Smokey Mountain Breakdown

I'm trying to get back on schedule. You know the one where I post the next day's post at midnight.

Right now, I am roundly congratulating myself on being such a fricking genius that I never had children. I did some really stupid stunts in my youth, but having kids...thank God...that wasn't one of them.

It's not that I don't adore children. I flat out love the little buggers and always have. Particularly when they start talking and relating and going home to their mommies and daddies after I've spoiled them rotten and taught them the "Rolly Polly Fish Head" song. Mothers of the world...I so, so, so salute you! You are all such better women than I...warrior goddesses the lot of you.

I know that many of my readers have daughters. Daughters they would like to forgo childbearing until they are ready for the awesome responsibility. My suggestion is that you give your twelve year old daughter a baby goat to bottle raise. Forget, Baby Think It Over. There is simply no way a doll can simulate the smell and general yukky-ness of urine and feces soaked diapers. You know what I'm talking about. That warm heaviness when you feel the back of their diaper and know there's a great big ole load in it. That's the part that's going to squick these girls out.

The other cool thing about this plan, is that baby goats go from that squalling infant stage to toddlers in about four days. All of a sudden, they aren't just peeing and pooping machines, easily confined to their crib (or dog crate as the case may be)...now they are getting into everything. I had to clean goat pee out of my surge protector just today. In one week, you can cover about three years of infant human behavior. In real time. With real pee. And real poop.
Diapers, midnight feedings, really loud squalling. The whole nine yards. Sure they're cute. But do you really want 18 years of this? Right now?

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V-Man was real sweet to point to one of my baby goat posts. He'd sent me a link to another one of his old posts. We seriously need to compare notes. It seems we know lots of the same people from Bluffton.

And not only my sister who he evidently had a serious boner for when he was a teenager.

Ewww. I don't even want to go there.

Honestly, I think my brother, Bob, and V-Man need to get together and hit the flats after some redfish. I've got a feeling those two would get on like a house on fire. Telling all dem stories mens tell so well when they is by theyselves with only the slow chop of the water for company.

I'm getting nostalgic. I just slipped into Gullah for a moment there.

Peek-a-Boo Peach Brandy
This photo is a repost from 2005. I thought on this cold drizzly day, that it might be a good time to talk about the love/hate relationship between the folk of this area and "spirits" and a few disjointed musings and stories.

This is how I made this brandy...

"Peek-a-boo Peach Brandy is made by layering sugar and peaches in a large crock or jar. You stir the mixture for the first seven days for about 3 minutes to release the fermenting gases. On the seventh day, add the juice of four lemons and a box of raisins. You wrap the jar in a paper bag and hide it in a cool dark place. Check in about 21 days and decant and bottle if you wish. It will result in a potent spirit by Thanksgiving at which you can "peek" at it and enjoy some. You can add some moonshine(or vodka) to make it even stronger and more potent. The left over fruit is really wonderful spooned over vanilla ice cream. By Christmas, it should have quite a kick to it."

My brother made this according to the way my mother used to make it this past year and I believe it turned out quite well. He did not vent the gases and buried the jars. None of the jars exploded though he did say that one of them didn't seem to ferment properly. The sugar was not dissolved. Mother always just hid the jar in a paper bag in the bottom of a washstand that the TV always sat on. By Christmas, it was perfect.

Mine turned out really well and had quite a kick to it. I'm afraid that I got into it early and got quite tipsy.

The Hidden History of Apples in America

One of my neighbors has one of the original apple trees in his yard. Once, long ago, this area was completely covered in homesteads with apple orchards. This amazing old tree is the size of a live oak. It's so old, I don't think I've actually ever seen apples on it, but people "scrumping" them as children. The tree is on the old Alvin Hall homeplace. People don't realize how big apple trees can actually get. Most of our current varieties are dwarf or semi-dwarf.

There are many things that people make out of apples here. Apple butter, apple jelly, apple stack cake, apple pie, apple sauce....it goes on like Bubba Gump's shrimp list. But it still doesn't truly account for the preponderance of apple trees and the history of apples in the area going back to when this was the original western frontier.

When I read Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire and his amazing essay on the apple, it suddenly made sense. Apples were brought here to make hard cider and applejack. Plain and simple, there were no wheat fields and beer was unavailable. No doubt, apples are a healthy snack but you can only eat so many of them. And you can make hard cider even out of the "spitters"...those pippins that have nearly inedible fruit.

And this area is rich in distillation history, obviously. It most likely started there...with the apple.

Liquor Never Passed My Lips!!!

I hear this a lot.

Yet, the elderberry "cordial" I make is very popular as a "cough" medicine. I make it by mixing up a strong elderberry syrup and sometimes I steep some horsemint or wild ground mint in it for the cough syrup. Then I cut it about half with moonshine. It's very tasty. And potent.

I soak my famous white fruit cake in the plain elderberry cordial. I am, of course, a heathen Episcopalian. When I told my mountain friends that I'd made a really big one of these fruitcakes, liberally dosed in moonshine, for my church's coffee hour one advent Sunday, they were scandalized. Even more so, when I told them there wasn't a crumb left of the 10 pound cake.

My grandfather used to soak his fruitcakes in his own homemade blackberry wine. I've played around with the blackberry wine, but it's so delicious, I never seem to be able to keep it around too long. I may give it another go this season if they haven't completely razed my new blackberry spots up on Faith Mountain. They have these really big water cooler jars at Lowes that look very promising for this.

But, it seems that under certain circumstances, liquor may indeed pass one's lips as long as it is called something else.

Discussing the Merits of Fine Wine at the Hall Family Reunion.

I was honored this year by an invite to the Hall Family Reunion held yearly on Hall's Top. Friend Scott invited me.

The Hall family is huge and is spread out all over the country, but they make the annual pilgrimage to Hall's Top each year. A spread of covered dishes stretches the length of a football field at the site of the old church. I can not begin to describe the variety of foodstuffs available. Every little twig and branch of this enormous family brings enough food to feed an army. And like some reverse action of the loaves and fishes...it's gone pretty damn quick.

I, unfortunately, made us a tad late. Won't make that mistake again.

I got cornered by a quirky but charming old gentleman and his wife while Scott was trying to fill up his six foot nine frame with banana pudding. The old fellow was quite talkative, and she was very quiet. Seemed like she had spent a lifetime trying to get a word in edgewise and had finally just admitted defeat.

They had come up from south Georgia, I believe. We discussed exactly how they were related to the Halls. Seems he was born up here on the mountain and his family moved away. Asking how someone is related to anyone here is like asking a hypochondriac "How are you feeling today?" It's a loaded question and you better have the time to listen to the answer.

I was a captive audience since Scott was still indulging his lust for pudding.

I think the conversation came around to wine via talking of religion. He shared with me that he was an "evangelical". I'm not sure exactly which sect he was from. I may have even asked him about his church. Probably in an attempt to get away from the convoluted familial relationships that were making my head hurt.

I think I said...and this was what got me into trouble..."Well, I'm an Episcopalian and we have wine in church for communion."

