"Yun's"

The first week after I moved to Nashville, I was without a phone for a few days.( For back then ,the hills were innocent of cell-phone towers.) When I finally did get hooked up and could call my mother, she informed me she had called the hospital I was working at. To see if I had arrived safe.

"My God, "she said of the natives who had answered the phone, "I could not understand a word those people said". She exaggerated, for Southerners do speak English most of the time, but for my first year in Nashville ,I sometimes needed a translator. And not just for unfamiliar pronunciation. Many figures of speech also eluded me.

"You All" and its short form "Y'all" were easy and expected. But never had I heard one syllable words given so much credit and so much license to expand. "Sir, you can not get out of the bay-ed", I heard the nurses who worked with me say to confused old patients trying to crawl out over the bed siderails. And what did those confused old men want to get out of bed for? " I want some aahz", they would shout back at me, the nurse who did not know what they were asking for-"Aahz, Aahz. Don't you know what aahz is?.

I was caring for a patient fresh out of the open heart OR one night, and that patient was bleeding. He needed to go back to surgery. His doctor was the late Dr. George B., one of the few gentleman surgeons I have ever met. "Well," said the doctor,"He's bleedin' and I'm just going to have to carry him back to the OR." This was a novel use for "carry", but I did understand. Far better than a Californian I worked with whose patient's brother told her he had "carried " his sister all the way into the city from Cookeville. " I thought he picked her up and walked all the way", said this embarrassed Westerner.

And how can I ever forget the young nurse from up on the Cumberland Plateau, who reveled in her country-isms. "Yun's-, are y'all going to order out tonight?", she would ask, trying to get the pizza ball rolling. "Yun's" meant all the rest of us. And I suppose her parents, who ran a tree farm and nursery out in the country. This young woman immortalized herself one night in our ICU with her reaction to receiving defective automatic blood pressure cuffs from our ward secretary.

The cuff in the room did not work. Country nurse called for another. It did not work. She called for a third. It was a lemon too. And when the fourth cuff was tried and found wanting, it and the motor it was attached to, came flying out of the room. It smashed all over the floor in front of the ward secretary and some Vanderbilt medical residents making rounds. The evening supervisor reported this to our head nurse, who pulled in Country nurse for a reprimand.

"What am I supposed to tell the Director of Nursing when she asked me how this happened ?", our head nurse asked the girl.

"Tell her I dun it," said our heroine, "I dun it. I dun it." And of course, she was eventually punished by getting into Nurse Anesthetist School and facing a life time of six figure per annum salaries. And she married a neurosurgeon.

And though I have never called any people I worked with "yun's", I do use "y'all" often. Everyone uses it. I drive past a store called "'Ual and Shop Ual" every time I drive to work.

I find it is better to warn patients not to try to get out of bay-ed, and to assure their families that we know "Y'all don't want him to break a hip", than it is to parade my Brooklyn born, New England raised Yankee-ness out in public. Not that there is much of that left after thirty years-

And so goodnight. Y'all.

Pictures of the Guilty Beagle

I am happy to say that no cupboards were broken into last night. Thomas asked for pictures of the "offending beagle". Here he is. His name is Dippetty Dog. He can stand on his hind legs like a meerkat for minutes at a time.

A Guilty Beagle

When I arrived home this morning from working all night, I saw my beagle and Shih Tzu sitting in the apartment window, waiting. The beagle had a pensive, nervous look that told me some overnight crime had been committed. He had either messed the floor or gotten into the cupboards again.

It was the latter.

I have learned to leave no trash under the counter, unless I want to find coffee grounds everywhere. To see butter wrappers smeared into the rug. But his last two raids have been into my baking cupboard. His first victim was a bag of Mexican natural sugar. What he ate of that must have tasted better going down than staying down since he vomited it all back up. (Another reason why I need my own carpet steam cleaner.)

Last night's raid was more ambitious. He could not figure out how to open a Tupperware container full of House Of Autrey seafood breading. He left it lying. But the cornstarch and cornmeal in plastic bags were broken open. I do not think he ate much. Straight cornstarch must not be too palatable . He did not care for the dried up bottle of lentils I used for blind baking either, but that did not stop him from scattering them all over the kitchen floor.

He ran and hid when I walked in, as well as he should have. And I must now move flour up and cookware down. Since I must work tonight and have no time for kitchen relocation's today, I will barricade King Arthur's flour with a ladder up against the cabinet door.

One must really love dogs to own them. To let them live in the house. To become their maid . I remember a Mrs Southern Living type I once worked with who bought her daughter a miniature schnauzer. In three days the dog  was gone.

"He made the house filthy", Mrs Southern Living wailed, "I have to follow him around with a broom".

No one with such housekeeping standards should ever own a dog.  For a dog owner wears his dog's coat to work. He smells the dog in the rug. The dog  is ever present.

I try to understand dogdom. I brought home the Shih Tzu as much for the beagle as for myself. I read "How To Be Your Dog's Best Friend", by the Monks of New Skete over and over. ( The  monks bred German Shepherds). I feed my dogs twice a day. They are not starving.

Yet the beagle will not stop foraging. No lower cupboards are safe. And if he can stretch enough he can steal a dozen peeled shrimp I dried in a paper towel and left on the counter. I know. He is sneaky.

