Southwords

SOUTHWORDS

Home
Tag Archives: Southwords

Summer Swarms

The worst kind of fan club

By Emilee Phillips

Illustration By Campbell Pringle

“Get them off me!” I yelled, sprinting for safety, flailing my arms like I was trying to take flight. I slapped at my legs, my arms, the back of my neck as I ran, the house looming ahead like a sanctuary. I burst inside with the urgency of someone being chased by bloodthirsty animals — which, in a way, I was.

This didn’t happen just once. To be honest, it’s less of an isolated incident and more of a seasonal tradition.

Don’t get me wrong, I love summer. I love the long, golden evenings that stretch on forever, the kind where the sun takes its sweet time setting and ice cream is accepted as a daily treat. I love the heat, the way it settles into your bones and relaxes you like a sauna. I love that you can wear a sundress almost daily. I’ve even made peace with the humidity — we have an understanding, a truce of sorts, where I tolerate it in exchange for everything else summer brings me.

But the mosquitoes. Ugh! The pesky little insects may as well be my own personal groupies because they flock to me the second I step outside. They’re buzzing around as if they want to join my inner circle and clinging to me like I’m their ticket to fame and fortune. It’s not even flattering. If they’re my groupies, they’re the kind that show up uninvited, scream in my ear like banshees and take a piece of me home as a souvenir.

I can’t even vent about it properly because no one else in my family is part of the all-you-can-eat buffet the way I am. It’s like they’re behind some kind of a forcefield while I’m out there taking hits for the entire bloodline. You’re welcome, by the way. 

My mother used to say it’s because I’m sweet, but I doubt their microscopic brains are thinking logically. And even if they were, what would they say? “You have notes of jasmine and poor decision-making?” 

I’ve tried everything to get rid of them. I’ve tried eating copious amounts of garlic, which only seemed to work on other humans. I’ve kept citronella close by, which I’m convinced is just an old wives’ tale. It’s really aromatherapy in bug form. I’ve tried wearing long sleeves, which only made me sweatier and impaired my ability to scratch the itch. Even DEET, which should have acted as my personal security detail, has failed me on more than one occasion. 

I’ve tried tackling the source. I’ve ensured my yard is free of standing water. I’ve planted all the usual pest-repelling plants. At this point, I’m convinced pine straw is some kind of breeding ground for genetically-engineered super mosquitoes, which basically means as long as I live here, I’m screwed.

They say scratching makes it worse, but I don’t have the self-control to just sit there with the itch taunting me. Sometimes the bites swell up so big it looks like I’ve contracted an old-timey illness frontier doctors used to treat with a salve made out of lard and “healing leaves.”

Years of my life have been occupied by scratching. It adds up, you know. All I ask is a little peace out of doors without feeling like my fan club is sucking enough of my blood to make a clone. 

I love summer, I just wish it didn’t love me back quite so much.

Southwords

SOUTHWORDS

Home
Tag Archives: Southwords

Where the Grass Ain't Greener

By Jim Moriarty

When my sainted mother, God rest her soul, was asked what her favorite movie was she replied without hesitation, and rather gaily I thought, The Silence of the Lambs. This was, after all, the same woman who dressed a county fair-sized teddy bear in a Mike Ditka football jersey and positioned it like a scarecrow on her coziest easy chair to ward off her pet housecat, whom she detested.

That aside, there is a sequence in the Jodi Foster/Sir Anthony Hopkins movie that hits terrifyingly close to home this time of year. I refer, of course, to the snippet of dialogue when Hannibal Lecter expounds on Buffalo Bill’s needs. “He covets. That is his nature. And how do we begin to covet, Clarice? Do we seek out things to covet? . . . No. We begin by coveting what we see every day.”

Which brings me to grass.

I can’t grow it. I’m not talking about that garish green winter stuff people cast about like fairy dust. I’m talking real Southern grass. Something solid that comes in bricks of sod on the backs of flatbed trucks. I’m talking grass that would chew tobacco if it had teeth and a cheek. I’m aware that we’re not supposed to covet that which belongs to our neighbors, but the simple fact is they have grass and I don’t. And it’s not just one or two of them. I could maybe live with that. No. They all have grass. Every single one of them. Coming home after daily counseling at my pub, the Bitter and Twisted, is like cruising through a gauntlet of carefully coiffed front yards taunting me.