I may have even gone so far as to say that I thought the self-control involved in moderation required one to exercise their free will in a more stringent way than simple abstinence.

And then I probably totally gnawed my foot off by talking about my own wine making experiments.

So, I really deserved the earful I got on the evils of alcohol.

Not quite ready to give up yet...since I hadn't reached the point his wife was where she knew that resistance was futile...I said, "Well, I don't know, I had some really nice wine when I was traveling in France. They even water wine down for children at meals there."

He pauses and says, "Well, now...I take that back. Sacramental wine is okay. There was a Mogen David plant near where we lived up in New York, and I suppose that wine is okay. They had some really good wine. For sacramental use."

I didn't know what to say to that. I'm wondering if he knows what the MD stands for in MD 20/20. I'm remembering the widely varied sacramental uses of MD 20/20 that involved brown paper bags.

His wife and I exchanged knowing glances as I finally understood.

Scott finally rears his head out of whatever vat of banana pudding he has located and notes that I am in need of rescuing.

He makes our excuses for us and we go join the singing.

Which is divine and transcendent as usual, and completely sober.

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A wonderful book on the Appalachian wine making tradition is The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Wine Making. It has some wonderful colorful stories in it. I love the one about where they tried to make pumpkin wine. It didn't turn out so well.

I'm actually very happy with the new site. It looks much more tasteful than before. Less garish. And I know it must seem weird that I'm so happy that I finally designed a website that passed that damn validation thingy, but I'm one of those people who calls things "thingy". Sort of a geek wannabe.

So, hopefully tomorrow I can get back to writing stories. I've been writing this site for the past few days and it's taken up lots of time.

It's been a brutally cold and bitter morning. Snow and sleet have been falling intermittently. I made the decision to keep Black Doe inside and Pearlie is not happy about it at all. I'd been keeping Black Doe inside at night since she is so small. Feisty, but small. And her brother is a great whopping thing who is obviously drinking all the milk that Pearlie is making. So, Pearlie recognizes that I haven't brought Black Doe out to spend the day with her as I have been. So she's standing outside the back door blahing most pitifully.

I get Maggie up on the milk stand and milk her out. It barely yields enough for the morning feeding for Bossy Toe and Black Doe. She usually gives me a quart and a half. Her milk hasn't entirely come in yet. Hmmm. The weather is only going to get worse and Maggie is a real bitch to catch. So I get her settled on the back porch and plan to keep Kidzilla off of her so she can make enough milk for me to feed the girls. I further plan, since we are probably going to get snowed in, to keep her back there. That way I can just go out and milk her as needed.

Which means I have to go collect Kidzilla. I trudge through the snow and pick him up to bring him down to the house. He's snuggled up in the shelter. Blinkin' has her triplets all cozyed up with her. I'm not worried about the triplets at all. They were out dancing and romping in the snow this morning. Blinkin' probably has more milk than any of them. Pity that milking her is damn near impossible. But she needs all that milk for her big family.

I quickly realize where all my milk went. The little bugger must have drained her dry this morning. It feels like he weighs 20 pounds already. He's easily twice the size of the bottle babies and larger than any of the triplets. I can feel how full his tummy is. I put him in the dog crate where he immediately passed out to sleep off his milk high.

It's a real chore keeping both girls in diapers. Black Doe is so tiny that she tends to leak through hers. And Bossy Toe has to keep her onesie on or she gets out of hers. By the way, if anyone has any suggestions for naming Black Doe...I'm open to suggestions. The name of my farm is "Old Maid's Aerie"...so I like to keep sort of old fashioned, old lady themes if possible.

Posting is likely to be spotty during this cold snap. Bell South hasn't changed the phone lines up here since 1972 or thereabouts. I feel sort of snitty about this since we are paying the same for basic phone service as the rest of the southeast but are forced to use these old connections that don't work so well in bad weather. I'd be happy if I could just use dial-up at the normal 56K speed. But we are stuck at 26K. And that doesn't even work half the time. I've been meaning to write a nasty letter to Bell South about this. They take advantage since most of the people here aren't accustomed to anything different than poor phone service. The honorable thing to do would be to charge us less if they are going to continue to provide substandard service.

I don't have much for you today.

It is bone chillingly cold here today. The snow started driving in around 3 a.m. and it was really vicious. I think it got near zero in the night. I fell asleep watching the TV and woke up to see all the bad weather activating my motion sensor lights outside.

I'm a big fan of motion sensor lights. Nothing pisses me off more than to see somebody put an unspeakably ugly light pole outside their house up on the mountain. If you want to live in a brightly lit place...move to the city. I like seeing my Milky Way in the pitch blackness of the wilderness.

I've named my little bottle baby, BossyToe. My friend Therese suggested Athena, since she did rather spring from Nod fully formed. But she's such a demanding little thing. I'm awash in infant diapers, bottles and onesies. Plus, I'm having to go out in the damn cold to milk Maggie for milk for BossyToe.

What's a bossy toe, you ask?

Well, you know how some people have a toe right next to the big toe that is longer than the big toe? Supposedly this means that person has an overbearing sort of personality. The longer the toe, the bossier the person is.

I'm working on redoing my Angel Dogs website. It's really hideously rococo and I suck at writing code. So I do it on Composer. It uses tables and I wanted to do a sleeker CSS page with more restrained colors and graphics. But CSS makes my head hurt. But I needed to do it so I've been working on it today. It's not live yet.

But I ran the W3C validator...and for the first time in my amateurish web design history...the damn thing validated! I think it's because I downloaded SeaMonkey and used the Composer on it rather than the Netscape one.

Anyway...I'm really flushed with success from having that web page validate.

This will be the last "kidding" post for this year. All of my girls have now delivered.

Today was difficult. If Betsy, the Goat Yoda, had not come by at exactly the right time, Nod would have died and taken her kid with her. I am still relatively clueless as to the practical matters of difficult kiddings. It's one thing to read all the books and know all of the types of things that can go wrong as the kid is entering the world and what to do about them.

But it's quite another to reach your arm up into a goat's uterus and fix the problem. Hell, it's quite a thing just to reach your arm up into a goat's uterus. I mean...they are about the same size as a person, even if their "lady parts" are a little bit bigger.

I knew Nod was going to deliver this morning. She was very vocal on the back porch when I got up. Everything seemed okay and Nod sort of freaks out when people are around. She hates to be touched. So I watched her through the window. As soon as she started to have mucous come from her rear, I knew she was about ready.

I've now seen a few of these. I'm not nearly as nervous as I was with the first one.

But Nod doesn't seem to be successful in pushing the baby out. She's screaming and grunting and pushing, her legs scrambling for something to push against. I try to help but she won't let me. I leave a message on Betsy's cell phone about it. Nod's grinding her teeth in pain. This goes on for about 30 minutes before she finally seems to stop pushing. It's like she's giving up the fight.

I know I should wait an hour before reaching inside her, but I've never done it before and I'm really nervous about trying. I'm suddenly unsure of how I will do this thing without someone else to hold Nod...since Nod doesn't like to be touched.

