LESSONS FROM MY SON 4

Why Guns Won't Keep You Safe
 

"You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown!" was playing live and the kids were so excited to be going with Linda and me. Their fathers, Don and Tom, were at an attorneys' reception and Linda, with her two children, had picked us up at the law office on Lady Street. In those days before seat belt laws, Jeff, aged 5,  Jeny, 3, and Linda's oldest--Jeff's age--sat unrestrained together in the back. Linda's baby,  who was barely 2,  stood between us in the front.  

Not long after we pulled away from the curb, amidst the squeals and jabbering of the four young ones, a BOOM exploded throughout  the car--a sound I can hear every time I think about it exactly as it was that night. Chaos! What was it!  Had the engine blown? Louder than that--A bomb? Where?--So loud! Like it was inside the car! The kids were screaming! Linda yelling--"What was that!!!" "I don't know" as I turned to the back seat.

Jeff was holding a gun.

"A gun!" I shouted. I grabbed it and threw it into the glove compartment as Linda tried to keep the car straight,  screaming "Is anybody hurt?"

"I don't know!"  Her baby was hysterical. I grabbed her and held her close, hoping to calm her down. I felt something wet and sticky. Linda yelled, "Blood, it's blood!"

She stomped on the accelerator, headed for Baptist Hospital just around the corner--though I still don't know how she did it. As we pulled into the emergency entrance, she grabbed the baby and ran. I scooped up the children and headed inside to register, answer questions, search for answers and try to calm the children and myself while we waited.  The police appeared with questions about the  hand gun, which I could not answer, nor could Linda later, as to why her husband had a gun in the car.

 .....How long had he had it? I don't know! Why did he have it! I don't know! Why did he keep it in the car? I don't know! Why did he keep it loaded? I don't know! Why in a cigar box? I don't know! Was it registered? I don't know! Did you know he had it? No.....

We were all lucky.  When Jeff  saw the cigar box on the floor, opened it, found the gun and pulled the trigger, he pointed it straight ahead, instead of at himself or either of the girls beside him.The bullet went through the side of the head rest before it hit the child. No vital organ was damaged; it was only a rather deep flesh wound and the police found the spent cartridge on the floor of the car.  It had not lodged in her little body.

Don's explanation to us all for why he had the gun was "for protection." His area of concentration in the law was collections. When a debtor could not pay, Don assisted the debt holder in bringing suit against the debtor.  He said he had had threats from those who were desperate, who were losing their homes, and he needed protection.  As for the rest of the questions--he had no answers. Why he kept a loaded gun in a cigar box in the family car he could not say. He did apologize for not remembering to take it out; but chastised us for not being alert enough to hear the sound of the gun being cocked in time to stop the tragedy.

Jeff tells me he can remember every minute as clearly as I can, though he was only 5. Later that night, I read to him hoping to calm him down so he could go to sleep. When we heard Tom's car in the driveway, he turned to me with tears in his eyes and said, "Oh Momma, Daddy is going to be so mad at me."

You can believe me, that Jeff was not the one who felt Tom's anger.  It was the person who thought he could make himself safe by bringing more guns into play, who was willing to endanger his family and friends by the careless use of a weapon.

Don was governed by fear, as so many of us in this country are. We are afraid of young black men, of the homeless, of people who wear turbans, of innocent young people who come to our door to trick or treat, of hooded teenagers walking through our neighborhoods where they "don't belong", of  anybody different from ourselves. We turn away from them, run from them, shoot them, go to war with them--and the gun manufacturers profit.

When horrific events happen in Sandy Hook or Columbine and small children are killed, we don't know how to react.  Some think  the answer is to arm teachers because they can shoot first and make the school safe. Some say "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns."  Some of my very good friends, supporters of the NRA, believe that the Second Amendment guarantees the right for citizens to own almost any kind of weapon (though they do believe in background checks).

Here's some of what I believe. Yes, strict gun control, if not a total ban. Required gun safety courses for gun owners.  Sure, that.

