What I Noticed in the Toy Kitchen Ad

I was flipping through a Costco catalog recently and came across the toy kitchen ad above.  It struck me as odd, and I spent some time studying it to see if I could figure out why it gave me that impression.  I decided the main thing that puzzled me is that the children seem so detached from any involvement with the kitchen.  The girl especially seems to simply be passing by.  She steadies herself by holding the countertop.  She is equipped with a cell phone.  Perhaps she is going to order a pizza and re-heat it in the microwave? The boy appears to be holding on to the back of the refrigerator with his right hand while he half-heartedly reaches for the handle of the refrigerator.   Both children may need to hold on to something because, if you notice their feet, they each have one foot turned on its side.  It's not a stance that lends itself to taking action.   It seems really odd to me that both children have their feet placed this way.

An alternative explanation of the detachment from activity is that the photographer needed the children out of the way to be able to showcase the kitchen.  However, this could have been overcome by showing the girl putting something in the sink and showing the boy in the act of filling a glass from the water dispenser in the refrigerator door--or many other options.

I decided to look at vintage ads for toy kitchens to see what I could learn by comparison.  I chose to study the one below.

Of course the pink appliances are noticeably different from the first picture and imply that the kitchen is the girl's/woman's domain, but the main thing I notice that is different from the modern ad is that each unit is open, implying active participation.  I can't tell if the girl's hand is actually touching the refrigerator handle, but the door is open, and she is holding something in her other hand--maybe a plate--definitely something to do with kitchen play.  She is clearly happily involved in her pretend world.   And look at her feet.  Both are flat on the floor.  I notice that she doesn't lean on anything.  After looking at her and seeing how upright she is, I recalled how good posture used to be emphasized to children.  I even remember being instructed in proper sitting posture in first grade in 1966, which included both feet being firmly planted on the ground.

With this insight, I went back and looked again at the children above with their turned feet.   I think the modern girl looks more confident than the modern boy.  She gets the more upscale outfit and shoes; he gets the sneakers and jeans.  The oversized untucked shirt gives him a soft look overall.  

Looking back at the pink kitchen, I notice the emphasis of time.  See the big clock above the stove?  This girl is going to get meals cooked on time.  She is productive.  I don't get that impression from the modern children.  

Maybe "hanging out" is the new play.

I Want a Divorce

from my cell phone.

Yes, O Best Beloved, the thrill is gone!

I am tired of alarming texts warning of the dire consequences of exceeding the shared data plan, sick of unsubscribing from unwanted emails, fed up with apps that constantly scream to be updated.  And quite  done with all the chargers, both A/C and D/C, that either cannot be found or work only intermittently.

I want out of this God-forsaken union, but I hadn't really seriously formulated that thought until the last month, when...

I began having, on an almost daily basis, random images of a 1970s olive green, rotary wall phone pop into my technology-tired brain.  It's not just floating in space, though.  In my mind's eye, I see it securely attached to the wall in my kitchen in the here and now.  I long for this phone like I do for a decadent slice of cheesecake after an especially fine meal.  It is a phone from my childhood.

I remember fondly the way it felt to insert my index finger into the rotary dial and turn and release it. I remember the soothing sound of it whirring back to its starting place, and I remember the luxurious leisure of having seconds elapse before I could dial the next digit in the phone number.

But can we really turn back the clock?  Or the rotary dial for that matter?  Can we ditch our iPhones and still function with the people who keep and use theirs?  I've been pondering this, and I am sure we can.  The question is, will the benefits of losing the mini 'puter outweigh the negatives? Of this I am not yet decided, because for one, pay phones used to be widely available.  If you had need  of one because, say, you had a flat tire on your way to the grocery store, there was one at every gas station and corner store.

Now I see none.

In those carefree days of the public pay phone, I would blithely leap into my car and motor away, feeling confident and complete.  To the grocery store and beyond!  With. No. Phone.

Now, if I forget it, I often turn around.  And I die a little inside.

So I daydream of the old green wall phone and about how I might leave my iPhone balanced precariously on the right front fender of my car sometime soon.

