Bless Your Heart, Tramp

by Celia Rivenbark

  The baby was sucking on Mountain Dew in a bottle.

  “Wanna use my phone?” I hollered.

  The woman wearing a Foxy Mama T-shirt hollered back, “Yeah.”

  She sat in my car and talked on the phone, but her end of the conversation was brief: “Naw…Yep…Naw, see we used the money for oil to buy cigarettes. Huh? Well, ’cause we didn’t have any, you mo-ron.”

  She hung up and we agreed that I’d drive her to her boyfriend’s house a mile or so away.

  “He knows a lot about cars,” she said.

  We pulled into his driveway and she chose this moment to say, “Well, actually, this is his swamp slut girlfriend’s house.”

  Uh-oh.

  She tried to knock on the front door but there was a Doberman on a two-foot chain standing guard.

  “Where’s your friend?” I asked when she came back to the car.

  “Well, he could be back in jail. I mean, after I swore out them warrants on him and all.”

  I just knew she was going to call him her “old man” in a minute.

  She started to cuss him.

  “Do you mean we’re at the home of your boyfriend’s new girlfriend and her psychotic Doberman and you think a man you had thrown in jail for stealing your beer money is going to help you fix your girlfriend’s broke-down car?”

  “Yep. You know,” she says, suddenly looking almost cheery, “when we drove up I could’ve swore I saw him walking with that bony-ass bitch girlfriend of his toward that convenience store across the highway. Let’s go.”

  Oh, yes, let’s.

  I wait outside while she goes into the store.

  Two minutes later, she jumps into my car, slams the door, and folds her arms. She’s furious.

  “What happened?”

  “He said the baby ain’t his.”

  Oh, sweet Jesus.

  “What baby? I thought you were just going to ask him to help you get the car started.”

  Now, about this time, the object of her desire, a stringy, tattooed, shirtless creature lurched out of the store, grinning drunkenly.

  He gave us the finger.

  Then she lowered her window and cussed him good and he started beating on my car.

  “What’s he doing?” I screamed. “I don’t even know this guy and he’s beating on my car windows.”

  She says, “That’s okay, we can get a warrant swore out on him.”

  (This is the redneck woman’s answer to every little problem in life. That, and Marlboro Lights.)

  I guess maybe I am part redneck because I got a wheel getting out of that parking lot and enjoyed every rubber-burning second of it.

  We got back to her friend’s car and I was real relieved to see another skinny, bare-chested, tattooed guy working under the hood.

  Foxy Mama looked relieved.

  “Guess her old man’s gonna help us out.”

  I knew she was going to say that.

  The Grits Gonna Rise Again

  A recent news item should remind all of us that there’s a hidden danger lurking in our homes that, if ignored, threatens the safety and sanity of our beloved families.

  Radon? Nope. Unlocked gun cabinet? Wrong again.

  It’s grits.

  Sure, they look harmless enough sitting there in that bag on your pantry shelf but, when left to their own demonic devices, grits can be as destructive as a Republican congress.

  People will shake their heads after the inevitable grits attack. Why, oh why, can’t we all just live in hominy?

  Who knows how long grits across the nation have boiled and churned in anger?

  The horror that unfolded in Gainesville, Florida, could inspire a B-movie. Say, Attack of the 2,000 Pound Grit or It Came From Corn!

  A large pot of grits exploded and sent two people to the hospital. A bystander said the noise was awful and sounded like exploding electrical transformers.

  Them grits were cheesed.

  So how can we prevent a second grits rebellion? Well, we must begin by educating our youth, of course.

  Face it. Schoolchildren are trained to crouch under over-passes or beside interior walls during a tornado but teachers have no idea how to prepare America’s most precious resource from a grits explosion.

  Ask yourself this: When is the last time you saw a bag of grits? When is the last time you saw a tornado? There you have it.

  When the grits exploded, confused youngsters could only stop, drop, and roll, jump in ditches, just say no, and abstain from sex when the hail of hominy fell from the sky. That’s pretty much all kids are taught these days.

