You Can’t Drink All Day if You Don’t Start in the Morning (11 page)

She also made a red velvet cake that you’d crawl over twenty miles of broken glass to have the chance to eat. And she was the most cheerful somebody I’d ever met. If you asked Reverend Brenda how she was doing, she’d always smile real big and say, “Honey, if my life gets any better, I’m gonna have to hire somebody to help me enjoy it.”

Reverend Brenda’s red velvet cake was created as a godly alternative to devil’s food cake, which she refused to make or decorate for obvious reasons. Ditto her feelings about partaking of that famous Southern Christmas delicacy: divinity fudge.

“There’s nothing Christlike about fudge,” she’d say, refusing to eat it even under the more politically correct name that even the holinesses who didn’t shave their legs and lived on the dirt roads would use: seafoam candy.

In the rural South, even food had the capacity to offend the Almighty. Some folks I knew wouldn’t eat deviled eggs because of the name, which made them almost but not quite as crazy as Sister Admira in my mind.

I’ve never met a deviled egg I didn’t love. They’re a pure pleasure and you can dress them up as much or as little as you like. Here’s one of my favorite variations.

• 1 dozen hard-cooked eggs
  
• 6 tablespoons mayonnaise (yes, Duke’s again)
  
• 2 teaspoons prepared horseradish
  
• 2 tablespoons sweet pickle juice
  
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
  
• ¼ teaspoon salt
  

Split the eggs lengthwise; remove yolks and mash ’em up with the mayo, horseradish, pickle juice, pepper, and salt. If you want to get fancy, you can blend this together in a food processor ’til creamy, pour it into a cake-decorator bag (or a Ziploc bag with one corner cut) and pipe the filling into the egg-white halves. Garnish with paprika ’cause it just looks more festive.

In the South, we love our artificial red food coloring and we’re not ashamed to admit it. You won’t care about the health and safety of it once you taste this Southern classic, which is always welcome at wakes and weddings alike.

• 2½ cups flour
  
• ½ cup cocoa powder
  
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
  
• ½ teaspoon salt
  
• 2 sticks butter, softened
  
• 2 cups sugar
  
• 4 eggs
  
• 8 ounces sour cream
  
• ½ cup milk
  
• 1 (1-ounce) bottle red food coloring
  
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  
• Cream cheese frosting (recipe follows)
  

Sift flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt; set aside. Beat butter and sugar in large bowl with electric mixer for 6 minutes or until fluffy-looking. Add eggs in, one at a time. Add sour cream, milk, red food coloring, and vanilla. Gradually beat in the flour mixture until blended. If you overdo it, your cake won’t be as moist and soft, so just don’t.

Pour batter into two greased and floured 9-inch
cake pans and bake for about 35 minutes at 350 degrees. (Use a cake tester to make sure it’s done.) Cool the layers on a wire rack and frost with classic cream cheese frosting made by mixing together these ingredients ’til fluffy:

• 8 ounces cream cheese, softened
  
• ½ stick butter, softened
  
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  
• 4 cups confectioner’s sugar
  

This recipe makes enough to frost one fabulous cake. When you get really expert at red velvet cake, you might want to try your hand at making one in the shape of an armadillo like they did for the groom’s cake in
Steel Magnolias.

Duh-hubby looked at me with loving eyes as he gently held out my coat and waited for me to slip into it.

“What’s up?”

“I’m taking you to the Outback,” he said.

While more monied folks might think this meant that he was spontaneously whisking his bride of nearly twenty years away on an Australian adventure, I knew better.

We are attentive Kmart shoppers, after all. People in our income bracket don’t just jump on a plane and fly eighteen hours on a romantic whim. He meant the Outback Steakhouse, which was fine with me. I’m a big enough redneck to believe that going to Epcot is almost as good as crossing the pond. It-lee and a whole bunch of other countries and you never even have to leave Orlando! Suh-weet!

The truth was, I knew why Duh had selected Outback, but he felt the need to explain anyway.

“The winner of the Duplin County Hall of Fame always gets the award at a fancy steak dinner,” he said. Did his voice just catch a bit? He cleared his throat and continued.

“And, although they didn’t pick you again this year, I just want you to know that you’ll always be in
my
hall of fame.”

