Cloris Bell Struck Dead at Church Supper

I’m so popular, I get more and more mail asking me for advice. This week I got a letter from a woman named Myra who thinks so much like me, I held the letter right up to my nose and looked at who signed it to make sure it wasn’t from me.

She wrote, “Trixie, at the church where I go, some of the people who come to our church supper don’t bring enough food, then they eat up more than their share! I feel guilty getting worked up over something so petty. What’s your opinion?”

Well, Myra, since you’ve owned up to being petty, I don’t reckon it’s my place to deprive you of the designation. And if you’re so hell-bent to make a confession, hire yourself a priest. Who do you people think I am, anyhow, the Pope’s wife?

That used to happen a lot at my church, and one Sunday when we had a congregational meeting to address everybody’s concerns, I stood right up in the sanctuary and complained that there sometimes wasn’t enough food at the family night suppers. “The reason there’s not enough,” I said, “ is half you people that go to this church are too tight to bring your fair share and the other half of you are just hogs.”

I tried to go on to suggest a new bylaw that would allow me personally to shut the door to the fellowship hall in the face of anybody who showed up at a church supper with a half of a canned pear smeared with mayonnaise on a piece of lettuce on a saucer, the way Cloris Bell did, but a couple of the ushers hauled me out the back door before I could get into the specifics.

Believe me, Myra, I know just what you mean. This is a problem that is the thorn in the flesh of church people across this nation, and has more than once made me wish we Protestants had a Pope to raise holy hell over these little things that aren’t covered in the Bible.

I wanted to pinch off Cloris Bell’s head from day one, and not just because she was a skinflint when it came to church suppers. I knew she’d run with the men all her life and dipped snuff and had robbed money from the cash register when she worked at the Picadilly Cafeteria.

Then, late in life, like a lot of folks do when they look in the mirror of a morning and see Death looking back, she joined the church so she’d have a preacher to say words over her, a place in the ground to get planted, and a few people obligated to come to see her laid out.

She never put more than a dollar in the collection plate of a Sunday, when I’ll pinch and save all week and throw in a five. I knew she only dropped a dollar because I made sure I sat on the pew behind her where I could lift my head and see what she put in.

To the first church supper she came to she brought a fourth of a dried-up turkey breast still wrapped in the aluminum foil she cooked it in and proclaimed it a main dish. The next time, and half the time thereafter, she’d dump a can of peaches or pears on some iceberg lettuce, sling some mayonnaise on it and declare it a salad.

Then she’d proceed to bull her way into the line and pile her plate high with everything everybody else had brought.

One time old Ben McLaughlin brought a whole ham he'd smoked, it got all eat up, and somebody found her in the closet where they keep the choir robes, gnawing the last bit of meat off that hambone.

It all came to a head one night when I was helping arrange everything on the table in the fellowship hall. She waddled in the door bearing a little relish dish with some celery sticks smeared with dried up pimento cheese. “Is that all you brought?” I said, loud as I could so everybody could hear it. Heads turned. I heard some snickers.

“I don’t bring much,” she said,’ since I’m such a light eater myself,” and I looked her up and down and said, “Are you for a fact? I guess it takes a while for the effect to show.”

Now, that happened to be the same night that I had made a nice pot roast, potatoes, carrots, and onions. My neighbor Delores had brought a spiral-cut ham from Harris Teeters. My daughter Lou Ann had brought a whole bucket of Bojangles chicken.

I couldn’t even eat myself for just sitting back and watching Cloris Bell, Miss Light Eater, load up her plate. I finally had to give up counting how many times she went back to the table since I’ve only got ten fingers.

Bitterness rose up in me like acid reflux. I knew I was standing in the need of prayer.

I was so got away with I ran down the hall to the empty sanctuary and sat in a pew in the dark and prayed for patience. I was so wrought up, I wished I was Episcopalian so I could get on my knees. “Lord God Almighty,” I prayed, “thou alone art the wellspring of my exceeding generosity! I know that thou art the source of all my good and perfect works, and I know I’m not supposed to be doing all that I do for that ungrateful hog, Cloris Bell, over in the fellowship hall. I am supposed to be doing it as unto Thee.”

