ROOM and BORED

So just when I have got this Buffalo/hippy/pot/no make-up/straight hair/overalls thing down…my parents decide to move BACK TO TENNESSEE.   WHIPLASH. They gathered us all together over the summer and sat us down (always a bad sign) and informed us that Dad was either going to buy a tea plantation in Sri Lanka,  India (where?) or a catfish farm in Tennessee.  (what?)  I was a little disappointed when they decided on Tennessee.  At least India had  sounded dramatic…visions of myself riding on an elephant, etc. ..”so we loaded up our truck and we moved to Tennessee”..no movie stars, no swimmin’ pools…just catfish…200 acres of ponds, and fish and bugs, and biting horseflies…in the middle -of- nowhere (Counce) Tennessee . At least my overalls were going to come in handy again.  I spent that first summer on the fish farm with my family…helping people fish, untangling their lines, selling stink bait (aptly named, I might add) weighing their catch, skinning catfish (I didn’t even know fish HAD skin)…and being socially BORED TO TEARS.

I decided we needed to shake things up a bit…get some action going..because I was not going to spend the rest of my summers DOING THIS.  I suggested we put a restaurant in the old fish processing room.  I told my parents that I was more than qualified to help get a restaurant started because I had worked one summer in Howard Johnson’s as a waitress.  It frightens me to this day that they listened to me.  They obviously mistook my bored  desperation for enthusiasm and know-how.

My mom experimented on all the recipes until she had something we all agreed was pretty darn good.  Menu…fried catfish, cole claw, hushpuppies, french fries…all-you-can-eat…$7.95. 

Flash forward 3 weeks…Pickwick Catfish Farm Restaurant opens…denim table cloths and curtains, red bandana tie-backs, coke machine, deep fryers…and…voila…customers!!  We hadn’t really anticipated that many customers which became evident that night.  One man who was waiting for his food for quite some time said to me (the waitress) “what’d ya have to do, catch ‘em”??  Oh, how right he was.  I’d have to yell out the back door to my brothers who were desperately trying to reel in that next meal..”another customer…now step on it”. 

Flash forward about 36 years.  The little -restaurant -that- could is still going strong,  has been in many books about the BEST OF THE BEST, has been featured on the Food Network, has kept those first customers for all these years, packs ‘em in every weekend,  and now people drive 2 hours from Memphis..JUST TO EAT OUR CATFISH DINNER!!!!

Lesson:  never, ever underestimate a bored teenager.

Cinderella hippy

Hi..me again…sorry for the long gap.  So, where was I??  Oh yeah…Buffalo…waist-deep in snow.  I quickly found out that my idea of what college SHOULD be like and what it was ACTUALLY LIKE…were two completely different things.

Since I had seen the movie “Daddy Longlegs” with Fred Astaire..where the girl goes off to school with trunkloads of fabulous dresses, etc…that’s what I did.  I was so thrilled at the prospect of dressing for the dances, socials, dates, football games….WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.  As I began unpacking my “trunks”, my roomate and suitemates were sitting on the floor in their WORK OVERALLS smoking pot and laughing.  Where was my social whirlwind, my mint juleps…my gentlemen callers…something told me I was not in the south anymore.  So, fast forward about a month…I am now sitting on the floor in WORK OVERALLS AND WORK BOOTS…smoking POT, eating pizza, and passing around a bottle of whiskey.   Cinderella had turned into a hippy at midnight.   Talk about BACKWARDS! 

One day I saw a beautiful boy playing guitar in the lobby of my dorm and fell head -over -workboots in love.  After asking around I found out who he was and wormed my way into his life.  We were both virgins and I remember the night I lost that title.  It always reminds me of the song from “A Chorus Line”….”I felt nothing”.  All I remember is about 10 seconds of  something after which he said “it broke”.  I found out later he was referring to the condom.

We dated a while until I fell in love with Jesus.    I  was in the college production of  “Jesus Christ Superstar”…and Jesus was downright dreamy.  We started hanging out together and I fantasized about how passionate it would be for Mary Magdalene to be making love to Jesus…wouldn’t it be so cool in the throes of passion screaming out his name and it WAS HIS NAME????   Oh Jesus…that didn’t happen.  What DID happen is I bopped over to his off-campus apartment for a surprise visit and found him in bed with KING HARROD!!  I mean, JESUS CHRIST already. As you can probably guess, that pretty much ended my fantasy.  It wouldn’t have been as much fun screaming out ASSHOLE.