I live by my own self-styled holiday cycle that has nothing to do with what the government or calendar says.
I'm off the grid that way.
Tuesday began BLT season--BT season, if you want to be technical, because nobody likes lettuce.
But holiday seasons are about tradition, so BLT is what the season always has been and thus shall remain.
My heroic South Arkansas tomato provider--I call her Bubbette--made her annual delivery from the Warren area. I rushed to the store for bacon and to replenish the mayo.
This year I'm going with five crisp strips crisscrossed on toasted, slathered bread. I'm adding a couple of thin slices of tomato, permitting me to stuff the remainder into my mouth whole as an appetizer.
I'm going with a bib this year because I ruined three T-shirts last year. Oh, I still wear them. I just ruined them.
Those telling me to add basil or baby arugula or an avocado must be coastal elitists. I will admit to having occasionally added a slice of cheese, mainly to fortify the sandwich and absorb the moisture between the tomato and the bread.
BLT season will continue until depletion--mine or the fixings. After that, the next holiday will be white peach season in early to mid-August.
The item above is adapted from a social media post that friends advised me would make a worthy column. I offer it in part as an homage to the late Our Town columnist, Richard Allin, who wrote quintessentially, and often, about the iconic BLT.
Likewise, the following is my Father's Day post of Sunday on social media. I also was encouraged to share it with newspaper readers. I apologize that it's four days beyond context:
When you get nearly to the age of your dad when he died--from Prince Albert roll-your-owns toned down to Camels and Lucky Strikes--your loving respect for him is stronger than ever.
It's not because you are oblivious to his fears, weaknesses and imperfections. It is because time and experience have revealed those to you and given you the perspective needed to love him even more.
You don't love him even more despite those fears, weaknesses and imperfections. You love him even more because of them.
And when you see them in yourself, you are torn between wanting to rise above them and wanting to keep him alive within you.
My dad was gone a lot because he was working--two jobs for a while--to try to bring home enough money to pay a $60-a-month mortgage and buy $20 worth of weekly groceries, mainly beans and potatoes.
When he was home, he either was sleeping or, often, tired and cross--because he knew how little money he had in his pocket and that something as simple as car trouble or a plumbing problem could pose a financial challenge revealing him to his wife and kids as the one thing he feared most--unable to provide for them.
So, when I was out back firing a rubber ball into the two lowest pieces of siding on the house in imitation of a major league baseball pitcher, imagining batters flailing at my stellar pitches, what I wanted more than anything was for my dad to come out and behold proudly my prowess.
He indeed came out--to berate me for damaging the wood siding, which he didn't have money to replace.
What we had was a fearful dad and a disappointed son.
And we had love that would only grow stronger with understanding--mine of his fear, his of my disappointment.
This man once walked from his house in the Baseline-Geyer Springs area to his night shift at the Nabisco warehouse near where the Clinton Library is now. His truck wouldn't start, and he had no other option that his pride would let him exercise. Thank goodness some fellow night-shifter drove him home at 1:30 a.m.
Another time, workers on our dead-end lane left the street dug up overnight in a place that didn't permit him a way out at 3:30 p.m. to get to work--except one, which was, with our neighbors' consent, to back up that pickup to the far edge of our yard, tear out as fast as he could across our yard and through the hedge and across the neighbor's yard, to a portion of the lane beyond the work site.
That pickup tore through that hedge full speed.
Then he vanished, off to load cookies onto trucks for eight more hours.
And I was wondering why somebody hadn't told the blankety-blanks on that street crew not to leave a hole in the road because a war veteran and working man needed to get out to provide for his family.
I think I've been telling off politicians for him ever since.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 06/22/2017