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2009 a Space Oddity

How much stuff would a woodchuck, chuck if a woodchuck could chuck the useless sh$# he/she’s collected over the last 30 years? Some of you have not moved since your twenties. Some of you have moved maybe three times, but like the very slow snail you have dragged it all with you. I know of people who can’t imagine moving because they don’t want to face their piles of useless, albeit sentimental, crapola.

One lady I recall was convinced that everything she held on to (I mean old empty candy boxes, chipped vases, vintage potato chips) was increasing in value until the Salvation Army came to see her things and announced the stuff was useless to them! Think about that. The ultimate low end chain store rejects your stash.

So I declare 2009 a brand New Year! It’s time to reckon with your stuff. ALL of your stuff. Your clutter, your attic emporium , your (lord help us) storage barns and rental spaces. You know the rule…(now in Yoda-speak) “If in 2008 you have used it, not, to charity it goes or in trash may it rot.”

And what about the “air-looms” you were saving for your grandchildren? Do you really think the next generation will ooo and ah at a Cabbage-does-nothing- but-sits-there-ugly-Patch doll? Forget the value angle…I just saw a Cabbage Patch doll tossed in a bargain bin at Ross for less than a pair of pantyhose. Now I know you will tell me there are collectors who will pay big bucks for an original Scuby Doo lunchbox. Okay, define big bucks! $25, $50 $100? Divide that by the cost of storage. You get the picture.
You don’t need stuff that you don’t use, so toss it (granted, give or take a desk Charlemagne used to write thank you notes to everyone for naming him one of the “Nine Worthies”) but the rest? Heave-ho.

Yes, this New Year is a great time to scale down for your retirement (albeit years away now thanks to the depression–mine and the economy’s) , you might want to start cleaning house right NOW as you take down the decorations. If it’s faded, chipped or ripped–bye-bye! Then when you return the good stuff to the closet, garage-once-used- for-cars, storage shed look around. What else can get “offed, whacked, exterminated”? I swear most folks have a harder time throwing out an old Mr. Potato Head than they did their last spouse. Of course in some cases the similarities are scary.

Speaking of dwindling spaces…all of our brain cells have been collectively and quietly in a mass suicide pack since before Jonestown. It’s amazing I can still do square roots in my head and quote the first 100 digits of pi (just kidding!) I can’t even remember where I put the piece of pie I just got out for my snack!

Fortunately we can leave more and more on our computers (PLEASE BACK-UP REGULARLY and learn how to use the ‘restore-to-previous-day-thingy-ma-bob’). But we have to face it, it’s triage time for the gray cell library as well. We only have so many neurons and we need to jettison out the garbage.

Garbage includes bad memories (I know, I know you finally had time and money for that much needed analysis which is digging up all your issues), hate and loathing of others, need for more stuff (see above), and adios to fear (F-false, E-evidence, A-appearing , R-real)…this last one includes worry. Baggage weighs you down, it literally hurts your body and doesn’t mean anything. Ask yourself about anything that is hard to let go of, a set of unused golf clubs or a memory of being cut from the team in 1968. Will it matter in 50 years, 500 years?

I know it is easier for me because I have moved so much I can get all my belongings except my kayak into a VW…bug. But I highly recommend divesting your personal portfolio of extra weight. In the end no one cares but you, so don’t hold on to anything that doesn’t allow you to feel weightless and free.

If our homes and our brains have limited storage, let’s choose quality over junk this year!

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Exactly which day of my life did I get old enough to feel that Christmas festivities were a waste of time? Never mind the money, the sheer energy used up for the outrageous pomp and hoopla for three crummy weeks, and then it all goes back into boxes which have to all go back into the attic…whatzup with that?

There’s more work into creating Holiday ‘cheer’ than to stripping outdoor woodwork and repainting it…and that stays in place for ten years! But the very thought of trying to remember which box has the mistletoe wreath meant to hang from the hook over the doorway, gags me. The heck with it, who needs all that germ invested saliva passing around from lord knows who from which foreign airport, right to your own front door? Screw the mistletoe, I don’t want anyone looking up anyway, it would just mean having to be on attack for the daily cobweb invasion.
Don’t get me wrong, I look forward to the candle light services, the worship, the music and the children’s wide eyes. I just think the department stores may have it right. Put up Christmas decorations up in September and leave ‘em up until February. I mean if you’re gonna have to climb up a ladder out in the elements, make it count for a good six months. I’m just saying.

