Pies and cakes are in competition with the cookies and the brownies. The various leftover vegetable casseroles are carefully inspected as to quantity remaining so that a crowd favorite can be declared. I wouldn’t be surprised if they weighed them. I’ve seen men receive stern looks from their wives and valiantly attempt yet another helping of their spouse’s offering.
Some of the younger women in the family have resorted to bringing obviously store-bought, boxed food as an expression of submission. Either they don’t have a prayer of winning this trophy-less contest, or they know it would be political suicide to ‘win’ at their age.
There’s a female pecking order inherent in any gathering of family women. New brides know better than to come swooping in with a fabulous recipe. It’s much better to be patted on the hand and taken under the wing of one of the grand dames.
The smart men bring bathing suits and volunteer to supervise the little kids in the pool. The smartest among us grab four plates of food and wedge our backs into the corners of the room. As long as you’re busy eating, you don’t have to explain what happened to the girl who came with you last year. It takes a long time to eat four plates of food if you do it right.
As soon as they find out about my new restaurant and catering business, I’m dead meat. Those women will be insulted if I don’t bring food, and they’ll be hostile if I do. Switzerland has unwittingly joined the skirmish.
Why do you think I moved to Mossy Creek and changed my name?
Winfield Jefferson Allen. A perfectly reasonable name. If you don’t mind being beaten up in school.
I did.
When the first day of third grade rolled around, I made the decision that changed my life. I asked the teacher to call me Bubba.
The Bubba’s of the world have a certain swagger of confidence. They’re the elder sons, the big brothers; they rescue damsels in distress . . . usually from other Bubba’s.
However, in the third grade I wasn’t thinking much about damsels. I was just concerned with making it through recess in one piece. I became Bubba. With the stroke of a pen on a roll-call sheet, I changed my life.
Thus began my life-long pattern of becoming someone else. Anytime I didn’t like my life, I picked a different part of my name and started over. Like in college. I ‘walked on’ to the community college basketball team. Went right up to the coach and said, ‘Hello. I’m Win Allen. You need someone like me on your team.’ He asked me why. I told him my name said it all. He laughed and asked me to prove it. I played point guard at that tiny college for two of the best years of my life. I had no illusions about taking my game to another level. I just wanted to play.
My whole life has been about getting in the game.
Someone once told me that people fall into two categories: producers and achievers. A producer is someone who finds his satisfaction from amassing a body of work. An achiever is someone who finds his satisfaction in mastering the next challenge.
I think that may be why women tend to get a little skittish when I get serious. They put me in that achiever category. I’m not sure they trust me to be a one-and-only kind of guy. The funny thing is, they don’t realize achievers need a solid base. We need a heart to come home to after risking failure. Because that’s what achievers do. We fail as often as we succeed. Being an achiever is a scary proposition.
Like my new business—Bubba Rice Lunch and Catering.
This time I think I’ve lost my mind.
It all began when I sold a piece of computer software I had developed to some nice folks in the air freight industry for an indecent amount of money. Let’s just say that I’ve got twenty years to retirement age, and I don’t ever have to work again. At least not at anything I hate. So I asked myself what I liked and discovered that real men do cook. Puttering around the kitchen is a necessity if you’re single. I’m talking good solid southern favorites here. Nothing fancy.
My little hole in the wall behind Mossy Creek Drugs And Sundries is only open for lunch . . . two days a week. There is no fixed menu with the exception of my trademark specialty—good ol’ boy fried rice or ‘Bubba Rice.’ Nice marketing hook, huh?
I’m talking to Bert Lyman at WMOS Multi-Media—he owns the town radio station and just set up a TV studio in his barn—about producing a local access cable show called Cooking with Bubba Rice. I figure if Emeril, Bobby Flay and the Iron Chef can do it, so can I.
On the tables at the restaurant, I’ve got these great laminated placemats that offer colorful advice to get the ball rolling on my new career as a ‘character.’ The idea is a take-off on the posters proclaiming all people need to know in life they learned in kindergarten.