Of course I’ve sought professional help. You know when you hire a roofer or a painter and they plant a sign in your yard by the road to advertise what a splendid job they’re doing? When I’ve contracted highly regarded yard folk, so concerned are they with their reputations that they want to put up a privacy fence so no one can see them. I’ve been quit by the best. Some last a day. Some a week. No one has made it through an entire growing season. There have been times when I tried to get a quote and they don’t even stop. Their truck slows down long enough to see what kind of shape my grass is in, then they jam the gas pedal to the floor like they’re being chased by flesh-eating mutant zombies.

And so, I struggle along the best I can, a DIYer. Like putting a pig on a lipstick, my philosophy is simple. If it’s green and it chooses to live in my yard, I welcome it. I’ll even buy it lunch. This includes all forms of moss, nature’s toupee. I could make penicillin in my backyard. And I love pine needles. Lots and lots of pine needles. They are the gardener’s version of wearing black to look thin.

It’s true that I don’t know much about what I’m doing but I remain optimistic, because I’m nothing if not coachable. In the days when I traveled frequently for work, the War Department once hired one of her co-workers who was looking for a little extra cash to come by a couple of times a month to whip the yard into shape, or at least keep it from rolling over stone-dead. I was deeply appreciative, though I was concerned that our yard — as you may have gathered — required a certain amount of local knowledge. This also pertained to the equipment I used to keep it up.

When Mr. Smith (let’s call him that because Durant wouldn’t want anyone to ever know he’d been associated with our yard in any way) came over on that first day, I happened to be home. I pulled our gas mower out of the shed and explained to him that the mower worked just fine, but it required a bit of finessing to get it started. He assured me he’d encountered a reluctant pull cord or two in his time. No, no, says I. It’ll start right up. All you have to do is flip the lawn mower upside down once or twice and it’ll fire right up. I demonstrated with a knowing grin.

Mr. Smith looked at me and said in the most measured of tones, “Well, I suppose you could do that. Or you could press this little button right here.” He pointed to the primer.

It made me wonder whatever happened to that Mike Ditka jersey.

Southwords

SOUTHWORDS

Home
Tag Archives: Southwords

And They’re Off!

My day at the Kentucky Derby

By Tom Allen

March owns the Madness. April, the Masters. But the first Saturday in May belongs to the Kentucky Derby, and during my seminary years in Louisville, Kentucky, one magnificent Saturday found me in the high-dollar seats watching the “The Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports.”

Every January the word went out that Churchill Downs, the iconic home of the Derby, was accepting usher applications. My part-time job as a hospital lab tech usually found me volunteering to work Derby Day, but I wanted to close out my senior year in Louisville experiencing Kentucky’s most beloved tradition.

In the spring of 1989, graduation loomed. Finding a job consumed much of my time. The Derby was just the break I needed. On application day, a couple of buddies and I got to Churchill Downs early and waited in brutal western Kentucky wind and cold to snag an usher badge as coveted as the blanket of roses that adorned the winning horse. And snag that badge, I did.

Among the long list of usher rules was no drinking, no smoking, and no betting. I guess the stereotype of a Baptist seminary student made us trustworthy employees. Most worked the corporate box crowd — seats passed down through generations to family and business owners. A few unlucky chaps were assigned to the track’s infield, a grassy area with few seats and an atmosphere that, rumor had it, rivaled New Orleans during Mardi Gras with hookups, breakups, fights, and the occasional wedding.

Usher training focused on hospitality, first aid and learning the layout of the Downs, as well as how to deal with attendees who sipped one too many mint juleps. Walkie-talkies were handed out if security was needed.

May 6, 1989, dawned cloudy, cool and wet. A muddy race is the last thing Derby-goers hope for, but by late afternoon, the track was drying out. Derby Day is packed with 14 races, on the Downs’ turf as well as dirt tracks, culminating in the 1 1/4 mile race for elite 3-year-old Thoroughbreds.

The corporate crowd I was assigned to was chatty and kept me busy answering questions, making bets, grabbing drinks. They soon found out I was a minister in training. I met their jokes and gentle ribbing with a smile and a few quick comebacks. Tipping swelled. True to the occasion, everyone was decked out in Derby attire — floral print dresses, pastel blazers and bowties, and those over-the-top hats. That day I learned what a fascinator was, having years before heard the word during televised royal weddings.

