Hot pants and go-go Boots

Her older sister told me this story. Over thirty years ago Debbie came down the stairs in an outfit that her father considered indecent. He carried her back up the stairs kicking and screaming, gave her a spanking and made her put on something more modest.

Yesterday at the parade we watched a flatbed pass with the hillbilly kickers. They were line dancing to a song titled something like “Ain’t it Great to be a Redneck”. They reminded me of the backwoods version of the Rockettes—a dozen large older women who came dangerously close to stepping off the edge of the platform with every whine of the steel guitar. And they could really “shake that thang!” They mostly wore in jeans and t-shirts that said “I kicked it”. Except Debbie who is still pretty well preserved for a grandmother. She wore hot pants, go go boots and a cowboy hat. I wondered if her dad, now in his upper eighties or nineties knew what she was up to, and if someone had told him, would be chasing after the flatbed, trying to catch her and put her over his knee.

Tater tot helped me at the honey/lumber booth. I quizzed her on the display of lumber species. She knows nothing about identifying hardwoods. That’s a real hole in her education. Occasionally we had a crowd around the booth. As I explained the nearly miraculous virtues of honey, I heard Tater on the lumber side going into great detail on the various hardwood samples to people, imitating me perfectly.

Many people assume dark honeys are bitter or strong tasting and unpalatable. I have quite a bit of bamboo or Japanese knotweed honey, a dark mahogany color with a full but mild flavor. One woman from Colorado bought a jar, took it to her car and tasted it. She came back twice more and eventually bought almost all our bamboo honey.