Seeing as The Queen Mother is no longer required to cook by state law for the custodianship of children (or child, since I was four when ROE v. WADE came along and never managed to luck into a sibling), meals at her house are more exercises in hunting and gathering than sitting and sharing. Twist my arm, because on the Eighth Day, God emerged from The (The) First Baptist Church of Sleepy Southern Hometown and created "Mike's".
My hometown has what every hamlet needs but in the dawn of The Age of Sprawl, most are sadly lacking. A "meat and three". For the unsouthern uninitiated, that would be a restaurant whose daily printed menu has columns of meat on one side and "sides" down the other. Do not confuse "sides" with vegetables. If a recognizable food group emerges from that column of offerings, it is quickly doused with lard, deeply fried, sprinkled with bread crumbs and whipped back down to "side" status. One simply chooses a meat and pairs it with three sides. Your fondest wish emerges from the back of "Mike's Meat and Three" or "Flo's Meat and Three" as you designed it. A heart attack on a blue plate.
A genuine meat an' three cooks everything the way it should be cooked. In four sticks of butter. Lunch yesterday was so delicious that I had to stop myself from stripping naked and lathering my parts with the broccoli and cheese casserole. After all, I was saving myself for dessert.
Now Diary, you know I'm a CRUNCHY CON and I deeply regret the withering of small town America, my own hometown in particular. But I will not weep for nostalgia. I will grit my teeth every year and make the pilgrimage (!) home for Thanksgiving so that my children can have a taste of the fleeting innocence of my childhood.
And as long as The Queen Mother is hanging on, some of the sport of it too.
Comments