Like most people (maybe I’m presuming a bit here), my Facebook feed is filled with memes & links & billboards. Lots of bad news, politics, & sometimes a history lesson. Occasionally it’s interspersed with an antidote or joke. I scroll through lots of hysterical cat videos. There are recipes & makeup reviews. Here & there people check in at restaurants or cool places. Families smiling & laughing & barbecuing. There are plenty of prayer requests & praise reports & pictures of babies. I see tributes to our armed forces. Shared pictures of beautiful landscapes. I read about Vols statistics & what Peyton’s up to. Not just in the fall, but year round.
But here my news feed may begin to differ. Mine also consists of eggs for sale by young 4-H’ers. Trophy bucks & ducks. Sausage, freshly ground & ready for your freezer, from hogs I just saw on the hoof a mere week or two ago. I see cows & four-wheel drives & tractors. It’s also sprinkled with book recommendations.
I see children & crops grow.
And Lord at the horses. Thousands of horses.
And Sunday night, I saw my good friend TammyLynn holding a great big crappie.
TammyLynn is my newest good friend. Like all the best people, she has two first names. I met her, like I have the majority of y’all, at the Co-op. She bought bookoos of birdseed twice a week, and as it happens, about the sixth time I waited on her, we struck up conversation. I learned straightway that she can close her epiglottis & not be able to smell much of anything.
Now, how many of you can do that?
Also learned neither of us care for surprises in food. With me, I have an aversion to nuts. Y’all surely remember the banana bread incident? Well, raisins are why TammyLynn has trust issues. She said when you bake ’em, they swell up like a tick & then you bite into ’em, & there you are, all that mess squirting out like blood, guts, & gore like when you pop a tick getting it off your dog.
Y’all will be thinking about that next time you eat raisins, I bet. She ruined them for me, too.
C-uuuun-TREE, I tell you. (That word is country, by the way). And hilarious, to boot. We share the same type of hair (curly, & not a thing you can do about it), the same height (it’s rare for me to be able to look someone eye-to-eye), & the same general outlook on life. She’s a nut, ain’t a bit bashful, & has a steadfast belief of God, Jesus, & the afterlife.
My faith in her was further reinforced when she was telling me she had jury duty Monday & said she would love to be a professional juror. She said she doesn’t mind doing it, she didn’t go fight a war overseas, it’s the LEAST she can do. It’s our civic duty. It was like she was taking the words right out of my mouth.
The only fault I can find in her is she likes Alison Kraus, who makes me grind my teeth & my eye go to twitchin’.
Anyway, this picture of her holding the crappie just spoke to me, as things are wont to do. We need more fish in our news feed!! So I simply text her: “May I write about you? The crappie is striking a chord in me.” I sometimes just leave it open & ask if I can write about you. I have also been known not to ask at all but it’s not out of meanness, I get caught up in your story & just forget. Anyway, TL said she would be honored, which is one of two standard replies. The other one is “oh, Lord.” Hahahaha. She’s very brave, you see.
So, even though I’ve written about my favorite biscuit instructor before, how she nearly died on the lake shore, going for broke against The Gooch/ Bull Shark, I had to share the best picture in my news feed with y’all.
And no, she ain’t mad, I think the sun was in her eyes. Or maybe she was thinking she needed a dozen more just like him to freeze. Or MAYBE the thought just crossed her mind about the last mess she’d cleaned & left the guts for her neighbor to use for organic fertilizer. Who, come to think of it, hasn’t returned her bucket & wonder if he’s okay….
(This story to be continued, because goll-lee day it’s funny. It involves a bag of lime & a motorcycle helmet)