Just before the big race, one of my spectators, mellow from a few Kentucky bourbons, handed me a $100 bill and asked me to fetch him a mint julep. When I returned, he told me to keep the change, along with a request to “say a little prayer” for his chosen horse, Sunday Silence. Earlier in the week I had given a work associate two bucks to put down a bet on a horse for me, based solely on a name I liked — Sunday Silence.

I watch the Derby on TV every year, but there’s nothing that compares to being there, hearing the trumpeter sounding the call to post, then watching those grand steeds and their petite jockeys parading to the starting gate to “My Old Kentucky Home.” Electrified magnets hold the doors shut until a starter pushes a button, breaks the current, and the horses throttle off to the cheers of 150,000 spectators.

The Derby takes roughly two minutes, 120 seconds. When riders make the turn in front of the Downs’ iconic twin spires, the crowd’s roar intensifies. Win, place or show, hearts race. Sunday Silence, with jockey Pat Valenzuela up, was the unlikely winner that day, beating the favorite, Easy Goer, by 2 1/2 lengths. My big tipper was ecstatic, handed me a 20, and thanked me for whatever divine assistance he imagined I invoked. I smiled knowing my $2 bet had snagged me another 20. Coupled with a nice paycheck and tips, it was a very fruitful first Saturday in May.

One month later, I graduated. Two years later I married a Georgia girl I met in Louisville. We moved to Raleigh for my first call, then seven years later, to Southern Pines, a haven for equestrians, and us.

For 23 years on my ride to work, passing horse farms that rival anything in the Bluegrass State, I couldn’t help but smile whenever I saw a horse and rider on Youngs Road.

Southwords

SOUTHWORDS

Home
Tag Archives: Southwords

A Magic Moment

By Jim Moriarty

I find it hard to believe that it’s been 40 years since Jack and I won the Masters. God bless him, he’s gotten old. Jack has shrunk over the decades. He blames, at least in part, his cascading vertebra on the cortisone shots he received in his back to relieve pain when he was a teenage golfer. At the Father and Son Challenge in 2020, Gary Player joked that he never thought he’d out-drive Jack, “and I never thought I’d be taller than him either.”

Jack and I didn’t get off to the best of starts. It was the 1979 Colgate Hall of Fame Classic on Pinehurst’s No. 2 course. I was a relative newcomer to golf. Jack had already made a favorable impression on the game. (If you think 15 majors is good.) I met him on Maniac Hill, where he was warming up. I was there to take as many swing sequences as players would allow for Golf World magazine, where I was the associate editor — a title that conveyed with it cameras and lenses, something I was beyond ill-prepared for. I introduced myself and asked Jack if he would mind if I took a swing sequence of him. He rather politely agreed, being a good friend of my editor in chief, Dick Taylor. Whenever Dick traveled to Palm Beach, he bunked in with the Nicklauses.

The sequence camera was — and I suppose still is if, God forbid, you can find one — called a Hulcher. It was a rattletrap box of whirling, grinding widgets, invented by an otherwise perfectly harmless little man of the same name to photograph rockets taking off for the Department of Defense. While it may have been useful for Wernher von Braun, it was a curse to any golf photographer who ever touched one, with the exception of World Golf Hall of Fame photographer Leonard Kamsler, who had mysteriously managed to tame his personal Hulcher the way Siegfried and Roy tamed white tigers.

Jack never pulled a club back until he was absolutely, positively, unconditionally ready to hit the ball. He could stand motionless over a putt longer than any human being who ever lived. His full shots weren’t much different. When I got ready to take Jack’s swing sequence, he was addressing the ball. I began running the camera, sending 35mm film screaming through the beast at 40 or 60 frames per second, I can’t remember which, making a noise not dissimilar to a Navy destroyer raising anchor. The film came in 100 foot rolls and I’d run about 80 of it through the camera when I stopped.

The motionless Nicklaus turned his head and stared at me. “I thought you were going to take a sequence,” he said.

“I thought you were going to swing,” I replied.

Not quite a year later, I had the chance to take Jack’s picture again, this time on the 18th green of Baltusrol Golf Club as he won his fourth U.S. Open. They hung the message “Jack Is Back” on the big leaderboard. As thousands rushed the green, Jack threw up his hands like a London traffic cop, stopping the hordes in their tracks. Isao Aoki had yet to putt out. Lost in the crowd, I climbed the tree at the back of the green, a vantage point that — given my limited photojournalistic capabilities — didn’t yield much better pictures than the ones I’d gotten that day on Maniac Hill.