The taste of freedom is sweet on my tongue.

I Know What I'm Doin'

One of the best things about taking care of my parents is getting to hear bits about their lives that I would probably have missed otherwise.

Like tonight, out of the blue, my mom told me that her Grandma Thomley cooked fantastic meals on her wood stove and that she always had sweet potatoes baking in there.  She also said that Grandma Thomley picked cotton up until the year before she died at 92 or 93 and that she was a "go-getter."

"She cooked until she died," Mom said.  This gave me pause.  I wondered if I would even want to cook until I died.  Already at age 55, some days I am pretty tired of cooking.

Then Mom remembered that she and Dad stopped to visit Grandma Thomley early in their marriage, and she was cooking cornbread and talking with them.  My dad said, "You better pay attention to that cornbread," and Grandma Thomley said, "I know what I'm doin'," not snarky, just as a statement of fact, according to my mom.  She was in her 80s at the time.

Previously the only thing my mom told me about Grandma Thomley was that she lived in a dogtrot cabin and that when she spied my mama and her twin sister coming down the road to her house, she would start in making chocolate tarts for them, and they were the best chocolate tarts ever.  As background my mom had told me that the extended family always did their hog killing at the Thomley grandparents' home and that when my grandmother experimented with the new-fangled margarine that came out during the Great Depression, the kind you had to add artificial coloring to, my mother would resolutley walk to her grandparents' house to get real butter, because the margarine was nasty.  Some things never change!

Happy Birthday to Me!

49 years ago today, partying with my big sis, Bevy. See how I'm clasping my hands in excitement? I'm just as delighted today.

50 is going to be fun. I'm having a birthday slumber party! We're going to eat Mexican, drink Mexican (Margaritas, not Tequila with the icky worm), watch chick flicks, paint our nails, and TALK, TALK, TALK.

And my beloved husband had planned to spend the day with me and take me out on a date but instead is now going to milk for me and go elsewhere so that I can enjoy my comp'ny.

Is he not incredibly wonderful?

YES, INDEED!

Do I deserve him?

Certainly not.

On Thanksgiving

I give thanks for my Alabama ancestry and that connection that I feel with the land. I give thanks for my grandparents. How I miss them! They took me to "dinner on the ground", to pick messes o' peas on summer mornings, and to call on the sick in bare-walled houses with a single light bulb hanging down. I give thanks for all the time that we just sat together on the porch, sipping Dr. Peppers and rocking while we shelled butterbeans, snapped green beans, and shucked corn.



I give thanks for the rustic beauty of country living that I learned to love as a child.



And I give thanks for the profound luxury of getting to spend time as an adult with my Grandma Somerset: sleeping in the bed next to hers under half a foot of quilts, getting up in the morning and rushing to light the gas heater in the kitchen, then huddling together in front of it; cooking grits, eggs, and bacon while listening to the AM radio on the kitchen table; sitting on the piano bench together and singing from the old Broadman hymnal; listening to her tell me stories of growing up as a child bride under the loving care of her mother-in-law and fishing companion, Ma Set.

For all this and so much more, Father in heaven, I thank Thee!

Happy Birthday, John!

I love this picture of my husband and his younger brother John. They were born two years apart in Riverhead, Long Island. My mother-in-law says that she was frightened to death after John's birth, because she looked out her hospital window and saw her mother drive up in her Lincoln(?) convertible, with happy children hanging out everywhere. One of them was Herb. The rest were his young uncles.

I believe Herb's dad took this picture when he was stationed in Minot, ND. He had a darkroom in the basement. The basement also served as the boys' playroom. Bruce was born the year after John, so three little boys enjoyed a safe, warm place to play. Herb remembers that it was upstairs that John was chasing him and fell into a table, almost severing his tongue.

My favorite stories, though, come from the era of the truck camper. They often traveled for 30 days a year, visiting between grandparents in south Texas and Long Island.

The boys rode in the camper, separated from Mom and Dad in the cab. Uncle Dick and Uncle Hallie worked for the phone company and installed a phone system in the camper so that they all could communicate. It didn't take too much communication from the boys before Dad said that the phone had mysteriously quit working.