And the reason none of the vacuum cleaners I picked up for free at the apartment dumpster are adequate. No- I was forced to buy a $600 Dyson Animal to clean up after my animals.

I repeat. One must really love dogs to own them.

I wonder what the beagle is planning tonight.

Radio Classique

Nothing will induce my 83 year old mother to look at a computer screen, or the Internet. When asked, she quotes New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who once said that the Internet was a "sewer". To my mother, this is the last word. There is no discussion.

She is wrong, of course. The Internet may have its murky sloughs and fetid, evil pools, but it also will let you read Yeat's poetry, identify a wildflower, re-connect with school mates one has not seen in thirty years, learn  about Armenian cooking, and read the New York Times-

And it plays music from radio stations all over the world. I turned to it a few years back when our local Nashville Public radio station went to an all jabber all the time format, relegating classical music to the hours between midnight and four am. And I am going to come out and say it- I want less talk, not more.( If I want to hear politicians lie I can go to CNN.)

I can remember my mother listening to Public Radio many years and many mornings ago. Vermont Public Radio broadcast Robert J. Lurtsema's show. It  began each day with the sound of birdsong from New England fields and woods. The Veery, the chipping sparrow, the drumming of a woodpecker, and then, Mozart.

And WGBH in Boston still plays the birds singing , but only on weekend mornings at six. Yet now it plays to everyone. Everywhere. All over the world via the Internet.

And WQXR in New York does as well. How pleasing it is to hear of a 70 degree day in Central Park, when one is sweltering in Nashville. To pretend one is in the world's greatest city -

Or consider Sky-FM and their free Piano Jazz channel. Music to cook dinner by, indeed.

Or- my favorite. Radio Classique, from Paris. Mono-lingual barbarian that I am ,I understand not a word its announcers and program hosts are saying. But just now I listened to Edith Piaf, and then to Sinatra. I understood them perfectly. I imagine a blue evening in Paris.

I wish my mother had a more open mind.

My own Private Tea Room

Do you see the beagle lurking in two places?

To paraphrase an old wittiscism- Work is the curse of the reading classes. How I wish I could stay home tonight. But someone has to support that beagle. And the Shih Tzu. Ah, but I think I see a stay at home vacation on the horizon! It is only three free days and two work days away-

The Estate Sale Diaries- Holly Golightly's Barkeep

If Holly Golightly owned anything other than her little black dress, this would be it- a vintage Waring Blender. Remember her cocktail party, with her guests crammed into her apartment like anchovies in a can? She had to have help keeping everyone well-lubricated- I do not think that crowd would have been content with Boodles straight from the bottle.

I bought this yesterday at a moving sale over at River Plantation, a favorite neighborhood for the over 70s. I also bought a Cuisinart food processor with pasta attachments and slicing discs galore for $24. The blender cost me $5.


What else did I find? Two fine lamps. A fancy yellow damask tablecloth. Four Lennox mugs decorated with goldfinches and cardinals and cedar waxwings. A little crockpot. A sackful of paperback mysteries- Dorothy Sayers, Rex Stout, Josephine Tey- for $5. And best of all-

A Panama hat, made in Ecuador. $3. Too late to wear it now, but there is always next summer-

Kitchen Orphans.

A woman I work with, a true home cook, confessed to me two nights ago that she has a KitchenAid mixer she has never used. It sits on her counter looking expensive and purposeful, but is really unemployed. And I wondered when I heard this how many appliances spend their time holding down the counter tops.
Or taking up space in kitchen cabinets. I will wager some of them- the bread makers and the waffle presses and the rice cookers - came from wedding well-wishers or from a new apartment christening. Perhaps they are used once or twice. Until the waffles stick. Until one decides one prefers Pepperidge Farm to home made bread. "Too much work", someone sighs, trying to scrape off yesterday's dried on batter. And then the lazy put them back into their box. Under the cupboard they go again or into a closet. People with more energy pack them up and send them to Goodwill, so they can go and live forgotten in someone else's house.

Does a $300.00 mixer deserve this? I admit that mine sat for ten years, untouched. Until I found James Beard's "Bread" at an estate sale and began to make my own loaves. Until I started to make batter for breading poblanos for Chiles Rellenos and for frying oysters. How I love to beat eggs until they are yellow and foamy and can be folded into a puree of avocados and tomatoes to make a Guacamole Puff- my version of a semi-souffle made with egg yolks. I am not such a culinary purist that I feel I need to strain my elbows beating away at a job a machine can do-

And can do better. Imagine the work if we did not have food processors to julienne zucchini. People blessed enough to be able to stay home all day may not mind doing this. But I work twelve hour shifts three nights a week. That twelve stretches when I count time lost hitting every red light on West End Avenue on my way in and the horrors of ten mile an hour school zones and the gridlock near Aquinas College and The Overbrook School on my way home. There are any number of ways we helplessly fritter away our time. It behooves us to grab that time back with some friendly, helpful machine. Especially if it is a kitchen aristocrat such as a KitchenAid mixer.
Let us get our money's worth.

But one question remains- my rice cooker is wasting prime kitchen space. I need that space.

What to do do? Well, the bowl comes out. A nice little metal bowl. It would make a good water dish for Popette and Dippitty Dog. Problem solved. And now I am free to get ready to go over to River Plantation to a moving sale to buy and bring something else home I don't need.