Silly me. I've been reading all these books with the assumption that any goat in trouble is just going to lie back and say, "Oh sure... please DO go ahead and thrust you arm up to the elbow into my uterus...I'll stay quite still for you!"

Betsy drives up just at the right time. She has come to pick up Lucky to go to his new pet home. She was supposed to come last night but rescheduled for this morning. We sit on the pew in the kidding stall and watch Nod make a few half-hearted attempts to get the kid out.

I'm wondering, since I've already seen two really big buck kids come out of the more experienced does if that might be the problem. Or breach, or one foot back, or two kids stuck at the cervix...there is a whole list of presentations that could be the problem. Or a kid just too damn big to clear her pelvis.

The "miracle of life" can become "the miracle of death" in a skinny minute. Don't ever subject children to this with any animal unless you are damn sure you know what the outcome will be. And, of course, you never can predict what will happen. It's much better to go to the animal shelter and see all of the little miracles of life looking for a home.

At an hour and 15 minutes, I give the go-ahead for Betsy to "go in". We have the meager supplies I've been able to gather. Hot soapy water, towels and some ultra-glide. I hold Nod's head in a vice grip with my knees and hold grip elbows. Betsy reaches in.

Betsy has to close her eyes while she does this so she can visualize the inside of Nod. Nod is squirming and understandably not happy about this but eventually calms down. Betsy tells me when she finds the front legs, and then the head. The kid is enormous. The head is huge. It's bigger than Kidzilla.

Oh, crap, I think. Another huge buck kid.

Betsy's really up in there. I'm frankly in awe of this entire procedure. It's the sort of thing I've only seen watching "All Creatures Great and Small" and they usually tastefully shoot over the animal's shoulder. It's really different watching it in person.

Suddenly, Betsy has two legs out. I can tell how big they are for a newborn.

"I think we've lost the kid." Betsy says.

The legs are limp and floppy, like dead things.

"That's probably why she stopped pushing." She says.

This is sad, but part of raising farm animals. They really are very delicate creatures. A great deal of work goes into making them robust and healthy.

Betsy struggles to pull on those limp little legs. This is not going easily and she struggles to keep them from being sucked back inside.

"Do you need a kid puller?" I ask stupidly.

"Do you have one?"

"Uh. No."

I'm wondering if we are going to have to do something drastic to free Nod of this kid. They use tractors sometimes to pull stuck calves out of cows. I really don't want to do anything like that.

"Wait a minute....I feel a head coming."

It is suddenly all over with. With a wet squicking sound the entire kid slides out onto the towel we had placed there.

And amazingly, I see the dead kid gasp for breath.

"It's alive!" Both Betsy and I say in unison.

We rush into action now to do the kid "snatching". I keep Nod from seeing the baby. She's never kidded before so, unless she sees the kid, this will all be like the bellyache from hell for her. Betsy pulls the baby up by it's back legs and swings it to clear its nose and throat.

An incredibly loud and lusty goat wail is heard from the baby.

"It's a doe!" Betsy announces as she hands me the kid completely wrapped in a towel. I rush inside with the kid while Betsy tends to Nod.

I open up the towel and am met by a very indignant, very much alive little soul. She continues to berate me for dragging her from that comfy warm wet place she was enjoying. I feel her eye fall upon me and I experience that moment of imprinting. It's a rush. I feel myself returning the imprint. I'm the first living thing this baby sees. I am now somebody's mommy.

She immediately starts head butting my abdomen demanding something to eat. Her bleats change from indignant to a demanding, staccato of short little "blat, blat, blat's." I give her the bottle and she is a greedy little thing. The rest of my babies took a while to find their first meal. This one wants food right off the bat.

She's so big because it looks like she is late. And she does seem a bit lazy about anything that doesn't involve food. And extremely demanding and bossy. If I leave her eyeline, she cries very loudly and repeatedly. I've got her dressed up in diapers and onesies.

Betsy is yet another amazing person who has been laid in my path. I always tell the story of how our vicar showed up at my mother's hospital room mere minutes before she died. I've been hugely fortunate in having lots of people like that in my life. Some people are just more closely attuned to the needs of others and answer some sort of call that comes from I'm not sure where. They just mysteriously show up at exactly the point at which they are most needed. Betsy is one of those people for me. For Nod. And for this yet un-named little goat person.

And she does seem to see herself as a person...not even being a day old yet.

Naaaa...I'm not attached at all. Completely objective, I am.

The day started out leisurely enough. I finished reading Ralph Steadman's Joke's Over that my best friends, Therese and Lorna, sent me for Christmas. It's about his forty-five year collaboration and friendship with Hunter S. Thompson. I cried at the end. I really miss knowing that HST is still roaming the planet being reckless with firearms and writing while intoxicated. Mostly, I loved their relationship. I loved how Steadman described it. They really loved each other in the way that people do over decades. Not everyone in this world was cut out to be HST's best friend.

That was the last intellectually stimulating thing to happen to me today. And that was at 9 AM. Since then, I've been thoroughly slimed with afterbirth, baby goat pee, more afterbirth, colostrum...you name it. There isn't a bodily fluid a goat is capable of producing that I haven't had smeared on me.

I had a doctor's appointment today. I got all dressed up to go out. I went up to the shelters to check on the babies. The three doe kids were all accounted for, but Maggie's freakishly large kid, who I've started thinking of as "Kidzilla" is gone. Maggie knows he's gone and is baaing most pitifully.

She follows me as I walk around looking for him. We even go back in the woods. He's no where.

I'm pissed at Maggie and keep a running commentary on her sucky mothering skills as the two of us search.

"I knew I should have taken him from you last night. You were dragging him all over the damn farm and him not even a day old. What were you thinking, you inconsiderate frickin' cow?"

It's evidently a great and terrible slur to call a goat a cow.

"Blaaaah." She says. I can hear the guilt in her voice. Damn straight.

She even goes the extra mile to look even deeper into the forest for him.

Normally, if he were stuck somewhere he'd bleat for help and I could find him. But Kidzilla is nowhere. I resign myself that some wild beast has taken Kidzilla off in the night while Maggie was out drinking and whoring at whatever the goat version of a crack house might be.

So I trudge back down to the house to get my keys and make off to town. As I'm heading down the driveway, there is Pearlie. She has a three foot long rope of mucous hanging out of her rear end.

I turn the jeep around and run into the house, stripping my dress off as I hit the porch. Call the doctor to reschedule and throw on my turtleneck and sweatpants. By the time I get to where I saw Pearlie, she is no longer there. Great.

I trudge back up to the shelter. No Pearlie. I start calling her and she answers back. She sounds really frantic.

She has found a spot over by one of the wood piles that I burned out last year. It's covered in nice soft leaves and is sheltered. It even has a log for me to sit on.

She has just dropped a freakishly large buck kid to replace the one we just lost. Super great, damnit. He's the spitting image of Leonard but a wee bit lighter. I help clean him up and get the mucous out of his nose and mouth. I didn't bring a towel with me so I'm using the sleeve of my turtleneck.