They loved to ride up top on the bed, which was located over the truck cab. There a window provided a panoramic view. When bored with that, they found other things. My innocent Herb suggested to his younger brothers that someone could fill the sink with water, then drain it, and any vehicle following the camper would be sprayed with water. John succumbed to this temptation, and the boys would rush to the door window to witness the surprise deluge. The fun turned to dismay when the vehicle receiving the car wash was a state police car. The policeman pulled alongside the camper with his windshield wipers going, shaking his finger accusingly at the occupants. Then he sped away. Dad promptly pulled over for a father-sons conference.

My Southern Inheritance

My use of the Southernism, "Well, I'll swan", in a recent post has dredged up more such good sayin's in my memory. Of course, "I'll swan" is just a short version of "Well, I'll swanee", but I'm sure you know that already.

One of the ones that I anticipated with great glee whenever I visited my Wicksburg, AL, relatives always surfaced when we were fixin' to go to town:

"Are we goin' to go on your car, Myra, or mine?" my Aunt Dessy would ask my grandma (Nanny).

At once the fearsome image of Nanny and her old maid cousin clinging to the rooftop of a Chivolay sedan, gray roller-set hair-dos flattened against the rush of hot, gnat-filled air, delighted my brain, and I would saucily retort, "Y'all go ahead. I'm ridin' in the car."

Why they didn't whoop the tarnation out of my upstart self, I'll never know. Instead, they just blessed my cotton-pickin' heart.

If a gnat or two pestered us inside the car, Nanny would tell me to "crack the winder" to let it out.

"Proud" meant overwhelmingly happy. "I'm just so proud you came to see me!" Nanny would declare, arms outstretched to me as I hurried across the breezeway to her embrace.

My favorite use of the word "hungry" is when it means "to long for." That poor word never got a moment's rest but trotted briskly through the day hauling meaning for my kinfolks.

Aunt Dessy frequently told me the story of my childless Nanny and Papa going to adopt my mama and her twin sister shortly after they were born. The critical part of the story for me began with a description of how "Your Nanny and your Papa were hungry for some babies!"

Nanny never baked biscuits; She "fixed a baker o' biscuit".

Daily conversations were liberally punctuated with "Holy Hannah!", "Lord, help us and save us!" and "Law, law!", which I guess must be Southern for "Lord, Lord!" because there was a variation, "Lawsie mercy!", that I can only decipher as some version of "Lord, have mercy."

The triplets of secular Southern interjections: "You don't mean it!","I'll declare!", and the aforementioned, "Well, I'll swanee!" rounded out the basic vocabulary.

I used to tease my mother that she could hold down her end of a 20-minute phone conversation with my Aunt Sandy (who was born and raised up in Goshen, AL) with just that short list of indispensable Southern conversation spices and extracts. I'm sure that's why Southerners invariably are good listeners. Their pantries overflow with ingredients guaranteed to flavor any conversation with heartfelt empathy.

My Somerset relatives in Troy, AL, nurtured their own little sayings and peculiar words. First, "Pshaw!" was a cane on which my Grandmother Somerset leaned heavily in conversation. Then for really important stuff, she set out her best, "Good gracious alive!"

I loved to "hear tell" of how she miscarried her first baby when she and "some town girls went up on the ridge to pick flowers, and it come up a cloud."

One Troyism that I rarely heard but adored was the word "larapin", used to describe something bodaciously wonderful tasting, like Pauladene's fried apple pies, Aunt Lizzie's sweet potato pie or Grandma's Lane Cake.

Then there was "the river swamp", as in, "We spent the night down by the river swamp, fishin' and settin' around the fire." Hearing it always thrilled tingles into my spine. Surely vicious animals with large, glowing eyes prowled the shadows of such a place.

And that is how my Southern inheritance continues to bless me. I am the beneficiary of a wealth of words that I can never use up, of a love that I still feel from deep in the heart o' Dixie.