But there's more to it than that.  I don't think that having fewer guns or no guns is the answer. I am an idealist. I believe that the attitude that gun control is the only answer because the horse is already out of the barn concerning guns is giving up, admitting defeat.  I want to go for more. I want to go for changing our way of thinking, doing, living, relating to each other--a culture change.  What if we stopped romanticizing violence? What if we learn to worship not the tough guys in Pulp Fiction or Fight Club, but instead the gentle, loving guys in To Kill a Mockingbird or Gandhi?   What if our movie heroes were not the ones who used violence to solve problems; our most sought after video games were not those where realistic killing was the point ? And we did the killing!!! What if  all our sports emphasized skill, endurance, cooperativeness, instead of violence where one of the purposes is to "take somebody out" with a head-on tackle and where the players are so damaged that their life expectancy is 55 years old? Oops, I know some Carolina/Clemson fans who will take exception to that one.

I believe in a world where we learn to honor God, not as an angry, vengeful God, a violent God who orders the Israelites to "not leave alive anything that breathes" or sends Joshua to destroy Jerico, or condemns sinners to hell, but as the loving New Testament God. I believe we can become a world where the mentally ill are not shunned, but are treated as any other person with an illness and we can commit the financial resources to truly help them. I believe in a world where we can learn to solve our problems without violence, but with respect, honoring one another. I believe in a world where we can overcome our selfishness, greed, lack of empathy and fear of one another. I believe in a world governed by compassion and respect for one another.

In that kind of world, Don won't need a gun.               

How Does Your Garden Grow? The Harvest

Containing more  Lessons from my Daughter and From My Son

The End for 2010

The last of the harvest has been eaten.  Tom cut four lone pieces of okra from the garden the end of  November and ate them raw, cut up into our mixed salad.  It was not enough for a mess and some folks would have just tossed them, or put them in the compost pile.

 But Tom is a  WWII baby, whose mother’s  voice still echoes in his head.  “Waste not, want not.....   You must belong to the Clean Plate Club..... Eat your food—just think about all those starving children in Africa.”

I hear a similar voice.  I could never understand, though,  about that starving children thing.  Why in the world couldn’t we send the food—which I DID NOT WANT---to the hungry children who so needed it?

First Harvest of the Season 2010

This year we planted a limited number of crops, unlike in past years.  The tomatoes and okra were givens, though not quite as much okra as in the past.   Peppers and fields peas rounded out the garden. My three favorite summer foods are tomatoes, okra and field peas.  I could eat them every meal. 

I do not eat peppers.  To be in the same room while Tom is cutting them up makes my eyes water.  Tom puts them in everything he eats and if,  by accident,  it is something I also am eating,  my mouth burns for hours.  Taking a hint from Jeff's cheese stuffed peppers dish, Tom also makes his own unique stuffed hot peppers, stuffing them with all kinds of cheeses, smoked oysters, crab meat, chopped shrimp, smoked salmon, tuna, minced clams and other interesting and unusual things.  The two tricks to this dish are to wear gloves during preparation (the more important of the two) and to roast them well  so that the intense heat is under control.  He freezes these individually on cookie sheets so that he can pull out one or two at a time to roast for his dinner.  

The only disappointment were the field peas.  They were heavenly tasting, but almost nonexistence. We planted four rows of them, two on one side of the garden and two on the other.  The rows on the right side yielded some every now and then, so that every few days we had gathered enough to cook a mini pot full.  Tom let me eat them all each time(about 3 spoonfuls), because I was the one who had begged to plant them this year.  The other two rows yielded nothing—not one pea.  The plants looked healthy and were heavy  with dark lush leaves.  That was it.  No peas. We are going to be more careful about the exact kind of field pea we try next year.  I think we will try two different kinds, maybe crowder  and pink eye peas, and keep track to see if either does better than this year.  If anybody had a recommendation, please let us know. I don't know if I can go another summer without fresh field peas.  On the other hand, Tom may be over it and have no interest in trying them again.  If you have read my previous gardening posts, you know that Tom is the master gardener and I am the sometimes helper—except for the summer of his hip replacement, when I was the worker bee under his rigorous oversight.  So if he says it’s a no-go, then we will be pealess next year.   