For the life of me I am as puzzled as anyone that I am so convicted on this point, this year. It must have come with that last bout of flu I had, because up until now I can remember putting up lights on the house and decorating the tree as a fantastic experience. I loved making Christmas cookies and candies and homemade crafts. But now even China can make better cookies than I can for half the price. Being a Gramma at Christmas has been out sourced! So why compete? Three weeks in December is a blink of an eye not an event as it once was.

But, ah, as a child those 14 days off from school seemed to be a time warp of at least three months of sledding, Christmas caroling around the neighborhood and snow forts. My town even had a contest for the best decorated home, which we took very seriously. Did my parents really put up all those lights on the roof peak, decorate the house and drag out every gilded falderal we owned for display and buy all those presents, not to mention wrap them for three weeks only? All to be whisked away January 1st? I wonder if I ever even thanked them for the effort. I’m pretty sure I did not. It was all a part of the magic world I lived in. Things just appeared and disappeared without my input, permission, knowledge or understanding.

But now, if I purchase a present and get it stuffed into a gift bag it feels like a huge imposition. I am beginning to see why my grandparents sent money. It wasn’t because I wanted money as a child, it was because licking an envelope, stamping it and actually mailing it was Holiday shenanigans enough to last them all year.

Is there a morale to this tale?

Perhaps it is to slow down to a pace that fits your energy level. Spend the high energy times with people. Send love and checks and do what you can online. Because the point of a Holiday is to enjoy it, not have it run you. So with that in mind I am going to hunt down some gingerbread cookies and a glass of cold milk. Merry Christmas, ya’ll.

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Southerners are fearless when it comes to frying food. And by ‘frying’ I do not mean a light glazing in an inch of oil in a cast iron skillet; that is considered pan-seared or braising even if the contents wallow for over an hour. Also, as a demarcation, please note that pan frying is usually distinguished by the use of bacon drippings which are kept on the counter left to ripen and re-use over several years, preferably in an old orange juice can. If the label isn’t translucent chances are the fat won’t have enough scrapple type tid-bits for truly tasty cooking. Pan-fried green beans come to mind. The objective of which is to remove all of the color and form before slithering the contents onto a plate.

However, true southern frying or ‘deep’ frying is done in a fry-a-lator. I am talking about huge tubs of bubbling vintage lard where wire baskets hover awaiting their turn to be submerged into the hydrogenated bath. Deep frying includes every one of the four food groups and yet miraculously through the art of re-heating unstable molecules they are all reduced into one and ONLY one food group: fat.

While most of America is acquainted with French fries or chicken, thanks to the KFC Colonel , southerners are apt to ‘chicken-fry’ anything within reach (this is when you dredge the food in a flour and water batter before dropping into the volcano temperature vat). Nothing is too sacred as to not be improved by frying it into a golden puffy brown morsel; be it pig ears, cheese, jalapeños, tomatoes, okra, catfish, livers, storm fence slats, you name it.

Starch courses include hush puppies which are deep fried balls of, well, more deep fried batter with nothing inside them at all except very hot steam. Fritters are similar to hush puppies with the occasional slice of apple, banana or vegetables the aroma of gym shoes. But just when you think you have heard it all, there comes along the king of starchy deep fried foods: batter dipped-French fries.

I suppose every culture has their fried foods: Asian Tempura, Danish Aebelskivers, French Fondue, Scottish Chips and even Massachusetts (a world unto itself) has their fried clams. So enticing is the melting pot of American cuisine that the gourmet crowd has entered this culinary niche with offerings such as battered (in every sense of the word) mahi-mahi cubes, zucchini sticks and ice cream.

Which brings us up to desserts that are fried. Besides the nation-wide (and I do mean wide) craze for State Fair Funnel Cakes sprinkled with enough confectioner’s sugar to make a tan greasy topping the texture of wet concrete, there are other delicacies which go beyond even the bounds of Rachels Ray’s “make-it-out-of-a-box-with-your-sponsor’s-name-on-it” recipes. I am talking about deep-fat (yes the same fat that the corn dogs and fish heads are cooked in) Oreos, Twinkies, and Milkyway bars.

I am guessing, but not too far off the mark, I’d gander to say, that entire Thanksgiving meals will be deep fried somewhere beneath the Mason-Dixon line this year. Whole turkeys, potatoes, beans and if they have figured out how, I am sure entire gelatin molds will soon be facing a death of horror plunged to temperatures that rival the surface of the sun all in the name of our founding fathers. What joy there will be this Holiday Season, and no down-turn of the economy for those around the table where the gall bladder surgeon lives. Yes, the south shall rise again, or is that just acid reflux!

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October skies. Gold, crimson and tangerine leaves framing a crisp blue panorama. Birds singing in the meadows and deer grazing by the stream. Then BLAM! The crack of a firearm splits open the sound waves and an animal hits the dust. Hunting Season is afoot.

