Pissabed?

After a winter of  monotone, spring's rapid green always takes me by surprise. I forget just how green; the speed of dandelions. I used to tag along with my grandmother, along rural Indiana roads, collecting enormous bouquets of dandelion greens. Did they grow more lush and tall then, or was it that I was smaller? We would come home with mountains of greens, to be trimmed and simmered with bits of bacon, canned and stored for the following winter.  

My local Kroger store carries dandelion greens in season. But what's the fun of eating them, if you haven't properly foraged? There was some discussion on Facebook last week about eating pokeweed greens. Apparently, they are poisonous, so they have to be cooked and drained three times before sauteing. Somehow that takes away from the fun of the hunt. I'm sticking to dandelion greens...or spinach...for that matter. It tastes the same. 

The dandelion was long popularly known as the pissabed 

because of its supposed diuretic properties, 

and other names in everyday use included mare's fart, 

naked ladies, twitch-ballock, hounds-piss, open arse, and bum-towel.

― Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

*dandelion at Willow Manor

Remember this book?

Last week, I happened to remember a book from my childhood, given to me by my great-grandfather who was as crazy about rocks as I am. His father, Palestine Hanna, was a great collector of stones, bones, and Native American artifacts. People would bring him bones and various relics from all over rural Indiana.

It was easy to find a picture online, because I remembered it it having a black cover. I posted it to my Facebook timeline, and was surprised how many had this exact little book.

I still save rocks. Not for color and shape, like I did when I was a girl, but for their geographical origins, places that hold special meanings. Today, my nondescript collection looks like a few plain stones ... completely meaningless to anyone else.

addictive

I might not look like it, but I'm a natural-born smoker. Okay, I've smoked an occasional cigarillo ... just one or two ... but I don't smoke. From an early age, I've been enamored with the whole process of smoking; the look of the pack, the lighter, the exhale, the cigarette in my hand, poised between drags.

I had it down perfectly at age four. Uncle would take me to Chew's Grocery, in rural Burlington, Indiana, on the handlebars of his bicycle. My choice was always candy cigarettes. They used to sell them in little packs that looked similar to the real thing. I didn't actually eat the chalky candy, just pretended to smoke it, tap the ash with an expert flick of my little fingers. It all came very naturally to me, even exhaling up, so the smoke wouldn't blow in my imaginary friend's face.

When Grandma caught me in my favorite pastime, she, like Queen Victoria, was not amused. The sandy scuff of her house shoes on the hardwood floor signaled me to extinguish the cigarette in the tea set saucer I used as an ashtray. She frowned on the notion of a little thing like me pretending to smoke, even though it felt so very right.

It's a good thing I didn't start, because it would be a habit too hard to shake. These days I make do with nibbling my nails. It's part of my addictive personality, and certainly not as satisfying as smoking. I keep them coated in Black Cherry polish to remind me not to chew, but it doesn't keep me from craving a glamorous smoke from one of those curious finger holders Gloria Swanson used in Sunset Blvd.

One-cigarette poems

hang sexy and impatient,

hand-rolled thought-bubbles

combust smooth and easy.

Pluck them fast ―

inhale before they sprout nervous wings

and take flight.

Pen them down, taste,

capture the essence as it smolders,

circles the ashtray,

spellbound in the mouth,

taking a chance,

bulletproof, addictive.

tk/December 2012

* Candy Cigarette, 1989, by Sally Mann

Doesn't everybody name their hats?

It comes as no surprise that I like hats. I wear them year round, but it's especially fun to wear them in winter. With the approaching Polar Vortex 2, little brother of Polar Vortex, I will most likely be wearing a woolly hat indoors. It's good to have a proper cold winter. I've enjoyed Edna, my vintage poodle hat, named after my dear friend, Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Not many wear them in my neck of the woods, so I get pleasant looks of surprise when I show up around town in wild vintage hats. It's no fun to dress without accessories. In 1950s rural Indiana, a woman dared not show up to church without her best hat, pocketbook, and gloves. My favorite thing to do in church, besides eating Grandpa's butterscotch Lifesavers, was to look for Margaret Mabbit, the woman with the feathered hat and bright red lipstick. When we rose to sing the doxology, she looked like a lovely Sendakian parrot, happily singing on her perch.

“What the hell is that?" I laughed.
"It's my fox hat."
"Your fox hat?"
"Yeah, Pudge. My fox hat."
"Why are you wearing your fox hat?" I asked.
"Because no one can catch the motherfucking fox.” 

