NEARLY SEVENTY YEARS

 

Pretty near SEVENTY years ago---September 26, 1956, my best friend Linda got her Mama to drive us to the Tupelo Fair to see Elvis perform. We were just  in High School, and like many a young’un of all eras, we got together on the phone the night before, to decide on what to wear. Sitting there in our September-night houses, with perhaps the fan going and the heat of the day subsiding, we threw all sense to the nonexistent winds and chose to wear our new black skirt-and-sweater sets, bought for the new school year---both sweaters were long-sleeved wool, pushed up to the elbow, and hers was angora. We got dressed the next morning and off we went, confident in our sophistication, the curl of our immaculate ponytails, and our stylish outfits, decades ahead of Fernando’s infamous “It’s better to look good than to feel good.”

It was HOTTTT, even early morning, even in the car. They had a BIG Oldsmobile, with the flip-forward front seats for getting into the back. It was dark green with white leather seats, and her whiny brother had to ride in the front because he got carsick---which was fine with us, because neither of us wanted to be stuck in the back seat with him, anyway.

We’d first hoped that Linda's Mama would go and visit with her sister, who lived there in town---but the even more fervent hope was that she wouldn’t go off and saddle US with Little Brother while we had mature lady-things to do. But he wanted to stay for the Fair, and so they both stayed. We had matinee tickets, because we had to try to get home before dark.

We carried a picnic lunch in a big carrier, and we had to take it in when we went through the gate, so we took turns carrying the thing, and baby-sitting it when the others would go on the rides. I don’t think she and I ate a bite, for the show started about 2 p.m., and we were just so nervous to go and get into a good spot. No reserved seats---no seats at all in a lot of places, and as we entered, Randy started to whimper and pull back, because of the crowd, surging and already screaming all around us, and Mrs. T. had to stay behind with him, as we went WAY forward. The stage was a big plank platform, and all these years I’ve remembered it as a flatbed truck, somehow---maybe there were wheels visible. It was all open in the sun, and I’m sure we were limp as dishrags by the time we got as far front as we could.

We were WAY early, and as we stood in that September sun, with the sweaty, nervous crowd pressing ever close and closer, I could just feel the fever in my clothes---that wooly outfit, so chic and so sophisticated, was just intolerable, and the sweat was running down our faces. We’d grabbed a few each of those awful brown NIBROC “towels” in the restroom---the ones like pinking-sheared grocery bags, and we were steadily trying to dab our foreheads and not let anyone see, as the Coty powder from our dollar compacts dissolved and our Tangee lips must have looked like teeny-bop Riddlers.

There was none of the fanfare of later years---no dramatic 2001/Zarathustra and strobing lights---they just announced him, and there he was---Elvis, beginning his first number. And we were vindicated: The King was wearing almost an exact duplicate of our own outfits (he was in pants, of course). Despite the darkness of his own clothes, he just shone, up there in the sun---his hair was closer to REAL hair at the time, hardly distinguishable from any haircut in our acquaintance, and he was SO beautiful.

His shirt looks black in the picture, but I swear it was a deep, sapphire-y blue, kind of glinting as he turned and moved, gleaming almost electric sometimes in the depths, like the changes when you blow onto a cat’s fur, with the light hitting the velvet just right. I heard later that his Mama had made that shirt, and it was no big deal at the time, but now, it’s a thing of rare grace to think of---that just-starting-out Most Enduringly Successful Show-Biz-Personality-of-All-Time, wearing a garment made by his beloved Mama on her old Singer. And he was proud to wear it.

We were two shy small-town girls, in every sense, and would never have intruded ourselves onto anything, but somehow we were RIGHT BENEATH HIS FEET, right up at the front of the stage, with fans who were screaming and crying and reaching fervently toward him, as if to Touch His Garment. Flashbulbs were popping and the music was blasting, and he was gyrating and we were literally burning to death inside those infernal wooly clothes, and it was like no other experience I can imagine.

And of the continuation, MOIRE NON.

SWEET AND LOVELY

In addition to shirking my attentions to my own blog, I’ve missed out lately on a lot of the wonderful ones I’ve enjoyed over the years.   One of these is CAKE WRECKS, and there's a cheer-you-up, BRIGHT you, in a little story-in-cake.

The tiny, timeless characters from all over the world of baking are simply the sweetest ever, and the little poem to accompany is spot-on perfect.

https://www.cakewrecks.com/home/2017/5/21/story-time-sweets.html

RIPPLES FROM ANOTHER TIME

 

REFLECTION FROM TEN YEARS AGO---You know how you meet someone and instantly that person becomes a part of your life-memories, even though you never see them again, nor they ever think of you as well.   Just a small encounter at a restaurant, a child of such grace and charm that her tiny being captured my heart in that moment.   Often in these ten intervening years, I've wondered if she's doing well in school, or is she happy and dancing, or perhaps she's had a wonderful something in her life that would BRIGHT me to know.   However, wherever, I hope she is still that beautiful young lady whose small touch on my day has resounded in such a strange, welcome way, and I wish her WELL.  

