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27th Dec 09
M. R. SellarsI watched out my back window as the next door neighbor’s girlfriend hopped over the chain link fence as if it wasn’t there, then jogged up the back stairs – pretty much taking them three at a time. Since there are only three stairs to begin with she, for all intents and purposes, went from the ground up to the deck in one leap. She then zipped across my deck and began pounding on my back door.
Normally, in a case like this, one might imagine that there was a dire problem that needed addressing. Like perhaps a fire, or some other emergency. However, in this particular case I had a good idea there was little or nothing to worry about on the other side of the fence. What had attracted her to my door was going on right in front of my face.
I stood up then hooked around the center island and opened the door. Before I could even say hello my neighbor’s girlfriend pointed and said, “I want some of what she’s having.“
It was a cliche statement, yes, but then I’m not the one who made it. Besides, I couldn’t really blame her. After all, there was a highly animated cliche writhing all over my kitchen island even as she spoke.
And, it was not E K…
You see, as we have established on many an occasion, I like to cook. (That subject change give you whiplash? No? Then try the next one…)
In the South, hospitality is something deeply ingrained into your being as you grow up. There are the standard manners like Please, Thank You, Yes Ma’am, Yes Sir, and the like. Adults are addressed as Mister or Miss followed by a first name. Unless of course they are so familiar as to become Aunt or Uncle, regardless of blood relation. But, as I said, those are just the manners… The thing here is the hospitality.
What I’m trying to say is this – if someone visits your home, at the very least offer them a drink. If they show up and help you do something, I don’t know, like say build a barn, or roof your house, you FEED them. No ifs, ands or buts… No butts either, unless of course it is a pork butt you have slowly BBQ’d on the smoker for about 6 hours, then pulled apart and served with a nice vinegar based hot sauce for those who want an added kick. Of course, ‘tater salad, slaw, and a slice or two of bread are a necessity as well… But, I digress even further…
Back to regional manners and the like…
And so, myself being from a more civilized section of our country, i.e. The South, whenever someone helps me out I repay them by not only helping them out when need be, but by feeding them…
It’s just the way things are done…
So, anyway, we have now made a couple of turns around the chicken coop and are back to the animated cliche.
A few weeks back I was needing to rip the old roof off my shed in the back yard. After all, the roof was better than 15 years old and had seen its share of hail and highly acidic walnut shell droppings from the squirrels. The tree rats had also endeavored to build nests here and there throughout, widening their ingress and egress with a good bit of gnawing. Therefore, in a word, the shed roof was shot.
Enter Rhonda and Dave. You may remember Rhonda from the Bail Money blog. She and Dave worship at the altar of The Evil Redhead… And, Rhonda texts me a whole bunch. So, anyway, Dave, Rhonda, The Chunkinator, and Johnathan came over to lend a hand. Truth is, while I was taking care of other crap, they pretty much did the job themselves.
So, what did I do? Well, I fed them of course…
The problem is, I had not been to the grocery and we were woefully short on supplies. However, the rule of thumb around our house is that if it isn’t nailed down and it stays still long enough, I can probably cook it. So, I set about rooting through the freezer and pantry. Within a few moments I had a pile of ingredients and a few kitchen utensils in front of me. While continuing to converse with the gang I ground, grated, crunched, cracked, seasoned, and mixed until I had myself a meatloaf formed up and wrapped in aluminum foil, ready to toss out on the grill to join the slab of ribs Rhonda and Dave had brought with them.
That’s it. Meatloaf. Just plain old, average everyday meatloaf made with whatever I had on hand. Nothing special. But hey, food is food and when it is time to feed hungry folks a good old fashioned kitchen sink meatloaf will fill stomachs, guaranteed.
It was after we sat down to dinner that things became a little When Harry Met Sally-ish…
I was gnawing on a piece of rib when I heard the first moan. I wasn’t quite sure what it was at first, but it didn’t really sound like anyone was in major distress, so I continued eating. Seconds later, it sounded again, but this time louder and even more guttural. It was followed by a nasally whine, a squeak, another moan, and then a loud clap as Rhonda leaned forward, slapped the surface of the island, then arched her back and began tossing her head around like she was in some kind of shampoo / conditioner commercial, all while whimpering and moaning.