High Impact Art

When my husband lived in Alexandria, LA, as a boy, he attended St. Francis Xavier Academy. (photo above) Although he was enrolled for just third and fourth grades (1966-67, 1967-68), the nuns made a huge impact on him.

He vividly remembers looking at art masterpieces on glass slides in the attic. Additionally, the nuns would pass out art prints, and each student would have to write a story to go along with the picture. Herb liked one of the prints so much, he took it home and showed it to his mother. He asked her to paint one like it for him, and she did.



While Herb was in Amsterdam last week, he visited the Rijksmuseum. He was overwhelmed by Rembrandt's "The Night Watch", mesmerized by Vermeer's "The Milkmaid", and haunted by Hals's "The Merry Drinker"--haunted because it reminded him of something he had seen before but could not place. He finally realized that it reminded him of the picture that he had asked his mother to duplicate for him. After some quick research, he found that the artist is the same. The painting he had loved as a boy at St. Francis Xavier was Hals's "Jester with a Lute".

That Revolutionary Year

We got air conditioning, kindergarten, and integration at my Florida public elementary school in 1968-69. I was in the third grade, and for me, the anticipation of the black students' arrival was much greater than that of the window unit. I was used to heat and humidity. I wasn't used to black children. The addition of the kindergarten meant my little sister would be joining me and my big sister at school.

Integration turned out to not be such a big deal, although we did get one boy who fascinated me with his loud humor and his earthy knowledge of human relationships. My little sister's kindergarten class actually shocked me, because when I went by there one day the young teacher was playing a song on the record player called "Sweet Blindness", and all the children were dancing around to it. If you're not familiar with it, here are the lyrics:

Let's go down by the grapevine
Drink my daddy's wine, get happy
Down by the grapevine
Drink my daddy's wine, get happy

Happy, oh, sweet blindness
A little magic
A little kindness
Oh, sweet blindness
All over me

Four leaves on a clover
I'm just a bit of a shade hungover
Come on, baby, do a slow float
You're a good looking riverboat
And ain't that sweet eyed
Blindness good to me

Let's go down by the grapevine
Drink my daddy's wine, good morning
Down by the grapevine
Drink my daddy's wine, good morning

Morning, oh, sweet blindness
A little magic
A little kindness
Oh, sweet blindness
All over me

Please don't tell my mother
I'm a saloon and a moonshine lover
Come on, baby, do a slow float
You're a good lookin' riverboat
And ain't that sweet eyed
Blindness good to me

Don't ask me cause
I ain't gonna tell you
What I've been drinking
Ain't gonna tell you
What I've been drinking
Ain't gonna tell you
What I've been drinking
Wine, of wonder
Wonder by the way

Oh, sweet blindness
A little magic
A little kindness
Oh, sweet blindness
All over me

Don't let daddy hear it
He don't believe in
The gin mill spirit
Don't let daddy hear it
He don't believe in
The gin mill spirit

Come on, baby, do a slow float
You're a good looking riverboat
And ain't that sweet eyed
Blindness good to me

Blindness, sweet eyed blindness
Now ain't that sweet eyed
Blindness good to me

I had gone to a Christian kindergarten where I memorized all the presidents in chronological order and learned to sing "I'm a Little Teapot" with hand motions. So, even though I was only in third grade, I was not too young to be shocked by the difference.

Now I know that revolutionary things were happening throughout the culture, in the Church especially. I read on Rorate Caeli that "Pope Montini gave a great gift to the rebellious wing of the Church: on Holy Thursday, 40 years ago, he imposed (or at least attempted to impose) upon the whole Latin Church a completely New Mass, a liturgy much to the liking of the rebels. His own Roman Mass, promulgated by the Apostolic Constitution "Missale Romanum" - the second major step, after Pontificalis Romani, in the fabrication of a new Roman Rite."

On Holy Thursday in 1969 I was probably sitting in my third grade class, memorizing my multiplication tables, practicing cursive, and reading about the Laplanders, completely unaware of this huge upheaval in the Church and the dramatic consequences it would have on the whole world. I wasn't Catholic. If any of my classmates were Catholic, I wasn't aware of it.

