A CHRISTMAS MEMORY, REMEMBERED

 

I've long-missed my friend John in Vicksburg, at MISSISSIPPI GARDEN. He faded away way too soon from the blog-world, but I look back often to see his lovely garden, and equally lovely way with words.   It's been more than fifteen years, and the memory of his sweet, lyrical, poignant prose has been a lasting wonder, and his title-page still on my side-banner.  

The first Christmas of my blog, he had posted a piece about his favorite modern Christmas story---Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory. It's also one of my own, for the times and circumstances so nearly mirrored my own raising, with Mammaw and a group of Aunts all chiming in on my welfare and manners and grooming, though they did not actually RAISE me, in the sense of every day looking-after.

And Y'all know I very rarely repeat a post, but this little book bears looking at, bears reading, for a real and stark and stunning picture of a little boy's life in the South of his day, with the devoted, fierce woman who took him in and did her absolute best for him, despite her own meager circumstances. And the almost-zany zeal with which she carries out her own odd Christmas tradition---that bespeaks a Southern woman's determination and grit and sheer strength of will to overcome and outlast and follow through.

I love Aunt Sook, as I loved and remember fondly all the odd group of Aunts of my own---the Aunt who DIPPED and traveled hundreds of miles on Greyhound to come spend summers with us, ferrying tiny Ayres and Avon samples in her vast suitcase---oddly enough, from the big city I now live in.  Then there was the one whose livelihood got her tossed in the calaboose for the activities of the scandalous houseful of young ladies she was "counseling," and the  tall slim one whose quiet, spare reserve sent her deep into the beautiful realms of paint-by-number to escape the constant humming hive and bell of the six-days-a-week dawn-to-dark little country store they owned. And always, my Mammaw.

And so, from LAWN TEA---scarcely a jot on the internet scroll, Christmas, 2008---Reflections on A Christmas Memory:

One blog featured Capote’s “A Christmas Memory” in a daily post, the stark words re-read this morning with my first coffee. I could feel those cold Christmas-morning planks of the bedroom floor, see the hard-won clumsy homemade gifts and tree decorations, smell the scents of Winter-long bacon grease and Vicks in that drafty grim house.

The faded gray tones of the accompanying picture echo those in my own scrapbooks and albums. Little Truman squints and gives a tentative smile into the sun, as the limp skirt of his spare, gaunt kinswoman hangs beside the pants of his short white boy-suit.

I know that woman---called “Aunt Sook,” though she was some distant cousin, as unwanted and unwelcome in the household as the quiet, brilliant little boy. You can see the arthritic clench of her hands which had just made thirty fruitcakes, chopping and stirring, sending them to the Roosevelts and other dignitaries, as well as neighbors and friends---she'd saved every coin and dollar she could spare for the year, hiding them in a purse beneath the floorboard under the chamberpot beneath her bed.

Those same wiry hands had chopped down a Christmas tree, wrestling it home past bayou and brush, for that beloved child, and decorated it with bits and bobs of anything pretty she could scrounge.

I know that scraggy porch, the one “turned” post standing valiantly against the sag of time, the rattly boards of the steps, the GRAY of the whole thing---the house and the porch and the prospects and the people and the time. There are plants on the porch, and contrary to my Mammaw's first porch, the one of my childhood, with the big old creaky swing, there are no coffee-cans in sight. I'd have expected at least one, holding a cutting of something-or-other, to coddle into flourishment in that ripe Alabama climate. Mammaw's Folger's and Maxwell house cans held mostly coleus---plural to her, I suppose, for if she gave you ONE, it was a colea. Just like one amaryllis was an Amarillo---I never GOT the difference til I learned to read, and seed catalogs were some of my favorites.

We have pictures of that hollow-faced woman, lithic as Lincoln at Rushmore, in our own handed-down flaps of Kodak-cardboard; the deep, wise eyes, the scrunched-back, sparse hair, the best-dress for the honor of the event, the still stare captured in its simple eloquence. She even LOOKS like my Mammaw and her sisters, though four of them, including Mammaw, were definitely not slim, spare ladies. They were bright, laughing women, whose conversation and dress and daily doings were not of the gray sort.