  The grits were being prepared for a client appreciation party hosted by a Gainesville accounting firm when a large piece of the exploding pot hit one of the guests just as he was waiting for his heaping helping of fish and grits.

  Gee, clients are usually shown appreciation with such objects as calculators that last less than a week, not a hot grits shower without so much as a pat of butter on the back. I wonder if business has suffered following the explosion.

  Rival accounting firms would be foolish not to take advantage of this disaster. I’m imagining an ad campaign for the competition: “We Do Your Taxes for Less AND We Don’t Pour Boiling Grits On Your Head.”

  Just a thought.

  This Beer Was Made for Wearin’

  Sisters Betty Durrance and Mary Ann Hewett will do just about anything to fight boredom in Exum, an itty-bitty town in Brunswick County, North Carolina.

  All that’s there is a hog farm, a smattering of houses, and the Exum Grocery.

  Betty and Mary Ann run the grocery, kind of a generous description considering it’s mostly sodas and “nabs” and a few jars of salsa that Betty says seemed like a good idea at the time.

  “That salsa was a mistake,” says Betty.

  “Yep,” says Mary Ann.

  Sometimes there’s as much as three hours between customers, so the sisters sit at a little Formica dinette in the store and work on their jigsaw puzzles or play cards. Or sometimes they watch the soaps and make clothes out of old beer cans.

  Say what?

  “You do what you can to stay busy,” says Betty, deadpan.

  Betty and Mary Ann’s sister, Hazel Hughes, who lives just down Big Neck Road, actually sews the clothes, mostly vests and hats, together after the cans are good and “smaished.”

  Hazel prefers to work with Budweiser because it’s so festive and patriotic looking, but she’s not above making a purse out of some Natural Lights.

  Silver for evening wear.

  Because the sisters don’t drink beer, this is a trickier enterprise than you might think.

  “We just put the word out that we needed some beer cans and people started bringing them to us,” says Mary Ann.

  “A lot of people around here drink,” says Betty.

  Hmmmm.

  If the beer can supply dwindles, the sisters hit the roadsides looking for the cleanest, shiniest specimens tossed from car windows.

  “We have to wash ’em good because if you’re making clothes out of beer cans, you don’t want ’em to smell,” says Mary Ann.

  Can’t argue with logic like that, I say.

  Sister Hazel’s “Bud-ding” career has made her wiser with each garment she sews.

  “See that vest up there with the cans on the shoulders?” Mary Ann asks, pointing to a spectacular number containing several six-packs of Bud cans crocheted together.

  “That one was Hazel’s first, and she realized the cans in the shoulders were going to be uncomfortable so she made the others different.”

  “The ones with the soft shoulders just feel better on,” says Mary Ann.

  So who’s buying this stuff?

  “College kids,” says Hazel. “Race fans, maybe.”

  The vests cost $50 and, while the sisters haven’t actually sold one yet, they’re hopeful.

  “We sold three of the beer can hats to three little old ladies that came through on their way from Myrtle Beach,” say
s Hazel. “You’d be surprised.”

  Between customers, Mary Ann and Betty wash the beer cans in soapy water, cut them with scissors, and punch holes in the edges.

  Promotional advertising can ruin a perfectly good outfit, says Mary Ann. If there’s a lot of writing on a can, you can only get one good side out of it, she explains.

  After they’re cut and punched, the cans are delivered to Hazel, who crochets them together with blue and red yarn. She can complete a vest in about three days if she doesn’t have much yardwork to do.

  The sisters say they get their talents from their late mama, who was widely known for making pocketbooks from cardboard, yarn, and plastic milk cartons.

  Their late uncle could turn out an entire set of miniature furniture made out of beer cans snipped and curled into palm-sized wrought-iron patio sets.

  At around six P.M. every day, the sisters sit down to supper at the store. Mary Ann does all the cooking. They take turns waiting on any late customers who might jingle the noisy cowbell on the door.

  The Exum Grocery is so low-key that Betty’s been known to drop in for a cup of coffee still wearing her pink pajamas, says Mary Ann.

