UPTOWN

An-unusual-night-out-on-our-small-town included the authors’ readings at our luscious indie bookstore, which in a larger city would be considered trendy. Afterwards I picked up a paperback, one of those not with a slick covering but with that thick pulpy cover that screams Quality. Both the owner and the very-knowledgeable clerk were behind the counter. As the clerk took my money and handed me the book, I could hear the rain pounding the sidewalks. My next stop was a small bar a block away.

“Can you put that in something?” I asked.

The clerk looked flummoxed.

“A bag,” the owner whispered. “She wants a bag.”

The clerk heaved a sigh of relief and dug under the counter. He fished up a thin paper sack. If I carried my new compelling book out in that sack, within seconds it would swell up like a marshmallow without me even having had the pleasure of reading it in the tub.

"Do you have plastic?” I asked.

I think for a second the universe stopped. In a musical it would have been the moment after poor orphaned Oliver said, "More food, please."

The clerk began pawing under the counter again.

“We don’t have any plastic,” the owner said. “We don’t have any plastic,” he repeated, his voice an octave lower.

“No plastic,” the clerk whispered.

I considered how big a carbon footprint I would make if I left my book and came back the next day to pick it up, if it weren't still raining which it had been doing almost every day for six weeks as if we lived in Oregon and not in Mississippi.

In silence the three of us stared, them at me, me at them, and then the three of us at a plastic bag filled with store supplies someone had left on the counter.

“Here’s a plastic bag.” The owner sounded as if a life raft had been spotted from his sinking ship.

“A plastic bag,” the clerk said. He could have been making a toast.

Folks, there were maybe fifty people in that classy bookstore that rainy night, all buying books m a d e o u t o f p a p e r. I was the only one who requested plastic.

I promised to use the bag to pick up my dog’s poop. The clerk laughed, but it could have just been nervousness.

Of course I repeated the story to my husband when I got home, just as I’m telling you now.

“Green,” said the curmudgeon. “It’s the new puce.”

He’s a smart man. I am sure he knows puce is not really a green. He just liked the way puce sounded. Say it out loud. You'll understand.

From the Bag of Odd Things

note: my father was in Methodist rehab, nearing the end of a hospital journey that began August 18, 2001 and left him paralyzed from the chest down. In days we would be headed home, to see if I could take care of him there. I must have found these bulletins in some waiting area of the hospital. For some reason, I took to Jennifer and Michael.

Two handwritten photocopied church bulletins, dated Sunday Jan 6, 2002:

Inside the cross on the first, someone had printed Michael God Love you don't forget

Inside, the following exchange:

Don't go to sleep.

first of all not going sleep I think about some

What? The sermon. or our blessings.

Yeah. also wonder if I have job or not but long as I keep pray I'm really scary I not going have job.

The Lord's will be done. Let's not speak on it anymore just and wait and keep the faith.

When we get finish with communion I find to go I sit here long another why should I sit up in her for meet for I belong this church you sit up in here you want you just be sit here. Next person get up talk over minute I gone. Sincerly, Jennifer

I stay you stay. Sister that's the way it's gonna be.

Then you just see other people leave I'm going anyway now how you like those apple If know you be bad I made you stay at home.

Sorry but I needed a laugh. God forgive me this morning.

you know what at least man up sing doing his best. if that old man sing another song you start laugh I get up say my boyfriend want sing how you like those apple.

as a foot note:

How we gonna get to West today without gas.

I got some mones

Still We Try

from the quote archives

Mr. Raney named the porpoises—Sister Woman, and Renford, and Lamar, and St. Elmo—and could recognize them, and call each by its name, even at night, six feet long some of them, with a million sharp teeth and a naughty grin. Often when he floated past in the boat and watched their playful wheeling, in and out among the cypress knees, he called out to them, “Lamar, we are all alone in the world.” Or “Renford, cork is an export of India!”

The echoes of his voice across the wide water of the bayou was like a heartbreaking song, a music of the swamp.

Hydro said, one time, many times, “Do they understand what you tell them?”

Mr. Raney said, each time. “Nobody knows.”


Lewis Nordan, Music of the Swamp

More from the notecard archives

The obscure we eventually see.