By 1986, through sheer repetition, I’d improved. Most of my photos were functionally usable. Jack, on the other hand, had gone in the opposite direction. His return in 1980 lasted through the PGA Championship at Oak Hill Country Club, which gave every appearance of being the final major he would win, leaving his total at 17. Then came that Sunday in Augusta.

As Jack was charging on the back nine and Seve Ballesteros was collapsing, I found myself funneled to the right of the 16th green, trapped behind half the population of Georgia. Unable to squeeze in to take a photo, I became a spectator, too. For comparison purposes only, I once attended one of Bo Schembechler’s postgame interviews conducted in a tiny room with a single bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, off the same concrete tunnel the University of Michigan marching band used to exit the stadium, jammed shoulder to shoulder, playing “Hail to the Victors” at incalculable decibel levels. I promise you, the noise the crowd made in the valley at Augusta National that day as Jack walked from the 16th green to the 17th tee was far, far louder — so loud his eyes welled with tears as he walked up 17. Mine, too.

The echo of those cheers still rattles my bones, even if they are 40 years older.

Southwords

SOUTHWORDS

Home
Tag Archives: Southwords

Sole Searching

Finding just the right fit

By Emilee Phillips

The outfit begins with the shoes. Everyone knows this. Even in my tomboy years when my sense of personal style went no further than hating the color pink and having a small but mighty hoodie collection, it was true. I needed nothing more than a beat-up pair of Chuck Taylor Converse to anchor the look.

Today my boyfriend would kindly direct your attention to the fully loaded shoe rack that’s taller than I am, but somewhere between then and now I came to love fashion for the same reason I enjoy writing — it tells a story.

Oh, those Chuck Taylors. I loved the flat sneakers because they were easy and unintimidating and they went with everything. One year, I saved up birthday money to buy a pair of the customized Chuck Taylor Converse online. Today the options are more limited, but back then 11-year-old me was able to construct a pair of the most obnoxious high tops that have ever been laced up.

My favorite color was teal, so naturally that was my primary choice. The tongue and heel stripe accents sported lime green. I even had “Emilee” sewn onto the heels. I thought it made me en vogue though in reality it looked like something your mom would write in your underwear at sleepaway camp. What did I care? I was running off the fumes of a high octane mixture of teal and lime green.

The look was dealt a minor setback since my pre-teen feet had grown faster than what was living above them. My disproportionately large feet made my au courant Chuck Taylors look like clown shoes. My dad took one look at my bright new kicks and busted out laughing. “Nice water skis,” he chuckled. But nothing could rain on my parade. I wore those shoes every day, no matter how poorly they matched the rest of me, until the holes in the bottoms let the rain in.

By the time my size eight feet no longer mismatched the girl, I had evolved. Somewhere, somehow, I had acquired what passed for taste. While my current shoe rack is admittedly large, the threshold for “too much” is, I believe, subjective.

My sister gets it. She has shoes for every outing. It’s not all about fashion, practicality requires a healthy mix. What if you need to make jeans look fancy? What if it snows? What if you’re going to a Dropkick Murphys concert? What if you’re in a step count challenge with a friend and need to walk 10,000 steps in a day? What if you have to line dance in a pub in Savannah? What if you’re at a ’60s-themed party? What if you get invited to a brunch you know will turn into a sightseeing tour of the city? What if you’re walking through a fish market? What if you’re going to the ballet? What if you have to chase a rolling lime down a grocery store aisle with dignity? What if you’re on a cobblestone street? What if you’re hiking on a muddy trail in Asheville? Pure white Hokas wouldn’t stand a chance, which is why you need multiple colors: one pair for getting mucked up and one for everything else.

My current shoe rack might look like a small storage unit, but every pair has a purpose. Whether they’re painfully impractical heels that I’ve only worn once or sneakers that I could walk across the desert in, they each have a history, from an impulse buy to the perfect pumps I found at the end of the internet. And if that makes me obsessive? Fine. But at least I’ll be obsessively prepared — for weddings, walks and maybe even water skiing.

Southwords

SOUTHWORDS

Home
Tag Archives: Southwords

Blue Light Special

By Ruth Moose

Spooked. She, who had never had a single mark on her driving record, was now full of nerves anytime she was on the road. OK, maybe the first ticket was funny.

