Hello Daughter, Goodbye Biscuits
by: Jon Crane

Saturday Ramblins, Vol. 1, No. 6 (June 20, 1998)

Heather is coming to town for eight weeks! My heart leapt at the thought. My number two daughter, the one who teaches in Mexico, wanted to come and spend the summer with her old man. What joy! What happiness! What a reformation of my character will have to take place!

You see, Heather is my health-conscious daughter. She walks, she works out, she eats, if not good, at least right. I'm in big trouble.

I'm a Southerner, you see. I come from the land where gravy is treated as a beverage. Way down yonder, if it walks, flies, swims or grows from the earth, we batter it, fry it in grease and make gravy from the drippin's.

Once before, while she was in college and I was living in Mississippi, Heather came and spent a summer with me. Poor darlin' did her best to reform me. She almost succeeded, too, and was feeling pretty good about her efforts. Then came a day when all my sins were laid bare.

We were in the market, her filling the basket with fruits, vegetables, lean turkey, wheat pasta, no-fat cheeses, yogurt and any unappetizing fiber she could find. Heather went to rearrange some things in the shopping cart when she discovered a package of bacon hidden under the kiwis.

I protested it must have fallen in by accident when I was reaching for the bean sprouts, but she would have none of it. My goose was cooked (I could only devoutly wish!). I had been discovered and was made to confess my transgressions and promise to reform.

I thought I had raised those girls better. True, they're Yankees all, having been born and raised in the North. But I tried from an early age to bring them up right with such things as grits and greens. It never took, I'm afraid. Heather has gotten better with age. She didn't say much the other morning while we were driving to work and I stopped to get a couple of sausage biscuits for breakfast. In fact, she didn't say anything at all—for hours.

So, 'til August it's goodbye to fried chicken, mashed potatoes, bulldog gravy, a stick of butter on an ear of corn, Tennessee Killed Salad, mashed turnips with cream and butter, sweet 'taters whipped with butter and brown sugar, English peas in cream sauce, greens cooked down with a ham bone (and their pot likker poured over cornbread), biscuits, cream gravy, field peas and snaps cooked with salt pork, green beans cooked down with bacon, yellow squash casserole thick with cheese and crusty with buttered bread crumbs, fried catfish, hush puppies, chicken fried steak, fried okra, fried squash, fried green tomatoes, fried oysters, fried shrimp, fried soft-shell crabs, stuffed crabs, deviled crabs, stuffed fried flounder, hamburgers on the grill, barbecue, potato salad, deviled eggs, sweet 'tater pie, pecan pie, black bottom pie, and Fat Man's Misery dessert.

And what do I get in return? Eight weeks with my low-fat, high fiber, lean and loving' angel daughter. Pass the carrot sticks, please!

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