PS: This hyperlink should have appeared in the “well, a few might” parenthetical phrase.
Sampiro, you just might be this generation’s answer to William Faulkner, Harper Lee, Gore Vidal, etc. and any other novelist from the deep south. I don’t know how you do it, but this enormous thread has moved me to laughter, tears and rueful acknowledgement of my own family’s foibles. Like others before me, you MUST get this story published in a national magazine so others will recognize your genius.
When I first saw this thread, I didn’t read it.
Yesterday, seeing on this first page again, I clicked on it, wondering why it had risen to the top page again.
Except for a few hours for such nonessentials as eating and sleeping, I’ve spent the whole time since then sitting here mesmerized.
Sampiro, I’ll be in the line at the store waiting for the book as well.
Bravo!
No kidding, I can remember, clear as day, the commercials that ran for the Andalusia World Domino Championship when I was a kid. There’s this guy, looked like James Litpon, playing dominos, speaking with a fancy sounding English accent, detailing the event. You’d have thought it was the damned Queen’s birthday party, he made it sound so royal.
Never reallly thought much of Opp, other than it was between Mobile and Dothan. I had friends lived in Dothan.
I can’t speak for the validity of country critters with real blood, but I’m here to tell you that suburban cockroach ichor is utterly ineffective when used in this manner.
Wait a minute. Are you telling me there really is a Wacking Day? Do you want me to call Barry White?
I just found this thread for the first time last night. Bravo, Sampiro!
FWIW I don’t think putting these stories here on the SDMB will hurt their chances of publication later - not when every doper in this thread will be pushing their friends and family to buy the book the stories appear in. Most writers would pay for this kind of publicity.
So, logically, you really ought to write more stories, to keep your loyal doper fans hooked, dontcha think?
Every time I try to focus today, the word “Hacksaw” leaps into my brain, causing me fits of laughter.
Brilliant. Truely, awesomely brilliant. I will buy multiple copies of anything you get published, Sampiro. So glad this got bumped to the top!
Umm…truly…
Your public demands more, schnukieputz.
Please?
I’d like to know how many people had to look up ‘virago’. I haven’t seen a word of this sort since reading the delightful work of John Richardson (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice; Sacred Monsters; etc.)
Not me. Knowing your Broadway really does pay…
o/*Where is Fedora, the wild virago? It's lucky I missed her gangster sister from Chicago...*o/
-“Where Is The Life That Late I Led?”, Kiss Me, Kate
Showtunes I know. Coding…meh…
This Christmas’s only real morbid fascination was when we recalled the Naming of the Meat. My brother’s kids, a girl and a not girl 16 and 14 respectively, generally regard us (my mother, my sister, myself) as “country relations”, which is odd since they live in by far the smallest town of any of us, but they’ve grown up small-town rich so they have that type of snobbery happening, but anyway… I think tales of “the old ways” scares them a bit and especially seeing their father regress and convulse as we mention Grandmother and the aunts and the dead animals and the like, but what got them this time was that we called our meat by name.
“You actually took stuff out of the freezer by name?”
My mother: “Well it was the easiest way. You’d say 'hand me a flank steak- no that Huey, give me part of Minnie’s shoulder. Huey was too tough, he’s only really good for roast or cubed steak that you let set for an hour in the gravy. Minnie was just perfect.”
Nephew and niece: “That’s gross! How can you kill something if it has a name? And how do you know what cow it came from?”
Us: “We wrote it on the freezer paper. ‘Ground chuck- Danny’. That let us know it was a steer and specifically Danny, the big fat one, instead of skinny little Titus. And as for naming it, you had to name them since like as not they were all Holsteins or Herefords or whatever we were raising that year and that helped us sort them out so you didn’t have to say ‘Did you make sure that the third largest Holstein calf had food? Good’. A lot easier to say ‘Did you feed Bertha?’, and it seemed a lot more respectful too, and you really appreciated it once you named them because if Bertha was just really good and Danny was really tough then you knew which one to take out for company.”
Nep./Niece: “But… it’s just gross to know whose leg or rib you’re eating.”
Us: “Hell, the fact that I don’t know the name of the cow who gave us these steaks we’re eating today doesn’t make it any less dead animal flesh, and I’m pretty sure the animal didn’t die from stepping on a land mine or just grow another flank and say 'hey, would you be a dear and take this spare one off me? Thanks…”
My mother: “Besides, when you know the name of who you’re eating it makes for nice stories for that dinner’s conversation.”
The only other bad blood at all this Christmas is my sister, aka Our Lady of the Passing Fancy. When my brother said he was going to Orlando to see Auburn in the Capitol One Bowl she said “Oh, I wanna go! Any way you can get me some decent tickets?” He told her he’d look into it, but most of his usual sources were out. A few days later (yesterday), he called to tell her that he’d been able to snag a couple from a doctor who had a family emergency. They hadn’t been cheap, but they were really good seats. She told him “Oh, I’d forgot about that. I changed my mind. Sell 'em to somebody.” He ain’t happy.
Speaking of Auburn football, my niece (who has gone to Auburn homegames since she was a baby) was actually irritated when my brother told her he wasn’t going to pay for her to fly down and go to the home games when/if she moves north to go to college. According to him they had the following exchange while driving:
Brother: Damn girl, you always talking about how redneck you think we are and now you’re having a fit because I want pay for you to fly down and go to a college football game to a college you don’t even want to go to. You’re the biggest redneck of us all!
Niece: I am not a damned redneck! Daddy if you call me that again I’m gonna kick your damned ass!
As the saying goes (one that to my knowledge orinated with Brett Butler), “The cracker doesn’t fall far from the box.”
A quickie: My sister called me this morning with a business proposition. She and her husband went to the beach last night to break in the New Year and watch fireworks. It had drizzled most of the day and the fog was so thick they could barely see. When the fireworks started they could hear the blasts and see the colors and light, but it was very hazy and they couldn’t see the patterns of the fireworks in the fog.
She told me this story and asked me “So you see what I’m thinking? We could both make some money with this.”
I had to admit I was visionless.
“To me, that’s just a beautiful title for a book. FIREWORKS IN THE FOG. It could be all about how sometimes you can’t see something in detail even if it’s right in front of you, but you get the beauty and the essence of it. You write the book and you can use that title, and we’ll split the money. I’ll donate my share to charity.”
I think War and Peace and Fiddler on the Roof were born of similar deals, but unfortunately I’m too busy today to write a self-help book.
Classic!
HEY! You could actually start the book out with “It was a dark and foggy* night.”
Well, it should be stormy but maybe Sis wouldn’t understand that.
This has got to be the most ironic statement of 2006. Remind her she said this if you ever come out to her.
Vlad/Igor
I’m… uh… well… somewhere between squicked out and trying to regain my breath after reading this. If I needed a sig line I’d sooo be appropriating this right now.