The little, sort of Barney Fife-scrawny highway patrolman even apologized when he gave it to her. He was so young and looked younger. Maybe it was his first day. “Ma’am,” he said after she handed him her vehicle registration, “did you know you were speeding?”

“No,” Lucy said.  “I truly was not aware I was speeding.”

She’d never been a fast driver. Just the opposite. Maybe she was enjoying her double espresso milkshake too much. She’d never had an espresso milkshake before, much less a double. But it was so cold and sweet and creamy and yummy. 

“You were doing 70 . . . in a 55-mile zone.”

“Oh, dear,” she said. “I know I had to pass that gravel truck.” She’d already had one windshield replaced.

“The date on the ticket is when you go to court,” the kid said. His hand shook when he wrote out her ticket. “You drive safe now.” He tipped his hat.

“Why honey, you were only doing your job,” she said.

Well, it was her fault, or maybe the espresso milkshake.

Later her son said, “You’re going to get points and your car insurance is going to skyrocket.” Her grandson laughed. He couldn’t wait to tell his friends his grandmother got a speeding ticket. His grandmother!

“Maybe there’s a lawyer who can take your money and make it disappear,” her son said.

“How much?” Lucy asked. “Do I still get points?”

“I’ll check,” her son said, “but it’s not going to be cheap”

Her grandson just kept laughing.

She ended up writing a hefty check to the secretary of some lawyer she never saw in a dark, backstreet office.

“I hope this teaches you a lesson,” her son said. “You are too old to be driving that fast.”

Espresso. She thought. Double espresso. It had been the best milkshake she’d ever had. And the most expensive.

She couldn’t believe her second ticket! Not again, she sighed when she saw flashing blue lights in her rearview mirror. She pulled over, shaking her head. Surely there had to be some mistake. She had been so careful, she thought.

This officer wasn’t anything like the first. He almost yelled. “Lady, do you have any idea how fast you were going?”

“No,” she said. “I thought I was being careful.”

“Don’t you know how to read signs? They’re there for a purpose,” he motioned for her license and registration.

By now she knew the routine.

He went back to his patrol car, icing her.

She waited. “I can’t believe this,” she kept saying. Two tickets in two weeks. Damn, damn, damn.

“Seventy,” he said when he came back, writing. “Seventy. You shouldn’t even be on the road.”

“Twice in two weeks,” she said.

His pen stopped moving. “What did you say?”

“I said this is my second ticket in two weeks.”

“Stay here.” He went back to his patrol car.

“This one . . . the one I’m writing you right now is the only one I saw.”

Well, at least she knew the money she paid the backstreet lawyer had been well spent.

When she told her son about the blue lights, he groaned. “This one is really going to cost you. Your lawyer might not even handle it.”

Wrong. It cost her $500.

Then, six weeks later, on the very same road, really reading and watching all the traffic signs — and driving like an old lady, which she was — the blue lights, flashing, flashing, flashing pulled her over again.

This time the trooper was tall, lean, graying at the temples.

They danced the dance of the documents.

“Lady,” he said handing them back. “How old are you?”

“I am 82 years old last week,” she said, pulling on the steering wheel to draw herself up an inch or two.

“Eighty-two,” he started laughing. “OK. I’m going to give you a late birthday present.”

He put his ticket book back in his breast pocket, patted it and started toward his patrol car.

No ticket!!!! No ticket!!!

She pulled out slowly and drove on.

Happy birthday to me. Maybe, she thought, she would treat herself to a double espresso milkshake. 

Southwords

SOUTHWORDS

Home
Tag Archives: Southwords

Auld Lang…Humbug

By Jim Moriarty

I confess to being a New Year’s Scrooge. To those of us whose passing will be marked by the screwing of a brass plate into a particular spot at the end of a bar, the shenanigans and tomfoolery of the evening was commonly dismissed as “amateur night.” There is, however, one New Year’s Eve that I’ll not soon forget, and I’ve forgotten a lot of them.

I was married in an honest-to-God church during the fertile days between Christmas and New Year’s. Contrary to rumors, widespread at the time, this was not entirely done because the Methodist church was already decorated to the rafters, thus sparing the happy couple, i.e., me, any expense sprucing the joint up. Not entirely, that is.

Once all the stammering (me again) and vowing was over and done with, the War Department and I lit off on our honeymoon adventure like the giddy misfits we were. We actually had not intended on having a honeymoon. The ceremony fell smack in the middle of the Arab oil embargo. Lines at the gas pump resembled particularly slow-moving queues for particularly boring Disney rides, and the national posted speed limit might just as well have featured a drawing of a slug as the number 55.