I tell you what: Prayer changes things. I felt better for two or three hours. But that night when I got home and went to bed, I dreamed I plucked a drum leg from that bucket of Bojangles chicken and chased Cloris Bell around the fellowship hall and walloped her with it upside the head with a supernatural force available to us mortals only in our dreams.

She died on the spot and even before I was good and awake and remembered it was just a dream, I felt right good about it, and if feeling that way for five minutes was wrong, I don’t want to be right.

Thanks for writing, Myra, honey. I sure hope that helps.

Take a look at my Precious Memories album. I've just got started with it. Click on my picture then run the little hand over each picture for a little note:

Trixie's Precious Memories

Captain Hook's Descendent Gives World the Bird

Get out my flyswat!

This latest development is enough to cause me to give up trying to keep you chickens of mine in the coop!

("Chickens" is what I call the younguns who do what the Google people call "follow" me on this blog thing, and I love those chickens every one, even though every one of them but Amanda and O'Clara are in it for the prospect of inheriting my last dollar, should my last dime ever reach that lofty height.)

I have tried to set a good example for all of y'all, and now here's what one of my prize chickens, Creative Hook, (offspring of the Captain) has created with her own wicked little hand: a little man doing something ugly with his middle finger.

And if that's not bad enough, she named the little man Shiddy!

She calls him "a nasty little creature chrocheted in colors of nausea: pissed-off purple, pus green, and vile yellow. He's the dark force that lies deep within the hearts of all of us!" she says. "Having a bad day? Show the world your Shiddy attitude! It's a great way to say 'up yours' to people who deserve it."

I ask you all: Is that not awful?

I'm so weighed down with shame, I'm wandering through the house right now looking for a wall to hide behind.

Yet, Creative Hook is one of my chickens, one of those whose name is missing from the shid list I keep on the back of the envelope my Duke power bill comes in, and I therefore must also inform you that she also has the prettiest little things for sale, scarves and pocketbooks and hats perched on the prettiest little heads--make sure she throws in the head with the purchase of a hat. And you can see it all right here, including what Creative Hook calls a new, improved Shiddy, complete with a tail and a belly buttom: http://www.etsy.com/view_transaction.php?transaction_id=8153377

And to add to my woes: Amanda left her head in the pantry today and has not yet wrote to inform me if she found it.

And furthermore, Arlene Nix, Missy Hager, and Sarah Owens, who have not paid me a bit of mind for months, plus Ellen McLaughlin and Vicki Hughes who have yet to write a word, be sure your sin will find you out because the Devil comes lookin' for that envelope where I keep score and list all my bitter grudges.

And if you would redeem yourselves, write now and then go forth and spread the word to all the other infidels.

84 Years Old and Pregnant at Myrtle Beach

I'll have to make a new category for this one, y'all. I'll have to call it "Trixie's Believe it or Not."

Look at that picture over there on the left of those two young people from a place called the Ivory Coast of Africa who are traveling and exhibiting themselves all over the world and lately at Ripley's Believe it or Not in Myrtle Beach, SC.

Now, y'all prepare yourself for a shock.

Evidently there are in this world 2,000 fool women who claim they got pregnant after they rubbed that naked man with his ding dong a-dangling and that woman with petrified chocolate kissies for titties.

Now, the women who think rubbing those two got them pregnant have s*it for brains and I'll worry nary a hair nor waste a prayer on them. It's that young couple I'm worried about. They look so stiff and out of place. I think they'd make a right cute couple if they'd loosen up a little bit and try to blend in with the rest of the young people.

Anyhow, the story is those two are traveling the world and stopping off at museums and exhibiting themselves naked for a price, claiming that by rubbing them a woman can get pregnant, and all I can say to that is does nobody have any shame anymore and what a creative way to make do when times are bad, and if my tummy was as tight and my titties as taut as that gal's, I might fly all over the world, letting people rub all over me, too, if I thought it would earn me enough money to get my tires rotated and keep me from having to borrow from the Walmart greeter to pay my tithe.

Now, I have lived a long while, long enough to know that it is nature's way that for a woman to get pregnant somebody--two somebodies and one of them a man--have got to do some rubbing, and I've heard tell that the southeast coast cesspool of sin, Myrtle Beach, is one of the top knock-up capitals of the continent.

