grace grits and gardening

ramblings from an arkansas farm girl

low in the grave at Easter

By

Brinkley Chapel
The thing I remember most about Easter service when I was a kid at Brinkley Chapel was singing Low in the Grave. It was a horribly slow and depressing hymn, especially the way our small congregation sang it. Even the uplifting chorus of the song “up from the grave he arose!” sounded like something from Night of the Living Dead. I’m pretty sure at least that section should have been happy and full of joy, a celebration of the most important Christian holiday. And maybe expressed with a bit of pep? We sang it like Jesus the zombie clawed his way from the dank dark ground with his fingernails instead of miraculously arising from the tomb into the glorious gates of Heaven.
Although there were some great old hymns in the Baptist Hymnal, we may as well used them as booster seats. Brother Brown was stuck on the same old songs which we knew by heart and sang like funeral dirges. 
 
Brinkley Youth Group 1967
Front: Karen, Monica, Staci, Jamie
Back: Lesa, Talya, Lynn
Momma was the pianist. To no avail, she sometimes tried to speed things up a bit, but sadly we only knew one speed. Snail. From the piano bench, her neck bobbed back and forth like a chicken as she tried to will everyone to pick up the pace. Sometimes she just played ahead of everyone. Singing was clearly not our strong suit. 
 
Staci, Lesa, Talya, Jamie, Karen, Monica
Christmas Brinkley 1971
But those members of the church were strong and faithful. SaltOfTheEarth. This congregation of friends and family who surrounded us growing up, would give their eye teeth and right arms to help anyone. In the moment, spending time there and living life, you don’t realize the influence and importance of a place or people. I wish I could spend one more Easter service at Brinkley Chapel with that same congregation, but the building was sold and is no longer a church and many of the people are gone. I bet if we had one more chance to sing that song it would sound a little better to me now.
The “Girls” of Brinkley Chapel 2011
The Ladies of Brinkley Chapel 2011
 
Happy Easter!
 
Grace Grits and Gardening
 
Musical Pairings:
The Old Rugged Cross, Alan Jackson

Little Yellow Corvette

By

When my Daddy went through his mid-life crisis, he bought a yellow corvette. To justify this purchase, he gave her to me. At 14-and-a-half, I was too young to drive, even in Arkansas. My driving lessons had been limited to dirt farm roads surrounded by cotton fields with Momma slamming her foot on the passenger side imaginary brake. But even so, he let me drive the corvette down Highway 140 to Cottonwood Corner to buy his packs of unfiltered Camels. Something wrong with this picture? Underage driving + cigarette buying? Suh-weeet.

She was low to the ground and fun to drive. And thinking back, maybe there was a method to his mid-life madness. The inside was cramped like a clown car, leaving very little room for hauling loads of friends around. And she was a police magnet so speeding was not often possible. There was just no sneaking around in that Stingray. She lit up like a beacon, a tracking device before GPS. Momma could probably look out the back bedroom window and see my car leaving the high school parking lot at exactly 3:05 p.m. eight miles away on I-55. The land spread out flat and far and wide, much like West Texas without the tumbleweeds and dust storms. You could almost see the curvature of the earth, making the bright yellow corvette easily visible from the next county. We glowed in the dark.

One night at the supper table, Daddy confessed he spent the entire afternoon, when he should have been farming, following a bright yellow corvette all over the county, back around Evadale, over the levee, certain I had skipped school. He seemed oddly excited about catching me red-handed ditching school, obviously up to no good, a chip off the old block. When he finally caught up with the speeding car, the joke was on him. It wasn’t me. It was some confused man who likely would have called 9-1-1 had cell phones been around then. And Daddy so deserved it! He just expected for me to screw up, anticipating his overdue payback for the trauma he must have caused his own parents. I was safe and sound at Rivercrest with my car in the parking lot where she belonged.  We NEVER skipped a day of school. Not high school anyway. School was the most exciting thing we had to do, so what would be the point of that? 

Then Daddy bought that 2nd yellow corvette for my sister.  Probably so he could watch both of us from afar. Now we had 2 highlighter yellow corvettes, nearly identical twins, and we drove both of them to Baylor University during our one overlapping semester. Two groovy yellow corvettes at Baylor with Arkansas plates was quite the conversation starter, and Baylor was one of few schools that truly appreciated the shocking color. Really, where else could we go? Oregon maybe? That year driving home for Christmas break, following each other, a cop pulled us both over simultaneously near Texarkana, just to chat. He wanted to know the story of our two twinkie corvettes. 

This was the only bright yellow thing I ever wore. Momma taught me from a very early age that yellow was just not my color. Even so, I had many adventures in that car including an entire day spent at the Dairy Queen in Italy, Texas – home of Willie Nelson. That’s very appropriately where she decided to give out. Daddy eventually sold her to a man in Dallas in the mid-80s. Small world. I still look for her around the city. She’s probably looking for me too.
talya

Musical Pairings:

The Beatles, “Drive My Car”
George Jones, “The One I Loved Back Then (The Corvette Song)”

Who’s Your Sugar Daddy?

By

Yesterday at the nail salon I
a) nearly drowned
b) was almost electrocuted
c) both a and b

The soundtrack at my insanely entertaining nail salon yesterday was The Lonely Goatherd from The Sound of Music.  You remember the song – Maria and the children sang it during the marionette show for the Father, the number with all the yodeling. The song was apparently stuck, playing over and over, but naturally I was the only one who seemed to notice. 

The girl in the spa chair adjacent to me began talking to the customer in the far chair about her sugar daddy. This piqued my curiosity. She gushed on and on, having to speak loudly over the yodeling goatherd. “You will looooove my sugar daddy.” How brazen! People will say anything.

I pretended to play Angry Birds as I waited for the hot water to fill the bowl at my feet, nonchalantly glancing over at this girl with the sugar daddy from time to time. She had big Katy Perry eyes framed by very long, lush eyelashes. Was this Katy Perry sitting next to me? She had chewed up fingernails which did not pair well with those thick luxurious eyelashes. I wondered what her sugar daddy thought about that nasty little habit? 

As the yodeling seemed to get louder, it became more difficult to eavesdrop. “I loved Fiji too!” she positively gushed with excitement. Well, I guess so. She obviously hit the jackpot. He took those gnawed nails to Fiji!? 

Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo.

Just at that moment water began to spew out from underneath one of the middle spa chairs like a fountain. It flowed across the floor around all the chairs. The nail workers began pointing and chattering and stuffing towels everywhere, attempting to sop up the rising water. As another lady began to mop and bail, everyone else quickly turned back to their buffing and polishing like nothing had happened, as if a nail salon flood was business as usual. 

As the water creeped toward my chair, I felt the massage component inside my chair jolt and jerk a bit. Quickly grabbing the remote, I turned off the massage feature before I found myself ejected across the street into the Texaco station or worse. “You no want massage?” Kim asked me, looking dumbfounded. “I no want to be electrocuted!”

Amazingly, this flooded salon continued to seat new customers, wading them through the water as they looked around a bit confused. Maybe we should sand bag? Katy Perry’s friend tiptoed through the puddle of water toward the front to pay, careful not to make a wake.  As she passed Katy she said, “I looove my sugar daddy. It’s the perfect shade of pink.” Dang. It was a polish color. I was NOT on top of my game. That yodeling was throwing me off.

talya

Musical Pairing

Tom Jones, “Sugar Daddy”
Julie Andrews, “My Favorite Things”

Food. Farm. Garden. Life.

THANKS FOR READING!