My mother, however, had seen an advertisement for a steeply discounted weekend at a posh Indiana resort hotel. She tore it out of the newspaper and booked it for us as a wedding present. We were off to French Lick — the honeymoon destination that launched a thousand jokes. It should be pointed out that French Lick’s most famous citizen, Larry Bird, was a teenager at the time.

We were driving in the first automobile I ever owned outright, a severely oxidized white Volkswagen Beetle that may well have rolled off the production line the same year Khrushchev threw up the Berlin wall. As was typical of the model in those days, nothing functioned quite the way it was supposed to. The heater worked, for example, but only in the summer. It was definitely not summer.

When we pulled up to the grand hotel in our coach (rust bucket), we were met by a sharply dressed valet attendant. To my everlasting regret, it was years too soon to be able to quote Eddie Murphy from Beverly Hills Cop. If ever there was an opportunity to utter the line “Can you put this in a good spot ’cause all of this shit happened the last time I parked here,” this was it.

Our glorious weekend began with bowling in the hotel’s basement and finished in a New Year’s Eve celebration that, much to the War Department’s indifference, revolved almost entirely around the Sugar Bowl, which was the national championship game between undefeated and No. 1-ranked Alabama and unbeaten and No. 3-ranked Notre Dame, the university that was a mile or two north on Eddy Street from our apartment. We had found ourselves in South Bend that fall because she was a highly employable teacher and I was a decidedly unemployable English major and a kept man — which, come to think of it, hasn’t changed all that much in the last 52 years.

Be that as it may, that particular New Year’s Eve was not so much memorable because on a third and 10 from their own 1-yard line, Notre Dame quarterback Tom Clements hit back-up tight end Robin Weber for a 35-yard gain that allowed the Irish to run out the clock and win an 11th national championship. No, no. It was memorable because the War Department had developed an abscessed tooth, and while I had one eye on Ara Parseghian and Bear Bryant, the other eye could only sit there and watch as her face and jaw swelled like a Jiffy Pop aluminum balloon. Oh, my God, I thought, her father is going to kill me when he sees her.

The next morning, New Year’s Day, we drove home in a snowstorm as the War Department, cradling her throbbing jaw in a gloved hand, stuffed dirty socks into the heating vents to stem the polar vortex blasting through them, whilst riding with her feet propped against the dash because of the two inches of watery slush that had been strained through the Swiss cheese wheel well behind the right front tire.

So, yes, I’m no fan of the ghost of New Year’s past.

Southwords

SOUTHWORDS

Home
Tag Archives: Southwords

Santa’s Coming, Regardless

By Robert Inman

It starts every year, without fail, the day after Thanksgiving. Grownups begin to threaten young people over Santa Claus. The air is full of dire predictions about what might happen Christmas Eve if children aren’t something close to saintly. It is the bludgeon used to produce clean plates at mealtime, tidy rooms, impeccable manners and timely homework.

Of course, adults have been putting the evil eye on children’s behavior since time immemorial. My grandmother, for example, had a special word of terror for young folks who trampled her flowers, tracked mud on her rug, or swung too high in her porch swing. “Nasty stinkin’ young’uns,” she’d bark, “I’m gonna pinch your heads off.” Mama Cooper was a sweet and kind person who never would have pinched the head off a radish, much less a child, but she could strike fear into her grandchildren. We were careful around her flowers, her rug and her porch swing.

So the grownup weapon of fear is a time-honored tradition. But the direst predictions of ruin and misfortune, it seems, are always saved for the Christmas season. “If you don’t clean up your plate, Santa Claus won’t come.” “Act ugly one more time, buster, and you’ll find a bag of switches under the tree for you on Christmas morning.” Well, baloney.

I came to my senses about the Santa Claus business when I met Jake Tibbetts, a crotchety old newspaper editor who appeared in my imagination one day and then took over the pages of my first novel, Home Fires Burning. Jake had a built-in bull-hockey detector, and he could spot nonsense a mile away. Jake’s grandson Lonnie lived with Jake and his wife, Pastine, and when Christmas rolled around, Mama Pastine put the pox on Lonnie about Santa’s upcoming visit.

