Column/Blog responses and BLTs

 

             Fellow Amity (AR) STANDARD columnist Bill White asked the other day if I received any response from readers. “No,” I answered. “Not from the newspaper readers.”

             But on each week’s publication day (Thursday), I email the column to those not in the reading areas of Clark, Pike, and Montgomery counties, who’ve said they’d like to see it—family and friends. And I DO garner responses from them.

            After the email, I edit it, taking out all mention of the newspaper/editor May, etc. and post it on my prose blog, “pittypatter-pittypatter.blogspot.com. then share it to Facebook. I also receive short comments in that venue.

            So, I suppose I lied to Mr. White, though unwittingly.

            Here is one email response (edited) from poet-friend Dennis. The title: “Four and twenty blackbirds.”

             “ . . . I came home [from an errand] . . . to the aroma of what I hoped was dinner. As I walked into the living room, Frieda came around the corner of the kitchen and said I had scared her. She was munching on something and as she gave me a quick kiss asked what that kiss tasted like. I was near enough to the kitchen to give a quick glance for a hint of what I should say and saw it sitting in the far corner near the still-hot stove. A pear cake, make from windfall pears received as a gift the week before and ripened in a bowl on the fireplace hearth, still cooled in the corner of the counter. The fan over the still-hot stove couldn't suck the cinnamon spice odor out of the kitchen.

            “Instead of four and twenty blackbirds it was four pears in the bundt-pan shape that I sliced, slathered with butter, and ate while reading your pear cooking recipe and thought of how the king must have enjoyed his pie of four and twenty blackbirds, and hoped it was as good as this pear cake.”

 

           I DO have creative reader friends. Thanks, Dennis.

* * * *

 

BLTs

 

            One day recently, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette published a piece by John Kass of the Chicago Tribune with the benign headline, “Perfect time of year.” I thought I remembered Kass wrote humor, so I read the lead. “Is there anything more classically American than the perfect bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich?”

            This was five minutes after I cupped a fridge-cold half of a “double-decker BLT” in my hand. Said sandwich was left over from a post-concert stop at I-HOP. I’d brought it home in a  Styrofoam box.

            I’m glad no one was around to see me eat the messy-but-still-luscious “breakfast.” Soggy white bread, runny mayo, cold bacon, wilted lettuce/tomatoes--but all the flavors were still there. (As Gayle Glass’s recent blog said, “Waste not; want not.”)

            With a cloth napkin at the ready, I corralled the sandwich in my right hand, leaving my left for plucking a left-over fried cheese stick and one onion ring that my friends “couldn’t possibly eat” from their last-night’s appetizer sampler.

            Suffice it to say, afterward, my right hand was gooey with mayo. I wiped it onto the napkin, which went into the washer, pronto.

            Back to John Kass. Oh, dear. It’ll have to wait till next week. Until then, while the tomatoes are still ripening, build yourself a BLT. Take it to the porch (or yard) swing and add a glass of iced tea.

            Enjoy.