  “Well,” says Betty, a little defensively, “they’re real thick pajamas.”

  Maybe she can get Hazel to whip up a robe for her soon. Say, something in a Pabst?

  Bridal Moms from Hell

  The mother of the bride stood before me, a vision of confidence in a Chanel suit she bought at Rich’s, “in Atlanta, don’tchaknow.”

  “Now, dear, we want to make sure that Merry Sue’s wedding is given the proper coverage, don’t we?”

  “Oh, golly yes,” I replied. “I just hope the networks don’t waste time on that pesky war in Iraq because I’m sure they’d rather be covering your daughter’s wedding.”

  “See here,” she said, while I paused to lap from a saucer of cream on my desk. “Merry Sue’s father, Dr. Wayward Penberthy Extravagance III and I have planned this wedding for years. I guarantee that it will be the social event of the season.”

  “Okay, but you probably wouldn’t say that if you’d been at the Tammy Faye Messner karaoke and look-alike contest at the Sheraton last week.”

  She didn’t laugh. Bridal mothers have no sense of humor. I know this because I’ve assisted them with their daughters’ wedding announcements for years.

  I can tell you there is no more tenacious, single-minded and utterly obnoxious creature on this earth than the Southern Bridal Mother.

  The worst day of my employed life was the day I accidentally ran a bride’s photo and write-up in the newspaper the week before her wedding. The Sunday morning the paper came out, I had a call at home. The sun wasn’t up yet.

  “You have ruined my life and that of my daughter,” she said.

  It was an unforgivable slip. In the South, seeing the bride’s gown before her wedding day ranks right down there with finding out your grandmother’s sterling is actually silverplate or—worse—that the groom has relatives in Pittsburgh.

  It was a wretched error and I knew that I’d destroyed the most special day in this young woman’s life.

  Oh, well.

  I won’t say there haven’t been a few laughs working with bridal mothers.

  There was the one who loudly announced that “getting married to that clod will be the biggest mistake my daughter has ever made,” then dismissed the groom’s family as “cheap Christmas trash.”

  Impending nuptials have a disturbing effect on brides-to-be.

  Where else will you see a mom bully her all-grown-up-with-a-Ph.D daughter as if she were six years old and trying to sneak another Chilly Willy from the freezer before dinner?

  I have seen these women wilt quicker than convenience-store roses in the presence of their mothers.

  “But Mama, Waylon and I just have to have that Apache Indian prayer read at our wedding. It will be the most meaningful part of the entire ceremony.”

  “Forget it, Toots.”

  “Okay.”

  See what I mean?

  Obituary Madness

  I love to read obituaries, always have.

  You don’t have to know any of the “players” in the obits to find them fascinating. In fact, it helps if you don’t know them because then you can laugh out loud at the nicknames of the dearly departed. My favorites? “Punkinhead,” “Loverboy,” “Hambone,” “Lil Bit,” “June Bug,” “Big Dick,” “Jug Ears,” “Baldy,” “Big Mama,” “Fat Daddy,” and “Ham ‘n’ Eggs.”

  When you see these nicknames in print, you have to admire the family’s reasoning: They’re included—never mind how silly they sound to those of us who never actually met “Grand Theft Auto” Jones.

  At least that’s what my friend Sally Jo says.

  Sally Jo told me, “You know, Boogerface, nobody’d recognize these people if they didn’t include the nickname.”

  Come to think of it, I’m not all that close to Sally Jo.

  Reading obits can be a little frustrating.

  You’ll probably never know the particulars on how “Loverboy” got his nickname (although that long list of “special friends,” all women, could give a clue.)

  And because you didn’t know him well enough to attend the funeral, you can only speculate why the grim-faced Pentecostal Holiness preacher placed in the care of the good Lord, “thy faithful servant Hambone.”

  The obituaries in our Southern-style newspaper are usually straightforward, but that will probably change if national trends are any indication.

  Or so I was telling my editor, Larry “Is It Lunchtime Yet” Commasplice.

