Garrett, Vicksburg Tomato Sandwiches and other nonsense...

Grandson Garrett Rigby
HInds County Gazette
Christiansen's Comments
June 26 2008

It is nice to be back…Actually I haven’t been anywhere…..but I have been quite busy ….stretched out. Don’t ask me doing what?”, because, I would not be able to tell you, not without getting up from this computer and taking a look at my journal.
For one thing, Grandson Garrett graduated from high school, he graduated from Madison Central…with 400 hundred other kids! The graduation ceremonies were held in Jackson! At the coliseum! My brain went to calculating what a mob of folks that event would be generating….parents, grand parents, siblings and friends…the parking would be a nightmare…It would take forever before it was his turn to be handed a diploma… …. he would be getting his toward the very end…..his last name is Rigby!
I said all of that to say…. I didn’t go to his graduation…I bought him off…I told him I would come or I would give him money….he took the money. Grandson Philip graduates next year…I shall be giving him the same option. You are appalled aren’t you?
I didn’t go to his graduation but we have been spending some time together, mostly eating out…Soon Garrett will be headed up north to Ole Miss.
I have been making more cement leaves to take to the Clinton farmers market in August or September.
Oh! Oh!! I got a new saw!!! So I have been in the shop playing with it…..I love my new saw! I may have some birdhouses to take to the market too….we will see.
And I have been picking my garden….so far it has been three jalapeno peppers.
Mike and Trey Latham came by the other day and gave me some tomatoes…I ran in the house….sliced one up and was eating a tomato sandwich, before they got out of the drive way good…..I stood over the sink and ate three tomato sandwiches before getting back to work……I was sooooooooooooo glad I had a loaf of very fresh white bread. That healthy, whole grain, full of fiber bread, does not make the cut when it comes to a tomato sandwich….Do you think?

At the risk of my being culinary controversial, once again, (I am still reeling from the ambrosia fiasco), I shall tell you how I assemble my tomato sandwiches…the ones I stand over the sink to eat….Bread, tomatoes and salt….No mayo. But the dainty tomato sandwiches, I make for charming southern ladies, I, of course use the Vicksburg Tomato Sandwich recipe from the Junior Auxiliary of Vicksburg’s cookbook, Ambrosia……one exception, here comes the controversial part I fear, I begin the sandwich by buttering the bread.
Call if you need me.
Isn’t that something about the store bought tomatoes? having salmonella? You all, I am far more concerned about the harm we have inflicted on our water and food supply then I am about global warming.

Garbage

Hinds County Gazette

Christiansen's Comments

HCG May 29 2008
Over the years I have become somewhat, I don’t know, ashamed, isn’t quite the word I am looking for, self-conscious, might be better a bit better word, about my garbage, trash, rubbish what ever you want to call it. I just have so blooming much of it.

I feel bad about our over capacity land fills…I just hate adding to the dilemma…but I can’t help it…. everything you buy has at least three times more packaging then necessary to contain the article. I suspect the reason the packing is so expansive is so, they have more room to tell us how tasty, healthy, safe, or useful their item is…they don’t use it to give us coherent directions on how to use the apparatus that’s for sure.

Does it seem to you that the more environmentally aware we become the worse the problem gets? This is how trash was handled in Palisade Nebraska when I was growing up. First of all I don’t remember there being that much of it, there was no paper towels, plastic bags, no cling wrap…might have had been some foil, but mostly I remember waxed paper…. milk came in glass bottles when empty they were set out on the porch and fresh milk in sparking clean bottles were left in their place….water was not bought in bottles, it was fine out of the tap….Soft drinks did not come in cans but returnable bottles. Flour came in cloth bags, the cloth bags were then made in to tea towels….Grease, lard, came in metal buckets, they were reused for storage, lunch buckets, sand pails etc…Even egg shells and coffee grounds were not thrown in the trash They were placed around mother’s flowers.

Cardboard boxes, I do not recall many of those ether…when the groceries were delivered they often were in a cardboard box…If they were clean and big enough mother stored blankets and winter clothes in them. If they were real big boxes we kids went to the car bridge flatten them out, sat down on them and slide down the concrete embankment,

Food was not often dumped because of spoilage or just too much of it…something ate it. If we didn’t, the dog did…I think there might have been commercial dog food, but I as I remember our dog ate mostly table scraps….And stale bread was pitched out the back door for the birds.

There was a garbage can in the kitchen, it was neatly lined with newspaper or a big brown paper bag from the grocery store was sat down in it….no plastic bag that ties neatly…just the paper. But when it became full it was carried to the alley and placed in a 50 gallon barrel and when the barrel was full it was incinerated.
You all, I don’t even remember taking out the trash as a daily chore.

