Golf in the old style still excites me. Hit practice balls? What? Have a physical workout to stretch those tied muscles? Forget it!

The game of match play was more about people in stead of score. Spec, my Dad, would screech up in the ‘47 Willy’s Jeep rush to the tee to meet his golf buddies after the winter layoff, Hit it, go find it, hit it again. He was indeed a character, as his scrapbook proves. Even though it’s becoming more rare (he died suddenly in 1967), rarely do I travel for golf in Mississippi that some elder member of the Club where I am to play does not come up asking if I am kin to Spec. Once established, a new story gets told to a son who never tires of the tales.

One great example, not so many years ago, came from a great old gentlemen, Col. Burt White at the Colonial Country Club while playing at their venerable Invitational. He walked up and asked if I was Spec’s kin. As we chatted, he pulls a small box from his pocket inside of which was an 8mm Kodachrome movie of the finals of that Invitational around 1962. Spec lost that match, but later watching the film I remembered so well that OLD STYLE dip in the swing that imparted all kinds of different spins depending of the wrist flick, I could literally smell Spec. That packed Camel cigarette smell is forever tied to the memory of the man.

The Blog mentioned Eddie Merrins, a true star and fantastic gentleman from Northwood Country Club, Meridian, Mississippi. I had the great fortune to have dinner with Mr. Merrins the night before he was inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame. Sitting with Bob Travis at Tico’s over the perfect beef steak, he told me his side, a very humble one, of his crowd roaring pitch into the hole on the 18th green to determine his win in the finals of the State Amateur that year. Over the years, I have been told over and over by “hundreds of thousands” of people who swore they were in the crowd that day to watch Spec go down to Merrin’s magic.

The people like Spec, Merrins, Johnny Pott, Bob Travis, Hunter George Weddington really glitter up the story of golf in Mississippi.

Lou & H G Weddington

Bob Travis & Me

“Glitter up”, it’s true.  These people glitter up all around. They were Stars, and Stars never fade.

The indigenous people here in the Piney Woods were the Choctaw Indians, as far as I know.  Their people lived all through the red clay hills of this land.  Some foresters can find their camp grounds by just recognizing the pattern of high land close to water. They date the camps near 10,000 years old by recognizing the stone flakes discarded from tool making. Usually these locations yield all sorts of Native American artifacts.

When I moved back to Laurel, I moved into the cabin pictured here. It had been built by my father around 1960 on a parcel of land at the back of the place he called “The Farm”. An understanding of topographical maps reveals that this cabin site lies on a parcel of land made up of a peninsula jutting into the Tallahoma Creek bottom.  Today the creek runs ¼ mile to the north, but once it ran along the edge of the drop off.  The Choctaw people used this spot for their home, since it’s high, dry, yet close to water. Over the years I have found the remains of this camp.  Points, a bead, pottery, and piles of stone flakes left from the making of their tools show up every time a bare patch of dirt gets scrubbed by a hard rain. One day, I shall name the land formally and will use the Choctaw names for my guide. My friend, Bonnie Carter, in Natchez spent a good deal of time in another life analyzing the Mississippi Choctaw language as part of her linguistic PHD program.  Of the language she says that so much of her understanding came from various Choctaw informants with whom she worked.  In her words, “Translating without an informant is difficult for several reasons, ..”    As an aside, isn’t ‘informant’ a word so rich as to make one imagine whispers in the teepee.

 Some time ago, two years to be precise, the Christmas season was the subject of one Blog. It was something about celebration, a Sicilian celebration of making and enjoying sausage on Christmas Eve.  I love the event and the making too.

It started all over again last Wednesday when the grocery sheets came out in a news paper shopper, The Impact. I read them every week, and this one was one for which I had been waiting.  Boston Butts on sale at the Piggly Wiggly was a BINGO.   Laurel has good grocery stores, and I know since I shop them all.  Well, let’s be more clear.  The people who work in Laurel’s grocery stores are good.     

 Anyway, I bought about 25 pounds of Butts, bone-in.  They get deboned carefully, cut up into pieces about 1″ square.  Butts are about 80% lean meat, but sausage must have about 60%, with the balance being pork fat.  I got some of that too.   

  Cut all up into pieces, it all looks like this, 21# measured.

   Spices become the next hurdle. Fennel is the primary spice in

 Italian sausage.  It’s expensive too.  Anise, garlic, salt, red pepper flakes, red wine, black pepper, and some sugar come together in proportions that I mix up differently every time. 

