Fried Green Tomatoes
I'm in Charleston at the moment. The hotel has fixed me up with some temporary wireless gizmo which I find Quite Attractive. May have to break down. Go wireless. Every day I just fall further and further into the deep pit of modern technology, don't I? So much for my saboteur Luddite instincts. To hell with them. Gizmos rule.
Oh, and by the way, Dad, if you check in here, you should know that I am staying at the Francis Marion. Yep, you read it right. I am staying in a place named after the Swamp Fox. I intend to send you something on some of this Francis Marion hotel paper. If you still smoked a pipe, I'd send you some matches from the Swamp Fox restaurant.
Anyway, here I am, but I absent myself from my current work of 1) catching up on the sleep I missed when I got up at 3:15 to get to the airport (hence a sort of fuzziness to this composition), and 2) writing the paper that I haven't written yet. This is the worst I've ever behaved yet. Often I write the paper the night before I get on the plane. This time I got on the plane with NOTHING. But it's ok -- I'll get it done. I don't give it till Saturday afternoon, anyway.*
I absent myself from my proper work, as I say, just so I can tell you all how very nice it is to be in Charleston. In October. When, I'd like to say, the weather is not nearly so ghastly hot as it is in August, which is when I'm usually here.
The graduate student who's sharing the room with me just walked in. I'm glad, cause it means she's not dead. I was beginning to worry. Long long day, apparently, involving delays and nauseating rides in little puddle-jumping turbulence magnets. She's hours late.
I've sent her down to the hotel restaurant -- that'd be the Swamp Fox restarurant, as aforementioned -- to eat the most extravagant fried green tomatoes she will ever see in her life. She's from New Orleans. She's excited. Oh, my, are those fried green tomatoes good. I may have some more tomorrow.
I can make proletarian fried green tomatoes, but I can't fancy them up like this restaurant does. And you might say, well, what the hell. Why were you messing with fried green tomatoes in the first place? Can they possibly be made any better than they are when you just use cornmeal and fry them up?
Well, yes. They can have a fancier batter which actually sticks to them, and they can have Vidalia onion relish on them.
Of course, if I eat more fried green tomatoes I might not actually be able to eat at Slightly North of Broad more than once. And I could easily eat there three, four times. Hate to miss anything at Slightly North of Broad.
What am I saying. I'm down here being a medievalist. I didn't come here to go on some Southern Fancy Food tour. I got work to do. I got a paper to write. I got things to say. I have opinions to give.
Oh, I forgot to tell you -- the gift shop's got boiled peanuts in the cooler. I have died and gone to heaven.
___________________
*Sam was beside himself with happiness when I left without the paper written, cause it reminded him of one of his favorite pieces of Changing Places -- some professor guy's supposed to be giving a paper he hasn't written yet, and he can't get it done, and so he tries typing what he's already written real fast, hoping that the momentum will carry him over the intellectual gap at which the fragment he's got ends, but it doesn't. And so he has to deliver an unfinished paper. But he's saved, cause Legionnaire's disease breaks out in the hotel.
I don't really think Sam wants me to be saved by an outbreak of Legionnaire's disease. But I do think he'd enjoy it if I came home and told him that I had to write real fast, so the momentum would carry me over the intellectual gap at which my paper draft ended.
Might do that for him. AND bring home some boiled peanuts. But not the fried green tomatoes. I am eating those right up.
Oh, and by the way, Dad, if you check in here, you should know that I am staying at the Francis Marion. Yep, you read it right. I am staying in a place named after the Swamp Fox. I intend to send you something on some of this Francis Marion hotel paper. If you still smoked a pipe, I'd send you some matches from the Swamp Fox restaurant.
Anyway, here I am, but I absent myself from my current work of 1) catching up on the sleep I missed when I got up at 3:15 to get to the airport (hence a sort of fuzziness to this composition), and 2) writing the paper that I haven't written yet. This is the worst I've ever behaved yet. Often I write the paper the night before I get on the plane. This time I got on the plane with NOTHING. But it's ok -- I'll get it done. I don't give it till Saturday afternoon, anyway.*
I absent myself from my proper work, as I say, just so I can tell you all how very nice it is to be in Charleston. In October. When, I'd like to say, the weather is not nearly so ghastly hot as it is in August, which is when I'm usually here.
The graduate student who's sharing the room with me just walked in. I'm glad, cause it means she's not dead. I was beginning to worry. Long long day, apparently, involving delays and nauseating rides in little puddle-jumping turbulence magnets. She's hours late.
I've sent her down to the hotel restaurant -- that'd be the Swamp Fox restarurant, as aforementioned -- to eat the most extravagant fried green tomatoes she will ever see in her life. She's from New Orleans. She's excited. Oh, my, are those fried green tomatoes good. I may have some more tomorrow.
I can make proletarian fried green tomatoes, but I can't fancy them up like this restaurant does. And you might say, well, what the hell. Why were you messing with fried green tomatoes in the first place? Can they possibly be made any better than they are when you just use cornmeal and fry them up?
Well, yes. They can have a fancier batter which actually sticks to them, and they can have Vidalia onion relish on them.
Of course, if I eat more fried green tomatoes I might not actually be able to eat at Slightly North of Broad more than once. And I could easily eat there three, four times. Hate to miss anything at Slightly North of Broad.
What am I saying. I'm down here being a medievalist. I didn't come here to go on some Southern Fancy Food tour. I got work to do. I got a paper to write. I got things to say. I have opinions to give.
Oh, I forgot to tell you -- the gift shop's got boiled peanuts in the cooler. I have died and gone to heaven.
___________________
*Sam was beside himself with happiness when I left without the paper written, cause it reminded him of one of his favorite pieces of Changing Places -- some professor guy's supposed to be giving a paper he hasn't written yet, and he can't get it done, and so he tries typing what he's already written real fast, hoping that the momentum will carry him over the intellectual gap at which the fragment he's got ends, but it doesn't. And so he has to deliver an unfinished paper. But he's saved, cause Legionnaire's disease breaks out in the hotel.
I don't really think Sam wants me to be saved by an outbreak of Legionnaire's disease. But I do think he'd enjoy it if I came home and told him that I had to write real fast, so the momentum would carry me over the intellectual gap at which my paper draft ended.
Might do that for him. AND bring home some boiled peanuts. But not the fried green tomatoes. I am eating those right up.
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