Thursday, January 24, 2013

Snippets

A friend turned me on to Lou Beach, and of course, besides loving the stories, I thought "what a great way to encourage myself to write when the little man is hogging all my time." 

So plagiarizing his original idea, here's installment number one: 

Momma would sneak goat's milk into the jug, pretend it was store-bought. The speckled hairs floating on the cream betrayed her every time. Frugal, she saw nothin' wrong with free, not even when chocolate syrup couldn't hide the taste of wild onions. 

Ah! Childhood memories. I stole this from a long-ago project. I think I was writing a "Southern Legitimacy Statement" for a submission. I don't believe I ever submitted the piece, but loved having fun with the cliches surrounding the South and country life in general. And of course, my own childhood has a lot to draw from, being oddly idyllic and idiosyncratic. Someday I'll have time to immortalize the best parts of it. Someday.

2 comments:

Laurie said...

Such a stretch of the truth... I ALWAYS strained the milk before I tried to trick you into drinking it. However, the onion/garlic flavor is true. It did make the best ricotta cheese, though.

Keep writing !!

Ellen said...

Mom- NOT a stretch of the truth. you "added" a little goat milk again and again until it barely had cows milk left in the jug.
And I was younger than Jenna- the fact that I remember is a testament to how I was traumatized.


Jenna- you need to have excerpts from family members for that book, I think!