Kids say the darndest things

…was the title of a segment in Art Linkletter’s 1950’s TV show House Party. It’s true too. I was too busy to write down what my children said and now I’ve forgotten or garbled their best one-liners. Therefore I aim to transcribe my grandchildren’s quotes. At this time I only have two grandchildren Yaiza and Ayla. Only Ayla at two and a half is old enough to speak. But, already she says the darndest things.

Her most used line is “Don’t worry” which she pronounces, “Don’t woe-rie”. For example…
Me: Ayla if you run around with that sharp letter opener you might fall and accidentally stab it through your eye.
Ayla: Don’t worry.

On the day of her sister’s birth she was left in the care of her grandmother and me. I was about to step into the shower when I realized that I had forgotten to bring a towel to the bathroom. I didn’t bother dressing again to go out and find a towel, figuring that at two and a half my exposure wouldn’t even register with her. She tracked me walking all the way down the hall to the bedroom then called out, “I like your bummy Bapa.”

The next morning I emerged street legal with my shorts on, but no shirt, and sat down on the sofa to check E-mail. She ambled out with her Red Riding Hood book and sat down next to me. She looked up at me and the following exchange occurred.
Ayla: I like your boobies Bapa
Me (ready this time): Thank you Ayla. I like your boobies too.
Ayla: Thank you Bapa.
It all seemed to transpire like any perfectly ordinary exchange of pleasantries.

One day at dinner my wife served Ayla some broccoli. She responded, “Aaaaack!” Her mother said you shouldn’t talk that way to Grandma. You should politely say “No thank you Grandma; I don’t care for any”. Ayla responded sweetly, “No thank you Grandma; I don’t care for any”. At the next meal when we served her something she didn’t like she said (You guessed right) “Aaaaaack!”

The other day we phoned her mother. We could not hear what she was saying because Ayla was jabbering away in a strange voice. Her mother said that she was talking for her stuffed Teddy Bear and then said:
Mother: Ayla AYLA! Can you have Bear settle down now so I can hear Grandma and Bapa.
Ayla: No, sometimes Bear just does that.

Ayla is the world’s worst back seat driver. Her advice usually consists of, “Go Mama” or “Go Daddy” when we’re waiting at a red light. On one of these occasions I counseled her.
Me: Ayla, we have to wait until the light turns green because it’s the other cars’ turn to go now. If we don’t wait we might have a crash. We could be horribly injured with owies all over and have to go to the hospital in an ambulance.
Ayla: Don’t worry.
She may also be the world’s worst mycologist. She snatched a mushroom out of the ground and immediately started dissecting it during our nature walk last week. We exclaimed at how you should never pick mushrooms because some are deadly poisonous and she should put it down so we could wipe her hands good. She was reassuring.
Ayla: Don’t worry. Only white ones are poisonous.

Red Riding Hood in the bushes

I went trick or treating tonight with my wife and my daughter's family. A little slow start with most apartments having the shades drawn and no decorations on the porch. 2 month old granddaughter was taken along in her skeleton PJs. 2.5 year old granddaughter was red-riding hood. Daughter painted me up as a big bad wolf. Things perked up when we went into a development of single family houses...until granddaughter announced she had to pee pee just after we mounted the porch of one house. Daughter and wife whisked her away into the shrubbery. Then homeowners heard the rustling and came to the door to find a 190 pound wolf and a 6'-4" Daddy standing on the porch with an orange bucket looking stupid. At first they didn't seem to be buying our story until they finally realized that Red Riding Hood really was having a pee in their shrubbery. A block further along 12 pound skeleton suddenly became ravenously hungry and we had to sit on the curb while her mom nursed her. It was a halloween we'll always remember. The neighbors probably will too.

My mother's story

My mother passed away today. This is her story that I began compiling about four years ago.

Mazie Mitchum Coats and Ezekial Coats were blessed with a daughter Mary Lee on April 13, 1918. She was the fourth of five children spaced about two years apart. In order of age they were Cenetta, Ezekial Jr. (Zekie), Mae Barry, Mary Lee, and Geneva. Tragically Cenetta lost her life in an automobile accident at the age of 16 but all the others have enjoyed long lives.