‘All I ever need to know, I learned from cooking with Bubba Rice.’
1. Starch is the glue that holds a family reunion together.
2. Measuring takes all the fun out of cooking.
3. Always write down Mama’s recipes so you can sell them later.
4. A pinch of this and a pinch of that will get your face slapped.
5. Barbeque is pork. Always. Beef is a steak.
6. Never insult the people who handle your food.
7. Never be afraid to eat the last piece of cake.
8. Don’t plant a garden unless you have lots of friends who’ll take tomatoes.
9. If you need friends, plant a garden. Everyone wants fresh tomatoes.
10. A slow, promising simmer never hurt any relationship.
The door opens tomorrow. The menu’s eclectic to say the least. But that’s half the fun. For me, anyway. Don’t know about the customers. Guess Bubba and I will find out soon enough.
The Mossy Creek Gazette
215 Main Street • Mossy Creek, Georgia
From the Desk of Katie Bell, Business Manager
Dear Vick:
I’m still on the trail of answers about the fire and the Ten Cent Gypsy. Sandy Crane and I are sharing notes and getting closer to pointing a finger or two in the right direction. Honestly, I’m a little afraid we’ll find out that one or more of our own Creekites were involved. Remember what I’ve said about Rainey, Millicent, Dwight, and some of the others? But I don’t want any of my friends and neighbors to be guilty.
However, there are some Creekites I find so backward and annoying I can’t help but wonder what kind of stunts they’re capable of pulling.
Orville Gene Simple’s little brother, high school dropout Roy Gene Simple, was caught the night of the high school fire making homemade stink bombs behind the Mossy Creek Fill-U-Up gas station owned by Phillip Donlevy. Which made it Phillip’s Fill-U-Up, a hard mouthful to spit out—especially for old people with false teeth—but that’s another story. Roy Gene, who doused himself in cheap cologne purchased at the Woolworth’s store down in Bigelow, smelled worse than his stink bombs and could not have been in the vicinity of the school without being smelled, so Battle Royden said he wasn’t a suspect. But, in my opinion, there’s been an odd scent around the Simples ever since.
Sometimes, fate wins. Sometimes, the beaver does.
Katie
ORVILLE GENE
ORVILLE GENE
Up the ‘Dammed’ Creek
My name is Orville Gene Simple, and I hesitate to tell this story, but it’s hardly a secret, anymore. Especially since the whole town of Mossy Creek has witnessed my humiliation. I thought, what with the upcoming reunion and the reappearance of the Ten Cent Gypsy that my early defeats would go unnoticed, and I think they might have, if it hadn’t been for my old friend Derbert Koomer, who runs the I-Probably-Got-It store, and Sue Ora Salter Bigelow, owner of the Mossy Creek Gazette. It was bad luck all around that Sue Ora would have been the first to witness the beginning of what I like to call . . . my situation.
It all started in early September after Sue Ora brought her boy, Will, to fish in the pond down below my house. She’d been pestering me for weeks about how Will wanted to fish in my pond. I thought maybe she was hinting for me to bring her some catfish, but I never was real fo
nd of anything involving water and told her to bring Will and catch some for herself.
She and Will arrived just after daybreak. I saw her through the kitchen window as I was making coffee and waved at her as she and the boy hoofed it past the house down to the pond. The woman wore fancy jeans and a mail-order canvas vest. Like the catfish had an eye for fashion and she didn’t want to be embarrassed.
Later, I was outside feeding my dog, Duke, when I saw her and her son coming up from the pasture with fishing poles over their shoulders and a big smile on their faces. I knew then they’d had some luck.
Better than me, as it turned out.
* * * *
“Hey, Sue Ora. Hey, Will. Looks like you caught yourself a fine mess of cats.”
Will held up his stringer, eyeballing it proudly.
Sue Ora nodded elegantly. “We certainly did, Orville Gene, and I thank you for letting us fish in your pond. I’ll be serving these with a nice lemon-rosemary sauce for Will, Great Aunt Livvy, and myself tonight. And I promised John a plate, if he stopped by.”