“Honey, that’s real sweet,” I said. And it was. It was almost enough to make me forgive him for nominating me for ten years in a row in the first place.

“Ridiculous!” I had huffed a decade ago. “Why, there are many more deserving natives than I. This will just be embarrassing!”

Even as I was saying it, though, I figured I might have a smallish shot at it. But that last flicker of hope had been snuffed out seven years earlier when I heard a rumor that they might give the award to a native whose “fame” had apparently included working on a movie one time as a stand-in for Henry Winkler.

“Heeeeeyyyyy.”

I knew that the trip to Outback was because the rejection letter had arrived the day before. For the tenth year in a row, I wasn’t a winner. Which made me a loser. Again.

Since y’all know a little about my home county now, perhaps you should also know that the population is so small that they’re going to run out of people and have to start giving the award to farm animals. So, at this rate, I stand a fairly
good chance of losing out to a chicken. And if that happens, somebody’s gonna die. I’m not kidding.

The rejection letter always says the same thing: “All nominees are deserving of the honor and recognition of receiving the award, for they have contributed in a significant manner to the growth, development, and well-being of Duplin County, North Carolina, the United States, and/or the world and its people.”

OK, maybe I’m not deserving of being considered. After all, I can’t honestly say that writing a few books and a humor column that runs in a few newspapers has exactly helped the well-being of “the world and its people.”

After ten years of rejection, I’m feeling like a younger, fatter Susan Lucci, although even she eventually got her Daytime Emmy.

Because there are actually two Hall of Fame recipients announced each year—one living and one deceased—I’m starting to wonder if I’m going to have to die to win this thing. I’ve got my pride, hons. If they pick me posthumously, I won’t show up to accept it or to enjoy the much ballyhooed “nice steak dinner.”

Which brings us back to Outback, where Duh had invited his redneck cousin, Dink, to join us. And, yes, it says “Dink” on his birth certificate. This is the South; pay attention.

The waitress greeted us and shot me a look that seemed to convey pity. How could she know my secret shame? Did I
have “loser” written all over me? I considered resubmitting my own application to the Hall of Fame and mentioning that I had once had an entire conversation with the girl who plays Peyton on
One Tree Hill
when they filmed across the street from my house. Fonzie that.

We settled ourselves into the booth beneath the slightly creepy gaze of a stuffed koala bear clinging to a plastic replica of a eucalyptus tree. Travel broadens the mind so.

Dink was in town for a convention of fellow fastener salespeople. He started to tell me more about that but I fell face forward into my kookaburra cocktail from the sheer drudgery of it.

Kidding! Dink can make any story livelier. He’s a classic Bubba, the kind who not only helps you tote off the oyster shells after the roast but drops them into a neighbor’s driveway to fill in a pothole he noticed.

Dink was telling an extremely funny joke about how a group of kindergarteners were being told not to use baby talk anymore.

“The teacher says to ’em, ‘From now on, you just use big-people words.’ Then she says to ’em, ‘Now tell me what y’all did this weekend’,” drawls Dink.

“So when one little boy says he went to visit his nana the teacher says, ‘You mean your grandmother.’ Then another boy says he rode a choo-choo and the teacher says, ‘You mean you rode the train.’ Then a third little boy says he read a book and the teacher smiles and asks, ‘What book did
you read?’ and the little boy thinks for a minute, then puffs his chest out really big, all proud of his answer, and says, ‘Winnie the
Shit
!’ ”

Well, what can I tell you? I forgot all about my Hall of Fame diss and couldn’t stop laughing.

Sometimes a night out with your super red cousin-in-law is just what the doctor ordered.

It was time to order so I told the waitress I’d like my favorite: the eight-ounce Victoria’s filet, cooked medium.

The waitress looked at me and said, “Medium. Now that’s done on the outside with a warm, pink center, OK?”

I thought this was a little weird but, hell, maybe she just had a slight hearing problem and wanted to make sure she had it right.

“Yes,” I said. “Fortunately, our understanding of ‘medium’ is exactly the same.” I hated the snarkiness in my voice, but the kookaburra cocktail and Dink’s joke had me feeling a little bitchy/silly.

