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TURKEY DAY IN CALI - The home folks are comin' up from Louisiana. Yeah, all my Cajun relatives will be out here in Cali for Thanksgiving. My Moms is gonnah cook up a big turkey, I'll see my brother, Aziz, all my nieces and nephews from Benicia, of course. But now I have to deal with those folks from before this part of our family moved out to Cali.
Me and my girl gottah act like we are sociable. But when you dealin' with them folks from down in the Bayou, you never know how proper you got to treat them, if you know what I'm sayin'.
PLUS, like most of ya'll, I got some relatives I could surely do without seeing for a few years, let alone during the holidays.
There's Aunt Sis who makes other folks dirty laundry her personal habit. Her husband, Uncle Jake, who don't have much to say to nobody no more; Sis has beaten him down into permanent listening mode. Some women have a way of doing that to a man. Then, after a few years, they start complaining that the man isn't really listening to them anymore. Many he ain't. If I had a woman that went on and on and on like Aunt Sis, I'd learn to think of it as background music, too.
Then there are them big geechie-acting cousins of mine. They all look like they've lived their lives on fatback, greens and lots of fried potatoes. Men and women, all of them from the Wide-Load crew; you can hear the door frames whine as they squeeze into a room, laughing loud and talking trash. It's usually Louis or Little Bubba that provides the spirits that keep all these folks laughing and back-slapping throughout the whole meal as they put away enough food to solve the starvation problems in Ethiopia and the Sudan combined.
They don't eat, they Hoover up a long table-load of food. Mom's always cooks up two or three turkeys whenever we have a family re-union like this one, along with a couple hams, a goose, maybe a duck if she can get one. Good thing, too. These people should own they own Safeway store, far as I'm concerned.
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These are the folks who still go to their root-worker once a month, fill the pews of them Holy Roller churches, and believe we have to defend ourselves against haints and other evil spirits. Mostly toothless, some have the wherewithal for dentures, some don't. Unlike the full-back cousins, they tend to be kindah stooped and slow, lean as chickens, with accents that smack of smokey swamp mornings and snuggling up next to your coon hound waitin' to get a good shot off at a possum or a squirrel... You can practically hear Robert Johnson or Muddy Waters playin' in the background when these old folks talk.
| MALLOPHOBIA: The Wit of Bob Winter
I know I'm not alone among men in regarding the experience of walking through any crowded shopping mall as only slightly preferable to having to go to the doctor for a prostate check What is it about the experience? Typically we mutter something about "the crowds," and change the subject. But what is it really? Well, in my case, it actually goes something like this: There's a seemingly endless series of narrowly-missed collisions, with some people zipping and darting so close in front of me that I nearly can't zig out of their way fast enough or "put on the brakes" in time. At the same time, I have to cope with people from the exact opposite end of the spectrum, who progress through the merchandise with all the measured and stately deliberation of a bridal party making its way up to the altar. There is nothing intrinsically objectionable about this latter behavior -- except that the people who engage in it also seem to have an inordinate fondness for walking five to seven abreast... |
Looking at me and Aziz, most of these folks at least give him props for his good job, the fine family he's raising, and give me the hairy eye because my girl and I ain't gotten married yet. I don't let it bother me none.
I remind myself that you gottah take the good with the bad, that I'm lucky to be able to be together with family during this festive season, that my bro, Rod, who puts out this magazine, is probably gonnah be sitting alone in his little apartment back in Baltimore staring at a computer screen like you is now, like it was any other day, far away from family and friends.
I mean to call him this week, as I know he's going through another hard time right now, just to check in and see how he's doing. I might even get up the gumption to remind him I always felt he never should have left Cali. After all, he could be spending Turkey Day watching the Detroit Lions with me and the Wide-Load crew, getting his back slapped, and wondering where the nearest exit can be found...
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RDR RECOMMENDED SITE OF THE DAY: In the mood to explore the Thanksgiving holiday? Try this site for size: Holidays on the Net.