From September, 2015:  Leah and I had been to Sunday lunch at a salad restaurant, and she had lingered with a takeout-container to collect some for her lunches of the week.   I stood in the lobby, and met a small girl whose sweet smile and fabulous, luxuriant hair simply captivated my interest.  The waiting line was sparser, but still going through, and I looked down and across the divider to see the most beautiful child---a little girl of about three, with the most astonishingly-beautiful hair---just a shining waterfall up in a tight band---not a ponytail, somehow, but across the width of her head and cascading down way past her waist.  She reached up, several times, lifting it by the sides and letting it fall sumptuously through her little hands as if she luxuriated in that special gift she carried.   Almost exactly like this, except not in "made" curls---more a cascading ripple of small gleaming waves, and the young lady was much tinier.

She turned and we smiled at each other.    I said, “You look very pretty today.”    She ducked her head, looked up, smiled again.     Catching a glimpse of the two Disney characters on her tiny shirt, I said, “Oh, do you like Elsa and Anna, too?   We do.”

She held her shirt-front out from her body for a look, and grinned.   “You know, we like them so much we had a FROZEN birthday party for my granddaughter,” I said.    Her Daddy had been smiling at the interchange, as she and I talked of the movie and the two sisters, and I went on to tell her about the party decorations and how much fun we had had.

He said,   “Her birthday’s tomorrow, and mine was yesterday”---then we got into the Happys and the “Mine was a few days ago, and Caro’s is Friday,”  with good wishes and general congratulations all around, like a bunch of happy Shriners at convention.       Isn’t it a marvel what just a smile among strangers will enkindle?

She still comes to my thoughts in happy dreams, this unknown little one, and so, wherever you are, Baby Girl, I hope you have had a wonderful decade, and wish you a future as bright as your smile.

A REAL HISSY-FIT

 

I’ve contemplated defining some Southern terms like “might could” and “come up a cloud,” before going on with adding any more characters to the Paxton census. But recently I read an etiquette question from a young woman who went to her first pitch-in lunch since she moved to the South.

She’d taken a cake as her contribution, and as everyone had been asked to take home whatever food remained on or in the dishes they’d brought, she picked up her plate with a bit of cake left, thanked the hostess graciously, and started for the door.

The hostess called out, in front of all the other guests, “Hey! You’re taking my PLATE!” Guest answered that was indeed her own plate---she’d brought the cake on it. Hostess replied, even more loudly, that it certainly WAS her plate, because it had a Christmas tree on it---going on in that vein, all but calling the guest a liar and a thief.

Embarrassed and chagrined that her first party in her new town had made her the center of such a spectacle in front of ladies she hoped would be her friends, the guest removed the Saran from the bit of cake and showed the hostess the plain white plate. Hostess made no apology beyond a grudging, “Well, it LOOKED like mine.”

The letter-writer asked if that were common behavior (and as my Mammaw would have said, it was VERY COMMON, indeed, but it certainly is not the norm where I come from). I answered her post, saying that it was NOT the usual way of doing things, and that the hostess certainly owed her more in the way of an apology than a four-year-old might be coerced to offer.

Then I explained an almost-entirely-Southern phenomenon---in other regions it might be called a fantod, or a “going off” or just plain RUDE. Down South it’s called a Hissy Fit.

You, My Dear, may have had your first (I hope) and last (more fervent hope) encounter with what is known as a Hissy Fit. And a very amateurish attempt, it was, pitched by someone who has not obtained her proper HF credentials, much like the hangers-on of Rock Stars and Movie Idols.

She THOUGHT she could, but failed miserably. She attained merely Rude, and SHE was the spectacle.

Southern Belles learn the power of the properly-thrown Hissy Fit in their cradles, and use them to good effect and AT THE PROPER TIME---in case of absolute, dyed-in-the-cotton rudeness from someone, or when they see another creature, human or animal, being abused. Gray areas less or more than these are cause for contemplation, reflection and consideration before throwing or refraining. A mistaken dish, no. An overheard bit of gossip, perhaps.

Catching Bobby Ray kissing Sissy Maud---Oh, Yeah.

A REAL Southern Belle KNOWS the difference, and is a model of calm and mannerly decorum, unless dire circumstances require. Some circumstances do require a Dressing Down, a Blessing Out, a taking-to-the-woodshed. Yours, however, did not do Any Such Of A THING.

Your hostess was NOT Raised Right, was probably a THAT CHILD, left to run roughshod over everyone in sight, and was exhibiting TRASHY WAYS.

She is a true blight on Belledom, and would be cut dead at any Garden Club, Debutante Ball, Fishfry, Huntin' Camp or Eastern Star South of the M&D. Her lack of apology is certainly no surprise. I apologize on behalf of Belles everywhere; we do not hold with such nonsense, No Sirree.

I truly trust that you will not have any further truck with such a hussy.   I'll bet she even put dark meat in the chicken salad.

PAST PERFECT

 There’s a dry whisper to all the memories of the Aunts and some of the Uncles of my childhood, for their clothes and shoes and selves seemed crisp, somehow---the fabrics and nubby  linens, the book-edge cuffs and sharp pleats of the men’s pants.   Serge and gabardine and woolens are serious cloth, not like the frivols of today’s miss-matched cottons and all those man-made, unmemorable plasticky garments sported by the young.  