Shortly after Geneva’s birth, their father Ezekial died of the flu. Their mother was also ill with an incurable disease causing paralysis. She was unable to care for her children and they eventually went to live with other family members when Mary Lee was about two years old. Mae Barry and Zekie went to live with their grandparents Cenetta Murray Mitchum and Charlie Watson Mitchum. Geneva went to live with their Uncle Sonny Mitchum and his wife Ruby. Mary Lee went to live with their Aunt Catherine Mitchum Martin and her husband Mackie Martin. Their mother Mazie’s disease progressed and she died when Mary Lee was about seven years old.

Mary Lee had no memory of living with Uncle Mackie and Aunt Catherine because she was so young and no more than a year passed before Aunt Catherine died in childbirth. She must have been about 3 years old, if that much, when Aunt Catherine died. She remembers being taken to her grandparents Charlie and Cenetta’s home by her brother Zekie, then hearing the older folks talking about who should take her. It was decided that she would go to live with her Aunt Olive Carolyn Ayers Way and her husband Jacob Way in Eutawville. Olive was a niece of her Grandmother Cenetta Murray Mitchum, so she was actually Mary Lee’s first cousin once removed. Mary Lee thought of the Ways as her true parents and called them Mama and Papa Jake. She was adopted into the family and given the surname Way which she always used thereafter anytime her maiden name was called for.

Mary Lee remembers her Mama (Olive Way) as being very kind and loving to her. She remembers Papa Jake as not being unkind to her but being rather distant. Perhaps he had his hands full with his business ventures and his own three rather wild older children Sadie, Buster, and Otto.

Papa Jake owned a lot of property. He owned a grocery store in Eutawville. He also sold coffins that he kept in another store in Eutawville. He farmed, growing sugar peas on some acreage he owned right behind their house. He grew cotton somewhere near the edge of town. They grew nuts and figs in the yard for their own consumption. He had at least one additional house that Mary Lee remembers as not being occupied. She remembers him going to the gin with his cotton and seeing cotton bales temporarily stored in the yard waiting to be trucked away by a buyer.

Sometimes Mama Olive would send Mary Lee to Papa Jake’s store for a ginger ale. That was a big treat that she and Mama Olive would share.

Otto and Buster were a rowdy pair of older step brothers. They were nice to Mary Lee, but they liked to tease her. Buster had a moustache and Mary Lee wondered how one could grow such a thing. He told her you had to keep rubbing a little chicken manure on your upper lip. Both the boys played baseball in high school. She remembers seeing them in their baseball uniforms.

Sister Sadie, years older than Mary Lee, had her distractions with social life as a young woman. However, she was at least nice to Mary Lee if not highly attentive. Sometimes Mary Lee would get frightened at night and want to get in bed with Sadie. Sadie would consent if Mary Lee would agree to scratch her head. Sadie loved to have someone else scratch her head.

Eventually Sadie married and became pregnant. It seems she birthed her baby in a bed in the living room. At the time, Mary Lee was sick in bed, which conveniently kept her away from the action. That suited everyone fine as nobody had told Mary Lee where babies came from, or even that Sadie was expecting one. After the baby was born, they brought it and showed it to Mary Lee without telling her where it came from. It was the custom of the time to keep children naive as long as possible. Since Mary Lee was a good girl and not prone to ask pushy questions, she was very slow in accumulating essential information on such matters.

Mary Lee remembers Papa Jake often arguing with Sadie and the boys presumably over their escapades. She was not privy to exactly what their escapades were but thought they had to do primarily with some disreputable company they kept, and in the case of Buster, alcohol. Otto, the youngest, had the most moderate temperament. He eventually married and lived a respectable life as a police officer in Savannah. Buster, however, evolved into an unrelenting alcoholic and became very familiar with the inside of a jailhouse. By most standards his life was a failure.

Papa Jake made and canned his own home brew (probably beer). Mary Lee remembers that her cousin Vaneaton from Holly Hill liked Papa Jake’s home brew. At the time Vaneaton drove a bread truck. Mary Lee thought he was a perfect young man and looked up to him.

Uncle Mackie remained in the picture. He was very sweet to Mary Lee. When she was little, he would visit her sometimes and bring her candy and take her for rides in his horse and buggy. Once he took her to an Easter egg hunt at a little wooden church. Later when she was living in Holly Hill, she would see him occasionally when he was there on business. He would always give her a dollar or two. Uncle Mackie had an interesting business, sort of a double life. In later years Mae Barry revealed that he was a big time bootlegger as well as a respectable community member. Mary Lee (always nearly a tee-totaler) qualified that he was a “gentleman bootlegger”. Mae Barry said he had a staff of armed guards and had paid off all the key people in the sheriff’s office.