Then Pearlie starts to groan again and plops down. Another kid comes sliding out. This one is jet black with tan points and thankfully is a little doe. She's covered still in the sack she came out in. There seems to be an awful lot of slimy stuff. I break the sack and let her gurgle her first breath. Again I use my sleeves to wipe the copious amounts of slime from her little face. It's a real mess.

The little boy is already struggling to his feet at this point. He's emerged with a thick luxuriant coat. I pick up the little black doe out of her puddle of mucous and bring her around to Pearlie's head so she can finish the licking off part. No way am I going to do that.

The entire herd has gathered to watch. Maggie is still up there blah-ing away guiltily. Betty-Goat, who lost her kid, watches almost hungrily. She really wants to be a mommy and every time a kid comes near her, she gives it a good smell to see if maybe, just maybe, this is her baby.

After the two kids have their first drink of colostrum, I pick them both up and we all trudge back to the house with the entire herd following us.

I wasn't expecting Pearlie to drop first. I had her on the porch but after checking her tendons, I let her back out and brought Nod up here. Nod is most certainly very close. I may be up all night waiting on her.

Back at the house, I get Pearlie a nice warm bucket of molasses tea which she drinks all the way to the bottom. I get her some alfalfa. The babies are wobbling around in the sunshine. It's warmed up quite a bit from the teens we had this morning.

I milk Maggie, then worm her and vax her. I take all of her milk since she no longer has Kidzilla. I help Pearlie up on the milkstand and draw off some colostrum. I'm going to need that for Nod's baby who I plan to snatch. I worm and vax Pearlie while she's up there and give her a good feed of milk ration. The babies get their navels trimmed and painted with strong iodine.

I'm pretty damn tired about now. It's five o'clock and I haven't had anything to eat. But I go up to the shelter to check on the triplets. They are fine and I'm shocked at how strong they are now. They are still sleeping a lot, but are really lively and prancy. And can almost get away from me now.

I go back down to the house and take the babies inside while I get the dogs fed. I look up toward the shelter and there is Kidzilla with Maggie. She has done nothing to find him...he's just come home on his own.

Where the hell does a two day old baby goat go when he runs away from home? Where has he been all day? Is there some sort of Chucky Cheese's for goats that I don't know about? Did freakin' Maggie drop him off a daycare?

He's really hungry and that is just too damn bad since I've milked Maggie out. I'm sure she'll drop more for him now that he's back, but that was just the damnedest thing.

So, it's getting really cold tonight. We will have snow and sleet Saturday night. I'm hoping to get Nod's kids delivered by tomorrow. The new babies are spending the night inside the house....with diapers on. Pearlie is hanging out outside. They are the eating, sleeping, pooping, peeing things that all babies are.

But while I've been writing this...one has been asleep on my lap. And that's really sweet.

To celebrate my freakishly low cholesterol and triglyceride values on my recent bloodwork, I made this for dinner tonight!

When I was growing up, we had this meal with the addition of some bothersome green thing at least once a week. Now...I make it maybe once every two or three months. This really is a food best served on a quarter annum basis if you want to maintain your freakishly low cholesterol levels.

Some of my work has been appearing on Dew on the Kudzu these days. I was really pleased to see Larry Hambey's piece, My Mother's Annual Family Reunion, with an excellent footer on how to fry a chicken. My only addendum would be, if you are using a yard chicken, to make sure you age it for a few days before frying it. I generally soak it in salt water in the bottom of my fridge for about four days. That makes it really tender. If using store bought chicken...you can leave out that part. Just remember to salt the pieces before you dredge them in flour. Self-rising flour seems to make the most satisfying crust.

I do indeed fry my chicken as Mr. Hambey describes. Just a bit of oil in the bottom and cooking on medium heat after browning with the lid on the pan. Turn often. I prefer to use an electric skillet to fry chicken. Spices are a matter of personal preference. I rely heavily on Old Bay and have been known to marinate the pieces in Tabasco sauce before dredging in flour.

For the gravy, just pour out most of the left over oil from your pan, then make a roux with some flour. Add milk and let thicken. It should be a bit lumpy from the bits of chicken left in there, but if you are picky about such things, just put it in your blender and smooth it out.

The way to make perfect rice every time without fussing with measurements is to boil the rice in water for about five minutes then drain into a colander. Fill your pot back up with water and put the colander on top of the pot. Put a lid on the colander and steam the rice until done. Works every time. No fuss.

And, of course, fried chicken is good cold the next day. My mother used to fry up a batch to take out on the boat when we went cobia fishing. Really good with pineapple sandwiches made with white bread and mayonnaise.

I got that term from my Goat Yoda, Betsy. Basically, it's when all the does start to drop at the same time. Mine has officially started.

I walked outside this morning and there, up at the shelter, was Maggie, one of the Saanens. She had an enormous baby with her. I still have Blinkin' and the three doe kids on the back porch at this point.

I eagerly go up and pick up the baby.

Damn. It's a buck.

I look at Maggie...I look in the shelter.

"Is this all you have for me?!"

She looks at me with those half-closed eyes. She looks pissed off that I have asked her this. As well she should be...she's exhausted from pushing this little monster out.

Maggie was every bit as big as Blinkin'. She was huge. And all she had in there was this freakishly large little boy. I'm disappointed since, while Maggie is a bitch of a goat, she is a really good milker. Even if she needs goat bondage to keep her from sticking her foot in the milk pail. I was so hoping to get at least one doe out of her.

I take the little stinker up to the house to paint his navel. He's actually quite beautiful. He's white with cream and gray spots and has dark stockings on his back legs. I would have loved to have had a doe kid with these markings.

Evidently, Leonard and Beacon's Doe-Fu was no match for Maggie's Bitch-Fu.

So far, I have no registrable doe kids. We unfortunately lost the preemie that Betty-Goat delivered early. She would have been registrable. Blinkin's babies won't be registrable, but their kids will be.

Next to deliver is probably Nod, Blinkin's daughter. I'm planning to snatch any doe kids she has and bottle raise them. Nod is so unsociable and I don't want her passing that behavior to her kids.

Pearlie, my other Saanen, is now in the kidding stall. I do want to make sure that her kidding goes well. She will probably kid this weekend, if not sooner. Pearlie is my favorite. Both she and Betty-Goat are my little girlfriends. Both are very sweet girls.

I talked with Betsy tonight and she says Harper and Amyline are going to kid this weekend also. Both of these girls spent part of the summer here and got knocked up by Leonard and Beacon. Betsy will let me buy the doe kids from those two...so yay! I may have some more registrable does.

Harper is coming here in exchange for Maggie...who needs to go because she jumps the fences. Betsy has found a pet home for Lucky. This is good news since I was ready to shoot him today. Nod will be leaving the farm this season. I probably should get rid of both Blinkin' and Winkin' as well, but I'm a bit attached to the two of them.

The color being thrown out on these kids is spectacular. I didn't think that Beacon had gotten much action so maybe Leonard is throwing color as well.

