Would you give fake sugar to the Dowager Countess?

                Having just survived the holidays and trying to decide if MLK is enough of a reason to break out the haystacks once more, I realized that sugar is all around us and is an integral part of what makes a Southerner Southern as opposed to merely from the South.  Our tea is sweet, our belles are sweet (at least as far as you know) and our desserts are diabetes-inducingly sweet.  We even coat our criticisms with a sugary, ‘Bless their hearts’ when we meant what we said but needed the recipient to still feel as if the Junior League wasn’t suddenly out of reach.

                The reason I bring this up is I have been fake sugaring all sorts of things of late and today, I am loath to admit, I sugared my chili.  Now, before you get all judgmental, bear with me.  I merely added 3 individual Splenda packets to a pot of chili that contained 2.5 pounds of hamburger.  It’s not like I was trying to make a red meat soufflé; I was simply trying to recreate this amazing chili I had as an appetizer at dinner last night.  It was some of the best I’ve had (Willow Pizza in San Jose, check it out) and had a slight sweetness that was just divine.

                So I bought the ingredients for chili and was trying to figure out how to make it sweet.  I add grape jelly to my baked beans and they are loved by all and sundry.  But I thought that wouldn’t be quite the flavor profile I was seeking. 

                It is a known fact that Clara Herrington of Tylertown, MS makes the best tuna salad in all the land.  And I’m not kidding.  As someone who used to weigh 422 pounds, I know great food.  As someone who lost 220 of those pounds (yes, I’m bragging) you should trust my tastes.  Why, you ask?  Well, I’ll tell you.  I have great taste in clothes; as I write this I am wearing fuchsia chinos and a navy cardigan with navy suede wingtips and a matching belt, and my most recent fortune cookie fortune stated, “You are admired for your impeccable tastes”.  So there you go.

                Now, I have never been known for violent tendencies other than scathing remarks about tacky people, but I can assure you that if you were to stand betwixt me and Ms. Clara’s tuna salad, fisticuffs would ensue.  I am not proud of that reality; I am simply being honest.

                A couple of years ago, I was visiting Mississippi on a tiny book tour (buy my book A Gone Pecan online) and had an offering to stay at the Herrington Clan’s house on the Bogue Chitto River.  As I was taught to do, I politely declined at first (we are very British) but when they upped the ante to include, not only Ms. Clara’s tuna salad, but Ms. Clara herself, I would have been a fool not to accept.  I love me some Herringtons, do you hear me?

                Now, I realize that having just admitted to spending the night alone with Ms. Clara is tantamount to a scandal is the not-otherwise-occupied minds of Tylertownians, unless you think about it for, I don’t know, say, 4 or 5 seconds and you realize the players in the story are Ms. Clara and me.  I think Andy Griffith’s Aunt Bea was more scandalous than the sainted Ms. Clara.  Well, sainted if Baptists had saints, whose designations I assume would be somehow tied to popularity of casserole recipes or number of prayer circles started.

                I said all that to say this, her secret ingredient is sugar.  I apologize if that was meant to be a secret, but Sharon told me at the river one time so it’s her fault, Miss Clara.

                Now I know that sugar is bad for you.  We all know that it will one day take my Daddy’s feet.  Fear not, however, as I have been using fake sugar for quite some time. Sweet ‘n’ Low (the pink one) is the first I tried and used to be the only one.  It reminds me of old ladies and/or Tab.  I switched to Equal (the blue one) when Cher started advertising it in the 90s, I think.  My Daddy and I had been using that for our morning coffee until recently.  A friend, who is a nurse, told me some story about Equal having the same effect on your organs as formaldehyde or somesuch.  I don’t know if this is an urban myth but I switched to Splenda (the yellow one) as I was told by this same friend that at least Splenda was real sugar that had been altered to be bereft of, well, sugar.  I assume it was some chemical engineering process but I like to think it was magic like in Harry Potter.

                And speaking of Harry Potter, my Daddy and I have been enjoying Downton Abbey, which he calls Down Town Abbey, then wonders aloud (each week) why they’re in the country, not the city.  He can’t remember who is who so there’s a lot of questioning throughout the show, which requires the use of close captioning.  Not so much for him, but for me. 