The tomatoes were .......... Wow!!

Sam & Madeline pick our tomatoes

We planted many heirlooms this year, harder to grow, but so worth it.  The whole experience is an affirmation that beauty is only skin deep.  Heirlooms  are open pollinated, not hybrids,  that look like they've grown wild. They're all different lumpy shapes and sizes, with scarred splits in the delicate skin and the flesh is firm, sweet, rich, lush, and smoky tasting. I love to eat them straight out of the garden, like apples, hanging over the sink with the juice dribbling down my chin. I have been excited to learn that, besides being funny looking

Davis & Tom

and tasting scrumptious,  they are  more nutritious, packed full of vitamins and antioxidants, than are  the more common hybrid varieties. Hybrids, on the other hand,  are cross pollinated, developed for commercial purposes--a uniform size to make them easy to pack,  with thick skins to be bug resistant, and to stand up under rough handling and for travel. Hybrids look uniformly, perfectly attractive, but are mealy, juiceless and drip free, manipulated for the sake of economics, taste be damned.

Our earliest harvest is always green tomatoes, picked  to thin the plants so that they will yield more. I have searched all my cookbooks and the internet for the best green tomato recipe to be had.  I am glad to share it with you.  The secret is the mustard mixture that you spread on the tomato before you fry it.  It is messy, but the spread adds a tang that makes this dish special.

Fried Green Tomatoes

This recipe is from Robert Lorino of The Irondale Café in Irondale, Alabama.This restaurant is the inspiration for Fannie Flag’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café.  The recipe is world famous.

2          Medium hard  green tomatoes, chilled

1          Tablespoon Dijon mustard

1          teaspoon sugar

½         teaspoon salt

¼         teaspoon paprika

1/8       teaspoon ground red pepper

 1 ½     teaspoons Worcestershire sauce

½         cup yellow cornmeal

¼         cup hot bacon drippings or vegetable oil

Cut tomatoes into ½ inch slices

Stir together mustard and next 5 ingredients.  Spread on both sides of tomato slices.  Coat with cornmeal.

Fry tomatoes in hot drippings (or oil) in skillet over medium heat 3 minutes on each side or until browned.  Drain.

Yummmm!!!

  We planted less of everything this year, so we only froze a few of our tomatoes and gave away those we couldn’t eat at three meals a day sliced, diced,  minced and roasted, in sandwiches, sauces, and stews.  The office attorneys and staff got lots and we had enough get ripe at once during the summer to serve them on Sunday in Finlay Park at Food Not Bombs.

Our wonderful preacher,  Neal, got the lion’s share though.  In fact, he called every Saturday night to remind us to bring him some. “You know my favorite food is a BLT sandwich,” he would say. He even wanted us to bring a bag of them and hang them on his office door on the Sundays he was not preaching.  There was a little catch in his voice the Saturday night we had to tell him the yield was  over and there would be no more tomatoes in the morning. He is a tomato glutton and I threatened to tell the Board to reduce his salary,  as we were paying part of it in produce, the old fashioned way. LOL.

He did not LOL.

Okra was our most prolific crop this year.  Originally from Africa, okra is a hot weather plant.  We put the seeds in the ground later than any of our other crops and it is the last to stop yielding—when the weather is below freezing for several nights in a row, usually in late November.  We use it in stews and gumbos and soups, but primarily we coat it with corn meal and deep fry it.  Fried okra is as Southern as fried catfish, fried chicken, fried pork chops, fried squash, and….fried green tomatoes.  Good as it tastes,  Tom and I have stopped eating fried food of any kind, switching to broiled or baked, for the sake of our health.  But fried okra--we just have not been able to give it up. Until this year.  In yet another of the Lessons From My Daughter, Jeny introduced us to a new way to cook okra.  It is healthy, less messy than fried,  and so tasty that we are never looking back. Sauteed okra is simple.

