Quiet Afternoons

     I love quiet afternoons. Afternoons like today. Weather is perfect. Made an early dinner. I'm a simple guy. I boiled some water with five meatballs in it, dropped in the Mac and cheese and voila! Redneck health food. The meatballs were the kind with all those ingredients that make politically correct people cringe, but I don't care. I grew up poor, and my dad was a Cajun. Now, let me clue you in. An old Cajun will cook guts. It's not all that bad. We'd have liver and onions one day, and rice with liver gravy the next. Brains and eggs. A Cajun can cook almost anything. Squirrels, rabbits, slow tourists, you name it. And meat wasn't a vital part. Poke salad! May-hauls (and I know I spelled that wrong) that were the little apple things that floated in the swamp. 

     One thing I could never eat was a frog. Daddy would eat some frogs, now. Picture this. He's sitting there with his brother eating frog legs and the frog's heads are sitting there on the sink BLINKING at them. That's a whole new level of screwed! And the frogs were cool with it. They had thus calm look on their faces, just blinking away. Frogs are weird like that. 

     All the kids got to eat first and the adults last. That's Louisiana! The kids would chow down and daddy would "sop" up some gravy with a piece of bread. Nobody sops anymore. One more little piece of America lost. I don't think I ever saw a steak until I was in high school. Oh, we had "round" steak, but that's not really a steak, it just some crap they shaved off a cow's ass. Hey now, get this . . . Dog Bone Stew! I crapith thee NOT! Daddy would go down to A&P (That's gone now, isn't it?) anyway, he'd trot down down there and pick up some dog bones. They were left over bones from sides of beef being cut up in the back. Then he would bring them home and boil em up! Throw in a little rice and you have a first class stew. Now THAT'S the whitest trash you can be right there. 

     And health care? I don't know what the big deal is. In 1950's Louisiana there were two options. You got well or you died. Daddy would drag me over to Benton and some old VooDoo woman would blow smoke in my ear or make me drink sassafras tea. She taped a penny on a nail hole I had once so the spirit of Mr. Lincoln could draw the poison out. Come to think of it I'm lucky to be alive. 

     Dad got throat cancer. Oh, he took all that radiation nonsense, but when they gave him six months to live, and sent him home to die he went for a more holistic therapy. That was in 1974. He started eating Blue Bell ice cream and drinking whiskey every day. He died in '88. Mom got cancer, did what the doctors told her and lasted one month. That's why I have this psychological thing about doctors. 

     On calm afternoons all these things come back to me. I sit, and watch the sun set with a drink, and a smoke. Goodnight Puck . . .goodnight PaPa . . .goodnight Chris . . .goodnight NewBaby . . .goodnight Spartacus . . . Who let Spartacus in the HOUSE?