Posts Tagged ‘pop-tarts’


April

Jimmy crack corn. Yep. Jimmy crack corn and I… don’t… care.

Brunette curls shook as she leaned back – elbows on a Caribbean blue beach towel bought last summer on Bermuda’s north shoreline – and laughed.

You remember that?  Remember?

Not hard to forget.  Four? Five?

I think it was five.  Think.

Toes, pedi’d to a French cut less glossy clear coat, wriggled free of their temporary prison, shooting maroon nails out of sand like a time-lapse garden of croci in April.  Bridgette brought her feet up to the towel, lightly shook off what dark Georgian sand she could, and set them on the towel.

The absolute deadpan delivery. It would have shocked me no less if she had spilled “Jimmy cracked corn and I personally could give a rat’s ass less.”

Crack his fucking corn all over town for all I care.

The laugh warmed over bounced across loudly enough she must have heard.  Had to have heard.  Hermit crabs scurried for cover, leaving their sidled prints along freshly dampened sand.

photo by Daniel Agee.  all rights reserved.

photo by Daniel Agee. all rights reserved.

I know.  It was amazing.

And a foretelling.

No damn kidding.

Sodas only today.  Sunday.  They weren’t religious by any means.  A passerby on the road of their own life, if given a slice of their time to observe, would declare them as laissez faire naturalists.  Not naturists.  Not that strolling about naked would have necessarily bothered them, they just preferred not.

They ate raw.  Feeling a need to void themselves of as much processed sugar and corn syrup as humanly possible in the United Sates of America, they consumed organic raw vegetables and fruits.  Generally they preferred to grow their own, but every climate had specific foods it grew well and those it did not.  Georgia did well for a lot of sustenance (read peaches and onions) but almonds, a family staple, were not one of them.  Neither were fair trade grapes or coffee for that matter.

Whenever neighbors would invite them over to a barbecue bash, they wouldn’t turn their noses up at any meat offered.  The occasional slaughterhouse cow or pig was tolerable (although when they got home their stomachs, not used to grease and fat, would often purge).  They would delicately express their desire for a non-sauced slice of domestic meat to avoid, again, processed sugar and corn syrup.

Bridgette shifted, swinging her left leg over her right to face Dan.  Her eyes sparkled him.

Can you see?

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Charlie’s Whiskers

Cold oatmeal.  Charlie made it hot on the stove, taking the familiar blue-hat red box, dropping a ½ cup into the old-fashioned oats, grain dust popping a static-cling to the cup’s edge.  Indiscriminately, he dropped a cup of water into the copper-clad pot along with the oats.  A quick stir, he set blue flame to medium.

Once blue lit up, Charlie set about putting together the rest.  Fresh fruit of the season, this time of the year embracing apples, would litter oatmeal.  Slicing a Granny Smith thin, he set it aside, piling up the pieces side-by-side ground cinnamon and honey.  Almonds remained whole.

photo by Daniel Agee.  All rights reserved.

photo by Daniel Agee. All rights reserved.

Can’t stand slices or slivers.  Can’t stand processed chop.

Rosy listened to him.  Not too intently as she knew no matter what, no oatmeal was coming her way.  An occasional apple slice flew off the counter.  Charlie’s eyes couldn’t follow the tawny piece as it hit the oak.  Less a prize than a function of being the house vacuum, Rosy stealthily snatched it up before Charlie could turn.

William Penn stated two minutes, but two was a standard.  Charlie had been told many years ago the face on the box couldn’t be William Penn, but the person bloated with useless information informing him of this fact was not one Charlie ever took to heart.   Other than Grade A semen, his former father-in-law, a divorce attorney good enough to get married four times and never lose any property, was essentially useless. Partial to pomposity, the man taught Charlie one essential lesson – those who insisted on being the center of attention often corner themselves with audacious inaccuracy.

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