Friday's Ramblings

Good evenin. Ya'll come on in the house and get out of the heat for it is hot as blue blazes. We here in the South would say come on in or you're going to burn up or in South Georgia it is "heat to death." It was hot enough today to fry an egg on the sidewalk if you had one. It ws like you were trying to breath in a hot tub or suana. The humidity was thick enough to cut it with a knife and I stayed in the house except when I went to get a haircut. It was so hot, I told Robert to cut in short, short and also that cut makes me look a little younger. When you get old and white-headed, you have to have a youthful haircut to keep from looking OLD. That is unacceptable for me for I want to look young as long as I can.

Speaking of sidewalks, they are not something we have at our house for we live out in the country, bout 5 miles from town and no close neighbors. We choose to live this way for my Roy wants a house with this criteria. He wants to be able to walk out in the back yard, buck nekkid and not be seen by anyone. Now I have never seen him walk outside buck nekkid, but if he did only the dog, cat, birds, and deer would see him so I guess we have met the criteria. It is nice to live where you don't have to worry about your neighbors looking in your windows or so close you could spit in their grits.

We weren't raised with any sidewalks either. When our town friends got skates for Christmas, we didn't for it's kinda hard to skate on a gravel driveway and mama wouldn't let us play in the road. The only chance we had to roller skate was once a year when the traveling skating rink came to town and mama wouldn't let us go. You see it could get a little rough out there with all the local good ol' boys trying to skate. They didn't have sidewalks either and didn't know what in the world they were doing. It was kind of like a demolition derby of roller skating and mama didn't want us demolished. You see when the good old boys and the good old girls get together there can be some good old times and mama didn't want us exposed to this behavior. She was trying to raise a Southern lady and 2 Southern gentlemen and she almost did.

We also didn't have streets out where we lived nor did we have a street in front of our house. We had a road! It is paved, thank goodness, but it is most surely a road not a street. I don't like to live on a street, which we have been forced to do at times, for that means there are people close by minding your business as well as their business. You can't run around nekkid and you can't walk outside in your yard and listen to the natural sounds of the woods which are the music of the night in country.

I read about an author,Virginia Lanier, who moved from California to South Georgia down to the Swamp below Waycross. They put them a trailer way out in the country and she began to write books. One day when she went to the mailbox down at the end of the driveway, she came back and told her husband they had to move. When questioned about why, she said she had seen a security light at a house way down the road and that meant neighbors were too close. That's my kind of lady, even if she was from California.

If you are fortunate enough to live out in the country, walk outside sometimes and listen. There are frogs from bass to soprano, insects buzzing and humming, owls hooting, doves calling to their mates, an occasional dog barking way off, and sometimes just silence. I like silence and the darkness for all your worries seem to be so small when you listen to the sounds of God's creations and see the wonders of the stars and the moon.

Now I didn't intend to get all serious here for I was going to write about what I like about the South in the summer, but I will save that for another day. I will advise you to listen to the sounds of the night, sounds of the soft syllables of our Southern way of talking and just enjoy them while you drink a tall glass of iced tea or a cold, bottle of coke. That is the best way to cool off in the South.

Nuff said,

The Georgia Peach

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