I am adept at understanding English accents, idioms and slang, being an unabashed Anglophile.  He, on the other hand, being a citizen of Ala-Miss-La-Tex, doesn’t even understand me half of the time, much less someone British.  Watching with him is not unlike sitting beside a child with ADD and no Ritalin.  Who’s that?  Why’s she wearing that?  Boy, that one sure is ugly.  She’d make a haint take a thorn thicket!  Why’d they pick an ugly girl?  Why do you need a house that big?  Would you like a house that big?  I wouldn’t.  I like log cabins.  I want a Harley.  Why don’t you let me eat candy bars?  Did you bring me a Coke Zero from town?  You know I lost 2 more pounds.  Why’re you lookin’ at me like that? 

                We were watching TV this past weekend as I do only when he complains I don’t spend time with him as his activities consist of sleeping, eating and crocheting while watching TV.  I had found a Harry Potter movie and we were both enjoying it when he suddenly said, “Hey!  There’s that old lady from Downtown Abbey!”

                I responded that it was, in fact, the Dowager Countess and although she is a two-time Oscar winner (1969 Best Actress for the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and 1978 Best Supporting Actress for California Suite in which she played an Oscar nominee on her way to the ceremony) she is best known to the Millenials, which apparently includes 71 year-old rednecks, as Professor McGonagall.

                This set him off on another tangent:  Boy she looks terrible, don’t she?  What year was that movie made?  Can you look it up on your little computer?  I wonder how old she is?  How old is Ziva from NCIS?  I know Abbie is older than she looks.  You know she’s from Loozeeana? You find out the year yet?  What’s takin’ you so long?  How old is Abbie?  Who’s that old man?  Can I grow my beard and tie a ribbon in it?  Why d’ya always make that face?  Is it time to eat yet?  I’m hungry.  I sure would like a chocolate shake this big.  Where you goin’?

                I just realized that it is almost 6 pm and time for Downton Abbey out here on the West Coast.  I will bid you adieu and head to the TV viewing room.  I must prepare myself to read my new favorite TV show because Daddy is wide awake and while over-medicating a crazy old man isn’t actually illegal, it borders on rude and being British, I’d rather someone think I were poor than rude.

                Happy New Year, y’all!

The Perks of Knowing a Good Ol' Boy

Throughout the time I have shared with you the ins and outs of living with my Daddy, I haven’t done a whole lot of reminiscing about the more interesting perks of having a good ol’ boy for a Daddy. 

I recently spent a week in Hawaii with my family, which now includes my niece’s boyfriend who is saddled with the unfortunate nickname ‘Rica’.  

This very nice young man’s parents named him Chad.  My sister started calling him Chad-rica, for reasons known only to her.  And as she is prone to do, she shortened it to simply Rica and refers to him by that moniker in all our conversations.  So, I have started calling him Rica in my head; for example, when I was making my Christmas list I actually wrote “shirt for Rica”.  My Daddy even calls him Rica and thought he was Hispanic, which made for an odd conversation when they arrived at my house this June and in walked a blonde boy.

My Daddy ever so eloquently stated, “I ain’t never seen a blonde-headed messican.  Are you sure that’s Rica?”  When I attempted to make light of the situation (due to the reddening face of Rica himself) by stating that Castilian Spaniards can be blonde, my Daddy flagged down that train with his usual bluster, “Casteeya-whatayasay?  There ain’t no such thing as a blonde-headed messican.” 

And I shared all that to say this – I returned from my trip on Wednesday night, Thanksgiving Eve, if you will, and reminded my Daddy that he had promised to eat dinner at a co-workers home the following day.  Well, you would’ve thought I had asked him to wear a tutu or volunteer at a nursing home considering the look he gave me.  He says he doesn’t like “old people”.

You see my Daddy is not a social person, which comes as a bit of a shock to some of you.  Granted he can turn on the charm when he wants to and if you can get past the shockingly un-PC statements he is prone to make, he will make you laugh, albeit sometimes nervously and always looking around to see who heard you laugh as it was probably slightly vulgar.  He can “act right” in front of company when he wants to.  Unfortunately for me, I am not considered company.