All in all, Mary Lee found life with the Ways to be good, though she was not too fond of the bathroom. It was just an outdoor privy. She hated having to go out to it and always feared being surprised by a snake in the privy at an inopportune time. I don’t believe an outhouse snake surprise ever happened but the fear of it kept Mary Lee dreaming of a better life. She hoped that some day when she was grown up she could get a job as a maid for the rich Cross family that lived in the big white house down the street. They had a modern almost indoor bathroom at the end of their porch.

Once Mary Lee climbed up the old Chinaberry tree in the yard and couldn’t get down. Mama Olive let her remain there for a while as a lesson that she shouldn’t do such things. Eventually the cook came to fix supper and got her down. (Even people of modest means often had African-American cooks because their labor was so cheap.)

One of Mary Lee’s memories in the Way household was the time of the big flood. She doesn’t know why the big flood occurred. Perhaps a hurricane came through because the infamous Chinaberry tree blew down at the same time. The land was quite flat and a stream very near the house overtopped its bank. The water rose and came way up into the yard, which was a bit higher than the street. Mary Lee said there were little fish in the water. As a child I loved fishing about as much as swimming and her story caused me to imagine being able to fish from my own yard. I always hoped for a wonderful flood and I made her retell the story of the flood many times.

Mary Lee remembers getting a switching that she never thought she deserved. I fully agree. The incident began when she went with a girlfriend into Papa Jakes field behind the privy. There they found a cow that had just given birth to a calf. Excited, she ran to tell Mama Olive about the calf. Mama Olive responded by giving her a switching, claiming she had told her not to go back there. Mary Lee does not remember being told not to go there and always wondered why her Mama was so angry about it. She thinks it was probably because children were kept quite in the dark about where babies, human or animal, came from. She had actually arrived too late to see exactly where the calf had come from and nobody told her.

Life in the Way household came to an end when Mary Lee was 11 years old. Papa Jake died. Mama Olive took Mary Lee and moved seven miles away to live with Olive’s sister and brother-in-law, Ethel Ayers Price and Henry Price in their Price hotel in Holly Hill. Mary Lee called them Aunt Ethel and Uncle Henry, but like Mama Olive, Ethel was actually a first cousin once removed.

Life in the Price hotel was very different, in a positive way. Mary Lee ended up with a second step mother, a different step dad, and two new step brothers-Vaneaton (the admired bread truck driver) and Henry Jr. The permanent renters and the drummers (traveling salesmen) made for considerable excitement compared to life in little Eutawville. Some of the permanent residents were three Jewish families, each of whom owned stores in town. Another couple had a son Mary Lee’s age. He and Mary Lee were both too shy to talk to each other.

Mary Lee spent four years in the Price hotel. Then, when she was 15, Aunt Ethel moved to Columbia along with her sons, Olive, and Mary Lee. Aunt Ethel bought a boarding house on Pendleton Street across from the men’s dorms at the University of South Carolina.

Uncle Henry stayed in Holly Hill for a while doing his horse trading business but he came often to Columbia. When he came, he would bring good things like sausage and fresh produce. Soon he ended the horse business and permanently rejoined the family at the boarding house. He and Henry Jr. did all the buying of food for the meals served there. They would go down to the farmers market on Assembly Street, often at night, and buy food. Henry Jr. did the driving because Uncle Henry chose not to learn to drive.

Mary Lee enrolled in the 10^th grade at Columbia High School as soon as they moved to Columbia. Life was exciting. It was a big city. There were always college men working and dining in the boarding house.

Another lady from Holly Hill also came to Columbia and ran a boarding house on the opposite corner from Aunt Ethel’s. Uncle Henry bought groceries for her too.

The perfect young man and now stepbrother, Vaneaton, eventually found a sweetheart in Lancaster. Her name was Thelma and Mary Lee thought she was exceptionally nice. She also really liked Thelma’s mother. By and by Vaneaton and Thelma eloped and lived happily and productively ever after.

