GOOD MORNING, FRIENDS

A Rememberamble for Friday, September 05, 2025 ..... Oh wow, Friday once more! Y'all need to have them squirrels stop peddling so fast, let's all slow down a bit. Whew, there now, that is much better. It makes it hard to write when the clock is outrunning my fingers. I was just now noticing that this image of me captured the slight crookedness of my upper incisors (teefies/toofies for those of you from the Kite & Meeks area), and that reminds me of a while back a member asked if those were my real teeth.

I replied, "yeah, I dang sure wouldn't pay good money for teeth like this." Actually, I would. I have thought about that over the years, how when someone gets dentures, it is blindingly obvious. It looks so unnatural, and if I got dentures, I would spend a few weeks out in the garage working to make them look as old as I am, before I would start wearing them. It does not look as if I will outlive these, so hopefully that will not be an issue. I have talked to folks over the years about how dentures scream "I GOT NEW FALSE TEEFS!"

Some say, "heck yeah, if I pay good money for new teeth, I want them to look new." Nope, not me. I recall my daddy saying that his mama, our grandma got dentures when he and uncle James were young boys, and every time she tried to wear them, they cracked up laughing, hysterically. She soon gave up trying to wear them. Later in life when daddy and uncle James had enough younguns to be laughed at about things like that, Ma got a new pair. She still only wore them when going somewhere, otherwise they were in a glass beside the kitchen sink.

I tell Matt (Jolley) that po folks used to get their dentures at the funeral home, but he refuses to believe me. Oh, yeah, and eye glasses too. Some of my folks probably even traded up for a better glass eye that they had kept an eye on should the owner ever die. Yep, coveting a glass eye is a real "thing." I knew a guy with a glass eye, who worked at the peanut place, and it was of course, a very dusty workplace. Dust would get behind his glass eye and he would just take it out and leave it laying around, usually in the breakroom.

It was unappealing at dinner or break time see it laying on a table or countertop, so his boss kept telling him to not leave it there. He rode a bicycle and had no vehicle so he was hard up for places to put it. One morning when his boss got there early to unlock and open up, the guy rolled up on his bike and came inside, earlier than usual, and clocked in. The boss asked what motivated him to be early for a change. He said he had lost his eye the evening before. The secretary came in and he asked her if she had seen his eye.

She said she had not. He told her that he had wrapped in a brown paper towel so no one had to look at it, per the bossman. She told him that when she cleaned the breakroom before locking up the previous evening, she did throw the paper towels she cleaned the counter with, as well as any other trash laying around, in the trash. He started toward the breakroom to check the trash can and she informed him that the trash cans had been emptied into the dumpster last evening also.

He wheeled around to go outside to the trash dumpster, where on a few previous occasions he had to get over into it and dig for his eyeball due to it getting tossed away into the trash. His boss called him back inside and said, "you clock out before you go digging in the dumpster again for your eye!" I had to laugh about that and said I reckon that even Jeff Foxworthy would have to say that was about as good of a "you might just be a redneck," line there ever was: "you clock out before you go digging in the dumpster again for your glass eye."

Yep, you might be a redneck. I then added one of my own to that list, it was as follows: "if you ever drove a loaded log truck to church and to an AA meeting, all in the same day, you might be a redneck!" And I have done that! Really. Seriously. Sometimes I wonder if I have led an extraordinary life, with a long line of ancestors who did so also, and left no money, land, timber, nor treasure, other than a great big steaming pile of funny stories as a legacy. I like the stories, but I do wish someone had left me some money to go with them.

Changing channels in mid-stream, I made a dish of food two days ago that turned out so good, I have eaten from it for two days solid and not tired of it yet. Whoa though, first let me expound on that statement of mine right there, "changing channels in mid-stream." You are thinking I mixed my metaphors, but no, I did not. I made a new one, these odd things come unbidden to mind, and this one did, it plopped right down and made its self at home just now. So, how did I derive, "changing channels in mid-stream," as a substitute for, "changing horses in mid-stream?"

I modernized it a bit, see, I was referring to "streaming TV." So, "changing channels in mid-stream," makes sense. Getting back to what the dish consisted of. I had a one pound can of blue crab claw meat. I had a bag of "wild caught" Louisiana crawfish tail meat in the freezer. I cooked some Dixie Lily Yellow Rice, added sauteed bell peppers and onions, some garlic butter, a bit of soy sauce, a few drops of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce, some liquid smoke, some Badia smoked paprika, fine Panko bread crumbs,

Badia black pepper, the finest to be had, a small can of cream of onion soup, and a small can of cream of shrimp soup. The cream of shrimp soup is essential. I added some Tobasco Sauce, mixed it all well, then added shredded Mexican cheese blend and some quality brand shredded Parmesan cheese, a bit of mayo and poured into a baking dish, added a thin layer of bread crumbs and more shredded Mexican cheese on top, and baked it nicely until it reached 165 degrees, and removed it to sit and cool.

It is delicious. I know you want the recipe, but I never use them. Those are the ingredients I recall adding, so you can experiment and make it yourself, to suit your taste. Okay, let me pull over for a little while and spend time with the boyz. Bless you my beloved friends. Numbers 6: 24-26 KJV ..... we boyz three, babee conway, lil merle, & me