I need to keep Friend Scott from getting attached to the little boy. Unfortunately, the boys end up as meat unless someone gets them as pets or pack goats. It is the way of dairy animals. I was most happy to learn that Scott's current temp job has many Hispanic employees. I'm not sure if he understood why I was happy to hear this.

Blinkin's babies are now out in the pasture with her. They immediately recognized that Nod was their big sister and have been bouncing up to her to play.

I'm really exhausted. I went to town and got two 75 pound compressed bales of alfalfa, 100 pounds of goat milk enhancer and two bales of straw. I went to Walmart to get some new socks and underwear. One of the cocker spaniels, Max, has an underwear and sock fetish and I'm tired of picking up underwear out of the laundry to find them crotchless. And I love heavy wool socks. One can never have too many pairs of Woolrich Merino Wool hunting socks.

I'm walking through the sporting goods aisle at Walmart and I keep smelling something awful. I realize it's me. I smell like goat.

I hurry home to take a nice long hot shower.

After unloading the feed and straw and cleaning out and disinfecting the kidding stall so Pearlie can have some nice fresh afterbirth-free digs, feed the dogs and the goats, milk Betty-Goat, give shots and worming to Blinkin' and Betty-Goat, refill all water tanks with fresh unfrozen water.....

E-I-E-I-fricking-O

This is the post I was going to do yesterday before Blinkin' popped those three babies out.

This post was going to be another installment of "The Dark Hole", but I just can't get my dark, sinister and Gothic up with those three little charmers outside my window.

Anyhoo...needed to jot down some research notes I gathered this past Sunday.

Foot Logs

There was a huge and terrible flood here in 1972. It took out all of the bridges and the foot logs. The cattle were swept 10 miles from here all the way to Del Rio. There were cows everywhere stuck up to their bellies in mud. Dying livestock, dead livestock, deep, deep mud.

They just had many many days of rain and it all came sweeping down from the Gulf and the creek flooded all of the hollers all the way to Del Rio.

I've not found much about this flood online. But there are two weather events that stick out in everyone's memory who has lived long enough. One of them is the Flood of 1972 and the other is the Snow of 1992. Two feet of snow fell in '92 and power was knocked out for weeks.

1972 was also the year of the famous Buffalo Creek Flood in West Virginia. I'm imagining this was a very heavy rainfall year.

I thought when I heard that the foot logs were washed away that they were just logs thrown down to cross the creeks. That's not the case. They would cut down a really big tree then plane one side flat. Then they would plank that side and put up railings. So it was really more of a foot bridge. And they call all foot bridges whatever they are made of, "foot logs".

Everyone would ride their horses up to the foot log, dismount, then lead the horse across the creek while they were on the foot log to the other side. Then mount up and be on their way.

I photographed a very small one of these that went across a very small branch. I didn't know what I was looking at, at the time. But that's what it was. A foot log.

Race

I wasn't really entirely clear on this and needed to get more clear on it. Race relations here are very complicated since there are an additional two races not seen in most Southern communities.

There are four established races in the area. Whites, Blacks, Cherokee and Melungeon. Melungeons are actually more north than I am, but everyone here knows about them. Hispanics are relative newcomers and I think the jury is still out on them.

I'm using the marriageability factor as a scale because it's the most easily understood concept for the people I talk to.

Best I can figure, it is acceptable for Whites, Cherokee and Melungeons to intermarry. It is acceptable for Cherokee and Blacks to intermarry. Melungeons have traditionally married Whites. It gets confusing since there is a really wide range of skin tones for both Melungeons and Cherokee. There are Melungeons who look very African American. There are very dark Cherokee.

The Melungeons claim a Portuguese ancestry as well as being mixed white, black and Cherokee. I still haven't worked out exactly how this Mediterranean influence plays out. But I have seen archival photos of people who look very Italian or Spanish.

At any rate, the Melungeons are really fascinating as a tri-racial isolate. I recommend The Melungeon Heritage Association if you want to know more about them. They seem to be the most evidence based group out there.

Oddly funny.

I went to see the nephrologist yesterday and started giggling since phrenologist was that word turned around sideways. I'd much rather be getting the bumps on my head analyzed. They had curiously up to date magazines in the waiting room. I told them they would get their waiting room permits canceled for shenanigans like that.

Well, she finally did it!

Blinkin' just gave birth to three lovely doe kids. One is a lovely dun with points, one is spotted (a little Beacon in the woodshed, no doubt) and one is really dark bay or black with a big white blaze on her side(perfect combo of Blinkin' plus Leonard) . Each has normal, non-forked udders...unlike Blinkin' whose udder is forked and not so good.

So it looks like my boys have both good Doe-Fu and Udder-Fu.

Number One Daughter



Daughter Number One with Daughter Number Two



Daughters One, Two and Three


Looks like Mizz Blinken' is going to be really really busy! And me too, probably!

As we grow older, the epiphanies become more tangible and fewer in number. Perhaps that is because in childhood, we often have epiphanies that hit us like sledgehammers pounding multiple concepts into our young brains. All at once.

This is the story of one of those. One of those moments when pretty scales were pulled off of young eyes. To balance the terrible ugliness of one of those realizations, an equally beautiful one was included...as well as a few more.

This is the story of how, in one day, I was shown what it meant to be without a choice, that adults and newspapers didn't always tell the truth, and most of all, how my mother was a rebel, a hero and freedom fighter. I think I was ten.

The telling of this story would not have been necessary had I not been attending Catholic parochial school. We were Episcopalians, but when it came time for me to go to school in Savannah, my mother gave me the choice of attending Country Day or Cathedral Day School. I chose Cathedral Day, even though I had a serious nun phobia.

One day, I came home from school and mentioned something about abortion and that it was wrong. I didn't even know what abortion was. All I knew, was that it kept being parroted around the school. Everyone seemed to assume that this was true and that this was how the entire world saw this.

My mother looked at me with those ice blue eyes of hers.

"Who told you that?" She asked, cocking her head.

I told her they had been teaching that in my religion class at school.

"Let's go for a ride."

We got in the big station wagon and drove around Bluffton. First we "cut the beach", then headed downtown towards Scott's Meat as she told me the story.

This was the story of Tycie, who didn't have a choice.

It happened sometime in the sixties in Bluffton, SC. Black and poor children were starving to death in Bluffton during that era. It was a very different place than the cushy resort town that it is today. It definitely had a dark side. Dr. Donald Gatch was practicing there then. After he testified before the Citizens' Board of Inquiry into Hunger and Malnutrition in 1967, complaining about the discriminatory medical practices against poor and black people, a carefully orchestrated smear campaign was launched to deprive him of his medical license. Dr. Gatch lived near our house just off the causeway to Myrtle Island.

Tycie was the niece of one of our domestics at the time. My family has a history of forming close bonds, going back generations in many cases, with the families of the people we hired to help us. I know that's not the most PC thing to say aloud these days, but it was just how it was then. The bond I shared with the black woman who raised me was just as strong as the one I had with my mother. I even inherited Katie's laugh. She was the one who held me when my mother died. Katie and I, we loved each other.