The boarding house was a very large two-story structure. It had a full length front porch with a sleeping porch above it. A beautiful Wisteria vine twined around the porch. It was a street where the sidewalk ran close to the houses. There was a very wide parking strip (actually a front yard) that extended between the sidewalk and the street. All of humanity passed by on the sidewalk. There was a cozy parlor with a fireplace and a piano. Three meals per day were served family style. Aunt Ethel had a staff of black cooks and maids and Mary Lee. I remember Henry Jr. punching meal tickets for the diners. Some of the college boys also waited tables for their meals. Early the next year when she was in the 11^th grade there appeared one very interesting college boy eating and waiting tables at the boarding house. He was Garland “Doug” Douglass.

Doug took an immediate interest in Mary Lee. She thought he was pretty nice too. She said maybe it was even love at first sight, but she was young and there was a lot of excitement, work, school, and other college boys. Mary Lee believed in proceeding with caution in all endeavors. To her credit she didn’t get too serious too fast.

The next year, Mary Lee graduated from high school just after her 16^th birthday. Doug wanted to court her. Mama Olive didn’t forbid it but she gave her a lecture on how to behave. She and Doug would go to the drug store soda fountain for a Coca Cola and crackers.

Doug was persistent in his courting and knew she was the one, but she wanted to date some other boys as well as him. One time she dated a nice young man in a wheel chair, John Garner. He had said he and his mother thought she might like to go to a play. She agreed and when the time came he appeared without his mother and took her to the play. When they got home, Doug was standing on the boarding house porch waiting for her. He was quite peeved and said, “I’m a one girl man.” That line was good for chuckles for decades to come.

Doug was an intramural boxer at the University. One night he had a public match and Mary Lee showed up among the spectators…with another boy. Doug’s opponent took a sound pounding that was probably really meant for the rascal sitting with Mary Lee.

Olive had heart problems and died suddenly during Mary Lee’s last year of high school. One day in Aunt Ethel’s bedroom she said “Oh, I feel so bad. Uncle Henry gave her an aspirin. Almost immediately she fell backward onto the bed and died. Mama Olive’s death of course was sad for Mary Lee but not as devastating as it might have been under other circumstances. She had become very close to Aunt Ethel, whom she adored, and Uncle Henry. Aunt Ethel was a good humored and very smart lady who was not as strict on Mary Lee as her sister Olive had been. Also life in the boarding house was very busy and exciting with Doug and all those college boys.

The romance with Doug grew. He wanted Mary Lee to marry him and move to his home town in Chesterfield. The Chesterfield part didn’t sound too interesting to Mary Lee. She figured there wasn’t much there and she had a close family in Columbia, not only with the Prices but with her sister Mae Barry, brother Zekie, and two delightful cousins Tavie and Mattie.

Doug graduated and took a job teaching 7^th grade in Chesterfield. He missed Mary Lee tremendously, and the little 7^th grade brats drove him crazy. He left teaching after just one year and came back to Columbia. Soon after, he asked Aunt Ethel for Mary Lee’s hand in marriage. It was while Mary Lee was visiting friends at the beach near Charleston. When she related this, her memories of that trip were fuzzy. She didn’t remember how she got there but she had gone down to visit Aunt Carrie’s daughter and son-in-law. Somehow when she arrived, something had come up and it was no longer convenient for her to stay there. She knew her friend Rachel Nusbaum’s family also lived in Charleston and she was able to stay with them instead. After the visit, the Nusbaum’s took her back to Holly Hill to their mutual friends the Brownlees’ house. She stayed there until Henry Jr. and Sr. came to fetch her back home.

After she got home she considered Doug’s proposal and accepted. A big selling point was that Doug promised her she would never have to make another biscuit. Biscuit making was one of her biggest jobs at the boarding house and one she had become quite weary of.

Doug and Mary Lee married on September 3, 1938 when Mary Lee was 20. The honeymoon was a big event. They took the bus to Aiken. A friend of Doug’s in Aiken leant them a car and they went out to supper and a movie. Truly two of the kindest people on the planet had found each other. Years later, Mary Lee would credit the hand of God for leading them to each other.

By the time they married, Mary Lee had a job working for the Unemployment Compensation Commission which eventually became the SC State Welfare Department. Within three years they were settled into their permanent lifetime home on South Woodrow St. I was born in 1944. In three more years my little brain was formed well enough to start storing long term memories. My earliest memories are of feeling very much adored. My parents seemed to feel I was truly a gift. Aunt Ethel was like a real grandmother to me. She became Ma-ma (pronounced with two short a’s) to me, just as she was for Vaneaton and Thelma’s children Van and Jane. Uncle Henry was "Papa" to us and Henry Jr. became "Uncle Henry" to us little children. That created lots of confusion for me since Mary Lee still called Henry Sr., “Uncle Henry”.