I stopped eating, rib leavin’s all over my face, then looked over at Dave and said, “Dude… At the dinner table? I mean, come on… Can’t you two wait until you get home or at least out to your car?”
“I’m not even touching her!” he countered.
Sure enough, both of his hands were occupied with a hunk of ribs, and in point of fact, he was sitting several feet away from her near the end of the island.
Before I could say anything else, Rhonda began rocking back on the barstool and moaning at the ceiling as her eyes rolled back in her head. In a total Meg Ryan moment she repeatedly slapped her hand on the surface of the island, sending utensils skittering off onto the floor as she screamed, “Yes, Yes, Yes, YES! Meeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaattttt Loooooaaaaaaaaaaafffff!”
Seconds later she was writhing all over the kitchen and whimpering loudly.
I cast a glance around the room, thinking perhaps we were about to hear a live rendition of Paradise By The Dashboard Lights, but Michael Lee Aday was nowhere to be seen.
“She always have this reaction to meat loaf?” I asked Dave.
“Dunno,” he shrugged. “Never seen her eat it before.”
“Don’t… like…” Rhonda started, then screamed one of those screams like you hear in a bad porno movie, not that I’ve ever seen one, mind you. She whimpered for a moment, then breathlessly started again, “Don’t… Like… Meat… Loaf…”
“The singer or the food,” I asked. “Because I hate to tell you this but…”
I didn’t get to finish. She was already screaming and panting again. And besides, it was at just about this particular moment I saw my neighbor’s girlfriend vaulting over the chain link fence.
Unfortunately, relations in our neighborhood have been a bit strained ever since. You see, our impromptu visitor left in a fairly bad mood that evening, leaping back over the fence then shaking her fist at us before going inside, pretty much because Rhonda wouldn’t let anyone else have any of the meatloaf. In fact, she took the leftovers home with her. I think maybe she had it for dinner the following night too, because there were some very odd posts on her Facebook wall. I couldn’t make much sense out of them, other than the fact that they were some seriously pleasure oriented onomatopoeia.
Too bad it was an off the cuff, kitchen sink meatloaf. If I’d saved the recipe I’m pretty sure we would have been able to throw together another one then videotape Rhonda and sell copies on the Internet for a whole lotta money.
And there you have hospitality in its finest hour… Help me rip off a shed roof and not only do you get dinner, but a floor show as well. And, who knows what other bonus Dave found in his “pay envelope”…
Damn… Now that I think about it, maybe I need to figure out what I can whip up that will have the same effect on E K…
More to come…
Murv
Yeah, I’m sure you are probably wondering what I’ve been smoking that would make me think such a thing, but interestingly enough, that’s kind of the point behind this whole blog entry. Not the smoking per se, but the ingestion of psychedelic substances, and no, I’m not talking about a rainbow bomb pop from the ice cream dude.
Now, lest you think I am merely playing both sides against the middle, I am also a great supporter of the squirrel kingdom across the board. I have a pinwheel feeder which I keep stocked with feed corn (incidentally, my father-in-law calls it a squirrel gymnasium), and when winter rolls around and the temperature drops off, a big part of my morning routine is preparing breakfast for the tree rats. I do this by breaking a couple of slabs of Ramen noodles into squirrel friendly sized pieces, then coating them with chunky peanut butter and rolling them in sunflower seeds & feed corn. Not exactly gourmet, but I haven’t had any complaints yet. In fact, Clem and Cletus, a couple of my regulars, can often be found peering into our dining room from the picture window while they wait for the restaurant to open.
I stood there wondering what had gotten into them when something caught my eye. A couple of the tree rats who weren’t engaged in happy jungle gym time were sitting back on their haunches atop a stump. In their paws they held huge chunks of brownish-orange fungi. Before long, one of the crazed rodents who had been doing the backstroke in the offspring’s pool ran up to the stump, tore a hunk of the fungus from the side, then sat back and began gnawing on it. My guess is that his Psylocibin levels were getting a bit low and he needed a booster.