And so, his Christmas Memory. Very unlike mine in content, but so similar in locale, in persona, in clime and in women whose lives were of that time and place. My own memories lean more to scratchy dresses and a big noon dinner with kinfolk at Mammaw's house, with her own small tree set on the living room/bedroom dresser and her own bed behind a curtain not six feet from the dining table in the "middle room."

Men sat on the porch, came rumbling in to eat, lifted toothpicks from the tiny vase, and rocked back surfeited, into that tw0-chair-legs teeter which we knew to be the province of Uncles and Grandpas, but never young ladies; they soon vacated their places for Second Table, went outside, smoked, talked, kicked car tires and smoked some more. I think---for they were as peripheral to my ken as I to theirs.

But, like Truman, I DO remember the Women. Christmas and every day of my life.

WHAT IT WAS, WAS FUDGE!!

Reminiscing this bright-on-the-snow cold morning about days past, when we were so energetic and eager to get to the Christmas preparations.   Just about now would be the stocking-up of sugar, of chocolate chips and butterscotch and brickles, the solemn small blue jars of marshmallow creme, and a lot of butter.    It WAS FUDGE TIME!   We had a lot of folks in the local area, family and clients and just friends acquired over time, and we loved to surprise them with at least a pound every Christmas.  

I wish today was Fudge-Making Day, so it could just BE, cooling and being cut and wrapped for delivering around town to clients, so I’m “fudging” with the posts and using  this one from Christmas, sixteen years ago.  Wish I still had as much energy as I did then, when I was looking after a two-year-old three days a week.  She’s quite adept in the kitchen now, herself, and I’m sure she could show me a thing or two 

THESE ENLARGE WITH A CLICK

Here's the tableful of goodies for clients and friends---not nearly all of what we made, but it looks pretty, all arrayed like that. We swap the pretty cloths for an old red vinyl picnic sheet, and use a lot of Windex on the two glass tables, for candy-making is messy work.

Clockwise from One O'clock: Cappuccino Fudge, Plain Fudge, Chex Mix, Chocolate Chip Drop Cookies, Kahlua Fudge with Chocolate Coffee Beans, Rocky Road with the little cut marshmallows showing, more cookies, and a plate of Kahlua Brownies.

And I'm the candy-making Elf---Kahlua Fudge, with a couple of shots of Espresso Syrup and Kahlua:

Cappuccino Fudge, with a shot of Espresso syrup in the recipe:

Just plain Fudge, creamy and chocolatey---I love its color and shine:

Reese's Loaves---the bottom is the old-fashioned recipe for Peanut Butter Fudge, with extra-crunchy, left to sit in the pans til cool and firm, then a small pour of plain fudge on top.

One more look at the original, from whom all recipes spring---cutting those precise, sharp corners.

I wish you all a Christmas Season as sweet as these past

SWEET TIMES!!

MY FRIEND KARLA KAY

In this special season of THANKFULS, I'm doing a lot of remembering of Things Past---those softly-remembered moments and years and people who shaped our selves and beings along the way.   One very thankful for the past few decades has been a mist-softened memory of a childhood friend, whose life we all coveted, I think, in our youthful ways of thought.

Do we all know someone whose life we wished could live---someone with a family whose life together we envied, or who had a talent we’d like to have, or who even just had THINGS which we longed for and never obtained?    Mine was Karla Kay---she of the always-tanned perfect complexion, eyelashes out to THERE, and even longer slimslim legs which made white short-shorts into what they were meant to be. She lived in a house with hardwood floors and beautiful scatter-rugs in front of couches and a long strip of one down the hall to “the girls’ rooms” and an immense thick one beneath the real dining-room table. Our dining room was the end of the kitchen without cabinets, with a round maroon formica table and six matching vinyl chairs.     We knew each other from age four until early in this turned Century, when she passed away and was mourned most deeply by her loving family and friends.   

Karla Kay had long dark curly hair, washed with CONTI shampoo---the drift of scent from her curls was the fragrance of flowers; ours was Halo and a vinegar rinse and whatever was on the shelf at Fred’s. She always smelled of fresh-ironed cotton and the vaguest whiff of her Daddy’s cigars---he drove her and her sisters to school, and since he had a job with the CITY and could leave his office whenever he wanted, he picked them up and took them home for lunch, then was waiting after school to take them home or to the library, dentist appointments, or the drugstore for a Fountain Coke.