The world surrounding Ma-ma’s boarding house, as I remember it, seems like a stereotypical setting for a southern novel. We visited there a lot. Henry Jr. remained a bachelor and a permanent fixture. He was quite obese, 440 pounds I once heard. His 1940’s vintage Studebaker had modifications so he could slide the seat back far enough to sit in it and still reach the pedals. He would call me, “Sugar”, and let me sit on his lap. He would let me punch him in his amazingly enormous stomach which seemed very well adapted to absorbing impacts from my tiny fist.

In the parlance of the day, Ma-ma “wore the pants in the family”. She managed the boarding house as she had managed the Holly Hill hotel, and she took the lead role in making decisions about properties to buy and places to live. A testament to her role in the family was that Doug asked her, not Henry Sr., for Mary Lee’s hand in marriage. Her role as head of the household did not seem to be secured by any hardnosed or domineering manner. She was a gentle lady beloved by all. As far as I know, Henry Sr. recognized her talents and strength of character and appreciated the strong role she took in the family and their livelihood. I don’t recall anyone ever commenting or acting as if this was unusual or inappropriate. Before he became elderly and ill, Henry Sr. worked as a horse trader (literally as well as figuratively) and bought all the food for the boarding house.

In the early years of their marriage, Mary Lee and Doug worked hard to establish a home. Doug went to work selling tires and eventually became a bookkeeper. Mary Lee continued her job with the Welfare Department. The only culture shock in her marriage was that she missed the boarding house. She didn't miss the hard work, but things seemed strangely quiet after the bustle and excitement of all those relatives and guests. All her life she had been surrounded by lots of people.

Things didn't stay quiet very long. Mary Lee and Doug joined the Rose Hill Presbyterian Church and began making lifetime friends. They bought a little house with a large yard on South Woodrow Street in about 1942 that was to be their permanent home. They became best friends with Bruce and Buck Kingman and had many adventures together. Doug's mother joined the household and helped with chores especially tending to me after my arrival. By 1950, Doug had joined Southeastern Freight Lines as bookkeeper (where he remained until he retired as Treasurer in his late 60's.) Doug's mother passed away in 1953. Three years later, Mary Garland was born and we were again a household foursome. Mary Garland and I grew up, went to college, and became productive law-abiding citizens. We always found joy in returning to visit our parents in the little house on South Woodrow St.

All of us were greatly saddened in 1988 by Doug's death. His passing left a vast empty spot in our family. With the support of faith, family, and friends, Mary Lee endured the grief of his passing and continued to be the loving and giving person that so many people relied upon.

As a child, many memories were made for me in the little house with a large yard on South Woodrow Street. I had no doubt that it was the finest spot on earth. Mary Garland found it the same.

In early 2006, Mary Lee moved out of the little house on South Woodrow Street and joined the embrace of new friends at the Presbyterian Home in Summerville, SC. That put her back again amidst the cheering bustle and excitement of wonderful interesting people…and she didn't have to make biscuits! More years passed and inevitably Mary Lee eventually became frailer and physically dependent. Up until her last utterance she always had a kind word and loving touch for all who crossed her path.

Senior Museum of Play

We visited the Marbles Kids’ Museum in Raleigh with my Granddaughter. It’s a realm for educational play in a world of pretend reality. It was a blast, with all sorts of activities; dance, construction, life size pretend vehicles, and farms. Granddaughter loved it as you can see from the pictures.

All the while I couldn’t help but wonder why they don’t make senior play museums. I can just visualize one now. It would have venues with memorable pleasures of things done years ago and things we wish we could have done. Of course it would have all sorts of vintage vehicles, mostly convertibles, like ’57 Chevys and ’32 Ford Hot Rods. People could sit in them and be towed around, drinking Schlitz beer and making stops in drive-ins where curb girls in roller skates would sell giant burgers and French fries made from actual potatoes.

There would also be dance venues where people could do or learn to do important vintage dances like the Jitterbug, the Carolina Shag (not what you Brits think it is), Clogging (not for the faint of heart) and swing dance (Those actually old enough to remember swing dance should best view it on one of the large video screens from a comfortable seat). There would actually be many video screens all featuring black and white snowy reruns of everything from Howdy Doody to politically neutral news programs.

