September 29, 2005

Dear Jimmy,

My grand-niece, Dwaynette, started going to poultry slams and now she's got a little silver zit on her nose. She kept talking about "her Pearson" -- I asked if that was her boyfriend and she just reared back and laughed, and Lordy if she didn’t have a great big ball bearing thing right in the middle of her tongue! I was so afraid she would swallow it, but she said you can't swallow it, because it's a Pearson.

Well, I didn’t know anything about this Pearson businiess, so I looked in the phone book and found Pearson's Hardware Store, so that's probably where she got all that mess. That would make sense, since she's getting interested in poultry, though I don't think the slamming part sounds very nice. But if Gorgeous George and the Great Bolo can slam each other, I guess chickens can, too.

Dwaynette wants me to go to one of the poultry slams with her. I reckon I might go one time, but it’s probably not as much fun as what they’re doing over in Oakboro on the fourth Friday of every month. Hundreds and hundreds of folks go to the "Cruise-In."

They mark off a white line on Main Street between 4th and College and you pull up to the line with your motor running and your foot on the brake and then you stomp the gas until your tires burn up. Sometime something will catch on fire or explode! (Big Jim’s note: this is for real)

Lots of people drive their antique cars to this thing to show them off and that sure brings back lots of memories for me. The only thing I don’t get, Jimmy, is that there is a street in Oakboro called College Street. I just don’t know.

Jimmy, things are going pretty good working down at the Super Walmart. Your old mama "meets 'em and greets 'em," but that’s not all we do. People ask where stuff is in the store and usually I can tell what aisle it's on and all, but this one lady threw me for a loop the other day.

She asked where was the messy pork salad. I said, "The what?... do you mean barbecue?" ( See, I could tell she wasn't from around here, and might of had a language barricade or something. ) She said, no, that her next door neighbor told her about how good a messy pork salad and vinegar goes with pinto beans and chow-chow.

Then it came to me.. her friend had been trying to tell her to get a mess of poke salad. The more I tried to explain what poke salad was, the worse it sounded and I thought that poor Yankee woman's eyeballs were going to pop out of their sockets! I finally just sent her on down to the Farmers Market.

People do buy the strangest stuff, though. This one man bought 100 boxes of stick matches and 10 tubes of epoxy. Said he was going to build him a guitar, of all things. The next time he came in, I asked him did he build it. He said, yes, he built it and varnished it and then decided that was a crazy thing to do, and set it on fire. Lord, Jimmy, ain't this world a strange place?

He said it made a real pretty fire, though.

What’s worse, though was this feller with long, stringy. shiny-looking hair who bought a whole buggy full of sinus and cold medicine. I heard that they saw a lot of young people going in and out of his house and he was arrested for running a math lab. Well, Lordy mercy, Jimmy, what’s are things coming to when a man can't help folks with their arithmetic?

Maybe they were afraid the children would catch that bad cold he had...

You'll be glad to know some of the church youth have won another athletic competition. I know you remember they won the North Carolina Baptist Youth Musical Chair Championship back a couple of years ago. Now they’ve gone and won the NCBY Dodge Ball Championship!!! I wasn’t able to go see them play, but when they got back I told them to keep it up and they might win an athletic scholarship to college. And it was the girls’ team that won.

You know, we gals can be pretty tough when it gets down to it. I think your daddy, rest his soul, used to say something along those lines and then he would give that snorting laugh that aggravated me so. Lordy, I wouldn’t give nothing to hear that racket again.

Along those religious lines, Reverend Norman has taken on a new challenge. He is going to read the entire Bible in forty hours. And he just might do it because he is taking a speed-reading course over that internet thing. So, I went over to Polly Sue’s Tropical Fish Emporium and Sushi Cafe to watch him read and, Jimmy, his lips were just a blur!

Jimmy, they’re going to change the time again soon, so I better get down to the chicken house and set the clocks back. Tell all them other boys hey for me and maybe you all can make it for Thanksgiving. It’s on Thursday again this year.

Love, Mama

Mama