is.

Ummm hmmmm.

Why just look at you and Miss Etta. All the talent that veritably flies right outta your fingertips daily. Y'all sling these words and thoughts together like nobody's business, and I'm here to tell you: that's talent.

Yes it is.

You are so right, Miss Faye: we don't have to trek all the way out to California to find talent. No, we sure don't.

But I tell you what: if you want to step outside our backyard via the internet, give this little nugget a listen:

http://www.songpeddler.com/JimWilson/GodsCricketChorus_JWilson.asp

It's a chorus of crickets singing.

I kid you not.

Somebody with way too much time on their hands, recorded crickets THEN, as if that wasn't enough, slowed the recording down to match "the length of the average lifespan of a human being".

Don't ask me how they did that 'cause I do NOT do math.

It's a selection right outta nature's talent show. And it could still be local talent 'cause for all we know, those crickets were performing on this red soil we call home. Could be. It sure could be.

Gotta' run. Y'all stay warm now, ya' hear. And thanks again for inviting me to your v-porch. We're gonna' have a mighty fine time. I just know we are.

Till next time,

Miz Vul