I am sitting by the fire, drinking my first cup of boiled coffee and anticipating the beginning of a new day.  The air is crisp as ice on a pond after a blue norther.  The mountains of Mexico are still in the darkened shadows of sunrise and are silhouettes against the pale glow in the east.

A flutter of wings brings the visions to an abrupt halt.

A glance at the big ocotillo identifies the intruder.  It is our resident Dove.  It comes at various times during the day, seemingly to make sure that we have left corn for the day’s meals.  There is little fear exhibited by this creature and it has little to fear from me.  I find joy in its presence and watch the nearby brush for a glimpse of its family.

Its a shadow but it portrays a shape designed for the rigors of the wilderness.  It seems to be as smooth as the lines of an expensive race car but it is as soft as down.  It can fly with speed that can confuse even the best of hunters , yet it can perch on a cactus that has more thorns than roots.  It lights with the gentleness of a feather and sits undisturbed by its surroundings.  It emits a sound that is as mournful as the songs at an old fashioned funeral.  What is it saying?  Is it greeting the new day or simply supplying me with a brief moment of reflection.  I hope it is the latter and will continue to think that it is.

Gary

Sunny Grey had a picture tagged to her name in face book, showing a glass of buttermilk and the glass had cornbread in it.  Lord, is there a better description of manna than that?  I know in my heart that the people being led out of slavery by Moses probably survived on just that fine southern meal.

A number of years ago, Dorothy gave me a cookbook, aptly entitleed “White Trash Cookin”.  It is a funny title for a book but once I got to reading it, well, I was surprised that I had been eating these dishes all my life.  Collard greens and salt pork, pinto beans and cornbread, elbow maccaroni and stewed tomatoes, fried bologna and cat head biscuits, etc.  I try to get fancy ever once in a while with the dishes I cook, but when I want something just plain good to eat, well, pull out one of my family cookbooks and look around.  I usually find something that is filling, good as grits, and probably not good for ya, but it tastes excellent.  I normally end up doing this on days that are cold and dreary because soup is always good and can be made out of anything.  I am trying to be really good about my diabetes way of life so some of the old standbys are just for remembering.  Bummer.

COS  (change of subject)  Gang, we are only a hop, skip and jump away from the next mega reunion.  We might as well get a list going of who is going to be there.  It is, as you know, going to be in Dallas, where an inordinate number of our classmates live.  That being said, I fully expect a record turnout.  WE should start making a list of addresses of our classmates so that those folks who dont show, well, a gang of us could just go over to their house and catch them without their best duds on, sans makeup, or with girdle loosened up.  Kind of like a Readers Digest sweepstake. This could prove to be an incentive to come out and play with us at the designated reunion site.

I hope everyone is having a great new year.  We certainly are.  Except for yesterday at the bank when one of the foreign tellers treated me like I was cashing a phony dollar bill.  I have only been banking there for 30 years so I was madder than a Jap.  Dont normally lose my temper but as many who know me well can vouch, when I do, its a site to behold.  They normally have to use some type of stun gun on me to get me back to this world.  Dorothy went in to the bank shortly after I left and almost everyone in there called her by name.  Course they were yelling it from under their desks, but hey, they needed shaking up a bit.  I will try to do better on Friday when I go in again.

Have a good week and we will try to think up a good strategy for getting some of our classmates to respond to the reunion.

Chuy the Chider

My mother fell last evening and severly scraped her arm and bruised her knees.  She was kind enough to have the EMT officer call me to tell me they were transferring her to the local hospital ER.  This is where the debacle began.

Our family has always had one or more family physicians at all times.  We have specialists, we have general practioners and all kinds of dentists, oral surgeons, flat feet doctors and any number of pain specialists,  I was unaware of the number of people who dont.  That is until last night.  With nothing much to do but sit there, I evesdropped.  “How long have you had this excruitiating pain in your lower abdomen?” Well, I guess it started the weekend after thanksgiving.  “And why did you choose New Years day to come to the ER?”  Well, with the holidays and all , I guess I just got busy.  And do you have insurance.  Well, no, If I had insurance then I wouldnt be in here, I would be seeing a doctor.  OH.  Well dear, how long have you been pregnant.  I think I got pregnent in February.  Deary, it is January,  Thats 10 months.  Have you done any prenatal treatment?  Whats that?  Have you seen a doctor to tell if it is a baby or a tumor.  Oh, I can feel it moving around.  Okay. 