She had records and a big record player in the den, and a smaller one in her room; the big one was for when she “had boys over” and we danced in our socks---the closest I ever came to that was on several Saturday mornings when I’d put Johnson’s wax on all our own hardwoods, and was encouraged to call my girlfriends to come over to polish. We’d all wear a clean pair of Daddy’s old socks and dance the floors shiny to Elvis and Jerr’ Lee, and put on a Connie Francis, for long, skating strokes to smooth the boards. 

 

They went on vacations to Rock City and Destin and Mexico; they had subscriptions to Highlights For Children and National Geographic and later, Seventeen; they had girls over to spend the night, and they slept until ten or noon (once I went to a slumber party, and my Mother woke everybody up when she came to get me at eight to come home and tend to my sister, when we were supposed to go for Huddleburgers for lunch for KK's birthday). Her parents belonged to the BOMC and her mother smoked Old Golds with a little short white holder, the smoke drifting lazily up into her premature salt-and-pepper hair. They had a wonderful life.

I ran into Karla Kay and her husband in the ER one night in the Eighties, when I had to take my MIL in; she barely spoke, sitting leaning against him, as he whispered, “one of her headaches.” A couple of years later, same circumstance, same ER---his whispered, “We’ve come for her SHOT,” explaining all. I knew then that the coincidence was too far-fetched, and that she must have been there like clockwork;   Marjorie exasperatedly confided later that they made the rounds of several counties---one hospital here one night, another on another.

She wasted years of her life, her beautiful family, her own lovely existence, on a haze of nightly oblivion. And they adored her, lost her much too young, mourned her with fierce tears, and still speak of her as a saint who bore her travail with grace and honor. I remember her as a beautiful young friend whose life seemed to outshine mine. But not forever.

Anyone care to remember THEIR Karla Kay?

MY MOUTON JACKET

 

A question on another blog: What did YOU covet in high school?

Beginning about the ninth grade, I coveted a Mouton Jacket---the softest, smoothest, dig-your-fingers-into-that-lush, cut pile garment that ever came off a sheep. They weren’t for school---oh, No. they were for church and special dates and other VERY special occasions, and I longed for one of those beautiful things for YEARS. Even the linings were slipper satin, a fabric reserved only for wedding dresses and the finest fur coats.

We'd sit in Sunday school or BTU, in the folding chairs ringed round the room, and nobody, no matter what the temperature, would take off their Mouton. Except maybe Karla Kay, who would casually shrug hers off over the back of the chair so her fancy embroidered monogram on the inside left would show to advantage. Hers was even richer with the redolence of her Daddy's cigars, which seemed to permeate their whole lives and lend an air of added elegance to the soft fur.

And I finally got one---Christmas of senior year---perfection, with my own initials in gold-outlined-in-red-satin-thread, right there inside on that smooth chocolate lining. I cannot tell you how luxurious it felt, that piece of sheepskin and satin, cut and sewn to fit. There was more magic in that fluffy garment than in a dozen glass slippers or invisibility cloaks. I felt beautiful---just showered and made up in the best Revlon and Woolworth’s had to offer, hair gleaming and eyes bright, looking and smelling marvelous, feeling the nervous, happy anticipation as a sweet succession of nice young men arrived at my door to escort me out for a lovely evening.

I wore it all through college, as well, and once, at a fraternity party, I got the wrong coat. My date George had handed it over at the little check-table, and in the flurry of all leaving-at-once to get back to the dorms for curfew, the young pledge handed me the wrong jacket.

George did the obligatory holding; I slipped into it and slid my hands into the pockets. The size was right, but It was like picking up the wrong baby---It was not mine. It didn’t hang right, my hands didn’t fit right, and it was just OFFF. I flipped back the left side---no initials. The coat-check guy headed for the big front windows, pointing to a brother holding the car-door for his date. “That must be it” he said. “It’s the only other one I handed out tonight.”

Old George ran for the door, with my little red pumps in twinkly pursuit---he flagged down the car, we ran up and explained things, and then he opened the car door.