But this is Tycie's story. Tycie got pregnant. The circumstances do not matter. Any more than it matters how someone got HIV or Hep C. It's really none of our business. What matters is that she had no choice. No ways or means to deal with a situation that was intolerable for her. She had no legal recourse to deal with an unwanted pregnancy. She was too poor to afford to have this done safely in the "gray market" as more affluent women of the time were able to.

So she stuck a coat hanger up into herself to deal with the situation.

She contracted a life-threatening infection.

Tycie certainly wasn't alone in her situation. Between 5,000 and 10,000 women died and as many as 350,000 women were injured by illegal abortions each year in the middle of the 20th century. 1 Before Roe vs. Wade, illegal abortion was the leading killer of pregnant women.

So Tycie's aunt called my mother. My mother got Tycie to a doctor. It was probably Dr. Gatch since he was known for standing up for the poor and underprivileged. And he was a neighbor. I'm not actually sure where Mom took Tycie. But that makes sense.

There was a concern that Tycie would get in trouble for what she had done to herself. I'm not sure if that was a valid concern or not. I'm not sure if they prosecuted you for doing that to yourself. But the fear was there.

So, my mother arranged to get Tycie to another aunt in Atlanta where she could recuperate.

My mom didn't do all that much. She just basically paid for Tycie to get treatment and to get out of town. But to my ten-year old mind...well...my mom seemed like a super hero. I was just so proud of her. She had been part of something that made a difference and possibly saved someone's life. I can remember sitting next to her in the car, my eyes shining, big, like saucers.

So, Tycie's story has been the bedrock for my pro-choice stance. I've added other ideas, like the concept that we should probably first learn how to take care of everyone who is already walking the planet before taking care of those who aren't. Or the wrongness of taking away a person's free will...which basically is the same as slavery, isn't it? But my basic stance is that abortion bans are not only a women's rights issue, but a civil rights issue as well. The middle and upper class will always have access to safe abortions, illegal or not. It is the poor who will be victimized. They will be the ones on the killing floor, bleeding their lives out.

And isn't life hard enough for them without making it even harder?

I don't know what happened to Tycie. I hope she still walks with the proud, straight posture of a Lowcountry Gullah woman. I hope she went on to have children. Children she wanted with someone she loved dearly. I hope she is sitting at a large table loaded down with too much good food surrounded by her children and grand-children.

Children and grand-children who have the choice that she was denied.

What can I say? I just love where I live.

Enjoy your day.

(Disclaimer!!! I have some really smart people who read my blog. Way smarter than I am. I want to make clear that this story is mostly true. The un-mostly true part was changed to protect the situation of the character involved. Names, amounts, and certain details are complete and utter lies. The person who the character is based upon has complete and utter control over what is in the story. If he/she wants it to come down...it most certainly will come down. All details were hashed out over a pizza at a secret unnamed location in Hartford, TN(since Bubba had closed the damn kitchen at the BCD&M, depriving us of our Chez Burgers) before publishing. I wouldn't dream of outing someone without their permission since that would be tacky and common. Also, I have nothing but the utmost respect for our valiant men and women in pinstripes fighting on the frontlines of The War on Taxes. Also, do not try this at home. I tell you, it won't work. This is the sort of hapless event that can only be accomplished by a professional six foot nine naked gay man.)


He was sleeping on the sofa when the phone rang. His hand groped out from the blanket covering him and felt through the detritus of cigarettes, keys, matches, rolling papers and pistol on the coffee table until he finally found the hand-set, hit "talk" and dragged it to his ear.

"Mr. Smith?" A precise voice asked.

"Uh...yeah?" His voice was raspy from too many cheap cigarettes. He indulged in a morning smoker's cough.

"This is Mrs. Althea Johnson with the IRS. I'm calling about the 2,500 dollars you owe us."

It was shortly after this that he began to cry.

Friend Scott is six foot nine, handsome and charming. He speaks and behaves like he should be hanging out with the Camden Cup crowd. He has that congenial manner that certain well-bred Southern men exhibit that is a little bit cultured, a little bit momma's boy and a little bit bad boy. He tells great stories and if you are a Southern woman, you laugh, but are not quite sure if you believe him. Because as a Southern woman...you know the kind of man he is.

I'm afraid, however, that Friend Scott has gone quite native up here in the mountains. He has eschewed the chinos and polo shirts that are his birthright for flannel and overalls.

When Friend Scott "came out" to me a few months ago, I was shocked. Shocked, I tell you. After all, the first time I met him, he was outside Food City in Newport, on his way home from a Garden Club meeting. Also, during our friendship, he has exhibited an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the Brit comedy, Absolutely Fabulous, and every John Waters film ever made. He grows roses.

I mean...who'd a thunk it?

Yes, I seem to have found the only gay hillbilly on the mountain to be my buddy. He's actually quite good company and has a knack for getting himself into situations that can only be described as extremely gonzo.

Last year, Friend Scott got a letter from the IRS. He brings it over for me to look at since I am supposedly "the smart one". He is indeed being audited because they are questioning his claim that he has a son by his cousin who he is claiming as a dependent. I question this as well.

"Well, she told me he was mine."

I look at Friend Scott in all of his six foot nine gayness. I'm imagining that there were large amounts of recreational drugs and alcohol involved. And unconsciousness. There had to be unconsciousness. I really don't want to know more.

I've not met the cousin involved. I have heard of her by reputation. Evidently, the cousin and her mother often get into altercations with each other over men. Friend Scott tells me the mother is very homely. "Butt ugly", I believe were his exact words. Once the mother moved in on one of the cousin's boyfriends as the boyfriend was passed out drunk. The boyfriend awoke to the mother applying "oral pleasure" to his...uh..."member". The boyfriend was most distressed since the mother had failed to take her snuff out of her mouth.

I now have this image and concept burned indelibly into my brain. Thanks, Scott.

I advise Friend Scott that he needs a lawyer. Actually, I think Friend Scott should have a lawyer surgically grafted onto his left earlobe. But he can't afford one.

So now, Friend Scott owes the IRS a buttload of money. And you know how accommodating our friendly IRS folks are.

It is already mid-morning on the day Mrs. Althea Johnson, IRS agent, calls.

He sits up and wraps the blanket around his waist. He's not wearing any clothes.

"Yes, ma'am. I've been meaning to call y'all." He says, trying to get his wits about him and stalling for time.

"Mr. Smith, when can we expect payment of this amount? With interest and penalties, it will come to a sum of just over 8,000 dollars."

Scott is desperate. He's actually crying now. It is fairly clear that Mrs. Johnson is not responding to the charm and good looks he is trying to project through the phone connection.

He stands. The blanket falls in a puddle on the floor. He begins to pace, naked, about the room as Mrs. Johnson drones on about penalties and charges.

"Isn't there something we can work out?" He sobs into the phone.

Scott picks up his pistol on the coffee table and grips it, swinging it back and forth with his free hand. Looking out the front door he sees a big black snake crawling on the porch.

