ambrosia
Yesterday it was "legionnaire", today Anu Garg's word is "moribund", stagnant, lacking vigor, lacking vitality. And from its root, he says, we get, among others, the word "ambrosia", food of the gods, a dessert made of oranges and shredded coconut.
As a boy I looked forward to the summer visits of my aunts, Ruth from Pensacola and EG (Evalyn Godfrey, given her mother's maiden name, Carrie Godfrey -- do we still say "maiden name" or is that politically incorrect and highly offensive these strange days?) coming down from WashingtonDC to visit their parents, my grandparents Mom and Pop.
There were all sorts of reasons for enjoying their visits, summers being taken swiming at the Gulf beach, going crabbing in the Bay with crab net and snapper and grouper heads on a line, cleaning the washtub or several buckets of crabs together, them cooking the crabs, and especially when they made the gumbo I recently remembered here.
At Christmastime, EG coming first by train, later being the exciting family member to fly, traveling down by air, and the gifts she would bring. Under the tree, EG's gift to me often meant a book she had purchased at "Woodies," Woodward & Lothrop's department store in Washington, always just right for me, then a voracious reader. She introduced me to Hugh Lofting's books about the famous English physician Dr. Dolittle of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh, whose excellent house companions were talking animals, including his housekeeper (his sister had left when the alligator came to live there), who as I recall was a goose, or maybe she was a hen or swan, or other fowl. Over my years I acquired quite a collection of the Dr. Dolittle books.
EG also brought, or sent in the mail for my birthday, a book on etiquette for boys growing up, IDK, maybe it was "Blondes Prefer Gentlemen", where I learned to wear a brown belt with brown shoes and black belt with black shoes, and at the table which fork to choose, and which spoon, and to butter my broken bread not directly from the butter dish but via my bread dish or the edge of my plate. How properly to eat soup (move my soupspoon never towards me but always away from me, which avoids soup in the lap; and to finish the bowl, tilt it up not from behind it but from the edge near me and tilt it back, away from me - - which I remembered a few years later when I needed proper manners to make sure Linda's mother could see I was a gentleman and not just some common boy from church who worked Saturdays in a fishmarket). And in due course a book about boys going through puberty and maturing into young men.
EG always knew what I needed and should be reading at every age. And I remember that the summer when I was eight and mama and I traveled by train to visit my father at the maritime officers' school in New London, Connecticut, we stopped over in Washington for a few days, and EG's whirlwind tour for me of the nation's capital included a visit to "Woodies", my first ever real department store, their bookstore was most exciting, on an outside wall with large windows facing the sidewalk and letting in all manner of light.
That visit, she took me, on the streetcar, to Glen Echo, a public park that had a real swimming pool, and with circling slide to climb high and slide down into the pool. And also on the streetcar, to the Smithsonian, and to Washington Zoo, where my stuff of nightmares was not some fierce lion, but an enormous black tarantula, live behind a glass: the label on its cage said it could jump fifteen feet with accuracy and catch birds, mice and other prey.
How did I get here? It was thanks to Anu Garg, who has taken me down many paths over the years I've read his word-a-day. Today's word moribund, to ambrosia, a favorite that EG and Ruth often made for the family. Seems to me they added maraschino cherry slices for the color and their flavor, which I loved.
Next to Alfred, second oldest in the family growing up, Evalyn was away at college when the family sold out and moved from The Old Place in StAndrews to Ocilla, Georgia, where for a few years Pop owned the Ford dealership and garage. That happened in 1923, five years after Alfred's death and because my grandparents thought to escape the sea, grief and memories. My friend Mike McKenzie sent me the original deed by which they sold the house, and later a picture of EG from her college annual, Florida State College for Women. EG was away at college in 1923, when the family moved. Those and many other things are on a blue thumbdrive that, if left undisturbed by the contractors recovering 7H post-HMichael, are in the right swing-open drawer of the chinoiserie table that was in the entryway.
