Grandma, meet Grandma #T

I met a man the other day who said he was from East Tennessee.  I told him my mama's people were from East Tennessee.  Something in common.  We shared a few stories.  I told him an abbreviated version of this one.

My mother's uncle, her mother's youngest brother, married my mother's daddy's first cousin, a relationship which has no bearing whatsoever on the story, but it is interesting and something for you to puzzle over.  Mama's cousin, a granddaughter of this couple, told me this story many years after both the elders had passed.  She said

I did not know my grandmother chewed tobacco  until many years after her death. Grandpa and Grandma had dressed for an ocasion and Grandpa had gone ahead, was sitting behind the wheel of the car waiting, as men are wont to do.  Grandma came to the car, opened the door and got into the seat.  She reached back, pulled the door closed and died.  Grandpa realized she was gone and reached over, tenderly removed the chaw from her mouth.

Grandma was fifty-five years old.

My new acquaintance then shared this tale.

Our family has a big ol' reunion in the hills ever' summer. Always have eighty, hundred or more people.  To raise funds to continue the tradition we have an auction every year, the items mostly being family trinkets or heirlooms which get returned to the sale time and time again.  The item that brings in the most cash, ever' year for the past several years, is Granny R's spitcan.  She was the matriarch of the clan and has been gone now for twenty years.  Last year the can brought seven hundred dollars! 

Word of the day: chaw

Fishy? I Think Not #T

[Somewhat over a year ago, due to failure of proper functioning of String Too Short to Tie, I transported STSTT over to Bob Warr's blog for a few weeks.  Most of the faithful followers came along, so for them this is rehash.  But I thought there might be some who missed it then and would enjoy it now.]

I wish to express my appreciation to Bob Warr for allowing  me to  use his blog as a platform for my posts for an undetermined length of time.  Thanks, Bob.

Sincerely,

vanilla

STRING TOO SHORT TO TIE 

Disclaimer: This article is for entertainment purposes only. It is not a theological treatise, nor is its intent to make fun of anyone’s practice of faith.

Fish on Friday

We protestants who lived north of the Arkansas River chided (read: made fun of) our Catholic friends who would drive south of the river on Fridays to partake of their evening meal, for there they felt free of conscience to eat red meat. It was widely believed that Catholics were to abstain from meat on Fridays as an integral part of the practice of their faith. Failure to do so made the offender a sinner in the eyes of fellow Catholics and a hypocrite in the eyes of the protestants.

The trip across the river had its roots in some medieval history. Because of their service in the Crusades, Pope Urban II granted a dispensation to Spanish counts allowing them relief from the meatless Friday rule. In 1571, Pope Pius V extended the dispensation to all lands under Spanish rule. Hence, Spain’s colonies in the New World were excepted.¹ Even though Spain had long since lost her rule in the New World and even through domination by various peoples and right on into the twentieth century American world in which I lived, the observance continued in those geographical areas originally dominated by Spain. In the West, the northern boundary of Mexico was the Arkansas River, and hence the Catholics of Texas, New Mexico, and a portion of southern Colorado considered themselves under the dispensation of Pope Pius V.

In 1951, the faithful in the area were advised that indeed they should follow the practice of abstinence from meat on Fridays, along with the rest of the Catholic world. Much confusion exists to this day, and Catholics generally believe that to eat meat on Friday is not sinful, but that Friday should be a day of penance as clarified by the Holy See in 1966.²

¹Michael P. Foley, Fish on Friday: The One that Got Away, Musings of a Pertinacious Papist, December 30, 2010.

²ibid.