Mrs. Johnson continues to say mean, hateful IRS things to him.

Scott points the pistol at the snake and shoots it. It's quite a loud pistol to go off so close to the phone.

When he realizes what he's done, he drops the phone in a panic.

Mrs. Althea Johnson's voice can be just barely heard from the phone on the floor.

"Mr. Smith?! Mr. Smith, are you alrig...." The line disconnects leaving the ghost of her voice hanging in the air.

"Oh, Shit."

Scott pulls some shorts on and puts the phone back on the coffee table with the pistol. He stares at the phone. He seriously considers shooting the phone with the pistol.

Mrs. Althea Johnson, IRS agent, didn't sound like someone who was just going to go away.

What to do....what to do? Shit...what to do...

He lights a cigarette and tries to think.

A siren is heard coming up the road. This is unusual here.

Two of his cousins get out of the sheriff's patrol car. It is not unusual that they are his cousins. You can't spit in Cocke county without hitting one of Scott's cousins.

"Hey, Scott! You okay, buddy?" The shorter of the two asks. "We got a call from some damn IRS lady that you done shot yourself."

Scott explains that he was talking with the IRS lady when a great big snake crawled across the porch and he shot it. He got disconnected when he dropped the phone fumbling around with the pistol.

They all laughed in the way Southern men do when they know they are in the middle of what will later be a great story.

Scott explains to Mrs. Althea Johnson, IRS agent, what actually happened when she called back.

I'm thinking Mrs. Johnson is a Southern woman, because she has been very accommodating with Friend Scott since the gun shot incident.

I don't think she actually believes there was a snake.

Pecan (pronounced Pee-Can, thank you very much) Pie must be one of the most readily identified desserts in the South. You really have to have a well-developed sweet tooth for this. I'm not sure how the idea to make a ultra-rich caramel custard with karo syrup and eggs came about, but I often wonder how we came up with some of these combinations.

My sister had an Brit boyfriend who developed an unfortunate addiction to the stuff. He came for our big Thanksgiving bash one year with Simone. We cut into one of the many pecan pies there and found that somebody had eaten all the gooey center leaving just the nut crust on top. All eyes went to Stuart. And this was a grown man!

Yes...pecan pie addiction can be an ugly business.

Back when I was still bumming around working on movies, there was this one caterer who got me addicted to Bourbon Pecan Pie. The wardrobe guy and I could almost always be found sneaking extra slices back to our trailers at lunch time. So, of course, I had to learn how to make it.

This is one of the more simple pecan pie recipes. Here's the recipe:

Bourbon Pecan Pie

1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons butter, melted
1/2 cup dark corn syrup
3 large eggs, beaten
1 1/2 to 2 cups pecan halves
2 tablespoons good-quality bourbon
1 (9-inch) deep-dish pie shell, unbaked...or make your own if you are so inclined.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

In a medium bowl, stir together the sugar and melted butter. Add the corn syrup, eggs, pecans, and bourbon, and stir until all ingredients are combined. Pour mixture into an unbaked pie shell, and place on a heavy-duty cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes. Lower the oven temperature to 350 degrees F, and continue to bake for an additional 25 minutes, or until pie is set. Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack.

Notes: I add more bourbon and prefer to use the cheapest, strongest tasting bourbon I can find. Personally, I'd rather have my Maker's Mark or Wild Turkey with a bit of branch water. This recipe gives a hint of flavor to the pie. There are a few ways to give the bourbon more emphasis. One is to soak the nuts overnight in bourbon. Another is to put some bourbon in a spray bottle and spritz the crust with it.

Ideally, I would serve this warm with vanilla ice cream and drizzle with a whisky sauce.

Yesterday was market day.

Every third Wednesday I make my way into town to pay my bills and buy a few groceries, dog and goat food for the month. I do this on this day since that is when my disability check comes in and while I don't have it as hard as many, I am on a fixed income. I try to get everything paid off while the money is there.

I don't talk much about money, because I was raised that way. In fact, it was a lesson my mother actually regretted driving home so hard. The lesson that ladies simply did not concern themselves with finances and certainly didn't talk about them. I don't think I knew what each job I had paid at the time I took it until I was in my mid-twenties.

"So how much will you be making?" My mother would ask.

"I'm not sure. I didn't ask."

It just felt impossibly rude to talk about it. How could I possibly ask how much money I'd be making?

Now, I count each penny. Most of what I've made has literally gone to the dogs. And the goats. I'll eat ramen noodles all month before my animals will go without. Good thing I actually like ramen noodles.

This was a harder trip than most. Aegis' vet bill was substantial and I'd had to rework my entire budget so I could pay off that bill over the next four or five months.

We had been promised a grant from a group called Help-a-Pet. But as soon as they found out that Aegis was not going to make it, they withdrew the offer. I was too grief stricken to think about it at the time, but it was beginning to piss me off.

My mother didn't only give me a pathological avoidance of all things monetary. She was the one who gave me the gift of words. As a pudgy, pigtailed fat kid, stumbling in and out of fat camp like a crack addict in rehab, I knew very well that words could hurt. I learned from watching my mother, that words were a devastating weapon when deployed with skill.

Frances Griffeth was the undisputed champion of the nasty letter. She was a veritable sensei of the arch and cutting word. In my mother's hands, the pen was not only mightier than the sword, it was mightier than a thermonuclear warhead.

So, as I thought about it, I decided that Help-a-Pet deserved a letter. I didn't want their damn money, but I wanted them to know that I knew that what they did was wrong. So I began composing a letter. A Frances letter. A letter to shame these dreadful people.

I was having to take sleeping pills to stop composing the letter at night.

That's how a truly good nasty letter is born. You have to obsess about it. You need to let it run around your brain like a rabid raccoon, before actually writing it.

The letter gnawed at my brain stem while I went about my errands until I reached my vet's office. As I sat in the jeep in front of the office, the enormity of my loss hit me.

I'd forgotten how difficult the first visit back to the vet's after such a loss could be. I stood outside the door on their porch and looked out to the street.

I tried to compose myself. I kept doing that stupid sucking in and out of my cheeks thing that I do when I'm trying not to cry. I try not to think what I must look like, standing there...stiffly and rigidly. My fists clinching and my eyes turning bloodshot and wet. I try to stop my chin from wrinkling up like a Cabbage Patch Doll's ass. I buck it up. I walk in the clinic.

I thought I was doing okay as I put my wallet down on the counter of the window that looked into the receptionist's area.

"I'm here to put some money down on Aegis' bill." I say.

Michelle messes with the computer to bring up Aegis' screen.

I thought I was doing okay until I caught the word "deceased" in italics and parentheses next to Aegis' name. I felt my face crumple like a used tissue.

"There doesn't seem to be a balance on this account." Michelle says.

I blink hard to regain control of my facial muscles.

"There must be some mistake." I say, my voice soft and hoarse.

Michelle goes into the back and returns with Sandra, my vet. Actually, most of the clinic pokes their heads in the door.