Today, May 7, my mother's birthday. Born 1912, mama would have turned 107 this morning.
...
T
As a boy I looked forward to the summer visits of my aunts, Ruth from Pensacola and EG (Evalyn Godfrey, given her mother's maiden name, Carrie Godfrey -- do we still say "maiden name" or is that politically incorrect and highly offensive these strange days?) coming down from WashingtonDC to visit their parents, my grandparents Mom and Pop.
There were all sorts of reasons for enjoying their visits, summers being taken swiming at the Gulf beach, going crabbing in the Bay with crab net and snapper and grouper heads on a line, cleaning the washtub or several buckets of crabs together, them cooking the crabs, and especially when they made the gumbo I recently remembered here.
At Christmastime, EG coming first by train, later being the exciting family member to fly, traveling down by air, and the gifts she would bring. Under the tree, EG's gift to me often meant a book she had purchased at "Woodies," Woodward & Lothrop's department store in Washington, always just right for me, then a voracious reader. She introduced me to Hugh Lofting's books about the famous English physician Dr. Dolittle of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh, whose excellent house companions were talking animals, including his housekeeper (his sister had left when the alligator came to live there), who as I recall was a goose, or maybe she was a hen or swan, or other fowl. Over my years I acquired quite a collection of the Dr. Dolittle books.
EG also brought, or sent in the mail for my birthday, a book on etiquette for boys growing up, IDK, maybe it was "Blondes Prefer Gentlemen", where I learned to wear a brown belt with brown shoes and black belt with black shoes, and at the table which fork to choose, and which spoon, and to butter my broken bread not directly from the butter dish but via my bread dish or the edge of my plate. How properly to eat soup (move my soupspoon never towards me but always away from me, which avoids soup in the lap; and to finish the bowl, tilt it up not from behind it but from the edge near me and tilt it back, away from me - - which I remembered a few years later when I needed proper manners to make sure Linda's mother could see I was a gentleman and not just some common boy from church who worked Saturdays in a fishmarket). And in due course a book about boys going through puberty and maturing into young men.
EG always knew what I needed and should be reading at every age. And I remember that the summer when I was eight and mama and I traveled by train to visit my father at the maritime officers' school in New London, Connecticut, we stopped over in Washington for a few days, and EG's whirlwind tour for me of the nation's capital included a visit to "Woodies", my first ever real department store, their bookstore was most exciting, on an outside wall with large windows facing the sidewalk and letting in all manner of light.
That visit, she took me, on the streetcar, to Glen Echo, a public park that had a real swimming pool, and with circling slide to climb high and slide down into the pool. And also on the streetcar, to the Smithsonian, and to Washington Zoo, where my stuff of nightmares was not some fierce lion, but an enormous black tarantula, live behind a glass: the label on its cage said it could jump fifteen feet with accuracy and catch birds, mice and other prey.
How did I get here? It was thanks to Anu Garg, who has taken me down many paths over the years I've read his word-a-day. Today's word moribund, to ambrosia, a favorite that EG and Ruth often made for the family. Seems to me they added maraschino cherry slices for the color and their flavor, which I loved.
Next to Alfred, second oldest in the family growing up, Evalyn was away at college when the family sold out and moved from The Old Place in StAndrews to Ocilla, Georgia, where for a few years Pop owned the Ford dealership and garage. That happened in 1923, five years after Alfred's death and because my grandparents thought to escape the sea, grief and memories. My friend Mike McKenzie sent me the original deed by which they sold the house, and later a picture of EG from her college annual, Florida State College for Women. EG was away at college in 1923, when the family moved. Those and many other things are on a blue thumbdrive that, if left undisturbed by the contractors recovering 7H post-HMichael, are in the right swing-open drawer of the chinoiserie table that was in the entryway.
Today, May 7, my mother's birthday. Born 1912, mama would have turned 107 this morning.
...
T