Getting everything very cold is essential. No only is that a safety necessity, but the colder the meat, the better the grinding goes.

 Then come the casings. They are real pork and packing a salt.  Washing them out, well, you get the picture, literally.

 They are bought by the Yard.  I had about 16 yards this year.

 Next comes the fun part. The Stuffer is work but it brings the reward.

 I  love the rounds.

But I love the links better.  Each one twisted by hand, and it’s taken some time to know about turning one and not unturning the last.

When it’s done.  They look like this.

 Of course, it’s fresh pork. Cook it, cook it completely.  I usually poach the links to get the cooked through. Browning them in a saute pan provides some great color.  From there, it’s just pure joy. 

I do love Christmas!

Sunday mornings at the Bullet Proof Cafe always include something good to eat. The ritual remains a big part of the week, either looking back or forward.

In January 1970 I found myself in San Sebastian, Spain. Such a beautiful place I found the next morning. The night before I had rambled around the area of the station seeking a Pension for the night and had been lucky enough to come upon a delightful lady with a clean room. It had become quite late, and being someone’s Mom, she recognized a hungry young man. Offering to make me something in pantomime was easy. We both knew the language of food. She prepared my first Fritatta.

They come in all sizes, shapes, and from many places. They have been copied, rarely improved upon for one hurgry on a Sunday morning. The French took the dish to a different place and called it an omelette. In my admittedly narrow view, they don’t have the heft one needs to start a busy active day. They’re fine for one about to go back to bed and nap on a snuggle up Sunday, but that’s rare for me.

Here is a favorite on a happy plate. The little tomatoes of color make the thing sparkle with taste. Underneath them lies anything from potato slices lining the pan to slices of meat ranging from left over streak, port sausage, bacon, and various cheeses. Add what one has on hand is the rule

This one is fun, it’s a simple one with Farmer’s cheese and grape tomatoes. That thick sliced bacon and the potatoes were so good on the side.

I hope you noticed the parsley on each Fritatta. Joy Thompson, my mother-in-law, never served a plate without some colorful parsley picking up the pace of the plate. She would use it everywhere. I hate that those verbs are past tense. At the Bullet Proof Cafe parsley belongs on the Fritatta and on most all other dishes too, for that matter.

My mother, Virginia, makes her presence known at the table too. She fought the label of being a good cook, but loved being remembered. Here are jars of native Mississippi Wild Plumb jelly that Holly makes from Virginia’s old recipe. Nothing is better on some form of bread than this stuff.

Isn’t it fun to have so much family all around the table and good food too?

August 29, 2005.  That date is more embedded into my core than “9/11”.  The latter was for me some terrible and emotional day. The former was some terrible day for life.  Hurricane Katrina blew out our candles from Pensacola to Baton Rouge.  All along the US Gulf Coast and 100 miles inland she smashed life as all of us living there knew it.

Here we are again in The Season.  It’s something we live with.  The rest of the country asks “Why?”.   The insurance companies give us good reasons to move.  Here we stay.

Before Katrina, I loved the weather hurricanes brought inland. The wind, much like a seaside blow, brought some fun on the golf course hitting balls into and across its power.  During, and for a few weeks after Katrina, life changed and with that came a sincere troubled worry about bad weather.

I can go on and on telling the story of August 29, 2005, the damage, the fear, the feeling of helplessness, and the taste of being mortal at the hands of something so powerful, but I won’t. Instead, I shall pass along someone else’s story of Hurricane Season. Far out in the Atlantic, a weather satellite photographs a cloud pattern.  Highly excitable meteorologists notice it and begin to speculate.  Computers are put to work doing mathematical calculations embracing all the combinations and permutations used to build models that predict the path of the storm. 