Now, if you had things that were to just big to burn in the trash barrel, old broken furniture all such as that…you took it to the city dump and pushed it out….while you were there of course, you poked around in the piles of other peoples cast offs…sort of an early form of dumpster diving….people throw away some pretty neat things….we did not call it that back then but when we took a "Find" home it was “recycling”.

There was an odor at our town dump….it was mildly disagreeable…But not bad enough to cause you to commence gagging. But that was before disposable diapers…back in the days baby dodo was flushed. About the worse I ever smelled was chicken guts and feathers and they didn’t smell all that bad until they were burnt. That’s what happened when the dump got full they burned the garbage and what did not burn they buried….and it started all over again.

Trash day when I drive down the streets of Edwards, I rarely see a pile bigger then mine except after Christmas. I have had so much trash I was too embarrassed to put it all out in one week…caught my self just putting out half…That does not work, I had three as much the next week.

I know you have all seen this, one little plastic shopping bag, handles tied in a knot, placed at the end of a drive way. …That is a week’s trash! How do they do that?

I said all of that, to say this…for years I have had a garbage goal. That being, for me to confine a week’s trash in one garbage can, and have it neatly topped with its lid.


Last week, I achieved that goal!!!!! Yeah!!!! So now I can hold my head high and look even the most hard core environmentalist in the eye.


I know you are just thrilled I shared my garbage with all of you.
Call if you need me.

About the picture..it is of this weeks garbage..I did not take a picture of last week's garbage ...the one where I was able to place the lid on the can... as you can see, I was unable to repeat last week's garbage success...but honestly this is not bad for me...I usually have much more.

Farmers Market Clinton Mississippi And Gordon Cotton

This picture of Gordon Cotton was taken several years ago at a dinner on the grounds at the Old Lebanon Presbyterian Church.
My first Market!!
This was my selling space at the market...I need to work on my merchandising skills...Next time I will do better

Another view of the market...

there was near 30 vendors...all did well!

May 22 2008
Hinds County Gazette, Christiansen’s Comments
I have had a revelation!!!….You know those old ladies that wear the white socks with their sandals, you probably thought they didn’t know any better didn’t you? So did I, until quite recently , but it is not that they don’t know any better, it’s not that at all…they simply do not care how it looks…I know because I have begun doing the same tacky thing….The mornings have been holding a chill, so I put on socks, and slip into my faux Crocs….but as the day warms up, I change to a more airy sandals but I do not pull off my socks…Too much trouble.

I took some of my cement leaves to sell at the Farmer’s Market in Clinton Saturday; I was wearing the much maligned socks and sandals ensemble…. However I don’t know as many folks noticed, because all of my white socks were in the laundry basket with the rest of last week’s dirty clothes. so I put on a pair of John’s heavy dark hunting socks to keep my feet warm….I left my black faux Crocs in North Carolina and the bright green ones, I wear to do my outside work are hopelessly soiled…so I slipped my socked feet in to my sandals, and off I went. The Sandals were Clarks. The Clarks I am thinking may make my tasteless choice in foot wear a bit more palatable… I did pay full price for them…..but the shipping was free!

New thought…
Awhile back I received through the mail, an article, when my eyes landed on it, immediately my gut told me, what I was holding, in my hand, was a genuine relic. As I was staring down at it I went to wishing I had saved a few of them….Thousands passed had through my hands over the years…I envisioned them framed, hanging in the hall….Lighted like art.

It is strange isn’t it, how we do not notice change? Not until whatever it is completely gone…. I guess it happens so slowly that we do not notice its leaving.

What I was holding was a letter… the address had been typed on a real typewriter… I knew who had sent the relic…it could have only been one person, Gordon Cotton, he had told me he does all of his book and newspaper writing, the old fashion way, on a typewriter. He and I do occasionally correspond, but up until this letter, his notes had been hand written.

I ripped open the envelope to see if the message was typed too. It was! I feel I have custody of a remarkable piece….In this age of cyberspace, text messaging and email, a handwritten letter is becoming less common, but a typewritten letter, they are rare to the point of extinction….
.
I would not have thought you could still buy ribbon for typewriter…I do see old typewriter occasionally in peoples homes…but not as a utilitarian functioning machine…but as decorative/ conversation pieces..

I will not call my friend, Gordon Cotton, a relic…But I could with out fear of reprisal from him…he would almost certainly think it a compliment, indeed a term of endearment. Mr. Cotton is not unlike the artifacts pulled from our Southern soils. Gordon southern roots run deep…Born of the south, and barring an act of God, will die contented in the woods of Warren County, down Campbell’s Swamp Road where his life began.
Love to all