make believe

About a half-moon this evening, waxing, lighting the Bay in a streak right up to us, and delightful out here on 7H porch. When weather is welcoming, we have supper out here and enjoy our quarter-sphere outlook on the Universe.

Actually I'd already had my supper. In the freezer Linda found a few squares of cornbread that she'd put away some weeks ago: I heated one square, added a pat of butter or two, and poured genuine cane syrup over, stood at the kitchen counter and ate that. Supper for a Southerner.

Everybody's different, we make our cornbread with no sugar, not sweet. Hot with butter. Now and then, as tonight, with cane syrup or molasses. This is fine cane syrup, bought at Tanya's Garden, but it's so fine that I'm thinking to mix molasses in to make it a little stronger, darker, and maybe bring out the sulfur. My memory of cane syrup is the mule at the end of a pole,

walking round and round as in the center sugar cane is poked into the grinder stalk by stalk, pouring cane juice into the black iron kettle to be reduced over a fire.

I remember a faint sulfur taste. Things are good, but better when they are a shade off perfect.

In the South, some mamas add sugar to recipes and some do not. Mama added sugar to okra & tomatoes, and I'm pretty sure she sweetened cornbread too. As I say, we make our cornbread without sugar, and okra & tomatoes more acidic, no sugar. I always loved okra & tomatoes, but I really prefer my okra plain, steamed whole, or as the overloaded main ingredient in soups and gumbos.

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Next week we are taking a short vacation trip, our first in many years because of H.Michael, the covid pandemic, and life in general at this age, which limits our driving to PCB in one direction and Apalachicola in the other. This trip is to get as close to Tallahassee as possible without actually driving there, and go to a Lincoln High football game where the Trojans Marching Band is performing.

Otherwise for us, no more driving out US-231 except to a cemetery for a funeral or as far as Transmitter Road for a nursing home visit. And after dark never again.

No more air travel, no more sea travel. No more train travel, because the nearest train station is too far distant, otherwise ... . No more creepy bus/coach travel since "Midnight Cowboy."

But it's fine because 7H is like an ocean liner tied up at the pier of a small town, with our balcony stateroom on the seaward side.

Wishing you long years such that you get here where I am and understand the self-restraints that reasonable caution lays on.

Tomorrow up early to continue vetting this homily that Luke's gospel unloosed on me.

RSF&PTL