Goin' Down to Mama's

I Zumba. Fear Me.

An hour or so ago, I dragged my aged self home from my new favorite workout, a Zumba class heavily infused with hip hop. I've never listened to much hip hop music for the same reason that my parents never listened to Pink Floyd or the Eagles—wrong generation. And when you hear music that's brand-new to you, it has a way of sticking in your head. Not only that, but it will bubble up when you least expect it. Since I started this class, I could be strolling through Pet Supplies down at the Piggly Wiggly, innocently making my Fancy Feast selections, when suddenly, out of nowhere, I hear a driving beat and the words shake it like a pom pom, like a pom pom, shake it like a pom pom . . . This, in turn, gives me an overwhelming urge to bust a move, as the young people say. I am 52 years old. I have no business bustin' a move in the middle of the Piggly Wiggly. But it goes beyond that. Zumba makes me temporarily feel TOUGH. I know it's an illusion, of course, just the music working overtime on my imagination. Still, if those ladies down at The Pig should wanna rumble, I like to think I could handle myself.
[You, too, can Zumba with Denise at Lifetime Fitness, Vestavia.]

Why Pat Dye Will Always Be My Hero

I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a sports nut. My very patient husband re-explains the rules of football to me every time I try to watch a game with him. Every time I watch Auburn play, I fondly remember our dear family friend Bub Kidd, who once asked his daughter Sheila, "Does Valerie REALLY not know ANYTHING about football?" [Looking heavenward, I am saying to sweet Bub: "I really didn't. I just cheered whenever Sheila and Sandra did."]

As an Auburn freshman, one of my first purchases from the University Bookstore was a football jersey with the number 12—which I wore to class, in what I considered a bold act of sartorial rebellion against "the preppies," who were all the rage back then. A classmate asked, "Oh, so you're a fan of . . . [whoever wore that number, which I didn't know then and am ashamed to say I can't remember now]."  I gave her what must've been the world's blankest stare, blinked a couple of times and said, "I just like the number 12." Yep. I was that kind of football fan. English major. Bookworm. Nonathletic, uncoordinated geek who liked to hang out at the music school and was occasionally known to diagram sentences for fun.

But then along came Pat, who became the head coach my sophomore year, following some less-than-stellar seasons that had left the campus relatively uninterested in game days. He rode into town and fired up not just the football team, but the whole student body. He said we were winners, and we believed him—especially after he started winning. Coach Dye and the Tigers made Auburn such a fun place to be. There was genuine excitement in the air. I know the word "entitlement" has been bandied about in some of the more heated discussions surrounding the bowl games—and I guess it's easy to feel that way when you've celebrated an incredible number of winning seasons and championships. But it's actually great fun to experience the opposite, which is why Auburn was so wonderful back in the early 80s. We were stunned and amazed and thrilled to pieces when we won. It was great to be an Auburn Tiger—still is. [That's me in my Auburn garb at EPCOT with Mama, circa 1980s. Mickey, meet Aubie. Aubie, Mickey.]

Thanks, Coach Dye, from a clueless bookworm who cheered her heart out in that student section back in the day. She wasn't entirely sure what was going on. But she sure had a big time. Here's wishing lifelong AU memories for the current students, courtesy of Coach Gus and the boys.

 

 

Sounds Like Key West

Have you ever experienced such a strong connection to a place that you could feel it in your bones? Sometimes it comes from a sense of familiarity and belonging. Like my mother before me, I have always felt separated at birth from the Gulf Coast—I love Mississippi, she loves Alabama, and we're both sold on the Florida Panhandle. I am never more serene and content than when I'm walking along the water's edge—correction, THAT water's edge—watching the seagulls dive for fish and breathing salty air tinged with Hawaiian Tropic.

Sometimes you can connect with a place for the opposite reason—it's so unfamiliar, so unlike anyplace you've ever been before, that it speaks to you. You're a stranger in a strange land, and yet that land is communicating with you somehow. Key West was like that for me. I'm thinking about my first trip there because when I stepped outside early this morning, a blustery wind was blowing through the palm trees we planted in our garden—specifically to remind us of the coast. This time they reminded me of that faraway island, particularly an early evening walk when the sky was growing dark, and the palm trees were blowing in the night breeze, and I was surrounded by beautifully weathered old wood-frame houses with their tall, shuttered windows and deep porches. You walk through a place like that, and you just feel it—incredible people have lived here, dramatic events have unfolded here. For heaven's sake, PIRATES have hidden out here. 

Some of these very houses survived the devastating 1935 hurricane that destroyed Flagler's fabled railroad. Unbelievable—a marvel of modern engineering crumbled in the storm but these old houses made it through. My imagination went into overdrive. Who lived on this street back then? Where did they come from? How did they weather the great storm? Did they stay on the island afterward or leave here for good?