Sauteed Okra

Cut okra in slices as for frying. (If you have just washed it, pat it dry with paper towels, or wait for it to air dry).   Coat the sauté pan well with oil. On medium high heat, sauté the okra in pan  until brown on edges and slightly crisp, 4-6 minutes, stirring constantly so as not to burn. Lightly salt if desired.

There are more elaborate recipes with onion and various spices, but we all like it so well  plain we’ve not tried to fancy it up yet.  Maybe next year.

  Both of our children have turned into master gardeners and master chefs and their gardens include a wide variety of herbs to use in their cooking. Our garden in no way rivals theirs.   Jeny grows a wider variety of crops than we do, including a fall garden.

 Jeff plants cucumbers, and pumpkins, in addition to most of the same things we do. He plants  pumpkins and such for fun for the kids. Sam loves cucumber cookies. The Lessons from my Son in this blog post involve his turning his garden produce into highly sought-after gifts. His cucumber and okra pickles and  fresh salsa, made with his own tomatoes and peppers, are to die for and he makes many of us happy with his homemade Christmas and birthday gifts. The marvel of this is that he manages it at all, in a teeny plot on the side yard, raided frequently by their two large, rowdy family dogs.

Winter is here, the temperature is in the 20’s and  the garden is only a memory, except for a few frozen quarts of tomatoes in the freezer and some of Jeff’s pickles in the cupboard. We are already looking forward to next summer and so, I am told, is Neal.  He misses his BLT sandwiches. 

TECHNOLOGY OVERLOAD

We now have Tivo.  Our kids, Jeff and Jeny,  gave it to us for Christmas.  They are trying hard to drag us into the 21^st Century.

We are surrounded by Blackberrys, Iphones, Ipods, GPSs, Laptops. We know something about the Internet, Facebook, E-Mail, Google, Instant Messaging, Twitter, My Space, Skype, Blogger, YouTube, Firefox, and Tivo. Some of those we have and some not.  Some that we have we know how to use some of and some, none of. I tweet, but I don’t text.  I have an ipod, but not an iphone. I browse, but I don't Skype.

As for the Tivo, ours is actually DVR, the Time Warner equivalent; but it doesn’t matter, we still haven’t gotten the hang of it yet.  A couple of times I have set it to record two programs simultaneously that I wanted to watch later. I didn’t know you couldn’t really do that.  In the middle of one of Tom’s ball games, the TV switched over to one of my programs and started to record the Emmy-nominated

number Fear from So You Think You Can Dance. There was great consternation until I could come in from the other room and figure out how to cancel one recording or the other so Tom could get back to his game.  Lesson learned.

Tom and I are caught in a kind of a time warp, especially when it concerns television. While he likes all current news programs and my guilty pleasures include reality talent shows, such as  
American Idol, and  So You Think You Can Dance, the shows we both really like to watch together are the old ones--Casablanca,  
The Wizard of Oz, Oklahoma, My Fair Lady, A Place in the Sun, Grapes of Wrath, To Kill a Mockingbird and so many others on
Turner Classic Movies.

And of course we love Opie, Aunt Bee, Gomer, Barney Fife, Thelma Lou, Otis, Andy and all the rest on the Andy Griffin Show. 

So we have found a use for the Tivo that we both can enjoy.  While our kids are tivoing Survivor, Big Brother, The Amazing Race, How I Met Your Mother, Tom and I are tivoing reruns of Lawrence Welk.

LESSONS FROM MY DAUGHTER 2

If you scratch Jeny, she bleeds green.  She is conscious of her family’s carbon footprint on the planet at all times.  She composts, plants a garden, recycles everything—glass, plastics, paper, clothes, toys, books. The family uses cloth napkins, one for each family member for three days, instead of stacks of paper ones.

We have been doing many of the same things for a long time, but Jeny always seems to be ahead of the curve. Just when I think I am doing pretty well, she will mention something that has yet to occur to me, or something I have thought about, but which has seemed too much trouble so far.