She then turned to Duh, who ordered his Outback special, a twelve-ounce sirloin, medium rare.

“Hmmmm,” said the waitress. “That’s going to be pink inside fading to a grayish brown color throughout the rest of the meat and with a grayish-brown outside.”

“Yes!” said hubby as if he’d just proved to be more intelligent than a fifth grader. I was afraid he was going to pump his fist in the air.

Meantime, all that talk about gray meat was making me a
little sick. Or maybe it was the bloomin’ onion, which Dink ordered for the table but which I had demolished in my Hall of Fameless–induced depression.

The waitress turned to Dink, who also ordered the Outback special, but cooked rare.

Once again, the waitress took on a look of concentration like she was going to kinetically cook it by using her own thought rays.

“Rare . . . That’s—”

But Dink held up his hand to stop her. Uh-oh. I knew what was coming.

“I dunno about all that, lil darlin’,” he drawled. “Just knock his ears off, wipe his ass, and lead ’im to the table.”

The waitress looked down at the descriptions that Outback had provided and pondered, I thought, the proper response. It was obvious to me that Outback was sick and damn tired of dealing with idiots who send their steaks back whining about degrees of doneness. There are just some things in this life that we should all agree on without a lot of explanation, including the definitions of rare, medium rare, medium, and (shudder) well done, which is also defined as “charred on the outside without a remnant of juiciness left intact.”

Dink laughed at his own joke and the waitress looked mildly uncomfortable. Clearly she wasn’t used to being in the company of a high-dollar fastener salesman.

“Right,” she said. “Rare.”

“I mean reaaaal rare, baby girl. Listen here. When you
bring that steak out I wanna be able to tell you that I’ve seen cows get well that weren’t hurt any worse than that.”

Then he rocked back in his chair and laughed at his own cleverness all over again.

“OK,” said the waitress—gamely, I thought.

“You owe her a big tip,” I hissed at Dink after she’d finally left, presumably to bring us water, which would probably be cold, induced by its proximity to ice.

His dopey
LIFE IS GOOD
T-shirt stretched tight over his enormous belly, Dink picked at the greasy remnants of the bloomin’ onion and seemed content to picture his Outback special mooing noisily on the grill for a few fleeting seconds before being led to its plate.

He started telling about how his friend in South Carolina had “kilt” a five-and-a-half-foot-long timber rattlesnake, soaked it overnight in milk, dipped it in batter, and fried it ’til it was crispy. Being health conscious, they served it with salads. Dink said his friend kept the snake alive in a barrel overnight until his grandson could come see it the next day and feed the rattles to his pet ants. Did Dink know anybody normal? I mean, besides us?

Meanwhile, my thoughts wandered to the steak dinner I wasn’t going to be having at the Hall of Fame banquet that night.

At this rate, they’d go to the crazy house and give the damn award to that crazy-ass Sister Admira before I’d ever get it. She could bring along her bucket and stand on it to make her acceptance speech.

In the meantime, all I could do would be to watch the mailbox every October, sulk a bit and, oh yes, one more thing, continue to work on my newest book:
Duplin County: Gateway to Paradise!

That oughta learn ’em.

Dink, who is usually about as sensitive as a toilet seat, noticed that I wasn’t as cheerful as usual, despite having just eaten most of a bloomin’ onion and a perfectly medium Victoria’s filet.

Finally, after a (very) little amount of prodding, I told him about the whole Hall of Fame shame thing.

He shook his big curly head in sympathy. Like any good Bubba, he stands ready to defend the honor of a Southern woman who has been forced, through no fault of her own, to endure some trauma or other.

After listening to me and wiping the last bit of cow blood off his stubble, Dink leaned forward and said that I should always remember the words of his granddaddy who had raised him.

I braced myself for something wise and useful. Dink, like most Bubbas, could be quite insightful and kind when you least expected it.

“Always remember one thing in this life,” he said, pausing to stare at the koala’s big brown glass eyes. I knew he woulda shot it if we were really in the wild.

“What is it, Dink? What should I remember? I could really use some perspective here.”

“Always remember . . . you can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the mornin’.”

And with that pronouncement, Dink laughed loud enough to make the boomerang nailed to the wall above our booth rattle a bit.