So, I figure those two are making false claims, but what would it hurt even an 84-year-old woman to play along, pitch them a few coins, give them a good feel, and see what happens? And you never know: Abraham in the Bible, was it his wife--one of his wives, they say he had a houseful--who was in her mid-nine hundreds when she had her first?

I've always told my own kids if I could start over I'd raise them up another way than what I did, knock some sense into their heads early on, for one thing. And now, some 35 years after my female organs have dried up like leather britches beans, maybe I've got another chance. You don't know.

Maybe I'll hitch a ride down to Myrtle Beach with a busload of Baptists and in a few months' time some of y'all will be throwing me a little baby shower at the Methodist Home. More peculiar things than that have happened.

Steelers Beat Cardinals

That's the kind of headlines that hollered out to me today when, old fool that I am, I chanced to open up the newspaper hoping for a little spot of happy news.

Like I need to hear first thing of a morning that a bunch of steel-workers hauled off and gave some Catholic bishops what-for.

Some folks say there ought to be a law against walloping a man of the cloth, even a man of the red cloth, but where I stand on that issue shall remain a deep and abiding mystery.

Well, all I can do is pray for justice, as I reckon that boy is doing with all his might, the one with the yellow britches and the hardhat on.

I Don't Want to Make a Difference

That picture right there is of former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, a woman who did a lot of good in the world, unlike me, and at my age I don't give a dam*n what anybody thinks about it either.

She wasn't on a fixed income like I am and she liked going around doing things that matter, whereas I'm happy just going to the store and reading the labels on the cans, not doing anybody any harm, but not doing anything they'd write up in the papers either, at least not anything I'm proud of or would even own up to, though I'm capable of a lot y'all would never guess.

Penny who fixes my hair told me one time, she said, "Trixie, you are too a giving person! I've never left your house when you didn't shove into my hands a jar of pickled pears or chow chow that you've made!"

But what she don't know is that half the time I'll give her the jar of chow chow with the worst date because I'm saving up my better stock for when the world ends and all my kids and their kids and half the neighborhood end up here and I've got a whole house of hungry mouths to feed.

Now one thing I will freely give out and that is advice.

You have heard the saying "Advice is cheap." Well, it is, and that's what I like about it.

I guess word of my wisdom is reaching into the far corners of these United States, because I’m starting to get emails from as far away as Florida asking me for advice.

I got an email just this past week: “Trixie," this young gal said, "my kids are in school, my nerves are bad, and I'm spending my days watching Oprah and running around pulling out my hair, and I don’t know what to do with myself, and I could use some extra money."

So I wrote her back and gave her a bit of advice that you'd think would've sprung up natural as a weed from her own head. I said, “Honey, why don’t you get yourself a job? I've heard they are hiring at J.C. Penney's in the catalog department."

And she wrote back, "But I want to do something meaningful, Trixie. I want to make a difference."

So I right quick emailed her back and said, "Honey, you might want to make a difference, but I just want to go the store. They’ve got chicken leg quarters on sale and every time they do I buy up a bunch and stock my deep freeze."

I think what I say and I say what I think, about which fact my daughter Lou Ann says, “that’s all right mama,”---which sounds like the start of an Elvis song and now that I’ve thought about it, I can’t get it out of my head--“you’re at that age where the front lobe of your brain is getting hard, the place in your brain that governs your judgment and your impulses, and the doctors say that’s why you're always doing and saying inappropriate things.”

And I gave her to know that I said and did what I wanted to way back when I was not yet twelve years old and I stumbled down the stairs trying to walk in one leg of big fat Effie's bloomers.

Now, I have, on occasion, tried to do the right thing. The last time I remember was back when I was on the committee at the church where the members were supposed to take supper to Lola Maude Harkey, who was housebound. Well, when it was my turn, I fussed over what I took her, taking care that she had a meat, a starch, two vegetables, and some bread. Sometimes I'd make a pie when I didn't even want it, just so I could take her a piece.

But it didn't take long to figure out that she hardly ate a mouthful and whenever the ladies brought her a plate of food, as soon as their back was turned, she laid it down on the floor for that old dog of hers to slurp up.