Both Jeny and I switched from plastic to canvas grocery bags long ago—with her leading the way. Tom and I bought a number of Publix bags and were off and running. For the longest time we had the bags, but would forget and leave them at home--in the house or in the garage--and be forced to use plastic again.  Finally we got in the habit of taking them back out to the car as soon as we emptied the trunk  and put up the groceries.  We felt really good about that. Problem was, we keep misplacing them.  We would leave one at Finlay Park when we went to feed the homeless on Sunday, or another at Penn Center at the church conference, or wherever……

I was complaining to Jeny one day about how much I was spending on replacing canvas bags because of our carelessness. “Mom, really! Are you buying canvas bags? There’s another whole way for you to think green!”  Well, that was sure beyond me.  What more could we do?  I was not quite willing to put the groceries into the car one by one without using a bag at all.

“Go to the middle bedroom and look in your closet”, she said. What was that all about, I thought? Clueless, I marched in and took a look.  There they were shoved up on the corner shelf.   The stack of empty, canvas bags I had collected from conferences, recently, and over the years.  C-Span, Trial Lawyers, The Democratic Party, Palmetto Health, Interfaith Alliance, Pro-Law, and, the most recent one from just two weeks ago, Robert Ford for Governor. All colors, all shapes, all sizes.  Waiting to be recycled. Waiting to be filled with groceries. 

Why hadn’t I thought of that? Another lesson from my daughter.   

LESSONS FROM MY SON 2

My Mother died a little over 3 years ago. Jeff wrote a piece about her and gave me permission to post it here.  

 You're never too old......

 Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Popmommy's Funeral

My last remaining grandparent, Popmommy, died last week at the age of 93 and we went to the funeral this past weekend.

Popmommy's eyesight and general health had declined in the past few years, but her mind had not. Everyone saw the end coming and all family and friends had been to visit her in the weeks before she died. Because everyone had already said their goodbyes and knew that Popmommy was ready to leave us, the entire weekend became a celebration of her life.

Here is Popmommy's obituary.

NEWNAN, Ga. — Elizabeth Cherry Davis, of Peachtree City/Newnan, passed away Wednesday, October 18, 2006, at home surrounded by family, three days after her 93rd birthday. Mrs. Davis, known to her many friends and family as “Lib” or “GG” or “Pop Mommy” was a Renaissance woman. She was born and raised in Estill Springs, Tenn., lived a large part of 

her life with her husband, Jack, in Birmingham, Ala., and spent her post-retirement years in the Peachtree City/Newnan area. She was a prolific reader who collected, over her lifetime, a wide spectrum of books that numbered in the many thousands. She was an exceptional bridge player for decades, having earned various masters points. Her reputation as a linguist, a crossword aficionado and a Scrabble player was well known. It was claimed by Scrabble opponents that she knew every word in the English dictionary. She could discuss at great length subjects as diverse as politics, sports, music, religion, classical and modern literature, history or the latest computer game. She was a successful businesswoman who held a number of management positions in the Birmingham area. In addition, she was the president of several service clubs and charities. She was a member of New Hope Baptist Church South in Senoia. However, her greatest joy came in seeing her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren grow and prosper. She was the matriarch of a large family that lives throughout the southern states. She is survived by son, Jim (Evelyn) Davis, of Newnan; daughter, Judy (Tom) Turnipseed of Columbia, S.C.; grandchildren, Dodd Davis of Greenville, S.C., Paige Mathis of Chattanooga, Tenn., Jeff Turnipseed of Columbia, S.C., Jeny Mathis of Atlanta, Matt West of Sharpsburg, and Melisse Fetherston of Sharpsburg; beloved niece, Libby (Tommy) Blair of Chattanooga, Tenn.; nephew, Mike Powers of Savannah; sister-in-law and brother-in law, Dorothy and Earl Brooks, of Hilton Head Island, S.C.; and 15 great-grandchildren, Haley, Zack, McCay, Zack, Jackson, Sarah, Madeline, Davis, Brooks, Elliot, Sam, Lauryn, Gunner, Tate and Philip.  

