Country wisdom . . . and humor

From our marriage in 1971 to the first decades of the 21st Century, I was exposed to a milieu with which I was totally unfamiliar.  That was the yearly Thanksgiving gathering of my husband's mother's family on farmland just outside of Darien, Georgia, that had been in the family since before the Civil War.  Their home was a simple dogtrot built about a hundred years before.  Modern conveniences had been added through the years.  For decades, my husband's grandmother had cooked meals for her large family in a tiny galley.  One Christmas, the children all chipped in and gave their mother a gift that kept on giving: they enlarged and modernized the kitchen.  These were country folk, descendants of Scots-Irish settlers of Georgia.  They had a strong sense of family, and it took time both for me to be accepted by them and for me to get used to their ways.  But there were moments when their plain-spoken words made me laugh.

One of those times was when my husband and I and our two daughters, both adults, were sitting on the porch that ran almost the length of one side of the house, in southern tradition, talking about all sorts of things.  One of the things under discussion on that day was a dog my husband's parents had some years before.  She was a Black Apple-Headed Chihuahua named Weejee.  The aunts were on and on about that "nasty little rat dog."  Our daughters defended the little dog's memory.  "We loved Weejee; she was a good dog."  One of the aunts put her view of the relationship between our daughters and the dog in simple terms that had us laughing.  "Of course she was good to you.  You was her grandpuppies!"

      

The Book of Me: What do you enjoy?

I am a certified oddball.  Or, if you prefer (or if you're British), eccentric.  I like a lot of stuff that people today just don't care for.

Music:  I enjoy classical music.  My three favorite classical composers are all twentieth-century:  Aaron Copland, Richard Rodgers, and Leonard Bernstein.  However, I also enjoy Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and even earlier composers.  I like classical music from all over the place, including Asia (Chinese and Japanese classics are wonderful).  I also enjoy opera, being particularly fond of Antonio Carreras and Luciano Pavarotti.  I love bluegrass and what I call Real Country -- that which existed before it became nothing more than banal rock'n'roll with a southern accent.  I'm talking about A. P. Carter and Ralph Stanley and their contemporaries.  I like world music, especially Spanish, because I have spent time in Spain.  I lived with a University of North Florida classmate in the Triana neighborhood (or, in the Spanish word, barrio) of Seville while we were researching at the General Archive of the Indies.  The apartment was on the second floor (or, in the European manner, the first) over a flamenco studio!  Wow!  That was great!  Wonderful study music.

Movies:  My husband and I are both movie buffs.  We like many modern movies (though our tastes vary) and the classics.  My favorite classic movie is Sunset Boulevard.  I think his is Citizen Kane.  He likes action flicks, usually involving comic book characters.  I'd rather see a good drama or mystery.  I am very finicky about comedies.  Some of them coming out since the sixties are just plain dumb as a box of rocks.  Why they're popular is a mystery to me, but then one must take into account that one never will go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.  (H. L. Mencken said that.)  However, we've seen some hilarious ones, including Over the Hedge.  That was a scream, and William Shatner's death scene was such a self-parody!  What a hoot!  I also have to confess to one guilty pleasure in movies:  I love cheesy disaster movies, because they're just so funny to me.  They all have pretty much the same plotline (kooky scientist whose outlandish theory is dismissed by others saves the world, or at least what's left of it after the disaster plays out) and the same cardboard characters, including an action-hero type (cop, fireman, military person) whose personal life is an unmitigated mess.

Food:  Well, here, I may be closer to the mainstream.  My favorite food is steak.  I love it!  I'm also a chocoholic.  My favorite is dark chocolate.  I also love good fruit.  A nice, sweet watermelon  is such a pleasure in the summer.

I also enjoy my family and friends.  At Thanksgiving and Christmas, we expand our family to include two sisters whom we met years ago through other friends, and who live in our area with no other family around.  We all have a fine time on the holidays.

My husband and I both enjoy our cat, Gabriela.  Sometimes she is crazy, running from one end of the house to the other, climbing (sometimes places where we wish she wouldn't, but she also has approved climbing places we've provided for her), and sometimes stealthily attacking us as we walk by.  She is, as our friend Tom observed generally about cats, "an endless source of amusement in our idle hours."  She's also very attached to both of us, camping out near us and sleeping with us.

I enjoy scenery, especially mountains as I am a Californian transplated to flat old Florida.  The scene out my office window is nice, even if it is flat, and Gabriela is currently enjoying it as well, all loafed up on her window shelf.  Sometimes turkeys come out of the state forest our lot backs up to, and she does enjoy watching them!

Finally, I enjoy my work as an independent historian, translating and analyzing two-hundred-year-old Spanish documents concerning St. Augustine, Florida.  There are aggravations and frustrations (usually somehow involving the computer), but the work is fascinating and I can spend hours on it,  forgetting to eat (more of that, and I just might lose these pounds of fat)!

Overall, even with the disgusting state of public events and discourse, a very enjoyable life!