Cotton Mouth

We did not eat breakfast on the run when I was growing up in Charlotte in the 1950s. We ate breakfast together, the four of us, Dad, Mother, Brother Dave and me.  [The other five children were grown and gone.]  Supper, too.

Dad remarried in 1949, when I was six years old, a widow from Cullman, Alabama, who had no children. Her name was Vergie Winn Gunn.  Her first husband was a farmer.  She told me he was hitching a horse to a wagon when the horse kicked him in the head. Killed him.  Anyway, back to the story…

Vergie Winn Stith
Vergie Winn Stith

At breakfast my second mother would put a paper napkin and glass of water beside each plate. Usually she cooked eggs, bacon or sausage, grits, toast or, sometimes, made-from-scratch biscuits. Preserves were on the table. A small glass of orange juice, too. And coffee or hot chocolate.

She was a good cook and she set a nice table.

On this particular morning she served Dave and me hot, homemade biscuits. I didn’t realize what day it was until I took a bite — into a cotton ball she had cook inside the biscuit.

“April Fool!” she said.

NOTE: Viking, Iceman, Nine! and I lost the John Muir Trail lottery. For 42 consecutive days I got an email saying “DENIED.”  So we won’t be hiking the JMT this summer.  But Viking and I and, maybe, Iceman are going to hike a 103-mile section of the A.T. in Virginia in May.  And next year, the JMT!  I live in hope.

Coming Monday: No [Black] Girls Allowed

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