Friday, Cyndy and I drove 3 and 1/2 hours
to Peachtree City, an Atlanta 

Suburb for the Visitation. During the visitation, I asked my cousins if they remembered the scary puppet that had been at Popmommy's house when we used to visit in Birmingham growing up. The puppet was green with a black cape and top hat and one giant tooth. My cousin Paige replied, "Oh Mr. Sweet Tooth" and told me that she has Mr. Sweet Tooth now at her home in Chattanooga, Tenn.

Friday night we drove 45 minutes to my sister's house in Atlanta and spent the night.

Saturday morning we drove 45 minutes back to Peachtree City for the funeral. All 4 grandchildren were asked to speak about Popmommy.

I talked about how I had named Popmommy as a small child (She lived with my grandfather, "Pop", so the name seemed logical).

I talked about how fun it was to travel to Birmingham as a child because TV shows came on an hour earlier there and I described Mr. Sweet Tooth.

Popmommy loved to tell stories and she loved to tell me about some little frog toy that creeped me out as a child. Apparently the frog felt wierd and toddler Jeff would shiver when he touched it. Popmommy loved to tell me how they used to make me touch the frog, repeatedly, and laugh at me when I shivered. Popmommy told me the story, again, the last time I talked to her and she, again, laughed at the memory of creeping out her grandson and watching him shiver.

When I finished speaking and was walking back to my seat, my Uncle Jim, announced,

"I will give $1,000 for Mr. Sweet Tooth!"

My cousin Paige's husband, Michael, raised his hand and shouted "Sold!"

The funeral ended at noon and we had 4 hours to make it to the interment at the cemetary in Birmingham, AL, where my grandfather, Pop, is buried.

Cyndy and I rode with my sister Jeny and her husband, Gil. Gil and I were pallbearers. There was much discussion about where to eat on the way to Birmingham and how much time we had. Gil was craving fried Okra and insisted that we had time to eat at Cracker Barrel and that Popmommy would have wanted us to cut it close on the time and have an adventure.

After stuffing myself with country fried steak and fried okra, I fell asleep in the car.

When I woke, the adventure was in progress, as we had just reached Birmingham and had about 15 minutes to make it to the cemetary. We made it with 5 minutes to spare.

When it was all over, someone said that they had heard that Bear Bryant was buried in the same cemetary. I walked up to the three guys in the truck that was parked in the distance waiting for us to leave so that they could bury Popmommy. They confirmed that Bear Bryant was indeed buried in block 30, but we never went to look.

We drove 3 hours back to Atlanta and then 3 1/2 hours back to Columbia, arriving just before midnight.

Popmommy always told me "You are never too old/big to love your grandmother."

These were my last words to her.

LESSONS FROM MY DAUGHTER 1

Remember that great book by Robert Fulghum, "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten?" If you have never read it, do. It is on my top 20 list, which I will talk more about in later posts. But I digress.

The reason I brought it up is because I could write a book like that called "All I Really Need to Know I Learned From Jeny." Jeny is my daughter who lives in Atlanta with Gil and Davis and Elliot and Junie and Martin. Davis and Elliot are her girls. Junie and Martin are her dogs. Gil is her husband.

Jeny often says things with great conviction.  She analyzes situations; declares her stand on things firmly and has strong logic for her position.  For instance, she said she was never going to have dogs because they shed on the furniture; they aggravated, perhaps even caused allergies; they were dirty and I don't know what all else.

This year she changed her mind.  The family rescued Junie.  They liked her. Jeny gushed, like all new parents do. 

She placed pictures of Junie all over her facebook.  She sent pictures of Junie to the grandparents--almost as many as of Davis and Elliot.  Junie had a birthday party with all the neighborhood doggies as guests.  No, really.  There are pictures.

Junie needed a little friend and they have now rescued Martin.  He is as cute as Junie is.  He looks at least as much like a bunny as he does a dog.

I believe that they will live happily ever after.

The lesson I learned from Jeny here is that, truth be told, Ralph Waldo Emerson was right when he said  "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."  I love it when something I taught tenth graders in GREAT ESSAYS springs to life like that.

Jeny, you are so busted!