At the breakfast table one morning, Lonnie let a mild oath slip from his 10-year-old lips. Mama Pastine pounced. “Santa Claus has no truck with blasphemers,” she said.

“Hogwash,” Daddy Jake snorted. “Santa Claus makes no moral judgments. His sole responsibility is to make young folks happy. Even bad ones. Even TERRIBLE ones.”

“Then why,” Lonnie asked, “does he bring switches to some kids?”

Jake replied, “This business about switches is pure folklore. Did you ever know anybody who really got switches for Christmas? Even one?”

Lonnie couldn’t think of a single one.

“Right,” said Daddy Jake. “I have been on this Earth for 64 years, and I have encountered some of the meanest, vilest, smelliest, most undeserving creatures the Good Lord ever allowed to creep and crawl. And not one of them ever got switches for Christmas. Lots of ’em were told they’d get switches. Lots of ’em laid in their beds trembling through Christmas Eve, just knowing they’d find a stocking full of hickory branches come morning. But you know what they found? Goodies. Even the worst of ’em got some kind of goodies. And for one small instant, every child who lives and breathes is happy and good, even if he is as mean as a snake every other instant. That’s what Santa Claus is for, anyhow.”

Well, Daddy Jake said it better than I ever could. I believe with all my heart that he is right, just as I have always believed fervently in Santa Claus and still do.

I believed in Santa Claus even through the Great Fort Bragg Misbehavior of 1953. My father was stationed at Fort Bragg with the Army, and I was in the fourth grade at the post elementary school. The day before school let out for the Christmas holidays, Santa Claus landed on the playground in an Army helicopter. It was, to me and my classmates, something akin to the Second Coming. When we went out to welcome Santa, the teachers stationed the first- through fourth-graders on one side of the playground and the fifth- and sixth-graders on the other. When Santa’s chopper landed, I learned why. We little kids were yelling our heads off for Santa to leave us some goodies under the tree a few nights hence. Across the way, the fifth- and sixth-graders were yelling, “Fake! Fake!”

Some of my classmates were crestfallen. It never fazed me. I figured those big kids were wrong then, and still do. Santa Claus is for real. Just look in a kid’s eyes and you’ll see him.

(By the way, I’m sure the fifth- and sixth-graders didn’t get switches for Christmas. Maybe they should have, but they didn’t.)

Grownups are wrong, too, when they threaten kids with the loss of Santa. Daddy Jake was right. We adult types need to grant the kids their unfettered moment of magic. If they act up, threaten to pinch their heads off. But leave Santa out of it. 

Southwords

SOUTHWORDS

Home
Tag Archives: Southwords

Gee, I Really Love You

Car ride after car ride, song after song

By Jenna Biter

I peer into the rearview while the Dixie Cups keep singing.

Goin’ to the chapel, and we’re, gonna get ma-a-a-rried. Goin’ to the chapel, and we’re, gonna get ma-a-a-rried. . .

I drop an octave.

Gee, I really love you, and we’re . . .

I go back up.

. . . gonna get ma-a-a-rried. Goin’ to the chapel of love, oh, baby.

She’s staring blankly into space. The 1,000-yard stare, I call it. And the song loops.

Goin’ to the chapel, and we’re, gonna get ma-a-a-rried.

OK. I’m paying attention the whole time this time, all two minutes and 50 seconds. I reposition my hands on the steering wheel and focus on the double yellows.

Spring is here. The-uh-uh sky is blue. Whoah-oh-oh.

I waggle my head back and forth.

Birds will sing, as if they knew, today’s the day, we’ll say, ‘I do,’ and we’ll ne-ver be lonely any more. Because we’re . . .

Hard stomp, jazz hands, move toward the camera. That’d be perfect, I think. Costuming would be, hmmm, I don’t know, hard shoes? For sure, to emphasize the “hard stomp.”

. . . goin’ to the chapel of love.

Ugh. I stopped listening again. I glance in the rearview; still awake.

Bells will ring. The-uh-uh sun will shine. Whoah-oh-oh. I’ll be his, and he’ll be . . .

I used to wonder why music apps have a repeat mode. Actually that’s not true. I didn’t wonder. I just never used it.

. . . goin’ to the chapel of love.

OK. Now I’m really going to listen.

Goin’ to the chapel, and we’re, gonna get ma-a-a-rried.

I drum my fingers on the leather.

Goin’ to the chapel, and we’re, gonna get ma-a-a-rried. Gee, I really love you, and we’re, gonna get ma-a-a-rried. Goin’ to the chapel . . .

