Month: October 2017

Mmmmm, Good Lettuce

My second Mother, Vergie Mae Winn Stith, grew up in Cullman, Alabama, a little town with a population of 2,130 in 1910. When she was a young girl, she told me her mother would send her to buy vegetables from a neighbor, two German sisters who had a big garden.

[My first mother died of colon cancer in June 1947, when I was five.  Dad remarried 20 months later, on Feb. 24, 1949. Vergie Winn, that was her maiden name, was his third wife, or fourth, I’m not sure. She was a 48-year old widow with no children.  My second Mother told me that her previous husband, Leonard Gunn, was killed when a horse he was trying to hitch up kicked him in the head. He died in 1935.]

It might even have been as pretty at this lettuce.
It might even have been as pretty at this lettuce.

Anyway, all the vegetables were beautiful, Mother told me, especially the lettuce.

One day Mother said she asked the German sisters how they grew such beautiful lettuce, what was their secret?

“Oh, vee pour zee chamber pot on zem,” one of the sisters said.

Postscript: The two sisters lost a good customer that day.

Coming Monday: BB Battles

Biscuitville

I made it a point not to criticize the girls my sons dated. You just never knew when they were going to fall in love and marry one of them. If that happened I knew my boys would eventually rat me out, tell them everything I had said, and I didn’t want anything I had said to be held against me.

If I wasn’t impressed with a new girl and Bo or Mark asked me about her, I’d just say, “Well, she has high cheek bones.”

Bo: He knew what question to ask.
Bo: He knew what question to ask.

It was a code the boys understood but if they married her and told on me some day maybe my daughter-in-law wouldn’t hold that against me. Aren’t high cheek bones supposed to be a good thing?  

I didn’t like Biscuitville, a girl my oldest son, Bo, was dating, for reasons I won’t go in to now. [I called her Biscuitville because that was the name of the restaurant where she worked.] And for the life of me I couldn’t see why Bo continued to waste time taking her out.  

So one night when Bo got home from a date I broke my rule. I was so exasperated I asked him, “Bo, what do you see in Biscuitville?”
And he said, “Dad, have you ever looked at her?”

Well, of course I never looked at the girls my sons dated.  I did glance at some of them and I had glanced at Biscuitville. She had a beautiful face and what appeared to be a beautiful body.

“Yes,” I said.

“Why are you asking me this question?” he asked.

Coming Friday:  Mmmm, Good Lettuce!