Now if you are a Yankee, born and raised in the suburbs of New Jersey, the closest thing to the hunting season you’ve ever experienced is the carnage, the mauling, verily the ripping/clawing/biting of a Macy’s Day Sale.  But as far as an actual Hunting Season, huh? Like on Bugs Bunny cartoons? Elmer Fudd with a double barrel shotgun making Daffy Duck’s bill spin? Ya gotta be kidding me? But sure as God made little green apples…for target shooting with BB guns, Hunting Season is big doings in the countryside and especially in the south, as in: Old Jeb was out huntin’ for some food, and up from the ground came some bublin’ crude…(yes, yes, ok, I’ll finish the sentence), oil that is, Texas tea.

Now let’s NOT get our collective citified tongues all a-clucking. Many of the people who hunt do use the meat, the skins and the teeth/antler/bones (the later for decorative lamp stands worthy of any 4-H prize). And I myself have a N.A.R award (Bar 7) in riflery for target practice from Camp WannaPee, so I am not against the sport of shooting or the hunting of animals as a food source where absolutely necessary. I understand that deer will starve to death if they over populate so hunting can be more humane than a slow death…assuming you can hit something and stop its heart beating in a nano-second. And I am sure there are a gaggle of hunters who could qualify as bunny assassins, fair enough. But saying I am not against shooting a living thing under certain circumstances and actually doing it are two different things.

The reason this comes up is that the folks in these here parts seem to be wild for Dove Hunts.  (Ah, metaphor meets reality: pitting the doves against the hawks once again–and I am, uncomfortably, a dove in this scenario). Mind you, the actual doves in question look a great deal  like city pigeons, AKA the notorious ‘Flying Rats of Manhattan’. If you have ever had the dubious adventure of pulling out a sandwich in Central Park only to moments later resemble a scene from ‘The Birds’ you might easily be persuaded that keeping down the bird population is a good thing by any means. And, if you have to know, I’ve got a hit out on a certain raccoon that eats my bird seed every night, so I am not without blood on my own hands.

But, still and all, leaving rage out of the picture, I wanted to know what was the thrill of the hunt?  For me ‘the IDEA of the hunt’ is thrill enough. Very much like going into a New York City Club all dolled-up and being pretty sure I could go home with any one of the fine wine-inebriated men of my choosing was, quite simply, a prize in itself. I didn’t actually have to close the deal to know I was comely bait to all, albeit bloodshot and lonely eyes, in the room.

On the other hand, I have heard tell that men (and women more fiercesome than I), on the other hand, actually have to take action. They have to bring home a conquest and then upon awakening realize they were amiss in explaining the catch and release Miranda rights to their prey. And open the cage door as they may, a majority of their booty (so to speak) simply don’t want to go home. This however has never cured a single such ‘hunter’ from repeating the process. Has it never occurred to any of them to suggest to the paramour d’jour that they ‘go home’ and when ’the mark’ acquiesces to simply say, “just kidding”? I guess not.

But now, when it comes to using a weapon stronger than Chanel No. 5 (if there exists such thing) I am a bit of a neophyte. Sure I did use that 22 rifle at camp and I am still happy to shoot the devil out of the heart of a paper target, but spill blood. I can’t relate.

Yet, I am curious. I desire to comprehend why my southern colleagues (male and female alike) want a pelt, feathers and/or carcass at the end of the day.  Why must hunting for the true dyed-in-the-wool hunters include the whole kit and caboodle: the chase, the kill, and the bragging rights?

My plan is to find out for myself. But I don’t want to eat leaded duck, possum, doves or Bambi, so I have decided on a compromise. I am going to go out and ‘kill’ a clay pidgeon (a non-animate clay disc for those of you unfamiliar with the topic).

I have purchased a camoflage shirt with matching capris. And I am reading up on the subject of weapons. How uneducated am I when it comes to hunting and shooting? I didn’t know until yesterday that a shotgun shoots ’shot’ (kinda like large BBs, which are of course shot from a BB gun) and a rifle shoots bullets. And a musket shoots lead balls backed with wadding and gunpowder. Canons shoot cannonballs, launched by powder, wadding and chutzpah. This, I am sure, seems hilarious to those of you from the south. But if it wasn’t a Winchester, a Colt 45 or a Midnight special we didn’t ‘know from nothing’ growing up with our Swanson’s in front of the TV in Jersey.

So now I am off to hunt down, kill, bag and bring home my first ever clay pidgeon.

So be varwy varwy quiet! HeeeeeeHeeee!

Next month we shall discuss southern food for Thanksgiving and how to stuff a clay pidgeon.

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