There would be many outdoor venues since in the olden days there was more outdoors than indoors and people went outdoors to cool off in the summer time. There would be big back yards. On warm days people could go into changing rooms to get into swimsuits. Then they could run or toddle through sprinklers in the yards and young “mommies” in floral print sundresses would come out through wood framed screen doors to serve Kool Aid in frosty pitchers. It would not be real Kool Aid of course; it would be Sangria. Real Kool Aid would be unhealthy for seniors. At 4:00 PM each day daddies (staff men in their 30’s and 40’s) would bring out churns and hand churn homemade ice cream.

There would be a major water slide venue with everything. For the really seriously old there would be stable rowboats with handsome oarsmen to take out widows (in life vests, bonnets, and parasols) and read poetry to them. There aren’t enough really old men to make them a market priority. For younger seniors, like new retirees, there would be waterslides similar to what young people enjoy today. They would not be made of gaudy colored plastic but real stuff of our memories like storm water culverts and irrigation flumes. There would also be just plain swimming holes with sandy bottoms, not concrete pools. Hey! Maybe for the Woodstock generation there could even be a skinny-dipping water hole. It could be seeded with a few young attractive staff members to embolden shy seniors. The young staff would be behind a protective Plexiglas barrier where they could safely distract the seniors from themselves and each other.

Throughout this marvelous play museum there would be food food food. It would all be made from actual organic vegetables and killed animals, which had enjoyed a good free life before they hit the chopping block. Food would be served in various cafes where waitresses actually wear uniforms, and a mere 10% tip will be met with raves of stunned appreciation. Food would also be served in other surprise ways like the Kool Aid and ice cream discussed above. For example men driving vintage Cushman three-wheeled ice cream scooters would come putt putting through the outdoor areas ringing a bell. Some food would even grow on actual live trees. Seniors could use a big rock and a claw hammer to crack actual windfall hickory nuts and black walnuts. Fruit trees would probably be stripped bare too fast.

I realize the overstimulation of all this food and activity could tax the energy and well being of vulnerable seniors. There would have to be on-site pharmacies, vintage of course. They could offer tonics like Hadacol (really Jack Daniels in replica bottles; it has the same active ingredient and tastes better) Carters Little Liver Pills (placebos of course) and lots of Milk of Magnesia (real). Of course there would have to be some concession to twenty-first century miracle drugs upon which some contemporary seniors depend for life safety. But, none of those little blue pills. They would make things way too awkward in the skinny-dipping venue.

Maybe I can start this museum myself. I don’t have any successful entrepreneurial experience but my granddaughter would certainly encourage me with her favorite phrase, “You can do it Bapa!” If you want to invest in this endeavor, comment below and I shall open a Pay Pal account. Buzz, you’ll have to get a young computer savvy person to show you how to make an anonymous comment.

New granddaughter's first day

I'm feeling like a very fortunate fellow. My second grandchild was born this morning (August 31, 2010) at 5:54 AM. Mother and daughter Yaiza are doing great and looking great! We have been running around all day visiting at the hospital and entertaining big sister Ayla, now two and a half. Friends and family are asking who she looks like. I don't know. Here she is. Probably just like any other mixture of Swede, Norwegian, Israeli, German, Swiss, Yemeni, Finn, Scot, Irish, and Scot Irish. Her hair is quite dark now and her eyes are sort of standard newborn bluish gray. Being an infant, all this may change. One thing is certain. She sure looks good to me.

Here are a few more photos of the people in Yaiza's world today.

The telltale diphthong

I just moved to the Blue Ridge Mountains. People talk different here. One clear marker in the regional accent is they never diphthongize a long i. Now those of y'all who aren't English majors or married to one may need to know what a diphthong is. It's a vowel sound that you can't hold indefinitely like you can hold a short a as in fast. Many other English vowel sounds are diphthongized, ending with a little transition as the a in "Dawg" the way U of Washington Huskies pronounce it. We diphthongize that a with an "ah-oo" sound. Now...back to the long i. Well bred erudite flat-lander southerners like myself strictly observe the rule of never diphthongizing a long i if it is followed by the consonants b, d, n, g, l, m, v, z or no consonant. For the other consonants we diphthongize it like yankees by sort of a quick long e ending. From here forward in this engaging lecture I will insert an h after an i in a quotation when i want to designate no diphthong as in, "Ih'd be much oblihged if you'd get me some ice cream."

