February 19, 2007

Dear Jimmy,

It sure was good to see all you boys over Christmas, especially some of you (I don’t mean no harm, it’s just that Darrell or whatever you call him is like one of my own and I wouldn’t give nothing for him).

Thank Thom for the little dog he brought me. Does he know about all them little fice dogs you had growing up? I know Darrell and Mark remember our little chawaawaa (sic’em) dog that loved to ride in that ’57 chevrolet from when you all were in high school.

Your daddy, bless his mean streak, would say, "Tiny, want to go ride? Want to go ride?" and get her all worked up and then say "Can’t go" and she would cry real tears.

What do you do with a man like that? And then there was that feist lap dog you had that turned out to be an egg-sucker; his name was "PeeDee". Well, we all know that you can’t have an egg-sucking dog around, so your daddy caught the dog, got a dope bottle and very humanely hit him in the head with it. He never felt a thing and your daddy threw him into the cat graveyard behind the hogpen.

So, we got another little dog, named him PeeDee, and I’ll be dad-blamed if he didn’t turn into an egg-sucker, too. We didn’t have any more dogs after that until Tiny came along.

I think all that egg-sucking stuff was about the same year that everybody’s canned corn spoiled. I don’t think many people can stuff anymore. You remember, every year we would sit down in the kitchen and go through all the canned vegetables and empty what had gone bad into the slop-bucket (hogs don’t care). I think probably the worst was when the canned tomatoes spoiled. Whewwwww! ..

Anyway, Rev Norman came around the other day and asked me what I was going to give up for Lent. I asked him what was he talking about and you can just imagine the explanation he gave me. Being the good Baptist WMU woman that I am, I told him "watermelon" and he left me alone for a little while.

That Norman always has some project going on since he’s been living on top of Polly Sue. First, there was the jail ministry with ‘Holy Books for Crooks’ and ‘Hymnals for Criminals’. Now, he’s out to save the world from hunger with ‘Cans of Spam for Africans’ and ‘Loaves of Bread to keep God’s Children Fed’ and ‘Baskets of Fruit for the Destitute’.

I asked him where he’s getting the money for all these noble projects and he said something about "liquid assets" and another batch. He’s just too good for this world; he ought to be on a higher plane.

Jimmy, I think you said something like that one time, didn’t you? Well, things are starting to get a little crazy around here today; you remember Uncle Clyde Whitley and his three girls that he named for precious stones? He’s the one who was too cheap to buy a jar of mayonnaise to take to the house after Aunt Elsie’s funeral.

Well, Ruby called me up and she was fit to be tied. She had gone to this new doctor and he had asked her if she ever had a Pabst Beer. You know that drinking runs in our family and she’s no exception, so it shook her up a little bit and she said, "One at Christmas."

Well, he said that he wants her to have another one at his office next week; this sort of scared her and she told him that she wasn’t that kind of girl, but that her sister Pearl, the wild one, might want to.

Things went down hill until he finally got across that he was talking about a test, but she was still not sure about it.

I asked Thom what I should name this little dog and he said, ‘Chopin’. I asked why and he said because he’s the peeinest dog he’d ever seen. Is that one of Thom’s song titles or what? I reckon it’ll have to do.

I could name him PeeDee and hope he ain’t an egg-sucker.

Well, it’s winter, so keep your feet dry and your chest warm or vicey versey.

Love, Mama