I got a letter from my Uncle Barlow the other day. It had been a while since he wrote, and he said he just wanted to catch me up on things. Here's what he had to say.
Dear Nephew,
Well, out here in Barlow County things have been pretty routine, except for one. Well, maybe two, if you count the dust-up between the Widow Cumbee and Floyd over at the grain elevator, hardware store and auto repair. He had run out of lids for canning jars, and I guess she had some tomatoes and okra ready to go, and she started yelling at him about causing her to waste food.
Now, Floyd has been mighty careful around the Widow Cumbee ever since she accused him of making amorous advances. He long ago gave up on reminding her that it was the other way around, because that riled her up even worse, since he had spurned her, as Millie over at the library puts it. The Widow Cumbee has stayed on the warpath with Floyd no matter what he says, so he just hunkers down and waits for her to blow herself out.
Anyhow, Floyd has a cousin Rufus over in Wendell who's a big canner, and Floyd called over there and worked out borrowing some extra lids, and he got the Widow Cumbee settled down pretty much overnight, so that wasn't really the big to-do around here.
No, the big one was between Ida and Scooter over at the cafe. They are having marital troubles again.
It always starts when Ida gets hold of a notion and won't let go. Millie says she goes through phases, and this causes them to have what she calls a stormy relationship. I guess that's a high-toned way of saying that Ida's a shouter and Scooter is stubborn as a post.
Anyhow, it always begins when Ida gets a notion. There was the time she decided they needed to like opera, and went around trying to get people to call her Dulcinea. She overheard Scooter telling Floyd he'd sooner have the green apple quickstep than listen to an opera, and she didn't speak to him for weeks.
Then there was the time she insisted on adding Mexican food to their menu over at the cafe. Scooter got in hot water for poking fun at that one, too. They eventually got around to kissing and making up, but I guess they got kind of carried away with that part after hours at the cafe. They made such a ruckus that the sheriff dropped in to check, and there they were, naked as newborns and getting on toward the main event right on the cafe floor.
Idea dove behind a steam table and started screaming that the sheriff was a voyeur. Millie says that is a high-toned way of saying he's a peeper. I never thought that was quite fair to the sheriff, because he didn't know what they were up to, and anyhow when Ida is in a room you don't have to peep. She's a big old girl and pretty hard to miss, naked or otherwise.
Well, this time it was the menu again. Ida decided they ought to aim it over toward healthier food. Scooter, who is not what you'd call a quick learner, started digging in his heels again. He said she wasn't making good business sense, as their three top sellers were batter-fried chicken, pork skin cracklin's and white cream gravy over buttermilk biscuits.
Well, Ida said, that kind of showed her point. And she wanted to put in some gluten-free stuff while they were at it. Well, Scooter said, he'd read where that gluten-free diet business was aimed a disease that almost nobody's got. It was mostly just a fad, he said. Why, down at the Shop-Good market, he'd seen gluten-free labels on stuff that never had gluten in it in the first place.
Well, Ida said, Shop-Good was keeping in tune with the tenor of the times. Millie says that's a high-toned way of saying they were just going along with things. Anyhow, Ida kept changing the menu, and Scooter kept grumbling.
Then, one day, she caught him out behind the dumpster sneaking an RC Cola and a Moon Pie. Well, the roof just about came right off the cafe. She said he was not being respectful of a sharing spirit in their enterprise. He said he had always made a point of trying not to share in downright foolishness. She said he was being supercilious. (Millie says that means he was being uppity.) He said he didn't like being called silly.
Well, Ida said, he was just going to have to learn to embrace healthier life decisions. He said no, he didn't. He said he had read where the Supreme Court says you don't have to do things you don't like if they get you crossways with sincerely held religious beliefs. He said he sincerely believes the Lord never meant for people to eat grass.
Now, I have to say, I think Scooter's got a point about this gluten thing being a big fad. Any day now I expect to see that television woman -- the one they sent to prison -- telling people how to make gluten-free water.
Anyhow, the whole thing has become a big, sad mess. Ida has thrown Scooter out of the house. He is sleeping on croaker sacks of pig feed over at the elevator.
And Ida has got so loud about this health food notion that people are beginning to take sides. You take the Hopgood family. Joe and Maybelle had sent their son Arliss to school up in Chapel Hill. Those professors up there convinced him they had a monopoly on everything worth knowing, and he came home looking down his nose at anything you could name in Barlow County.
Well, Arliss got wind of Ida's notion about healthy eating, and he decided he wanted to be part of that movement. That's what he called it: a movement. Every time his father slapped some butter on a piece of cornbread, the boy commenced to snort and cluck. When Joe finally asked him what was wrong, the boy jumped into a lecture about unhealthy eating habits.
Joe pointed out that old man Pruner next door was still slapping butter on cornbread at the age of 92. The boy said old man Pruner was a Philistine. Joe asked him what the hell Samson and Delilah had to do with cornbread, and things have been frosty at the Hopgood house ever since.
I just don't know where all this is headed. They don't have a shower over at the elevator, so Scooter has begun to smell like pig feed. People kind of move away a step or two when he shows up.
If any of the rest of us want a good plate of white gravy on buttermilk biscuits, we have to go all the way out to the Sip 'n Snack on the bypass. The food Ida is serving at the cafe is so bad that business has fallen way off. Ida says she is glad to make an economic sacrifice for the sake of social conscience. Scooter says they can't eat her social conscience, and nobody else can, either.
There is one little bit of hope. The sheriff has got a little group of people together to try to find a way to trick Scooter and Ida into kissing and making up. The sheriff promises to keep away, no matter how loud it might get. We'll see.
I hope things are going good for you up there in the city.
Sincerely
Your Uncle Barlow