I wonder, when the Dixie Cups recorded “Chapel of Love” in 1964, did they think anyone would loop the song for hours on end? Doubt it, though they might’ve dreamed it.

I take another look.

“Yes!” I exclaim — in my head, not out loud.

She’s “reading labels.” That’s what I’ve named it, when she turns her head to the side, middle through pinky fingers in her mouth, lolling eyes trained on the labels on the sidewall of her car seat.

To give proper credit, my dad was the first to ponder whether the Dixie Cups could have imagined the staying power of their pop love song. My parents originally sang the tune to my older brother 30-plus years ago. We don’t know why it puts babies to sleep; we just know it does. And you don’t mess with success.

I turn down the volume.

Goin’ to the chapel, and we’re . . . 

I look in the mirror. Out like a light.

The Dixie Cups strike again.

Southwords

SOUTHWORDS

Home
Tag Archives: Southwords

The Monster

And other commonsense solutions

By Ashley Harris

It was a delicate operation. The patient sat dejected on the floor, his “arm” dangling uselessly by his side. Just five minutes earlier, I had innocently slid the hose of my precious vacuum along the floor under the nightstand to suck up loose tumbleweeds of dog hair. Suddenly, the comforting whir of the motor was replaced by a death rattle.

“Help!” I screamed to my husband, J.P. But when I ran into the living room, I saw that he had on headphones, the protective gear worn by any baseball fan whose wife was doing loud chores. “I need you!”

“The Dodgers are playing the Padres.”

“This is an emergency!” I clenched my teeth.

Of all the vacuums I have ever owned, my 7-year-old, swivel-headed model is my favorite. We move together like Nureyev and Fonteyn, sweeping across the floor in artistic harmony.

I hauled the victim into the kitchen for triage. We peered down the dark hole of the hose and, even with the flashlight, couldn’t see anything.

“Can you think of something you might have vacuumed up that could be clear?”

Aha! I hadn’t seen the cap to my hairspray in weeks and, I confessed, it was clear.

“Congratulations,” J.P. said. “You have managed to vacuum up something that perfectly matches the diameter of the hose. That takes finesse.”

I had no time for clever remarks. “Let’s try this,” I said, handing over a steak knife. This tool remains one of my favorite commonsense solutions, useful for tasks well beyond its intended purpose. Never mind the scar I still bear on my left hand from the time, at 6 years old, I used one to pry a hardened collar of glue from my Elmer’s.

I held the hose steady while J.P. tried to jiggle the cap free, but the trusty knife did not work. We had no more luck with the screwdriver or the pliers, and the situation grew more dire with every attempt. Each tool we poked into the hose only pushed the cap even farther down, along with my heart.

“Why don’t we try the drill?” asked J.P.

For a normal person, the space between a crazy idea and better judgment is at least 30 seconds. Not for me. In my mind, this was pure genius. Why didn’t I think of it myself?

The cordless drill is J.P.’s most cherished tool, the equivalent of my vacuum. “Now, I don’t know how safe this is,” he warned. “You’re going to have to hold the hose perfectly still while I drill into the cap. If you move, the drill could damage the hose or worse, hit you. You sure you want to do this?”  

I dismissed the pesky notion that most deadly accidents happen in the home because I was as desperate as I was stupid. I held the hose, standing at arm’s length, in case J.P. slipped. And he drilled and drilled, rattling my bones with every thrust and parry. Still, the cap would not yield.

“This is going to take forever,” he said, glancing back at the Dodgers in the bottom of the seventh.

“What about The Monster?” I asked, in a wave of inspiration.

The Monster, a three-quarter inch drill bit, emerges from the toolbox only for special occasions, like when we needed to drill drainage holes in the discarded satellite dish we use for the seat in the swing we made for Tulsi, our bossy corgi.

“That could work,” J.P. said. “But we have to be very careful. You have to hold the hose, and you cannot move a muscle.”

I held on with both hands, shaking like an apprentice snake wrangler holding her first python. With one shove, that pesky cap shattered, spewing plastic shrapnel all over the kitchen. Hallelujah! We did it!

I plugged my vacuum back into the electrical outlet, and a quick flip of the on button confirmed that suction was fully restored. J.P. donned his headphones and planted himself in front of the television and I was happily vacuuming again, sucking up the shards of my sin.