Month: January 2018

Have Some Carrot Cake

[This is a true story.  Oh, I know.   I shouldn’t say that.  ALL my stories are true, more or less.  But you know this one really is true because it’s too good to be made up.]

Here goes:

This is not THE carrot cake, but it is a carrot cake with
This is not THE carrot cake, but it is a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.

Janice, a new bride,  decided to surprise her husband, Eddie, and bake him a carrot cake.  It turned out beautifully, with cream cheese frosting and everything.

But just before he took a bite Eddie paused.  Something wasn’t quite right. What was it? Wait, he remembered: they didn’t own a grater. How in the world had his bride grated the carrots?

He asked her.  She told him.

Janice said she had chewed up a whole bag of carrots, spit them out, washed them good, and put them in the cake. It was hard work — her jaws were still sore.

I know you’re wondering: Did Eddie eat the cake?

Oh, that’s too easy: Would you have eaten it?

* * *

Yes, that's pepper.Speaking of food that’s not fit to eat, at least by most folks, I have another nominee.

A bunch of us were up at Snowbird, in the mountains of North Carolina, in November  when I saw one of my nephews, Mike Stith, ruin a perfectly good banana and mayonnaise sandwich.

He put pepper on it, lots and lots of pepper.

Mike Stith: Pass him the pepper.
Mike Stith: Pass him the pepper.

Knowing that some of you might find that hard to believe I whipped out my iPhone and got proof.

Mike just says, “Don’t knock  it ’till you’ve tried it.”

You get right down to it, what Mike did isn’t surprising.   My brother, Pop, Mike’s Dad,  put pepper on his banana sandwiches, too.

Mike said Pop put pepper on pepper.

On at least one occasion, Pop put pepper on a piece of lemon pie.  As far as I know there’s no law against that, but there ought to be.

***

Mexican hot sauce on green beans? Yep.
Mexican hot sauce on green beans?

And I have one more  nominee.

Brother Dave; my wife, Donna; and I went to New York after Christmas to visit old family friends, Dan and Daniele Woods, and their children, Fiona and Eamon.

We’re sitting at their dinner table one evening when I saw Fiona soak her green beans with Mexican hot sauce.  And then she ate them.

It’s OK to put butter and sugar on grits –I do that — but hot sauce on green beans?

Fiona Woods
Fiona Woods

Pepper on a banana sandwich?

Oh, I know:

Live and let live.

To each his, or her, own.

And, most important, Mind your own business, Pat.

Coming Friday: Advanced Reporting

 

The Gentle Strong Man

John Norman Johnson was the Sampson of my youth.

I don’t remember seeing him around when I was a boy — he was so much older, a friend of my brother, John, who was 16 years older than me.  But I remember the stories. They said he was a man of prodigious strength.

John Norman Johnson
John Norman Johnson

After WWII Mr. Johnson hauled coal for my Dad, from his mine at Altoona, AL.   One day when Mr. Johnson was coming down the mountain the dump truck he was driving got to going too fast and he braked, hard, and pulled back on the steering wheel. It came off in his hands — he pulled the steering wheel off the steering column — or so they said.

When I got grown I finally got to meet Mr. Johnson.

Brother Pop was in the hospital in Birmingham and Brothers John, Dave, and I went to visit him.  John Norman Johnson lived in Birmingham and while we were there we went to see him, too. I didn’t know what to expect, but what I found wasn’t it.

Looks like part of John Norman Johnson's collection to but, but dolls are at a B&B in England.
Looks like part of John Norman Johnson’s collection to me but, no, these dolls are guests of a B&B at Bourton-on-the-Water, England.

In Mr. Johnson’s home there were dolls everywhere. Dozens. Scores. Some were in display cases. Some were on shelves mounted to the walls. Every flat surface in that house on which a doll could stand or sit had a doll standing or sitting.

The strong man of my youth had become a collector of dolls.

Postscript: Later on, I’m told, Mr. Johnson tried to invent a candle that would burn for a year. While he was at church the candle he had concocted flared up and started a fire that destroyed his house — and his dolls.

Coming Monday: Have Some Carrot Cake