The next time the committee held a meeting, I marched myself right in there and said I didn't think we should keep taking food down to Lola Maude Harkey's. It was wasteful, I said. And they all chimed in about how she was housebound and if we didn't take her supper, she wouldn't get the right nourishment, and I said, "But EVERY DAY?" And they said, "Well, Trixie, don't YOU like to eat everyday?"

And I gave them to know they might as well just fix up a plate every evening and take it down to Lola Maude's, and just lay it straight down on the floor for that dam*n dog.

One thing nobody has ever accused me of is being good for goodness sake.

So I hope whoever that was that wrote me that email--I forgot the dear one's name already--will email Dr. Phil or somebody next time, and just leave me out of it.

Dinner on the Grounds at a Leper Colony

Well, I got up this morning figuring I'd probably left y'all in suspense long enough about who I picked as the winner of our dirty pan contest. Some of y'all might think I took too long to get here to the point of announcing it, but that's because I'm old and I just learned to do the Google and I don't learn these things as fast as you all do, dam--t! So, as you young people like to say: Give me a break!

Remember, before Thanksgiving of this year, I had sworn off ever having a thing to do with the Google or with computer machines or cell phones, and with cell phones I still don't so if you happen to be one of my kids reading what I'm writing here, don't you even think about giving me one because I'll sling it right out the window first chance I get and you know it.

But I like doing the Google because it gives me a chance to have my say, though I don't like how it has brought me undue attention from the men, though that could change. You never know.

And I was going to do it yesterday, announce the winner, that is, but I kind of like that boy they put in the White House, the one with the ears and the funny name I can't keep in my mind, and stayed glued in front of the TV all day watching the inauguration and thinking about those little girls bouncing around the White House and what a fine couple he and that wife of his make, and I kept picturing them in the White House in bed having relations with her hanging onto his ears, though I expect they were too worn out last night for that.

So now that I've thrown a wet towel over the heads of those of you who didn't win the contest, and told Arlene to go throw her scrawny self off a cliff, we at last come to the last two pictures, which are of one pan belonging to Karen.

You see that blister in the upper right hand corner of the first picture? When my daughter Lou Ann (who I brought in to help me judge) saw that, she declared that Karen's pan would make a great buffet dish at an all day dinner-on-the-grounds at a leper colony.

In the last picture, which shows the whole pan, Lou Ann said she saw Tom Cruise jumping up and down on Oprah's couch, screaming and hollering about psychiatrists and the medicine they give out, and that the little white squiggle to the right--which you can't see too well in the picture up there, small as it is--was Brooke Shields holding high a butcher knife, riding a white horse, galloping toward Tom Cruise with the clear intent of shutting him the hell up.

Now, if you think what my daughter Lou Ann said does not reflect too well on her sense, you've got company and I'm it. This is not the only example of how Lou Ann seems to have climbed down and left her brain dangling up in the treetops, but I owe it all to her going through the menopause. When she said what she did, I just about snatched the job of judge right out of her hands, but I wanted to go to the store so I let her get on with it.

Well, Lou Ann decided that Karen's pan had the "added value" that contestant Hendersonville Epicurean's pan had, and by that I mean you could see things in it the same way some people claim they see the face of the Lord on a bedsheet, so we had a tie. I could see this going on for another month, so I chimed in and declared Karen's pan the dirtiest of the two.

So, as it turns out, plain ole dirt was the deal breaker, or I guess the tie breaker, and I hereby declare Karen the official winner of the Parade of Pans and the soon-to-be owner of what's called an "advance reader copy" of that book about my life, THE DAYS BETWEEN THE YEARS. Karen is a good picture taker of pretty nature scenes and mushrooms and goats, which you can see by clicking right here: http://www.karenbryantphotography.com/

And for those of you who entered the contest but did not win, I want you to know that you did not send in your pictures of dirty pans in vain. To those of you who arose to the occasion but fell flat on your face, who fought the good fight, but got thrown out of the ring, I don't know what to give you for a consolation prize or what to say except keep in mind you're still in my will, although I have not a penny nor a pot to my name, but I've always heard it's the thought that counts anyhow.