"This was already taken care of. A man from Durham paid it."

At this point, I completely lose it. I know who did this. He only knows me sort of second hand. Aegis and I took in a cocker in Charleston named Zachary. We took him to Kerry Bryce's Carolina Cockers in Chapin, SC. He was a quirky little tri-color with an attitude and an air of entitlement. Mr. Holley adopted Zach.

Zach went on to the bridge this past year. The Holley's were crushed. Zach, like Aegis, wasn't really all that old.

And now, Mr. Holley done gone and paid Aegis' vet bill.

I stand there sobbing like a five year old. I'm glad there isn't anyone else in the clinic. I don't have a handkerchief and wipe my face on my sleeve.

"Hey! This is a good thing!" Sandra says.

"I...I..uh..uh...uh...know...uh...uh..He didn't have to do that!" I say, barely able to speak. I am not a person who weeps with any sort of grace or elegance. It's not pretty.

They ask how the other of my "boys" are doing. I'm so grateful that they can tell that I need to turn my mind to something else so that I can regain control. Self-control is important to me and I've completely lost it this day.

I'm almost okay again and can leave the office.

I sit in the jeep for about fifteen minutes before I feel I can drive. I'm overwhelmed by the generosity of Mr. Holley. I think of all of the wonderful gifts I've received. My mother's gift of her fearsome and lovely words. Aegis' gift of companionship and self-less devotion. My veterinarian's gift of understanding. My wonderful, supportive friends. And Mr. Holley didn't just pay Aegis' vet bill for me.

He gave me the gift of knowing that there are people out there handing out kindnesses just to do so. Just because.

How great is that?

I went out to the porch tonight to grab a stick of wood. Not that it is terribly needed, but I like to keep the woodstove going on low since the mornings can be chilly. And I heard a rumor that we were getting snow at some point tonight. Not bloody likely with the temps all day in the 60's. It's only fallen to 55 right now.

That is when I heard it. Frogsong.

It's the first sign of spring. The bull frogs awakening to lay their eggs. The song they sing from the frog pond was loud and clear.

And evidently confused.

It's the 15th of January. They awoke on the 15th of February last year. March 15th the year before that. I know these things since I pay close attention to the signs of change here.

During the winter, the mountains are silent. The frogs are the first in a long list of natural cacophonies that start up in the spring and then fall silent in the late fall. The next sound will be the whip 'or will. Then all hell breaks loose with hawk cries, cicadas, crickets, birds and buzzing insects. It gets really loud here. But it's a different sort of loud. A nice loud.

This is too early. I worry that we will have a killing snow and frost that will kill the tadpoles. The water level in the pond has been quite low and it doesn't take much to freeze it solid.

My neighbors excitedly murmur about "The End Times." This is not unusual. They see "The End Times" all the time. The signs. The Rapture. It's coming.

Problem is...I think they might be right this time.

The frogs don't lie.

It was like finally finding a precious rare book that I had searched for half my life. But when I finally had it in my hands and turned the pages, the words had been wiped out by some disaster. It was like losing my sight and only being able to see shadowy fragments of figures that I couldn't quite make out. It was like watching history fade before my eyes and finding myself powerless to stop it.

Her hands were gnarled like ancient tree roots spreading sideways on rocky ground. Her left hand in particular was frozen in a grimace.

"I used to climb all the ways up in them apple trees to pick 'em. Some said I was the fastest apple picker round these parts." She said in a moment of clarity.

She looked sadly at that frozen left hand.

"Don't reckon I could even hold an apple anymore."

I can easily see in the bone structure of her face the ghost of a ravishingly beautiful mountain woman in her prime. Her eyes, now watery, must have been a cornflower blue in her day. Now in her late 80's, she sits in her chair, close to the television so those eyes can make out what is on the screen. Mizz Kay-reen can't hear so good either any more.

She says when she speaks, she hears her speech inside the bones of her face. She doesn't exactly say that, but I know that's what she means. Her good hand reaches up to stroke the bony part of her cheekbone next to her ear.

She has chosen the memories and thoughts she lives with very carefully. You can tell that other things are lurking just under the surface. She alternates between thanking God for letting her be on this earth so long and then looking impossibly sad. She is the only one of her sixteen siblings still living. She chooses to forget they are dead.

Scott is with me and when she asks, he tells her who is gone. I want to pinch him and tell him not to. I want her to hang onto her fragile fantasy because it keeps that impossible sadness from her eyes. It is painful for me to see.

She starts to tell me how she and her husband, Otis, met. Somehow, a story that must have begun with a ride in a horse-drawn wagon ends up being about the day Otis died. The two tales are now entwined in her mind. And that seems to be a metaphor for their relationship. For Mizz Kay-reen, the fifty years of marriage passed in a moment. One second, she is a fourteen year old girl meeting the love of her life, and the next, she is taking that final car ride to the hospital with him clinging to life.

She tells me not to waste time. She seems to think that Scott and I are engaged. She has projected her own love for Otis onto Scott's and my friendship.

Her eyes twinkle at me for a moment and I glimpse the wry humor she once possessed.

"Well, you ain't no spring chicken!" she says to me. "But you look like you might be a nice fat fryer!"

I laugh. I know I'm fat and I'm okay with that. We all laugh.

"What was your name again?" She asks for the third time.

Scott coaxes her to sing a few bars of "Beulah Land". Her voice is the high fluting voice of a young girl, untouched by her age. Words, she cannot remember in speech, come effortlessly to her while singing.

I listen, entranced, and silently curse my lack of a usb digital recorder. Such a voice really should be archived before it is gone. I want other people to hear her. I desperately want this.

She talks again about how God has been so good to her to let her live so long. Then she almost tears up. Then stops. Then she smiles and says God was so good to give her Otis. He never hit her and was always kind to her. Otis has been gone 20 years.

Scott told me she sometimes sees Otis in the room and speaks to him.

She comes back time and time again to the same story fragment. It is where she seems to spend most of her time.

"Otis, he would come up to me and ask...like he didn't know me...'Whose Sweetheart are you?!"

She self-consciously strokes the age spots on her left cheek, and I realize they are in the shape of a kiss.

She smiles shyly and coyly, like a young girl.

"Why I'm your Sweetheart! I'm yours!"

Friend Scott and I had lunch at Carver's Apple Barn. The orchards are so lovely in winter. I love the look of the trees. This donkey mother and her painted mule baby were relaxing under the branches. It was oddly and gloriously warm and all the creatures were enjoying the sun.

Carvers is my favorite place to eat. I love the apple fritters...sort of like a sweet apple hush puppy...dipped in apple butter. The view of the orchards at any time of year is spectacular with the Smokies rising up in the distance. You can just see Mt. LeConte.

I paid the bill and he said, "You'uns have a good one!"

Okay, probably not one of my better efforts...but I really didn't spend that much time on it. Working for Weekly World News has always been a fantasy of mine.

Scary thing...I didn't really have to change his nose at all to turn him into Bat Boy.

Okay, back to pastoral musings of Appalachia. It's my cartoon night anyway.