The Great Beet Adventure of 1981

Don’t even think about feeding me a beet.  It’s not going to happen. 

Tom Robbins is a favorite author of mine. Tom thought highly of beets.  Let me just quote him for a moment:

The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.

Slavic peoples get their physical characteristics from potatoes, their smoldering inquietude from radishes, their seriousness from beets.

The beet is the melancholy vegetable, the one most willing to suffer. You can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip…

Jitterbug Perfume, Tom Robbins

Yes, Tom thought highly of beets. 

Photo by Monika Grabkowska on Unsplash

So did my father, I think.  Although I don’t remember ever seeing him eat a beet before that fateful summer.  He may have initially planted them for my mother who liked pickled beets.  Which are, arguably, the worst of all the beets.

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Joy to the World

Three Dog Night burst onto the scenes in the early ‘70s with the release of their single, Joy to the World – written by Hoyt Axton.  It first appeared on their 4th studio album but was released as a single in February of 1971.

I remember it fondly.  It took over the airwaves of Jacksonville, NC where I was living at the time.  I was 11 almost 12 when the single came out.  As the kids say now, it went viral.

What a glorious time of my life that was.  My world had not yet gotten dark and heavy.

The song is infectious – from the opening of Jeremiah was a bullfrog “to the refrain of Joy to World all the boys and girls.   it inspired surprise, joy, and dancing.  You just couldn’t help yourself.

My girlfriends and I were rocking out to the song in my living room one day when my mother came home from work.  Mom, uncharacteristically, grabbed the tambourine we had – the one I don’t know why we had as none of us were musical – and began beating it against her thigh and dancing around the living room.  I had monkey pod wooden fruit – a banana and a pear, I think – that I was banging together in rhythm to the song and we danced.  We were all singling loudly and probably offkey.  I can’t remember who all “we” were, but I had a group of friends and I think we were all represented that day.

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Memento Mori, Tempus Fugit

Alla Tsank https://statestreetdistrict.org/painting-list/alla-tsank

Her hair was a miracle, a wonder, a symphony of wild and beautiful.  You could get lost in hair like that. 

Let it wrap you in golden strands the color of wheat just before harvest like a blanket and a fire on a cold winter night.  Her hair was a mystery, an enigma, a talisman. 

Her hair beckoned you to magical forests, castles, charmed cottages.

Her hair.

I was in love with her immediately.  Entranced.  Intrigued. Infatuated.  I knew deep down it would not end well, but I hung around waiting for her to either find a table or leave.  I intended to follow her out the door if need be.  Determined to talk to her. 

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Snerds and Candy (a fairytale for Julien)

The Snerd loved candy.  Oh, yes he did.  Now it’s true that all Snerds love candy, but this Snerd, was the snerdiest of them all and loved candy so much that he hoarded it depriving other Snerds of their opportunities to acquire candy.  This Snerd would cackle with glee at his bounty all stored in his cottage.

Now Snerds don’t eat candy.  Oh no.  They use it as bait for unsuspecting children.  If you study Snerd lore, you already know that a Snerd would never harm a child.  But they are big and scary looking and find it hard to make friends with the little beings they are so enchanted by.  Your average Snerd looks just like the monsters you think you see under your bed and are sometimes drawn in books.  They have big eyes and big teeth and lots of hair and fur. 

Photo by Katarzyna Pracuch on Unsplash

They don’t mean to frighten children, but they do.  And so for years and years, the Snerds have been studying ways to befriend children because Snerds like children the way we like puppies – with abounding love and lots of giggles

Our Snerd, the hoarder, would race to the store after payday every week and spend his earnings on candy to entice children.  He was frugal in all other areas of his life, so he sometimes bought all the candy which made the other Snerds mad for it hadn’t yet occurred to any of the Snerds that there might be another way to get a child’s attention.  Throughout the history of Snerds, candy was used.  Snerds experimented with different kinds and different ways of getting it to the children, but it was always candy. 

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