Key West is the only place I've ever been where I felt completely disconnected from The Real World. And it made me want to transform a bit myself. By my second day there, everything in my suitcase seemed all wrong. I went to a little shop on Duval Street and bought myself a sundress and a pair of sunglasses to complement the one article of clothing I had brought along that did suit Key West—flipflops.

And away I went—travelling alone, an island unto myself on an island out in the sea. And it all came back to me when a morning wind blew through the palm trees in my backyard and made them go to talking:)

[Image by Robert Goosney @ Freerangestock.com]

Seize a Big Ole Piece O'The Day

In some ways, age makes you more cautious. Would I now enroll in a university I had never seen before, as I did at Baylor? Why, no. Would I strike out across Texas at 2 a.m. because I was so eager to get home to Alabama? Absolutely not. I'm just thankful that old Ford and I survived it. On the other hand, the years make you aware of risks worth taking, moments worth seizing. Like living in London for three weeks. (OK, I had to be shoved into that one.) Or the time Granny and I abandoned  the other tourists on the main deck of a glass-bottom boat and rode in a little crow's nest (remember that scene with Kate and Leo in Titanic?) as we ripped across some breathtaking water in Key West. I was sure it was against the rules. She convinced me that under the right circumstances, the rules don't matter one bit. When Dave's Aunt Shirley told us she was coming for a visit—and that her plane would arrive during rush hour—we immediately set about finding a way to turn that situation around. Aunt Shirley is full of mischief and fun, and we couldn't imagine welcoming her to Birmingham with bumper-to-bumper traffic. So we hit upon the notion of a limo. And not just any limo, but a loooooooooong white stretch limo. We were channeling Vegas. But how to make that happen? We called my friend and agent, Gary Wright, who ALWAYS knows somebody who knows somebody who can do whatever outrageousness you can dream up. Gary put us in touch with his friend Emory Hubbard, owner of Elite Limousine of Birmingham, and Emory, who retired from law enforcement and started his own business, gave Aunt Shirley an arrival she says she'll never forget. (That's the two of them pictured above.) It was like one of those Visa commercials, where they tell you the price of everything involved in creating an experience and then label the experience itself "priceless." The look on Aunt Shirley's face when she realized the long white car was for her? PRICELESS. Aunt Shirley, Dave, and I HIGHLY recommend Emory, whom you can reach at  (205) 856-4111 or [email protected]. We also highly recommend at least one limo ride in your lifetime, preferably during rush hour, so you can recline in your plush leather seat, gaze out an expanse of tinted glass, and feel sorry for all the "little people" battling traffic in their Lexus SUVs and BMWs. How ever do they STAND it?:)

Searching for Aunt Effie

Aunt Effie has always broken my heart just a little bit. She was actually my great-aunt, Grandme's sister. My mother is her namesake (Effie Nannette). This portrait came from a black-and-white that I borrowed from Mama many years ago. I asked a wonderful photographer friend, Tina Cornett, to copy and hand-tint it for me. That's Aunt Effie standing in back, in the yellow dress. Grandme is on the far right, wearing a dress with a wide blue sash. I'm pretty sure the other girls in the portrait are childhood friends, including Mrs. Alvie Thompson on the far left. The photographer probably posed them this way, but I think it's interesting that three of these ladies are looking at my grandmother, who seems to be lost in her own thoughts, while Aunt Effie is looking down from above, like an angel watching over them.

She was in her late twenties when she died of tuberculosis. Many years later, when Grandme was in her 90s, my mother asked her if she would change anything about her life if she could. And she said, "I wish I'd been more like Effie." That surprised us because Grandme never talked about her sister very much. Mostly, she talked about farming and her beloved hero and father, "Big Daddy." So we've never known much about Aunt Effie except that family members who knew her always described her as being very kind and feminine (Grandme was a tomboy:) and a devout Christian. She attended the University of Alabama and taught school in Chelsea, Alabama, but her teaching career was cut short fairly early because of her illness. Her doctor recommended that she go to New Mexico, where the dry air might help her recover. Big Daddy took her by train to the National Sanatorium in Alamagorda and stayed out there with her. He took a job with the border patrol just to have something to do and turned his farm over to his sons while he was away. At some point, Aunt Effie was apparently moved to a Methodist sanatorium in Albuquerque, judging from the addresses on family postcards that Mama found and saved when I was just a child.