My teacher, Mrs. H, was old fashioned, and I loved her for it. She had a calming low voice with a "deep in the heart of Dixie" accent. She prayed with us before lunch every day, and I remember always admiring the full, well-below-the-knees skirt of her dress as our class followed her to the cafeteria. At that point, we girls were still required to wear dresses to school, but I didn't have any with a big skirt like the ones she always wore. I loved the way they moved as she walked. They were really out of style at the time, but I didn't know it. Mrs. H's car was out of style too: a 50s or very early 60s Oldsmobile with tremendous curves and flares and lavish chrome. She read to us every day after lunch. Two books stand out: Paul Bunyon and Brer Rabbit. She did the best Brer Rabbit voices and dialect I've ever heard.

I carried a part of Mrs. H away with me at the end of that school year. I think that was her goal. It helped sustain me as the revolution progressed.

A Place of Enchantment

Author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings said that everybody needs a place of enchantment. I knew just exactly what she meant, because I had one and still go there--in my memory.

Miss Rawlings was talking about her Florida farm at Cross Creek. I did not grow up on a farm, but for most of my childhood, our house was the last one in a line of waterfront homes. The Florida woods adjoined it, a magical wilderness to me and my two sisters.

In the summers I would pack a lunch, a fishing pole, my cat, and a book and spend the day adventuring in our rowboat. I made stops at my favorite tree, a giant Magnolia that overhung the water and had the most lovely branches for reading benches. My cat liked it up there, too. A wicked girl, I enjoyed pelting unsuspecting skiers with the seed pods, which were the size of my palm.

Sometimes I followed a trail from the tree to an old abandoned homestead, the Crowder place. I dug up many treasures there. I remember particularly the small glass milk bottles. I took one to school for a craft project, and it sits now in our hall bathroom, a strange artifact encrusted with fragments of gold-painted egg shell. Better than the archaeological digs, though, were the rusting hulks of ancient vehicles that dotted the yard. I sat on the springy seats, gripped the huge steering wheels and drove, often pretending to be a delivery man.

Back in the boat, I rowed toward Gap Creek, stopping to frolic on the sandbar that guarded the entrance under the bridge. The water from the creek was clear and cold, the Florida sun bold and bright. I can close my eyes now and feel the minnows "nipping" at my ankles, see the tiny hermit crab trails in the sand alongside my feet. Reeded islands concealed duck nests. I was in another world here, but I could still see our house across the water. That changed as I rowed under the bridge.

The creek was narrow and winding; the trees blocked the sun, and it was often a struggle just to maneuver the boat, often forcing me to pull in the oars, making an "x" across my torso. There were houses along the creek, but I hardly ever saw anyone. Better still, the houses were individualistic, some dilapidated, and I often had the delicious sense of being right on the edge of an unknown danger. Once, upon rounding a curve, I came face to face with a decaying duck that was hanging from a tree by a fishing line, the hook in its throat. Looking at it, I could feel the barbs in my own throat, feel the slow agony of dying suspended above the water. Though I was hot, goosebumps pricked my arms.

Faced with this horror, I turned the boat, exited the creek, and pushed my oars deep into the open water, reveling in my strength as I pulled back and the boat shot forward. Home. I was headed home--to the safety of my own shore, my own backyard, my own family.

Home was the real place of enchantment.

To Syrup with Love

When I was a kid, the big event on Saturday mornings was Dad mixing up Bisquick pancakes. I suspect that he enjoyed doing this because we had a blender built into the counter. It was 1960s high-tech, like our intercom system and central vacuum. If he had had to mix them up with a hand-held electric mixer, I don't think he would have done it. But the blender was cool, and my sisters and I appreciated the novelty of having Dad cooking on something other than the charcoal grill. He poured the batter out on the griddle that occupied the middle of Mama's big electric range. Perfectly browned and delivered to our plates, we poured on the Alaga cane syrup. It was strong, dark, and yummy, and I loved studying the label, which featured hands clasping in front of a sheaf of wheat. These hands represent the joining in marriage of the company founder, Louis Whitfield, with his true love, Willie Vandiver. He was a Georgia boy, and she was an Alabama gal. Miz Willie coined the company name and designed the label to reflect their personal story. If you think that sounds awfully sweet for a commercial label, read the story here. The company is still in business in its Montgomery, AL, birthplace.