After that, the word is sent to their theatrical cousins- the TV weathermen. They are paid to excite the public.   The worried public then tie themselves to the TV to watch and listen to the 24 hour updates.  The more they watch, the more advertisements they see. Get it?  It’s capitalism’s heart beat- real life drama.  Everybody gets to either sell or buy something.  Read on:

We’re about to enter hurricane season. Any day now, you’re going to turn on the TV and see a weather person pointing to some radar blob out in the Gulf of Mexico and making two basic meteorological points:
(1) There is no need to panic. (2) We could all be killed.
Yes, hurricane season is an exciting time to be on the Gulf Coast. If you’re new to the area, you’re probably wondering what you need to do to prepare for the possibility that we’ll get hit by “the big one”
Based on our experiences, we recommend that you follow this simple three-step hurricane preparedness plan:
STEP 1. Buy enough food and bottled water to last your family for at least three days.
STEP 2. Put these supplies into your car.
STEP 3. Drive to Montana and remain there until Thanksgiving.
Unfortunately, statistics show that most people will not follow this sensible plan. Most people who live and work here will foolishly stay here on the Gulf Coast.  Go figure.
We’ll start with one of the most important hurricane preparedness items:
HOMEOWNERS’ INSURANCE: If you own a home, you must have hurricane insurance.
Fortunately, this insurance is cheap and easy to get, as long as your home meets two basic requirements:
(1) It is reasonably well-built, and (2) It is located in Montana.
Unfortunately, if your home is located on the Gulf Coast, or any other area that might actually be hit by a hurricane, most insurance companies would prefer not to sell you hurricane insurance, because then they might be required to pay YOU money, and that is certainly not why they got into the insurance business in the first place.
So you’ll have to scrounge around for an insurance company, which will charge you an annual premium roughly equal to the replacement value of your house. At any moment, this company can drop you like used dental floss.
SHUTTERS: Your house should have hurricane shutters on all the windows, all the doors, and — if it’s a major hurricane — all the toilets.  There are several types of shutters, with advantages and disadvantages:
Plywood shutters: The advantage is that, because you make them yourself, they’re cheap. The disadvantage is that, because you make them yourself, they will fall off.
Sheet-metal shutters: The advantage is that these work well, once you get them all up. The disadvantage is that once you get them all up, your hands will be useless bleeding stumps, and it will be December.
Roll-down shutters: The advantages are that they’re very easy to use, and will definitely protect your house. The disadvantage is that you will have to sell your house to pay for them.
“Hurricane-proof” windows: These are the newest wrinkle in hurricane protection: They look like ordinary windows, but they can withstand hurricane winds! You can be sure of this, because the salesman says so.  He lives in Montana.
“Hurricane Proofing Your Property: As the hurricane approaches, check your yard for movable objects like barbecue grills, planters, patio furniture, visiting relatives, etc.; you should, as a precaution, throw these items into your swimming pool.  (If you don’t have a swimming pool, you should have one built immediately.  A swimming pool is essential for any home along the Gulf Coast in case of a hurricane.) Otherwise, the hurricane winds will turn these objects into deadly missiles.

EVACUATION ROUTE: If you live in a low-lying area, you should have an evacuation route planned out. (To determine whether you live in a low-lying area, look at your driver’s license; if it says Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, or Texas on it, chances are you live in a low-lying area.) The purpose of having an evacuation route is to avoid being trapped in your home when a major storm hits. Instead, you will be trapped in a gigantic traffic jam several miles from your home, along with five hundred thousand other evacuees. So, as a bonus, you will not be lonely.
HURRICANE SUPPLIES: If you don’t evacuate, you will need a mess of supplies. Do not buy them now! Gulf Coast tradition requires that you wait until the last possible minute, then go to the supermarket and get into vicious fights with strangers over who gets the last can of SPAM.
In addition to food and water, you will need the following supplies:
23 flashlights. At least $167 worth of batteries that turn out, when the power goes out, to be the wrong size for the flashlights.

Bleach. (No, I don’t know what the bleach is for. NOBODY knows what the bleach is for. But it’s traditional, so GET some!)
A 55-gallon drum of underarm deodorant.
A big knife that you can strap to your leg. (This will be useless in a hurricane, but it looks cool.)

 $35,000 in cash or diamonds so that, after the hurricane passes, you can buy a generator from a man with no discernible teeth.
Special note for Floridians:  A large quantity of raw chicken, to placate the alligators. (Ask anybody who went through Andrew; after the hurricane, there WILL be irate alligators.)
Of course these are just basic precautions. As the hurricane draws near, it is vitally important that you keep abreast of the situation by turning on your television and watching TV reporters in rain slickers standing outside, right next to the ocean and telling you over and over how vitally important it is for everybody to stay inside and away from the ocean.
Good luck and remember: it’s great living in paradise! Those of you who aren’t here yet….you should come. Really!

My good friend Bonnie Carter sent this essay today. If it wasn’t well written, she would not allow it to come out associated with her name. She was sent it by another friend, don’t know who he is. He got it from a humorist. Thank you Mr. Funny Story Teller, and please don’t send the Gendarmes my way for reprinting it.