John Bigelow was her husband, Will’s daddy, though she and John didn’t live together and pretended not to be in love.
I saw her eyeing the old commode I had setting beneath the shady elm to the south of my porch, but I refused to comment. It was my house and my yard, and that old toilet was a right comfortable seat. Besides that, it was weatherproof, what with it being porcelain and all. She got this look on her face.
Thinking back, if I had been quick-witted enough to change the conversation, she might have gone on her way without saying what was on her mind. But I hesitated and she spoke again, and it was too late to stop the inevitable. “You know that the Mossy Creek reunion isn’t too far away,” she said.
“Yeah, I know. Seems like that’s all anyone’s talking about these days.”
“Everyone coming into Mossy Creek from the west has to drive right past your place,” she said.
I failed to see the point, but felt obligated to point out the obvious. “That’s because about eighty years or so ago, the state of Georgia decided to build a road straight through Great-Granddaddy’s land.”
Sue Ora shifted her stringer of fish to the other hand, obviously unwilling to give up until she’d had her say. “What I was trying to say is, you might want to think about cleaning up your place a bit. You know . . . making the scenery more appealing, so to speak. Everyone in town is fixing up and cleaning up.”
I felt myself glare and didn’t bother to hide it. “My scenery suits me just fine. That’s why I don’t live in town.”
She shrugged. “Well, it’s your place. It’s your reputation. But it does color people’s opinions a bit if toilet seats in the front yard are the first thing they see when driving in on West Mossy Creek Road.”
Then, before I could think of a smart comeback, she added. “By the way, you’ve got a couple of big fallen trees down at your pond. I’d think you would at least chop them into firewood instead of letting them go to rot.”
“What trees? I don’t know about no trees down at my pond.”
“Really? Well, I apologize. I didn’t realize the destruction was recent.”
Now I was really getting nervous. “Destruction? What destruction?”
She shrugged again, which was beginning to get on my nerves. When women shrug, it usually means they know more than you do, but they’d rather watch you make a fool of yourself before you find out. “I have no idea. I just saw two big willow trees that had been cut down. You know how limby a willow tree can be. They’re all over the place.”
I wasn’t familiar with the term, limby, but I was guessing it had to do with the number of limbs a willow tree might have, and I did have to admit that there was usually a good number of them on an average size tree. While I was still thinking about willow limbs, she smiled at me, as if the smile would fix all her criticisms. Some women just take the cake, and Sue Ora was one of them. She beat all, trying to tell me how to run my business—and after I’d let her fish in my pond and everything.
“I’d better get on home and get these fish in the refrigerator. I’ll ask Will to clean my catch so I can change clothes and get to the office. I’m already late as it is.”
“Your son looks nearly grown these days,” I commented, hoping it would get her off the subject of the condition of my property and that danged reunion. I was wrong.
She nodded as she eyed the toilet bowl one last time. “Just think about what I said. It would be a boon to Mossy Creek to have a town beautification project before the reunion.”
“I don’t live in the town, and I didn’t graduate from Mossy Creek High, Sue Ora. I am a bonafide high school drop-out, which some folks insist explains the presence of the commode underneath my shady elm and the hubcaps lining my driveway.”
She gave me another shrug-look. You know the one I mean. The one that women give you when they’re remembering that you used to pick your nose as a kid.
I sidestepped her. “I think I will go down to the pond and see what’s happened to my trees. Drive safe now, and I’ll be in soon to renew my subscription to the Gazette.”
That satisfied her enough to get her into her car with her fine catch of catfish. I stood there a bit, pretending to study the late summer weed problem in my mama’s old daylily bed next to the porch, but in truth, I was just making sure that Sue Ora was good and gone. Nothing makes me more nervous than a woman on a mission.