The obvious takes much longer.

source unknown

Discussion question:

What do you think?

Moderator's take:

My friend drove a beat-up car with a stick shift. We called it the Batmobile, but this is just an aside and not pertinent to the point, though just the name conjures up a lackadaisical delicious distraction of tumbling years of memories, thanks, Jenne, oops, back to the point. One day she took me to the pipeline site parking lot out by Baxter Labs to teach me to shift. After bucking the car across the lot, a door flew open, our school books fell out, and somehow I ran right over them.

"Why do you always do things the hard way?" she said.

I didn't know then and I don't know now. Could today's quote have some relationship to this?

Hint: "always do things the hard way?"

From the Notecard Archives

She found no easy answer, but instead quoted Rilke: "Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves." "Perhaps that is the deepest source and the greatest power of self-respect," she concluded, "learning to live with the questions that have no answer."

source unknown

If You Don't Know What You Have, How Can You Let It Go?

I once knew a woman who had a resale store in a town too small to claim an establishment as fancy as a ‘shop’. I who at that time loved flitching perfectly good items from other people’s trash was a fool for a resale store.

The loft was filled with frayed clothes overstuffed on hangers and heaped on the floor, clothes so lifeless I could not imagine the fabric transformed into cleaning rags. The woman and her husband bought things in lots at auction. Once they purchased a truck load of shoes, only to discover the shoes were manufacturer’s samples, shoes in all sizes but for the left foot only. A family with a one-legged gene could have been well-shod for the rest of their lives.

Underneath the loft was reserved for discarded toys—puzzles missing pieces, games missing parts, limp and grayed stuffed animals, dolls without arms. The rest of the ground floor was mostly filled with the grim detritus of defunct households, bulbous lamps, orange and brown dented pots with yellow splotchy mushrooms, broken clocks, nondescript dishes with dingy cracks, the occasional sprung chair that looked like small animals lived in it. Nothing that even a seasoned garbage gleaner would want to brush against, much less rescue, though everything was priced to sell.

Then I spotted the fireplace shield. It looked copper, with an elegant spreading oak pressed almost from edge to edge, each distinct leaf gleaming. I can still see that magnificent shield and I covet it today, though I didn’t then and probably never will have a fireplace. There was no price tag affixed. “How much is this?” I asked, mentally rearranging my budget so I could carry home my prize.

“I can’t sell that,” she said. “It might be valuable.”

I was shy and she was shy, so we did not haggle over the unsalability of the perhaps copper shield. She did tell me she refused a handsome offer from a rich lady the week before, so I would know it wasn’t only unavailable to me.

I prowled the musty aisles, casually eyeing the shelves of intact, unpriced glassware behind the cash resister. When I got too close, she spoke up. “I can’t sell you those. That’s why I keep them back there. They might be valuable.”

She seemed nervous that I was looking. I knew then that anything I might find attractive enough to carry home, she would have to keep, because if she sold it she might later discover a treasure had slipped from her grasp.

I gave up. On my way out I spotted a little wind-up metal gorilla. When I fiddled with the rod that required a missing key, I could get the gorilla to stagger a couple of steps and sputter sparks. A horrible walking thing. My boy would love it.

It had no price tag, either. “How much?” I asked.

“I couldn’t sell you that,” she said. “You just take that with you. It ain’t worth nothing.”

Slap U-mami*

*umami—the fifth flavor, savory, which enhances all the other flavors
*Slap yo momma—what we say down home to signify approval; i.e., it was so good it made you want to slap yo momma.

Why is it when I order

Linguine with Crawfish & Andouille Sausage with artichokes, tomatoes, mushrooms & basil pesto in a creole-cream sauce

and I think it can’t get any better than this,

and she orders

Penne with Beef Tenderloin & Portobello Mushrooms in a tomato & Noilly Prat vermouth brothlaced with pancetta

and she says hers is very, very good,

but before the meal is over, she leans forward and says, “I’m just going to have to have one little taste of yours," and she takes a bite and her mouth gets round and her eyes get rounder and she says, “I know what I’m going to have to order next time,"

in that instant my creole-creamy drenched everything does, it gets even better?