When I went to visit Nanny and Papa, my maternal grandparents, Nanny would cook the best-ever French toast for breakfast. Before she started, though, she always made sure and told me what a "good bedfeller" I had been the night before. This was an essential step to the whole French toast experience. Nanny cooked the French toast on a square alumnium skillet and would serve it, steaming hot, on a pale yellow plate that had a picture of wheat in the center. The slices of toothsome perfection glowed golden on that yellow plate and shimmered under a thick coating of refrigerated light Karo syrup. The contrast of the hot French toast with the cold syrup charmed my tongue, closed my eyes, and demanded that I hold that bite and SAVOR the goodness. Estblished in 1902, Karo became famous in the 1930s when the wife of a Karo corporate sales executive created the recipe for pecan pie.

Now my Grandma Somerset, she didn't hold with any fancy stuff, but she knew tricks that made a little girl's heart glad. She would bake a batch of biscuits and say, "Let's have some "Pokey Hole" biscuits, and gleefully, I would jab an index finger into a hot biscuit and fill the resulting well with a liquid column of Yellow Label syrup. Grandma's was the only place I ever had Yellow Label. That made it extra special. My dad always told me that during the Depression they ate salt cod with syrup for breakfast. I bet the syrup was Yellow Label. As good as it was, I doubt it could make him look forward to the salt cod. Yellow Label is a honey-based syrup that was bought by the Alaga company in 1975.

Now I cook a lot of waffles, pancakes, and biscuits for my children, but Nathaniel and Emma only like mild-tasting syrups. Not me. I still get hungry for something that can make my tastebuds stand up and salute. You know that's cane syrup. Luckily, during the many years that we lived in Louisiana, I discovered Steen's syrup. Mr. C.S. Steen established his syrup business in 1902 to salvage his frozen cane crop. Steen's still uses the same recipe today. It reminds me of the Alaga from long ago. I love to slice open day-old biscuits, spread them with soft butter, douse them with Steen's and warm them in the microwave until the butter is flowing like a river through the syrup. I also stir it into my coffee with some half 'n' half. Yum!

Papa, I Can Hear You

Although he died while I was still in high school, my maternal grandfather, whom we called Papa, has been with me every day for a fortnight.

Several times a day, he has been telling me, "Be pa-tickler".

It was his favorite thing to say to us "grandchillun" as we left his country store in 1960s and early 1970s Wicksburg, AL. Translated from the Wiregrass dialect of that region, it becomes "Be particular". It is a deceptively simple admonishment.

Soberly, I have pondered his advice and why he has chosen this time to advise me.

Papa, I think I understand.

"Be pa-tickler" is the opposite of "Don't discriminate". It tells me to be discerning about everything that I do; it is an antidote to relativism. When the radio, the TV, the movies, the internet all scream, "Anything goes," Papa whispers:

"Be pa-tickler."

Studying the Tea Leaves of My Past

Lew Rockwell has a link to this article on the anniversary of the tea bag. I confess that I have always taken the tea bag for granted. I never considered when its use became widespread or why.

My Hall's teapot has an infuser, but I just stuff a bag inside it. I guess my tea habits are a trifle on the unsophisticated side.

I haven't been a morning tea drinker since I was a teen. At that time I converted my bedroom into a sitting room, complete with a wicker "tea" table from my grandma's house. I purchased a blue and white Japanese tea set from an import shop and eventually collected the matching openstock dinnerware. Every morning before school I would have my mother join me for green tea. It seemed perfectly normal to me then. Now I realize the truth. I was a strange child. Mom never let on, though. What a good sport! And she had probably had three cups of coffee before she "took tea" with me. She kept an electric percolator on her vanity, beside the makeup mirror. I guess she had to fortify herself before she could step out of her bedroom each morning. Being the mother of teenaged girls during the '70s demanded regular fortification.

