GOOD MORNING, FRIENDS

A REMEMBERAMBLE FOR SEPTEMBER 26, 2025

Hot dang it's Friday! I had not seen a Friday since last week. it is a sight for "the so'eyes!" That is how my older kinfolks said it. Which reminds me, back then there were a few contagious childhood conditions that had a bit of shame attached to them. Kids would be told not tell anyone if they had pink eye, impetigo, or lice, there were likely others, but those are the ones that come to mind. I can honestly say, swear, and affirm that I, nor any of my siblings, or first cousins ever had lice.

One of my elder sister's kids had impetigo from mosquito bites, but I do believe we had pink eye once. in all my sixteen years of grammar school and high school, just kidding I made it out in twelve, was I ever aware of anyone at school having lice. In later years it seemed as if lice were in the schools to stay, and actually enrolled. I imagine some lice had better attendance and grades than a great many students.

Another thing that is so very different at schools now, are the numbers of kids who are dropped off and picked up from school by their parent, and how many older kids have vehicles to drive to school. Our family left the public school system in 1968, I believe it was, but at the time we left Swainsboro's schools, one high school girl drove to school in her own car, and if parents dropped any off, we did not know it. School buses were generally well policed by those old-school farmers, and farm wives who drove them back then.

They would tear your tail up and tell ya mama and daddy. That was the ultimate and literal double-whammy. These days, putting your kids on a school bus, is tantamount to child abuse. Not all, but many school buses today harbor just enough seriously bad kids to make it tough for the good ones. It is a different world now, is it not...let me speak as I like, and say...ain't it? If we got a whipping at school, we got another and worse one when we got home.

It has been a long while since those days, and none of us parents of the last couple of generations would allow our kids to be whipped at school, as our parents would. We would head straight down to the school and be ready to whip the teacher, coach, bus driver, or principal who spanked our angel. I posted about biscuit pudding the other day, and realize that is one of a few things that fell by the wayside, and moms stopped making when families became more prosperous.

And came to depend on fast food, or simpler home cooked meals from the box, mix, and can. You have to have flour, lard, and buttermilk biscuits to make real biscuit pudding. Hardly any young families now have country ham at breakfast, so therefore, no ham gravy with grits. Few today know what cush or haslet were, nor how to make them. The same for hoecakes of biscuit bread. Fried leftover grits?

Nah. I know no one but a Peebles might still occasionally have cold, leftover fried mullet mashed up in cane syrup and butter to sop for breakfast. It is funny though, that each generation has these same sad stories to tell, of the current generation that miss out on the good things of old. My parents lamented that cow tripe, squirrel brains, hog brains, fish heads, hog liver and lights (lungs), sweetbread (hog pancreas), and other scrumptious victuals...okay, vittles...are seldom on anyone's table these days.

I will wind up by telling one of my daddy's favorite stories concerning a young Georgia boy much like he was, many long years ago. The young man had lived the life of a poor sharecropper's son. He had never even been to town, not in his whole life. He had heard of town doings, tales of stores, moving picture houses, cafes and the like. He had got old enough to get work on a neighbor's farm, and helped his ma and pa out, but saved a few dollars too.

After putting away his little savings, he planned to go to town on a Saturday and do all of the things in town that he had heard of. One fine Saturday, he did. His first stop was a cafe, to get his very first "store-bought dinner." Later he would go to the the barber shop for a store-bought haircut, his first, a picture show, and some stores. He sat down and the waitress came over and asked what he would like, and he ordered himself a right good dinner.

He cleaned his plate, and the waitress asked if he wanted dessert, and he said he wanted a big piece of pie. She asked, "what kind of pie do you want?" Thinking she was playing him for a fool, or took him for a real "rube," he jumped up and hollered, "SWEET TATER PIE, what other kind is THEY!!?" Now that's funny, I don't care who you are. Bless you all for being our friend, for caring for us as you do.

NUMBERS 6: 24-26 KJV

we boyz three, babee conway, lil merle, & me