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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I have it here in my hand. The piece of paper a dermatologist gave me when I complained about an ominous bug bite that was doubling in size each hour size and turning the hue of Welch’s grape juice. “Apply mustard, or white vinegar, or chew some tobacco and put the nicotine juice on the spot.”

You just said what?

Strange as it may seem for a Yankee to admit, “I don’t dip snuff or chew, or play with those that do”.  In fact, the closest I have ever gotten to chewing “tabbacky” (besides watching TV baseball players spit ) is playing with a turtle shaped spittoon my Grandmother had. When you stepped on the head (the spittoon’s, not my grandmother) the shell popped open to reveal a small brass bowl. We kept marbles in it. I have the turtle in my home today (yes, I keep the marbles in it and okay, I may have lost a few over the years). But I have to confess, it really never occurred to me in this day and age that anyone might walk into my home and actually spit into the thing, or need to.

Now I am all for homeopathic cures and I don’t doubt that nicotine enhanced with spit can cure a great deal of woes, but since I was “afeared” that my malady was created by the likes of a brown recluse spider bite (read: Ebola breath) the thought of adding insult to injury made me a tad bit squeamish.

Thus I resisted the temptation of going down to the General Store and standing downwind of the good ‘ol boys with a gnaw of chew the size of a Buick in their mouths and hoping for a strong breeze and that perchance “a little dab’ll do ya”.

Instead, I went directly home from the doctor’s and waited for nature to take its course. Fortunately that process did not include an agonizing death with an equally agonizing twangy dirge which would have killed me all over again. Yes, I am happy to report that the itching and swelling subsided of its own accord. That after nearly killing myself with a plethora of remedies of my own invention: peroxide, rubbing alcohol, aloe, lemon juice. (I  know, I  know a ‘C’ student in chemistry should never be allowed in the kitchen to experiment on medical breakthroughs while they have a fever affecting their judgment)

So after I was on the mend, in the name of science and gathering fuel for my blog, I asked several of the natives in ‘these here parts’ what they would suggest to cure an inflamed itchy bug bite. And while several of you of the scarlet-upper- vertebrae-persuasion, (i.e. red neck wisenheimers) suggested I simply stay away from bugs in the first place, including such sarcasm as: Bite them first preemptively, wash the floor with PineSol and moonshine, burn Citronella candles and kerosene in the Tiki torches, or move back to Santa Barbara where they only have 2 resident mosquitoes on Leap Year. The rest of the sincere contributions are fascinating, I can assure you. So now (drum roll please) in no particular order and with zilch for a guarantee on results I present to you “The cure (s)!”

Apply: crushed ice which has been packed into a more or less clean muslin dish towel, mineral oil, mud, clay, a beer bottle cap filled with boiling water inverted to scald and numb the area (this from a biker acquaintance’s blog where scalding flesh and beer caps are often found in the same sentence), Crest, Absorbine Junior, Preparation H, Solarcaine (okay, not all of these are ‘natural’ cures, but either are their active ingredients indicated for bug bites, when last I checked), we might as well add Windex courtesy of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”, witch hazel (which is who or what?), gin, tequila (externally, bummer!), lye soap, used tea bags and last but not least Tea Tree oil (Yes, from the very Tea Tree you have growing right outside your own back door). I am not so sure if these remedies are meant to help the infected area or just burn off a fair portion of epidermis to remove all evidence of the original bug bite.

Additionally, there are a sundry of poultices made from: Chickweed, Plantain, Wintergreen, Yarrow, Yew, Watercress, Chamomile, Lavender, Hyssop, Mint, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme (what no Parsley?). These are often mixed in various machinations with animal lard, olive oil and/or bees wax (bee bite cures will be covered in another blog).

And if you think that is bad, I heard of a local cure for the mumps…rub sardine oil all over your cheeks and neck. Thing is, I don’t if it cures the mumps or just keeps everyone away so they can’t hear you moan.

Me? When it comes to bug bites I think I’ll stick to that old remedy in the 50s song, Poison Ivy. “I’ll get me a potion of Calamine lotion.”

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Let’s talk about critters. Okay, let’s up the ante to varmits (AKA vermin, for those of you raised north of the Mason-Dixon line) in May of this year a warm steady breeze swirled around the backyard and my sister (who has lived in “these here parts” for longer than I have) said as light as a sprite , “the critters will be coming out soon” and then she departed for higher ground.

CRITTERS: The first critter I ran into was a pernicious ground hog the size of the GoodYear blimp. He was ‘a-fixin’ to ravage a young tender (green) thing in my garden. I ran out of the house with words retching from my gut that only very old wizen sailors should know and even they might blush at the thought of such verbal carnage.

Arms swinging like a Tilt-a-Whirl I attempted to use size, aggression and fury to intimidate my opponent. His eyelids fluttered as if thinking he might look up and surmise the threat, but instead kept gnawing and assaulting my newly planted delphiniums.