The other girl feigned amazement that she might have on my coat, staying firmly seated, doing that hugging-shrugging motion that hugged it and herself, running her hands up the neckline and preening herself in it like a satisfied cat. She even pouted a little bit when she stepped out of the car. I reached and flipped the front to show my monogram, and she gave a resigned sigh as she took it off and handed it over.

SHE KNEW. And I knew she knew---she’d almost got away with my beautiful coat, and left behind a lesser version, thin and cheap as her intentions, with a stiff lining and no beautiful satin frog-loop at the waist. There was even the nasty scent of her Intimate cologne all around the neck fur, and I had to go sit up on the big old widow’s walk sunroof atop our dorm, with it blowing in the breeze two cold afternoons before the traces of that awful smell were gone.

I wore that coveted coat all through college, and its slightly-shopworn remains are in the guestroom closet upstairs, still in its Goldsmiths bag. It was the only thing I ever really aspired to HAVE in all my high school years, and it took three each of hopeful Christmases and birthdays before it finally appeared, for I was never one to press for anything. If my parents said, "No," it meant no. If they said, "We'll see," then you could live in hope, but you'd better not mention it again.

That gleaming lining is only a soft whisper now, but the initials still shine. I just go hug it sometimes, and I swear I can smell a long-ago spritz of Woodhue, and recapture the luxury of that young time---the evenings of a shining pony-tail  and bright eyes, of stepping out into a fun evening when all things were right, and a mere coat made my small, circumscribed World perfect.

"WHO SHOT J.R.?"

 

(A very close facsimile of the Original cake, which was 14" across)

• Leah and I have been harking back to some “old” TV shows in the past little while, and just now we mentioned the “Who Shot J.R.?" DALLAS episode that everybody in the audience was so avidly awaiting.   The seasons were different, then, in 1980 (yes it was 45 years ago), and usually consisted of 25 or 26 episodes, then re-runs for the off-season.  And the last season had ended with J.R. lying bleeding on the floor, with nary a glimpse of the culprit. The plot was discussed in pool rooms and beauty parlors,  at school events, ball games, and even 
• out at the smoking spot outside the Methodist

Besides, I'd seen the havoc those new TV series could wreak, with the tale of two ladies at the Beauty Parlor tying up over a magazine with Nick Nolte from Rich Man, Poor Man.   And I'd personally witnessed the time at P.T.A. meeting when the long, lanky Town Alderman tried to step OVER the folding chairs between him and the aisle to get his wife home on time about three weeks into THAT show.   Rumor was that he had to wear an "appliance" for a couple of weeks, but I wouldn't know about that.    

 Well, we had been hired to cater a small Wedding Dinner for a young couple---I don’t remember which one had been married before, but they didn’t want a “Big To-Do,” just a nice evening at the Country Club for about thirty friends, with a pretty Fall-decorated cake and delicious Cornish-hens-and Dressing dinner.  

As time went on toward the date, I was asked quite a few times at the office about timing re: getting home to see the show, and once, “When you gonna let us out of there?”    Since I was certainly not in charge of anything but the food, I had no answer for them.

But I DID think of one thing that might calm the waters and assure that no one missed the show.  We put together a little Movie Night plan, carrying both the new AirPOP, the old popcorn popper, several BIG salad-bar bowls, a big package of quart-sized Dixie cups, several flavors of popcorn salt, and  several pounds of Orville's Best---all unbeknownst to the Bride and Groom.

 

As the dessert was being served, and some folks hitting the dance floor, we started the poppers to work, with butter melting in a big pan and all that unmistakable scent of POPCORN in the air, filling those enormous pans and hoisting them to the warming shelves on those big Franklin ranges.

 When it got on toward nine o’clock, everybody had suddenly decided to stay on and watch in the big lounge, and a surge of refills at the bar and tea pitchers and Coke Machine preceded the crowd into the TV room, with chairs and cushions brought from every room in the club, and all those folks in their evening finery lounging on furniture, the floor, several on laps and handy leaning-spots all over the room.

We passed out cups of popcorn and lots of paper towels, set out the rest of the bowls and toppings, and went our way back to the clearing of tables, to hearty applause for our unexpected treat, and shouts to befit an Ole Miss/State game when the shooter was revealed.

 

I heard nice things about that unexpected lagniappe to the experience for years, and the surprised and grateful Bride and Groom remembered us with a handsome tip.