 ― John Green, Looking for Alaska 

Burn Barrels and Creativity

Willow Manor was quite rural when I arrived the summer of 1988. From the kitchen window I could see an open field across the road. Dogs wandered freely, children dug holes in the yard, dandelions were good; it was okay to burn yard waste. This week, our neighbor burned a bit of brush in the gully. Someone actually called 911; firetrucks, guys in hazmat gear, the whole shebang over a few burning leaves.

I remember every house in the village of Burlington, Indiana having a rusty burn barrel out back. Everyone burned trash without worrying about toxins being released. Grandma's barrel rested on concrete blocks, a square opening cut in the lower half, so ashes could be shoveled out, and used in the garden. My uncle and I (uncles close enough in age to be brothers) would play war, watch the burning post-bomb trash. No worries; we knew the dangers of fire, how to safely light a match. Sometimes we made elaborate scenes in the cooled ash; pot metal army figures carefully placed around leftover bits of glass and tin.

Children's freedoms have declined since I was a girl. Maybe the world is a more dangerous place, but children seem overprotected. I wonder about the long-term outcome, as far as creativity is concerned. How will this affect the arts on all levels? Nothing compares with wild exploration, digging a hole, discovering creatures in the clouds, riding a bicycle without a helmet, feeling the exhilaration of wind in your hair.


* Burn Barrel by Matthew Daub

You can't lie when you play with coal...

The boiler furnace at Willow Manor is going tapocketa-tapocketa-tapocketa, trying unsuccessfully to keep up with the Polar Vortex of 2014. A polar vortex is also known as an Arctic cyclone, or my personal favorite, frigid twister. Everyone's objective this week is to keep warm. Washing dishes the old fashioned way never felt so good. I'm actually typing this wearing gloves.

Boiler furnaces are becoming obsolete. I have come to love the nostalgic pop and hiss of the radiators. It's a steampunk thing. Grandma's house in rural Indiana had a coal-fueled gravity furnace. Coal was delivered by a truck that backed up to the house, and dumped the coal down the shoot into the cellar. When the temperature dropped in the house, she called for one of my uncles to go down and shovel some coal into the furnace.

I would tag along. Being a lover of stones and bones from an early age, I couldn't resist the beautiful mound of coal in the corner of the cellar. Grandma strictly instructed me to stay away, but I was compelled by the iridescence, the chalkiness, and even more, the satisfying crunch when you climbed on it. As careful as I was about not being seen, somehow she always knew. I guess you can't lie, when you play with coal.

As diligent as Grandma was about keeping house, the coal dust settled on everything. Things were simpler then, but dirtier. Think Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird; that was me. I had dirty feet, knees, elbows, and hands, year round; this was okay. Kids didn't have to be clean, except for The Lord's Day, when we were starched and spit-polished, until we were unrecognizable. My red Kool-Aid mustache never came off. I wore it like a tattoo.

I hate New Year's resolutions ... here's mine ...

I never make New Year's resolutions; but this year I am making an exception. My dearest friend told me of a dream. Dreams that include me make me feel uneasy, as if a look-alike captured on surveillance camera is doing something beyond my control.

This particular dream was of a post I had written about my childhood in rural Indiana. It felt compellingly right. I am inspired. (I don't inspire easily.) So, watch this space for a weekly nostalgic selfie; simple snapshots the Midwest, hopefully presented with a bit of quirk and intrigue.

My Christmas tree is still standing at Willow Manor. It stays up later every year. Ground Hog's Day is the usual expiration date, but Easter is not unreasonable. My paternal grandmother, Alice, was known to keep her tree up well into April. If one family member could not make it home for the holidays, she insisted on it standing firmly in the living room window until they made it home. Even if it meant spring break.

Trees in the 1950s were on the sparse side, anyway, as far as branches were concerned. They looked even more skeletal post-needles, colored lights wound around naked branches, limp ten-year-old tinsel, aged to a matte lead-gray. Even in mid-March, the lights on Alice's tree were religiously plugged into the wall socket at dusk. When her back was turned, my teenage Aunt Dee would draw the curtains, embarrassed what the neighbors in Burlington, Indiana might think of the icky ghost tree.

Grandma only knew me as a shy, precocious little girl. I think she would appreciate my grown-up passion, occasional strength, my small blatant tree, watered well into spring. As someone mentioned last week, it looks more like a Christmas bouquet, than a tree; a bouquet celebrating the new year, love, a hopeful me. She would like that I hang her faded-pink bell ornament near the top.


*Photo not me, but a close representation