Now I am not in favor of selective breeding, i.e. breeding people for the production of blue eyes, blond hair, etc.  I can tell you that I am 100 % convinced that there are people in Corpus Christi, Texas that should be prohibited from breeding.  If you are apparently around the age of 18, not sure when you got preggers, or if you even are preggers, then maybe you would be a candidate for the non-breeding list.  Especially if you are so dumb that you dont know where you live.  This was evidenced by the tatoo on her chest that said, CORPUS CHRISTI.  The debutante mother, dressed in her tennis outfit, (it was cold as a well diggers butt outside) bringing her teener daughter to the emergency room because of a rash on her neck.  Obvious boyfriend accompanied them and seemed more interested in the mom than the daughter.  The rash apparently cured itself because they left after about 3 hours. From looking at the boyfriend Dr Chuy would have diagnosed her as having razor burn. 

The entire process of the american emergency room is as screwed up as a box of phiiip 3/8th inch screws.  I would cure the problem by taking several simple steps.  If a person is bleeding, drooling, eyes rolled back inhead, thrashing on the floor, well by gawd, rush them into a treatment room.  For those who are apparently bored with watching football and have decided they have stomach pains, well a very strong laxative, or possibly even a good stomach pumping would cause them to pause before the next trip to ER.  I can only imagine how many people would consider a stomach pumping a pleasurable experience. 

And, finally, please do not bring over 15 of your immediate family members along with you.  And certainly no children, unless they are the ones that are sick.  I know this is gonna bring a rash of hate mail from all the gypsys that read this but, too bad.  Family reunions are for family gatherings.  The smell of roasting goat wafting thru the emergency room doors is a bit bothersome for most of us.

Chuy the healer

My life has been filled with the pursuit of the perfect biscuit.  I have not sought fame, nor fortune, just simply a good  world class biscuit recipe.  I want one that makes dough clouds so light that if you open the oven door, well you have to swat them back in with a spatula.  I want a biscuit that it takes at least 3 good spoonsful of gravy just to keep in on the plate.  In this time of “cliff diving”, world police action, etc, is my request too much to ask?

I thought I had the recipe after watching the cooking channel yesterday.  A place in Carolina , I think Chapel Hill, known as the Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen is supposed to have the best biscuits in the country.  I hit the internet and found what was supposedly their recipe.  Let me clue you, the owners of the SBK are probably laughing their flour dusted aprons off this morning.  I succeeded in baking some of the finest clay pigeons that a skeet shooter would ever want.  Talk about dense.  Bertie, if you happen to need a paper weight and are short of clay, well I could send up a dozen of these little hockey pucks and you could paint a hunting scene on them and sell them as fast as you could haul them out of the kitchen.  Needless to say, I have destroyed the recipe and will temporarily return to pre-prepared frozen biscuits.

James Earl’s grandfather could make a damned fine sour dough biscuit.  They were about the size of a small hamburger bun and every bit as light.  Never asked, but wonder if that recipe is around?

I have my blackeyed peas cooked and they are awaiting the preparation of a batch of cornbread.  Now that is something that I can make.  Some fried porkchops, a nice little healthy salad and dinner will be a keeper.

I have made a resolution that 2013 will see me slimming down like a super model.  D bought me a new scale that hooks up to my telephone and to her Ipad.  Every time I eat a piece of chocolate pie, her Ipad will report to my scale that I have gone off course and my phone will ring and call me a fat ass.  The marvels of modern technology are unbelievable.  I will try to lose down to a reasonable size in hopes that the cost of renting that tuxedo for the wedding will be keyed to the size that I order.  I can only surmise that a XL would be cheaper than a XXXL.  I want that gray tuxedo to make me look like a porpoise knifing thru the waves as opposed to a , well you get the picture.

I hope that 2013 is a good year for us all and feel that it will be.

GHC