grace grits and gardening

ramblings from an arkansas farm girl

Let Them Eat Cake!

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I’m in charge of the Munger Place Days Cakewalk. Because I thought we needed one. That’s how those things work, right? Open your mouth, make a suggestion, and bingo – it’s your project!

No respectable festival should be without one.

A cakewalk is the perfect throwback to yesterday’s childhood Halloween carnivals, when cake had no calories and dessert came with no consequence, no hips.

I downloaded perfect cakewalk music and made large, colorful numbers, one through twelve, to adhere to the pavement. The lucky number wins a homemade cake or pie or brownies or cookies for dinner. 

What’s not to love about a cakewalk?!

I think next year we need a Kissing Booth!  xoxoxo
Last year this man kept trying to sneak into the cakewalk…

talya

Grace Grits and Gardening
Farm. Food. Garden. Life.

Musical Pairings:

The Entertainer, Scott Joplin

Click here for my prior cakewalk blog post….

Munger Place Days

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In January 1977, the National Apartment and Home Builder Convention met in Dallas. On the agenda, a home tour of newly built Fox & Jacob homes, zero lot model homes at the Villas of Las Colinas, several recently constructed multi-family developments scattered throughout city and almost as an afterthought, a remodeling tour with stops in Munger Place and along Swiss Avenue.
These turn-of-the-century-built homes were slowly being saved thanks to a handful of tireless folks with the grace and forethought to recognize these treasures were worth saving.
The first unofficial Munger Place home tour?

This year’s home tour, Munger Place Days, kicks off Friday night with a wine walk and intimate preview of the homes on tour. Saturday’s activities include a tour of six historic homes with riveting histories – including a ghost and an Olympic gold medalist. The tour will continue on Sunday along with an old-fashioned street festival, complete with live music, six food trucks offering everything from whoopee pies to grilled cheese sandwiches, a pet parade, cakewalk, an art fair with over fifty artisans, and much more.  
If you live in the metroplex area, take a few hours to step back in time at Munger Place Days. If you live elsewhere, it might be worth a road trip!
talya
Musical Pairings:
I looked to the past for guidance…We may talk of saving antique linens, species, or languages; but whatever we are intent on saving, when a restoration succeeds, we rescue ourselves. – Howard Mansfield

Turning Gay in Dallas

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Setting: Expensive Dallas Hair Salon – Shampoo Room
Characters: 
Myrtle – shampoo lady
Lottie – shampoo lady
Me – customer with dark roots
Ms. Bettye – customer with gray roots

gay

Myrtle:  How’re you today honey?
Me:  I’m good. How are you?
Myrtle: Thanking the good Lord to be alive.
Lottie: She’s crazy as ever.
Myrtle: Lottie you hush your mouth. Baby, you just sit right back and let Ms. Myrtle take good care of your hair.
Me: Ok.
shampoo ladies chatting during my shampoo….
Myrtle: Margarita lost that baby bless her heart.
Lottie: Oh girl no she didn’t!
Myrtle: Um-hm. Been bleedin’ all night.
Lottie: Bless her heart but she done got seven chil’ren.
Myrtle: Lord’s way of telling her.
Lottie: Poor chile.
Myrtle: Um-hm.
glancing to door…
Myrtle: You mean to tell me Joe’s done fell again?
Lottie: Oh lordy mercy I guess so.
Myrtle: That poor man.
Lottie: Um-hm.
Myrtle: Joe you done fell again?
Joe: Yup, using my old cane.
Together: Well bless your heart.
to Ms. Bettye being shampooed next to me….
Lottie: Ms. Bettye I looooove that necklace. What’s that stone?
Ms. Bettye: Oh Lottie, I don’t remember. I’ve had it for prob’ly forty years.
Lottie: Myrtle, you see this necklace?
Myrtle: (Myrtle drowning my head to look.) That is very beautiful Ms. Bettye.
Lottie: You driving again Ms. Bettye?
Ms. Bettye: Oh no, my friend drove me. We’ve been friends for forty years.
Lottie: Isn’t that nice.
Myrtle: Ms.Bettye, did you know Joe done fell again?
Ms. Bettye: Oh no. Bless his heart.
to each other during my rinse….
Lottie: You know Hector done turned gay.
Myrtle: No! How you know?
Lottie: Margarita tole me.
Myrtle: ‘fore she lost that baby?
Lottie: Yes ma’am. His wife done throw’d him out.
Myrtle: Lawsy what’s wrong with him?
Lottie: Don’t know. She said one day he was fine and the next day he turned gay right after work.
Myrtle: What’s this world comin’ to?
Lottie: Sinful.
Myrtle: Bless her heart.
Me: Coughing. Gagging.
wrapping up my wet head in a towel…
Myrtle: There you go honey. You all done now.
Me: Thank you. Myrtle, you know people don’t just turn gay. Right?
Silence. Pin dropping silence.
Me: Seriously. People don’t turn gay. It’s genetic. You either are or you aren’t.
Myrtle and Lottie exchange quick knowing looks.
Best friends and co-workers for fifty years, they share the same thoughts.
They have one mind.
Lottie: Honey chile’ I think Myrtle done got water up in your head.
Myrtle: What’s this world coming to?
Lottie: Sinful.
Myrtle: Bless your heart.

Laughing. Hysterical laughter. At me.

turning gay

Grace Grits and Gardening

Musical Pairings:
They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Napoleon XIV

Homer Simpson to Bart: He didn’t give you gay, did he? Did he?

Food. Farm. Garden. Life.

THANKS FOR READING!