  Yankee newspapers have long, wordy tributes that, so far, Southerners have resisted.

  Consider this excerpt from a Northeastern newspaper: “He loved the Gospel and food storage…He was an avid reader and a voracious snowball collector…He always paid his bills on time…”

  Down South, we avoid these pompous, wordy tributes because we believe a person’s life and accomplishments should speak for themselves. Anything else is simply puttin’ on airs.

  We prefer to deal with our dead up close and personal. When I was growing up, funeral visitations were social occasions rivaled only by a new Piggly Wiggly ribbon-cutting with gimme caps.

  Southerners treat death special. I can remember many years ago that my Mama dispatched me with a Tutti-Frutti Gelatin Mold quivering on my handlebars to deliver to a neighbor whose husband had died mere moments before. We only lived four houses away and there were already six or seven gelatin molds by the time I got there. Talk about pressure.

  In my small hometown, our radio station aired “The Obituary Column of the Air” every afternoon.

  The DJ would play a scratchy old recording of “Amazing Grace” that sounded like two tomcats fighting while sorrowfully reading the names of the freshly dead.

  I couldn’t help but notice that he didn’t sound at all like he had just minutes before, when he was reminding us of the three-for-a-buck hot dog special down at the Time Saver.

  Something tells me there is no “Obituary Column of the Air” in big cities, where people are mostly cremated ’cause there’s no room to even bury them, much less have a giant chicken guarding the grave like I saw one time at a poultry farmer’s funeral. He was a good man, Wilbur “Buttcrack” Thigpen. And don’t y’all forget it.

  Dear Losers: A Christmas Letter from Myra Sue

  There are no Faulkners in my family, but there is Cousin Myra Sue Ravenel-Ransbottom, whose most recent Christmas letter is reproduced here in its entirety. I’m sure she won’t mind me sharing…

  Dear Family:

  Well, it’s Christmastime and that means it’s time for another family letter from me, Myra Sue. Just thought you’d like to know that both of our adorable children, Chip Jr. and Cindy, are doing wonderfully in school. Chip, although only nine, has already served two terms in the state legislature, and Cindy, six, spends her free time directing segments of Biography for the Arts and Entertain
ment network. Perhaps you caught her work in “Barney: Purple and Proud,” based on her Caldecott award-winning book.

  You know, Chip Sr. and I think it’s positively amazing how much money we made this year! To think that one short year ago, we were actually toying with the idea of letting one of the servants go and asking little Cindy if she could positively bear not to go to Germany this year for the family’s annual Christmas ornament shopping spree. But, happily, that awfulness is behind us and Republicans are in power again! Chip Sr. and I are resting easier, I tell you.

  Dearest family, I hope you will forgive any uncorrected colors in the accompanying flip chart photos. I’m still trying to get the hang of the computer printer Chip Sr. developed after a long day in the operating room. You’d think holding a beating human heart in your hand four, maybe five, times a day would be enough for the man, but saving lives just isn’t as exciting as it used to be, says Chip.

  One time, when I stopped by for lunch and Chip was still in surgery, he let me rub the paddles together and scream “CLEAR!” That was amusing for a while, but I dropped those paddles pronto when I realized I’d chipped a nail. Chip says the man was a Democrat anyway, so no big loss.

  My clothing design business—Myra Suits—is going gang-busters, but then what would you expect from a former homecoming queen and runway model, you sillies!

  Chip Sr. was able to sneak away from the Nobel ceremonies to join me in Milan for the fall show. The only awkward moment came when Chip and I told the Pope we appreciated his offer but we had our hearts set on sitting with Brad and Angelina.

  You know, dear family, Christmas is such a special time. That is, it would be if I wasn’t bothered by all those phone calls.

  One day I’m just going to tell Martha Stewart, “Look, I’m happy to help but you’d think just one Christmas Eve, you could not call me whining, “But Myra Sue, when YOU make the individual Grand Marnier Souffles with the Carmelized Chestnut Glaze for eighty, not a one falls flat.”