The postcards inspired a trip that I took yesterday with Mama, Aunt Grace, and Aunt Patsy. We had learned about the University of Alabama's W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library, which has Corolla yearbooks dating back to the 1800s. Some of Aunt Effie's postcards had pictures of buildings on campus and a postmark of 1913 or 1914—like this one to my grandmother, postmarked July 1913:

Dear Icie,

This leaves me fine. I got me some very low heel pumps and my feet haven't given me any trouble. Was glad you liked your dress. We are to have an entertainment the 4th, and I'm to wear tan and blue. So I got me a cute little tan trimmed in blue ($3). I think it very cute. I'm having a nice time. We had a rain here last night. If I could see you I could tell you lots of funny things. Love Mama for me. Tell Papa hello and all the others. I'll write a letter when I can.

Effie

At the Hoole Library, we found a wonderful (and wonderfully patient) archival access coordinator named Donnelly, who refused to give up as we went through yearbook after yearbook with no success. Finally, Aunt Patsy started going through a course catalog Donnelly had given us. When Aunt Patsy found something about "Summer School for Teachers," we remembered that all of Aunt Effie's postcards from UA had summertime postmarks. A little more searching took us to a listing of students for the 1913 summer session, and there she was: Effie J. Wyatt. So we think she probably didn't get a four-year degree but instead went through a couple of summer sessions to get her teaching certificate. We couldn't find her in the 1914 listing, but her postcards indicate that she was in school that year, so . . . another mystery to sort out.

What strikes me so much now, looking at the correspondence between Aunt Effie and her family, is how close they must've been. There's so much affection and "wish I could see you" in those postcards to and from Alabama. It seemed understandable to me, thinking she was away for a long time. But the summer session only lasted six weeks. Apparently, even that was a bittersweet separation, as Aunt Effie seemed to be enjoying school and yet missed her parents, brothers, and younger sister.

That longing for family gets almost too hard to read, once she becomes ill and the letters from home are addressed to "Nat San, N. Mex," rather than the University of Alabama. This one from Grandaddy McCranie, Aunt Effie's brother-in-law, is my favorite—but also one of the most heartbreaking:

My Dear Effie,

How's the girl today? Hope you are feeling fine and dandy. I am all OK enjoying life and having a good time always. Sure wish I could see you. Seems you've been away an age. You take good care of yourself so you can come back. Write me when you feel like it.

Love,

Guy

Say you sure have a sweet sister.  

When it became clear that Aunt Effie couldn't recover, Big Daddy brought her home from New Mexico. She died in June 1919. But she is not forgotten.

Stuff We Like: Crafty Husbands

SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION ALERT! (Just so you're prepared and do not, in any way, feel misled:) About two weeks ago, my dining room looked like this:

Now it looks like this (Mama would tell me I need a tablecloth and drapes before I go aspiring to the Tour of Homes, but this is a work in progress):

I owe my suddenly serene dining room to my husband, who has discovered a flair for woodworking and built me this . . .

I guess you would call it a sideboard? Eight feet long and the perfect height for buffet-style serving, it easily holds my turkey roaster, baking racks, crock pot, coffee urn, one large picnic basket, one small picnic basket, all my everyday dishes, a set of crystal glasses, and two candlesticks. Where was all this stuff before? EVERYWHERE. And not in an attractive way.
 
Dave has been restoring vintage cars for years, but he discovered his inner wood craftsman when our friend Carole needed more display space for her gift shop, A Little Something. A hutch, a few tables, and a scarf tree later, Carole kindly offered to share his business card with customers who were asking about his work. So now we're trying to figure out how to get this little venture going. I'm hoping Dave and I will become furniture-making moguls so we can retire to the Gulf Coast and live in the style to which we've never been accustomed:) Any pointers on starting a side business would be welcome!

[P.S. The aforementioned scarf tree is now covered with some STUNNING spring infinity scarves that even I can operate, so stop by Carole's and check out all the bright colors and cool gifts for graduation, Mother's Day, bridal showers . . . She's in Heights Village on Cahaba Heights Road, between Regions and Sexton's.]