Summer time and the tomatos are ripe.

Gardens begin producing the most wonderful blessings, just like these.

None more wonderful than these. Tomatoes! At the Bullet Proof Cafe tomatoes are such a favorite item on the menu. They are eaten fresh on the standby Tomato and Bacon Sandwich and so many other ways. Here are a few.

Sliced and roasted with garlic, celery seed, green onions.How about Stuffed Tuna Salad Tomato with Virginia’s sweet pickles?

In the morning, use them on a Fritatta with herbs.

Some fine lunch is Macaroni and Cheese finished with green onion and roasted tomato.

I love Burritos. A chicken filled flour toritlla topped with Pico De Gallo using big chunks of fresh tomato and jalapino.

A life long favorite. PIZZA with fresh tomato top. Sometimes they get baked, sometimes sliced fresh on top.

Use some of the leftover pizza dough and make Roast Chicken Breast “En Croute” on sliced tomatoes.

I love them sliced as a side for Pan Sauted Red Fish.

The Roadhouse Menu at the Cafe includes Hamburger Steak and Mushrooms with Tomatoes and $1,000 Dressing.

On the side with broiled catfish. Zuchini with browned bits goes so well.

It goes on and on from there, never ending in the bright, acid flavor they bring to a plate of good food.

Thank you, Sunshine.

Will gave me some different peppers. I got an idea for a side dish to accompany Chicken Marsala that was on the menu tonight at the Bullet Proof Cafe. They are so fresh.

Start with pealing off the skin which involves some charring.  Be patient, char, then place in an old time paper bag and let them steam. From there the skin falls off.

Finished Product!

Now, it’s a matter of how do you wish to present them. I chose a simple salad.  Fresh summer tomato, some herbs, olive oil. rice wine vinegar, salt, black pepper…

While that’s going on……..have a snack.  How about a pretzel with blue cheese, cilantro.  Makes the single malt warming and full………….

Chill the salad and serve it. It’ll rest while the entre is prepared.

At this point you must prepare the chicken scollaps.  Chill a chicken breast to just under freezing.  It’s about “good” chicken. Yes, I use Miss Goldie.  Use a sharp knife (OK VERY SHARP) and slice very thin several pieces like you see here. Again, be patient.

Make sure everything is ready.  Chopped, sliced, diced, poured,,,,,all that………close by the stove.

 Now. dredge the chicken in flour, saute it in olive oil until brown and place it in the warm oven while you prepare the sauce.  The chopped garlic is now in the pan with butter and cooked until just limp. Add the Marsala and reduce it by half.  When you are ready, add the chicken stock and reduce what’s left by half.  Be patient, it’ll get there. Watch and enjoy.

Yes, it looks the same. Smell it, it’s not.   The sauce reduces. Remove the chickenn from oven, place sauted chicken in the sauce, place some lemon wedges on the heated chicken, and return to oven for 10 minutes.   Serve. 

A very simple white wine. Enjoy!

It’s likely that this title is misleading. This post is mine, so one might imagine that I am talking about my very own good grooming. Maybe that someone else’s grooming was proper, or not. Given my, let’s call it ‘comfortable’ style, this blog is surely not about my good grooming.  Now, one shouldn’t think that one day I might take time out of my busy schedule to brag about how well groomed I am or stoop to a gossipy rant about another’s lack thereof.  No, this post is about nice people who care about what they do and do it well, really one professional who cares and does too.

More than once in these postings I have mentioned my mother.  In addition to being particularly bright, she was fun.  I still chuckle over when in her later years, way into her ‘80’s, she would almost twitter over the actor Sam Watersomethingorother on TV’s LawInorderToGetRatings.  She just adored this guy.  I would think to myself, “You mean my mother still swoons?” 

Johnny Carson was another one of her favs. She watched the Tonight Show each evening.  I can hear her now, “Son, just look at that suit he is wearing.  Just look at how it fits, it’s perfect.”  It was one more swoon. With each joke or quip, his style was to turn from the camera and look at various sidekicks,  Ed or Doc, to seek their reaction. When he did, mom would say, “just look at his haircut.”  After that she would comment that he kept his hair so well cut, but it never looks just cut. “ Oh, his barber must really be something.”  This brings us up sharply to ‘more of my mother’s influences on me today’.