The thing that makes this long i non-diphthong so culturally interesting is that non-southerners (a.k.a. yankees) consider it a marker of special toothless ignorance. Even the most dull double negative-using elementary school dropout from yankee land feels intellectually superior to a southern fellow who says, "Ih think it's about fihve mihles down the road."

Now, here's the interesting part. When I was growing up I had the same snooty feelings about Southern Appalichian Mountain folks who never diphthongize a long i no matter what consonant follows it. They don't let diphthongs go to waste though, they might diphthongize something else like as short a. Famous race car driver Richard Petty might say, "Ih drihve a faa-eest race core on a track that never turns riht."

I was stunned to learn that I still have my prejudice when I recently arrived here to live. The first thing I did (of course) was break off a tooth. (Probably from chomping on a BBQ rib but that's another story.) Oh mercy! I had to go to a strange new dentist from the yellow pages. Of course I got lost on the way and had to call for directions. I had to report to the receptionist that I was at the corner of Biltmore and Short Coxe Avenue. (I'm not kidding; that's really the name of the street.) She instructed me to, "Go just a little down Biltmore then turn riht into our parking lot." Yeow! At least she was just the receptionist. When I finally arrived and got in a chair, the dental hygienist instructed me to "Biht down on this." I almost bolted out of the chair running. I resisted the escape urge and I got the greatest crown job ever. I've been here a month now and I'm finally overcoming my silly linguistic prejudices. I long ago determined to never behave or think like a racist. Now I'm committed to never being a diphthongist. We're all human beings no matter how we close our vowel sounds. Riht?!

Johnny is faltering

Yesterday after loading a full chest of drawers, and other tonnage from our Dragonfly beach house into our little Honda Fit, we stopped at the bank to make a deposit. What?! No check book. It was supposed to be in our big FedEx envelope with our passports, birth certificates, and SS cards that we had used to register our car and lives in SC. We unloaded everything out in the parking lot and searched every drawer of the chest of drawers. No FedEx envelope. Then I decided it had to be under the back seats that were folded down. But, I couldn't lift the left seat because the head rest was under the drivers seat and somehow the drivers seat wouldn't slide forward. After a cursing fit in the parking lot, my first crush (Ginger from when I was 8) wandered up to enjoy some comic relief. It turns out that I had dropped one of the screws from removing my front license plate (not used in SC) and or course it had bounced into the seat adjustment track and jammed it. Finally dug it out. Still no FedEx envelope. Then in an epiphany moment I sort of remembered that I had stuck the envelope in a plastic box for safe keeping when we left the department of motor vehicle office (60 miles behind us). Where was the box? Oh yes! That was one of the boxes we had just stashed in our 150 degree Edisto house attic. Back to the house and up into the attic we found it. Yee Haa! We celebrated by a good long swim in the ocean, now 86.7 degrees according to the NOAA sea surface temperature web site. Life is good...intermittently.

We're Selling Our Olympia, WA Home!

Yes! We're pulling up stakes and moving to Asheville. We signed a purchase agreement so barring any unforeseen hitches before closing, it's sold.

What we have to kiss goodbye are our memories in our 4-bdrm, 2 bath, 1960 square foot beach view & beach access on Eld Inlet of Puget Sound. One acre lot exactly. Very quiet forested site. One of the bedrooms opens into the living room through French doors and can be used as a Den. Large activity room with plenty of storage space. One car attached garage and plenty of room on the lot to add a giant detached garage. Hot tub (dead but wiring and deck surround still intact) and H&C outdoor shower. Large private sun deck. The home was built in 1983 as a Model Conservation Standards house. It has super insulation and a whole house dehumidifier that can keep the house at a nice balanced 50% RH in this damp maritime climate. There are four secluded outbuildings ranging from a 12 square foot rabbit hutch turned tool shed to a one-cord wood drying shed, to a 144 square foot open-sided shed, and finally a 120 square foot climate-controlled storage building.

This is a great place to live as long as you are not a thermophile like me. You can swim, windsurf, kayak, dig clams or raise oysters right on your beach access easement on private land. It's only 16 minutes to downtown Olympia, 13 minutes to I-5, 11 minutes to Westfield Mall and walking or biking distance to The Evergreen State College (TESC). There are miles of trails and hundreds of feet of publicly accessible, yet virtually deserted, beach beginning just a block away in the 1,008 acres of mostly forested TESC campus. The few neighbors within shouting range are fabulous.