To ensure that he remained in a reasonably interactive mood, I plied him with breakfast at our favorite diner, Jason’s, and let him get in a nap before we left for Greg and Louise’s.  One of the only reasons my father agreed to attend is that Greg is one of his favorite people seeing as how he looks like a biker and actually owns a Harley.  I think he likes Greg more than he likes me.  Scratch that; I KNOW he likes Greg more than me as, and I quote, “Greg is macho”.  Shockingly, I am not considered macho which is a term used exclusively by my father and the Village People.

When we got to Greg’s, I distracted Daddy with football on the big screen and Ruffles with onion dip until dinner was served.  Thank goodness they had a Honeybaked Ham, my Daddy’s favorite holiday protein.  After we ate, he sat back down with Greg and watched football and told lies about Vietnam (the country with the fighting back then) and Germany (the women back then) and other standard après dinner conversation topics.

After a couple of hours, which was very much surprising, he said we needed to go as his a-double-s was starting to hurt.  On the way to the door someone asked why my Daddy calls Adam (my management trainee) George.  I tried to explain the nicknames my family doles out and the odd names my father loves to give to the various animals that have had the joy of being members of our household.  Dogs named Missy, Goober, Digger, Licker, Snoopy, Satan, Sophie, Pepper, Hot Dog and Lulu.  And I just adore my Lulu.  I just wish that her name was not the same as a now-deceased, overweight, reformed stripper who became a Christian and sang on Hee-Haw.    Since my Daddy has claimed I have “stole” his dog (which is accurate), I have tried to get her to answer to Paisley but she will have none of it.  You can take the dog out of the patch…

The conversation then turned to the odd assortment of other animals that we have owned such as horses, cows, sheep, guinea pigs and parrots.  One parrot in particular was named Seymour.  Christmas 1981, we drove the 13 hours from Oklahoma to my grandparent’s farm in Alsatia, Louisiana, population 27, not counting goats or horses.  My mother was driving.  I, my sister, brother, 626 Christmas gifts and our poodle (Pepper) were in the backseat and my Daddy riding shotgun with Seymour on his shoulder.  Yes, you read that correctly.  As he was slumped in the front seat sleeping, some random but soon to be unfortunate heathens mistakenly thought my mother was the only adult in the car. 

Somehow finding enough confidence to terrorize a family while driving a Ford Pinto, these ruffians proceeded to pass us and then pull over in front of us and slow down to 20 miles an hour.  As I inherited my lead foot from my mother and because back then Oklahoma highways had no posted speed limit, my Mother easily passed them, making great time on our sojourn toward the farming community of her youth.  After several episodes of the passing and subsequent slowing down with these hooligans, my Daddy woke up and asked her what was going on. 

When she explained the situation, it poked the proverbial bear, and he asked me if I had brought my early Christmas present, a knife.  My sister wondered aloud what good a pocket knife would do, having apparently forgotten that my father somehow mis-interpreted my Christmas wish list to include “Bowie knife with 8” blade and snakeskin handle” when what I had actually asked for was “Electronic Battleship”.

I grabbed the knife and we had a mid-air swap as he threw the parrot into the back seat and proceeded to hang his upper torso out of the window and wave the knife asking the “M-Fers” to politely join him in a discussion of the merits of leaving us alone.  For some unknown reason, assumingly alcohol, the threat of a large bearded fellow waving a Bowie knife was not enough to distract these wayward souls from their intended mission of, I am guessing, “harassing people” because they repeated the pass and slow down routine several more times.

Having more than enough of the situation that he cared to endure, my Daddy asked my mother ever so politely if she was finished with her (glass bottle of) Tab.  When she indicated that she was, in fact, no longer in need of the diet refreshment, he asked her to pull alongside the Pinto.

When he could see the whites of the driver’s eyes, like General Washington taught us, he proceeded to introduce the half-full bottle to the area in and around the driver’s ears, nose and throat, causing an abrupt departure of the Pinto from the pavement.  And with that, he turned to my mother and said, “Solved that problem, Mama.  Let’s get on to Alsatia.”

Lesson learned?  Actions do speak louder than words. 

And that is all I’m saying.