Surprising Self-awareness and Tomato Buckets: A Carolina Weekend

What do they have in common? Not a whole lot, except they both made appearances during my weekend. Saturday night we went to a fortieth birthday party held in a garage way out in the country. I'm serious. For those of you not fully acquainted with southern culture, a large freestanding garage is a perfectly acceptable place to have a social gathering. The garage in question was 40 by 60 feet, so it is large enough to have a block party, if one was so inclined. Though to gather enough people to fill it, one would have to invite the county, not just the block. We were invited by the birthday boy, but we were among the few not related to the celebrant or to the neighbor who owned the garage. A bit awkward, but we had an ok time. We feasted on a whole mess of ribs and pork loin, perfectly cooked. And yes, south of the Mason-Dixon a "whole mess" is a perfectly acceptable and recognized unit of measurement.

People were drinking heavily, which was fine. I was driving us home, so I got to observe everything with cool detached sobriety, though less fun. The host of the gathering had this awesome grill he made out of a large metal holding tank. It was big enough to fit a whole hog on. He supervised the grilling and proceeded to get so wicked drunk that by the end of the party all he could muster up in response to others was to glare, as if to say "you dare to ask me to verbalize?" It was pretty interesting. Apparently the bursting garbage bag of just aluminum cans was mostly beer cans and mostly his. I feel a little sorry for his liver, but whatever. After we sat down to eat there was a late-arriving couple. I'm not sure who they were related to or even who they were, but he was one of the most colorful characters I've seen in a while. His slight slur and overly loud voice announced that he had already tossed back a couple, and he proceeded to tell the table next to us that he had tried to get his companion (wife or girlfriend, I don't know) to stop on the drive over because their was a dead pheasant on the road. She apparently refused because it was dead and bloated. He answered that "so what, it's a pheasant! With the feathers, all out like.." and then he motioned with his hands and fingers how a pheasant's feathers are, which apparently are similar to a showgirl's costume. He then did admit that it was, in fact long dead and bloated, but that would not have deterred him from putting it in the car with them. This gentleman made the social rounds while his significant other sat down and talked with some other ladies in attendance. When offered the ribs he loudly replied "I can't! AIN'T GOT 'NUFF TEETH!"

The rural population, much like the urban poor, have limited access to reliable dental care. They often have neither the financial resources, nor the means of conveyance. Coupled with the pitiful social outreach and education programs in the rural south and unflourinated well-water, people's teeth are often less then stellar. Unless someone is all up in your grill with their snaggly gaping mouth, it's not something we really even register any more. It's very sad, and the social activist inside me gets angry at the short stick the rural population often gets, but I digress. On with the story.

So after the meal, homeboy walks up to us and introduces himself to my husband and myself, he tells us his name and then announces "Whatever, I'm fat and toothless!" and laughs. We laugh cautiously, wide-eyed and trying not to look at each other, because how are you supposed to respond to that? Hello, self-awareness! Wow. It wasn't so much that he was tooLESS, as tooth-lacking, really, but you gotta love a guy that just puts that right out there with an introduction. He then yells to his wife/girlfriend "Hey honey, they want me! Hahahaha!" Thankfully, he was just joking playfully with us.

They also brought their dog to the party. A small one-eyed mutt whom he stated was named "Red Owl", though he slurredly kept calling her "Red Barn, I mean, Red Bird...RED OWL!" I wondered if I had stumbled into a Jeff Foxworthy act. But serioulsy, he was pretty funny in a cool way. I'm laughin with, not at.

Sunday we worked in our little yard. I tried to get rid of my farmer's tan and planted the herbs I started from seed in the ground. I got basil, tomatoes and sage. Two of the tomato seedlings I seperated a few weeks ago to try a little experiment I heard about a few years ago. You can supposedly grow tomatoes hanging upside-down in a bucket. The reason it's cool is that one, you don't have to worry about staking the plants up, and two, the plant is supposed to produce more tomatoes because it doesn't have to expend any energy in strong stalks to hold itself up. There is an added bonus in decreased pest damage since ground bugs can't get to it. So we give it a try.

We have a huge dead tree in our backyard. It has all of it's limbs cut off except one, and it looks suspiciously like a giant gallows. The husband purchased a variety of rope, pulleys, rope cleats (???), hooks, etc. He's so MacGuyver. We rigged up this contraption, risking life and limb (hehe) hooking it up twenty feet high on this limb. We made things as difficult as possible by taking off the existing handle because we thought it was too flimsy for the growing plant, dirt, and all the water it would hold. I followed the directions and packed the drilled hole with coffee filters to keep the little seedling from falling out until it got a stirdy root system. He even hooked a tether to the bucket and tied it off on the house, so that if a strong storm comes and the bucket gets blown away, it will take the house with it! Weee! Auntie Em! Auntie Em! It's actually just to keep the bucket and plant from bashing into the tree.

So here it is. Our masterpiece.