I stopped abruptly at about four feet away when a glint of springtime sunshine bounced across his front fangs like a scene from movie “The Great Race” every time Tony Curtis smiled. It occurred to me the critter was waiting for me to get within mauling distance.

I screamed, “I’m gonna shoot you, you %$#@#$% (feel free to fill in your favorite adjectives for this sort of encounter). I swear to God, I am going to get my 22 and blast you to kingdom come (wherever that is).” That’s when I realized I was morphing into Daisy Mae Clampett (oh, alright, morphing into Granny Clampett). One year here in North Carolina and I was ready to shoot a critter. Never mind that I don’t even own a rifle. I was out for revenge. Heaving several large copper bottom sauce pans in the general direction of the garden, I was delighted to see the ground-HOG waddle away and sequester himself under the garden shed

Not to be bettered, I grabbed a broom and ran toward the black hole where he had disappeared. I poked. I made long sweeping swings into the dark crawl space. That is when the residue of my New York savvy brain surfaced and shouted:”Yo, shitforbrains! Hello? Crawl Space? Things that crawl live in there and can grab onto the pole, climb out and attack you. Rule number one of street-smarts-survival: give up your valuables and run the other direction.” I went into the house.

VERMIN: Webster’s states that vermin are collectively noxious or troublesome small animals or insects. Within days of the “Attack of the Crazed Critter” I ran into the local vermin. (No not the vermillion necked vermin down at the All-You-Can-Guzzle-Gulp-or-Grab-Saloon) This was a more sinister group and they had hundreds of peeps. There were (and still are) flying vermin…yellow jackets..in the &^%$# ground! I ask you what kind of self-respecting bee lives underground? Answer, the kind that also like the shade of my zucchini plants and the moist loam I bought at Home Depot at a premium, thank you very &^%$#$ much. Needless to say, several cans later of ‘KILL ALL’ I was wheezing ankle deep in a carpet of seizuring yellow jackets. I have not checked the zucchini in a month for fear of reprisals.

Next was the red earth worm the circumference of a kabasi. “Wow,” I gushed, “look at that, they really grow ‘em big down here. Well, that’s good for the soil, good for the flowers, good god it’s moving like a &^%$%# side-winder. SNAKE!” I now boomed to no one. I beg you, dear raeder, to understand. I like a lovely green garter-garden snake as much as the next girl scout, but we don’t just have vegetarian snakes down here, we have poisonous demonic vicious, fanged, venom-ators in scaly skin.

I caught the squiggling vermin on my metal rake, lifted it up high, like Moses leading the Israelites through parted waters. I steadied my feet and using my best lacrosse form flung the snake towards my goal…the other side of the fence. It shot across the air like a piece of rusted rebarb. As noted in other tales of mine referencing critters and vermin it can be duly noted that my immediate goal is to rid my marked turf of any obstreperous outsiders. And these automatic impulses are often ill planned. So, I will admit that as Sir Snake headed airborne through the woods a small voice (again, with the New York accent, already) said, “That’s right throw him over the fence, I am sure he and his older brother will never find their way back here.

CRITTERS AND VERMIN TOGETHER: There is one place that critters and vermin love to dwell in harmony, albeit an opus to kill me slowly and softly. Donde esta? Esta en the melting pot, the DNA soup, the swimming pool. In the last few weeks I have fished out (and given flying lessons to): warty toads, yellow-bellied slime drenched frogs, a snapping turtle (well, that puts the kibosh on any skinny dipping in the dark, I hope to shout!), snakes (can you say diamond backs?), spiders with pretty colors on their huge bodies and LONG hairy legs, worms, crickets, mice, wasps, fireants (one bit me on the jaw and my entire face went numb. The site of the bite was a lump the size of a CD which finally subsided leaving a lovely tone of “purple-browny” as my astute grandson was so quick to point out), an injured bird (no I did not jetison him over the fence…I do have a modicum streak of humanity under my permanent case of the willies!), bumble bees, mosquitoes the size of a Pontiac, poisonous centipedes, rolly-pollies (the insect version of the armadillo), and a massive, and I might suggest an aptly named, dragonfly.

It is a strange world when the streets of Bed-Sty and the South Bronx seem safer than your own backyard. But in the 8 years I lived at 96th and Lex and worked for the City Department of Aging in all lower income neighborhoods, I never had the queasy feeling that every single thing out there wanted me dead. But just so you don’t think I am going all ‘Rambo and DuPont’ on Mother Nature out here (and you are sicking Animal Protection on me as we speak)…I am fervently researching natural ways to keep the aforementioned wildlife and my ‘personhood’ in different realms of the Animal Kingdom.
This is what I have come up with. A young man at the corner “Gas ‘N Go” suggested I use goat piss. He said, and I quote, “Since I got me a goat I ain’t had no trouble with snakes ur other vermin.” Hey, why argue with success? Now the question at hand is do you rent a goat by the hour and pump him up on Aquafina, or do you just chase him around someone’s yard with a bucket?

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