Put on Your Bathin' Suit and Blow Up Your Float

Ah, vacation photography—where would we be without it? How else could we prove (or in my fuzzy-brained case, even remember) that we had built a sand castle by the Gulf, ridden the train to Tombstone Territory, explored the battlefields at Vicksburg, or toured Fairyland Caverns on Lookout Mountain? (Actually, our vacation shots suggest that I slept through that one, with Daddy carrying me.:) I found this picture when I was cleaning out a desk the other day. It was taken on Panama City Beach with a Kodak Instamatic (the kind with the flashcube on top), around 1969. That's me on the left, with my cousin Kathy, who was my beach buddy on those trips. Note that our mothers gave us the exact same haircut even though we had radically different hair. You would think the Ladies Home Journal would have advised them against that. Kathy was always trying to straighten hers, and I was always trying to coax a curl—even a hint of a wave—into mine. No such luck. It was straight as a board then, and it's straight as a board now. I'm pretty sure Mama ordered my shorts ensemble from Sears because other photos from this same trip reveal that I had it in more than one color, and most of my fashion multiples back then came from Sears. I don't remember where we were staying, but I know it had a kitchenette. We always had a kitchenette. My mother believed in stretching her vacation dollar. Kathy and I always envied the kids we met from up north because they were always in Panama City for at least two weeks, whereas we only got a few days. (Granted, it took them 14 hours to get there, but still, we were jealous.) The departure for home was always an adventure because my parents were notorious for deciding, at the exact same moment, that vacation was over and it was time to go—right then. Once, on the last night before we were set to leave, we had all had our supper and our showers and were ready for bed when Mama and Daddy looked at each other and said, "Let's go." Our car wasn't air-conditioned—come to think of it, neither was our house—so I guess they figured it was easier to travel at night with two sleeping kids than sweat it out with us the next day. As for me, I much preferred to return by day. That way, the folks back home would be awake to greet us—and to admire the way my pink airbrushed T-shirt set off my new suntan. Or sunburn.

Monsters Beneath My Fridge

The Luesses are on a nest-feathering rampage. We looked around and realized (1) we have too much stuff we don't need; (2) we have no place to put the stuff we actually do need; (3) we're bored with the color of everything in our house; and (4) we can't spare the cash to hire trained professionals, so we'll have to tackle this ourselves. For the past two days, I've been painting our extremely outdated kitchen a sunny yellow (which we hope will distract us from the seriously old cabinets that we intend to destroy when we flip the kitchen around and put the appliances on the opposite side of the room a little later on). By yesterday afternoon, I had painted my way to the wall behind the stove and fridge, which required me to unplug the appliances and pull them away from the wall. At which point, SCREAM!!!! It occurred to me, as I revealed the terrors on the floor beneath the fridge and stove, that the last time I scrubbed under there was approximately . . . never? I actually poked at a couple of spots with my foot, half expecting them to hop away. EGAD! What would Martha Stewart say? Forget Martha—what would Mama say??? Well, I'm happy to report that both Mama and Martha can rest easy now, thanks to Lysol, Clorox, and Greased Lighting. (No snake wranglers or critter catchers were required.)

Small Town, Big Santa

Driving through a small town last night, Dave and I spotted a super-sized Santa on the main square. That's the local courthouse behind him. Something about this jolly fella reminds me of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man that attacked New York in Ghost Busters. There's nothing like a small town with big-time Christmas spirit. Don't know how this fellow will fit down the chimney . . . but we thank him for such a warm welcome on this cold winter's night.

Apple and Me: Bellying Up to the Genius Bar

If you happened to drop by Goin' Down to Mama's right after I bought my iPhone, you know that Siri and I are having communication issues. Call it cultural differences. Bless her heart, the girl doesn't have a drawl--and she struggles to interpret one accurately. Still, I respect her desire to help me text, and so we are in counseling and working through our difficulties. And now on to my laptop. I used to think it just a tad pretentious that Apple refers to its customer service desk as the "Genius Bar."  However, when your Macbook Pro--your right arm, your primary creative outlet and source of much-needed income--when this machine that has become a virtual appendage breaks down, you do not think to yourself, "I should probably get that fixed." No, what you think to yourself is more like this: "Code Mac! Code Mac! Call 911! Get a chopper in here! We've gotta airlift her to the mall!!" Clutching my ailing computer and waiting for my turn at the Genius Bar felt very much like those nervous few minutes I once spent in Admissions at St. Vincent's, waiting to set up my knee surgery. (I would not have been at all surprised if the nice young man behind the Genius Bar had asked me, "Does your Mac have any allergies that you know of? Is there any chance your Mac could be pregnant? Does it have a living will?") When they called my name, I glanced around to see if there were any loved ones in the waiting area to accompany me, but no, I had to take that long walk to the Genius Bar alone. "We're going to take just a minute here and run some diagnostics," said the young man--who did, indeed, look like a Mac genius. As he examined my Mac, other technicians kept coming up to him, asking for consults, so I suspect he was chief of surgery at the Apple store. In the end, he recommended a rather invasive procedure and admitted my laptop for treatment. "What's that gonna cost?" I asked, with a quiver in my voice. "Not a thing," he said. "You're under warranty." That's what he said. But like Siri, when I speak to her, I heard something different. What I heard was: "Don't worry, ma'am, you've got Major Medical."