For some years now, the barber of choice for this man in need of proper grooming is a young woman at Thompson’s Barber Shop over in Laurel’s Went End. I have featured her before in an April, 2012 post. Robin Hinton lives out from Soso. That’s Jefcoat country.  Robin is a Jefcoat, and unlike some other Jones County family groups, the Jefcoats never got their brains knocked out.  Robin and I might even be some kind of cousins, but we have never crossed the path between the Jefcoats and the Knights.  The Knights are one of my family lines from that same side of the County.  Their brains, by the way, often get discussed.

Anyway, the first time I went in the shop she was the first barber of three to get an empty chair.  She got me comfortable, fit my apron, and cut my hair, all without much discussion. The place was friendly, clean, and people of all kinds came in and out for all kinds of hair care.  It was a nice enough professional encounter. My mother was still around in those days, and later in the day, I stopped by her house, ostensibly to check on her. Truthfully it was to check what was cooking on the stove.  Many of us are guilty of that.

My mom looked at me with her smiling eye and said she was glad that I felt well.  I did indeed feel well and wondered why she said that. “You just look nice today”, she replied.  Twice I noticed her looking at me. When questioned, she said that “it was just ‘something’, I don’t know, just something different”.  After we visited I turned away to leave for home, and she said, “There it is.  Yesterday you had lots of scruffy hair on your neck, today it’s gone. You had a haircut.  Who did it?”

So there it is.  I was well groomed in my mom’s eyes. The mirror mirror on the wall revealed some more scruffy hair, so once again today I found my way to Robin’s chair to get my haircut that didn’t look like it.  Robin is good at what she does, and our town benefits.

Thanks, Robin.

Once upon a time, I walked up all alone in the early morning to the first tee at Lahinch Golf Club. The fog was so thick one could not see more than 100 yards in any direction, including the open fairway on the 1st hole. I had hired a caddy, “Big John” Murphy. He told me that we were next off. “Next off?”, I said, and he replied, “Yes, there’s a two ball on the tee now, and a foursome is somewhere out on the fairway already. It was 7:08 AM on a November, 1997 weekday.

Lahinch is situated on the West Coast of Ireland within sight of the Cliffs of Moher. A treasure of a golf course not so impressed with itself as many get, but friendly with a quirkiness that makes the day of play fun. It’s just plain fun.

On the tee already was a twosome. One looked over and asked me if I was alone. When I said “Yes”, he wondered if I would like to join them so as to match pace with the larger group ahead. It made sense, so I agreed. Some quick decisions are better than others, and this was one.

Jump forward 13 years. It’s suddenly 2012, and I find myself standing on the 3rd hole of another friendly and indeed quirky golf course in western Oregon called Ocean Dunes Golf Club  and again in the company of that same twosome. Notice in this picture that we hold hickory shafted clubs.

The twosome is Bob and Mike, aka Bwana and Chewy.  Meeting them so many years ago led to a grand friendship, one that takes me to Oregon about every year to play their favorite courses at Bandon Dunes.   The game of golf often holds people together as they “play” the “game”.  We do our best to hit it, find it, and hit it again; and when we’re through, add ‘em up.   The game is so much larger than that; ask them. Still it’s “playing”.  Most often, more people of like mind join in.  Seamus, an Irish lad, is pictured here too.  Funny thing about him. He is passionate about Golf. He plays banjo too, he loves to cook, and he is self-employed.  All in all, there were 32 on this trip.  There were lions and tigers and bears, oh my; and each one an old or a new friend.

So “playing” I did, this past week at Bandon.  Ocean Dunes was first, then three of the courses at Bandon Dunes.  The Dunes course was first of those, my favorite.  Pacific Dunes was on the last day. I adore it and play it best for some reason.  In between was the new Old McDonald course.  They brag about the greens being the largest anywhere, indeed they are football fields.  It is truly different, and one wonders if it’s fun or just plain work.  It’s play, because still, it’s golf.  Hush and go hit it, go find it, hit it again, add ‘em up.  The winner is the one who is proud of himself, regardless of the sum.

I said before, “it’s more than that”.  Mostly, it’s about people; and not just the ones playing on any day. Some are those that taught me the game, the larger game. Some become stories about their “play”. Some could not make the trip this year, and I missed Skunk and Duckie and ChiMex.  Some are gone. Two of them, Rev and Chick, walked with us anyway. 

Can you tell that I had a wonderful time in Oregon?

Thank you, Gus.