Nowadays I usually sip coffee from a plain old white Corelle mug. All of my style comes from what I add to it. I don't go for any of the exotic additives that you'll find at Starbucks. My two favorites are Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk and Steen's cane syrup. One or the other, mind you. If I'm doing Steen's, I add half 'n half. My hair may be limp, but my coffee has body!

Precious Mem'ries, How They Render!

My big sister Beverly recommended that I visit a blog she just discovered called Homesick Texan. She found it while searching for a good refried bean recipe.

Well, as usual, she was right. I really like this blog. I read the strawberry shortcake post, then scrolled down and found How to Render Lard http://homesicktexan.blogspot.com/2008/05/how-to-render-lard.html

Homesick Texan mentioned how repulsed she was at first by the mere idea of lard, a.k.a. pig fat.

Immediately I had a Vietnam-era flashback!

I was standing in the midst of a warzone, only it wasn't in Vietnam, it was an oh-so-nasty, burned-out, trashed-up trailer, not far from my childhood home in Ft. Walton Beach, FL. I was about ten years old, and I was staring in fascinated horror at a gallon jar clearly labeled "LARD".

I think Beverly was with me; we trespassed regularly in those days in search of adventure. At any rate, I know I returned to this dump--ooooh, yuck! I just had a smell memory--just for the cheap but delicious thrill of seeing THE LARD JAR one more time.

Thank goodness I grew up in a neighborhood without zoning! Otherwise my life might have been as bland as original Crisco.

Good, Good, Good Vibrations!

I wrote the little ditty below a long time ago to commemorate one of the rare occasions when we got Mom to the beach. Though we lived in Ft. Walton Beach, FL, Mom didn't like the beach because the sand would hitchhike in your swimsuit and make a mess in the house when you got home. Sand in the house was strictly verboten! This is an early '70s memory when muscle cars like the GTO prowled the streets sucking down the cheap, cheap gas. My sisters and I loved the Healey, though. I think it was a '61 3000. It was black with a red interior and a gorgeous wooden dash. It had four seats and the engine featured the infamous SU carburetors that required Dad to "tweak" them regularly.

Summer Saturday in the Austin-Healey

Dad's got on his sunshades,
Mom has dawned a scarf.
The top is down on the little car
And we will soon be off.

We girls will sit on the trunk,
With just our feet in the seat,
Waving just like beauty queens
We're going to the beach!

Today I am sure that we would be arrested long before we got to the beach. We not only weren't wearing seatbelts (I don't think the Healey even had any), we weren't wearing a seat!

Background information from Wikipedia: The Austin-Healey 3000 was a sports car built from 1959 to 1967, by the Austin-Healey marque, and is the best known of the 'big' Healey models. The 3000 was a successful car which won its class in many European rallies in its heyday - and is still used in competition by enthusiasts today. The car was originally to be called the "Mille Miglia" after the famous sports car race, but the displacement-based "3000" name stuck instead. Both the 3000 and the 100 before it were known simply as "the Austin-Healey" in the 1950s, since the company was essentially a single-vehicle marque.

The original Austin Healey 3000 was 2912 cc (nearly 3 litres), with twin SU carburetors and front disc brakes. It was only called the Mark I after the Mark II was released. The original 3000 was built from 1959 - 1961 and has model designation BT7 (4 seat version) and BN7 (2 seater).

The 3000 Mk II came with triple SU Carburetors was built 1961 - 1963 and had model variants BT7 (4 seater version), BN7 (2 seat roadster) and BJ7 (wind up windows rather than side curtains).

The 3000 Mk III was launched in 1963, and remained in production until 1967.

The Series BJ8 was the most powerful and luxurious of the big Healeys - with a Walnut veneer dash, wind up windows, and 150 hp (112 kW).

Austin Healey 3000's have a long competition history - having raced at most major racing circuits around the world, including Sebring (USA), Le Mans (France), and Mount Panorama Circuit, Bathurst (Australia).