Everything seems so SHINY, now---so plastic, from lips to startled eyebrows to hair, from clothes to shoes and sparkling arrays of color enough to piece a rainbow.   Faces have a greasy texture, somehow, carried on to the glint of the most microscopic glitter in rouge and lipstick---with my Hot South history of life, I cannot fathom how it would feel to be swathed in all that shine.   

It seemed to me that the adults of those earlier times, with their hair, clothes, powdery skin---all seemed to be made of dry fabric, as if they spent their days pinned on a line in the wind.  

Even lively and laughing, they seemed preserved, somehow, with the little dust of powder on the ladies’ faces, the pencil-swoop of eyebrow, and the tissue-blotted lipstick a matte effect, in contrast to today’s glows and shines and all those modern glittery, gleamy cheeks and wetnesses of lip smeared and dabbed on at random moments, morning to night, while driving, in conversation, balancing purse and phone and applicator deftly, not missing a beat as that small wet wand swoops across a tightened lip, between children’s schedules and plans to meet Sherri-with-an-i for  lunch.

OUR ladies sat at Vanity Tables, carrying their taste for tulle-and-net-covered dressers way past their teens and into their married bedrooms, and the poufy effect was enhanced by all the powder puffs and atomizer bottles and dresser sets of comb, brush and mirror, all laid out as part of the room’s décor---all with their own perpetual haze of sifted-down face-and-body powder lending a soft focus to the entire scene.  A matching ashtray was quite a part of the arrangement, as well, holding a few lipstick-tipped butts as casually as the little china box held bobby pins, and the smoke-drifts added their own oddly inoffensive-then note to the perfume's bergamot and rose.  There was such an aura of forceful feminity to those dressing areas---an almost overwhelming sweetness to the smoke and the scents, like opening a long-ago perfume bottle with but a dried golden film in the bottom.

 They sat down and tended to things, those ladies in their boo-dwars, with everything to hand right on the countertop, and every gesture and application a serious business.

 The foundation swooped and smoothed just so, the powder, the tiny round rouge puff maneuvered delicately over contour of cheek, and the practiced touches of the lipstick, with the final lip-clench over a bit of Kleenex to avoid smears on glass or cigarette.   

   All the younger Aunts but one---my dear Aint May-ry-on-the-other-side, she of the soft  smooth skin and fine blonde hair, contagious laugh and forward-tilt in her pretty white pumps, a dry rustle to her own crisply-ironed cotton blouses and skirts---all those other Aunts smoked, as did my Mother and Daddy. And since I saw these relatives so seldom, and then always with all of us in our Sunday Clothes--“dressed-up” to me naturally meant a nice spray from the Chanel or White Shoulders bottle, the smooth hang of their luxurious fabrics in unfamiliar greens and browns and taupes, or some soft-toned mustards and yellows, and the ethereal suggestion of just the faintest wisp of Chesterfield or Kool.   It was simply a fact of life, that scent-addition encircling almost every adult in the family---either the honest sweat-and-khakis of a hard work-day, or Sunday clothes with their own dry-goods-store aroma mingling into the Old Spice/Coty/Shalimar/My Sin and smoke.

I loved to watch my visiting Aunts get dressed for the day, especially Aunt Cilla.   She had the most wonderful wardrobe of them all, from Goldsmith’s and Lowenstein’s in Memphis, all cut to fit her tiny frame.   She’d hang her things in the closet as soon as they arrived, in hanging bags-to-match-her-Samsonite.   Those smooth tobacco-brown cases held wonders never imagined by Aladdin in that cave---pale stockings-with-seams, all in a pink satin bag to keep them safe from runs, and stacks of pastel undies and gowns and dusters and the tiniest bedroom shoes of velvet and and beadwork and lace, cuddled into the Overnight Case with tiny satin sachet poufs tucked in.   Her real shoe-case was a square puzzle-box thing that folded out in several directions to display a half-dozen pairs of beautifully polished leather shoes---mostly peep-toes or sling-backs with heels which raised her height to at least 5’2”.

And the dresses and pants and little jackets with peplums, or that one darling “military-style” one which was a deep blue, cut off sharply at the waist, with gold buttons and the smallest hint of little epaulettes.  I remember she wore that one occasionally just around her shoulders, striding down our little main street in her perfectly fitted slacks and fabulous shining shoes. 

She was FROM there, but no longer OF there.   Being “from OFF” separated her and Uncle Jed from the rest of us, into a cool, sanctified place, of wide streets and hedged lawns, of brocaded spindly chairs and sofa (as opposed to our chunky, wide-armed prickly-covered COUCH and chair-to-match.  I remember that Daddy complained from Day 1 that you couldn't balance a glass or plate on the slopy arms of those things.

 Even having been ordered from Sears in Memphis and delivered on the TRAIN did not imbue ours with such cachet as the stately, delicate furniture in the still, sea-green living room in her House on Parkway).   It was, and still is, the absolute in décor and gracious living.

And if I could replicate it, I’d go there and simply DWELL, swinging along on my own two merry little clothespins.