I thought about going back into the house and having a third cup of coffee, just to let my breakfast settle, then decided to walk on down to the pond and take a look at the felled trees—just out of curiosity, you understand. Not because I thought there was anything to Sue Ora’s concern.
As I walked through the pasture, my curiosity turned to a bit of pique. I couldn’t remember a time when them willow trees hadn’t shaded my great-granddaddy’s pond, although I knew things don’t live forever. Great-Granddaddy sure hadn’t. He was thrown from a horse and died on his thirty-second birthday, leaving Great-Grandma with five kids and no money to raise them. It’s a testament to Great-Grandma’s fortitude that she didn’t lose the farm.
Of course, I suppose it helped that she turned around and married the local undertaker, who was pretty well-off. That’s one business that never goes out of style. People are always dying, no matter how hard they try not to.
As I walked, I remembered we’d had that hard wind a few nights ago and decided that the willows had probably blown down. And that’s what I thought all the way up to the moment I reached the pond and saw that mound of limbs and twigs in the water about twelve feet off the shore. From where I was standing, the top of the mound looked like a giant chocolate cupcake floating three or four feet above the water line.
My heart sank. It was no wind that had felled my willows.
A beaver had taken residence in my pond.
As I stared in disbelief, I saw sudden movement in the water and then lo and behold, out pops the danged beaver as brazen as you please. He lumbered up onto the bank where he proceeded to chew off another limb of my poor willow. At that point I didn’t think, I just started running.
“Dad blame it, you pesky critter! You have crossed the line of peaceful co-existence. One of us has got to go, and it ain’t gonna be me.”
The beaver took the limb into his mouth and headed for the water, moving like a kid with a stolen lollipop making for the grocery store door. He hit the water with a splash, dragging the limb behind him. Just before the beaver reached the lodge, he slapped the water with that big old flat tail, then, along with the limb, disappeared beneath the water.
I took it as the insult it was meant to be and headed for the house. Something had to be done before that damned furry water bug ruined the rest of the trees.
If he was sprucing up for the reunion like everyone else in Mossy Creek, he was in for a surprise.
* * * *
It was seven minutes after eleven when I pulled up in front of the I-Probably-Got-I
tand bolted from my truck. Derbert Koomer, the owner and sole resident of the establishment, had just settled down on the stool behind the counter with a salami and red onion sandwich and an RC Cola, anxious to watch Days of Our Lives. It was his favorite show.
Although he was addicted to soap operas, he violently denied it. I saw him through the store’s windows. The minute he saw me driving up, he grabbed the remote and changed the channel to WMOS’s new cable-access cooking show featuring Bubba Rice, some kind of caterer who’d just moved to town.
“Hey, Orville Gene! How’s it hangin’?” Derbert asked, as I entered the store.
“I’m fine. Just tell me where you keep your shotgun shells.”
Derbert pointed toward the back of the store. “Goin’ huntin’?”
Knowing it was bad manners, I tried not to roll my eyes. Derbert Koomer was a good man and all, but he didn’t have a lot going for him between the ears.
“No, I’m making a new set of wind chimes,” I said.
“Really?” Derbert asked and took a bite of his sandwich.
“No, not really. Good lord, Derbert, you’ve watched so damned many of those girly shows that your brain has done turned to mush.”
“I don’t watch nothin’ of the kind,” Derbert muttered and pointed to the little black and white set on the wall behind the counter. “Looky there, it’s a manly cooking show. You can’t call Bubba Rice girly. He’s liable to whip your ass with his mixing spoon.”
As much as I enjoyed Derbert’s company, I didn’t have time to swap lies with him.
“The shells, Derbert. Where do you keep the shells?”
“Back yonder, past the chicken feed and the brown blocks of cow salt.” Then curiosity got the best of him. “Whatcha’ huntin’?”
“I need some 30 aught 30 shells. I got me a beaver.”
Derbert took a big swig of RC Cola to wash down the salami and onion then felt compelled to point out the obvious. “If you done got the beaver, how come you need the shells?”
Reunion at Mossy Creek Page 25
