No oil can for this Tin Man

In this world, there are very few folks who enjoy the self-imposed torment my elderly kinfolk call “taking the exercise.” Admittedly, I’m among the mass majority that doesn’t experience euphoria while jogging (and huffing) up hills, gliding (and sliding) on the elliptical machine, and summiting (and suffering) imaginary peaks on the local gym’s Stairmaster. I undergo such physical agony for one lone reason: I’m cash-strapped and can’t afford to grow out of my current clothes.

Among the numerous exercise drills I deplore, squats top the list. Not only is this knee-bending, rear-raising routine aesthetically awkward, it’s darned difficult as well, and in my case – disastrous. So last weekend, when my sister’s fiancé, Justin, accompanied me to the gym for an hour-long training session that involved several sets of squats, I was not the happiest future sister-in-law.

Against my better judgement, I sacrificed my out-of-shape physique to Justin’s torture training session. Although the workout consisted of more than the up and down, leg trembling techniques I equate with hell on earth, it was the secession of squats that led to my near collapse.

“I think I’m going to throw up,” I muttered, as Justin instructed me to lower my hindquarters closer to the floor. And then, after miraculously maneuvering myself in a miserable, seated upright position, it was over.

Or so I thought.

Minor muscle stiffness settled in the next day. Its gradual onset tricked my brain into believing that brotherhood’s brutality was but a mere, fading memory.

Yet, even the mind falls prey to deception. And by bedtime, as I lay among a pillar of pillows and my childhood stuffed cow, I awakened to a sore reality.

The next workday’s gait was a series of knee-buckling stilted shifts, similar to that of the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz. Like the shiny, clanking Tin Man, I also squeaked. Yet such squeaks sounded more like yelps, and sometimes hollers, issuing forth from my contorted mouth – not from the rusted, hinged joints of my kindred spirit.

Clad in ruby spiked heels, I clumsily shuffled back and forth from my gray-paneled cubicle to the office water fountain, seeking a remedy to the scratchy throat I’d acquired from the aforementioned yelps. And as a result of frequent fountain trips, I later limped to the one-seater bathroom adjacent our newsroom. After securing the single latch lock to the chipped wooden door, I grimaced and grabbed both sides of the wobbling toilet seat as my trembling thighs collapsed with an echoed thud on the commode.

“This must be what the old folks feel like,” I grumbled later, while squirting pink commercial bathroom soap onto my hands and lathering them for the second time.

Bumping free from the bathroom door, I shuffled towards the Advertising Department again, tripping when a rebellious foot freed itself from my high heel shoe.

“Are you ok?” Mama asked that evening, as I slowly stumbled up the back steps barefoot, clutching my wretched red heels in one hand while leaning forward, reaching for the kitchen screen door with the other.

“I’m off to see the wizard,” I jokingly hummed as I hugged her good evening.

That night at dinner, I said little and ate a lot. And then I retired to my little upstairs nook, where I collapsed onto my bed.

As I lay beneath my rose patchwork quilt, I realized that despite the comforts of my cushioned mattress, I would suffer a sore slumber. Discomfort’s a sure source for insomnia, so I had ample time to contemplate the culprit in my current condition – my lack of common sense. And as my waking moments surrendered to sleep, I dreamed the line of a familiar Wizard of Oz melody…

“If I only had a brain …”

Bambi gets no love from these apple mavens

These days, there’s a battle going on between deer and man – or should I say woman – just down Route 1 in Epsom. It’s not fought with the firing blasts of rifles, since the four-legged foe both advances and retreats while we Eaves folk sleep. Instead, retaliation’s waged with afternoon apple-picking frenzies — Mama scooping up basketfuls of any untouched Granny Smith apples that remain after our brown-haired, white-tailed neighbors have munched on their midnight snack.

I remember the day that Daddy, donning his straw-brimmed hat, shoveled earthen pockets about our yard and planted the several sprigs that have now matured into fruit-bearing trees. Despite his knack for gardening, Daddy’s mini-apple orchard was endangered on numerous nature-imposed occasions. Mama’d signal the siren with, “It’s coming up a cloud!” As we kids scurried inside, she’d unplug all of the lamps and the television set in our old farm house. Hushed, we’d huddle together in the darkened living room until the “thunder cloud” passed. Meanwhile, Daddy would venture onto the front porch to watch Mother Nature’s wrath, a TRUE cigarette dangling from his lax lip. Occasionally it was the lightening, but more often the strong winds, that toppled the branches and sometimes tree trunks in Daddy’s budding orchard. Even as a child, I deemed the uplifted tree roots an unmerited mockery by Mother Nature herself.

Despite two decades of thunderstorms, ice storms and Hurricane Fran, some of those original apple trees remain. And as I write this week’s column, Mama is outside picking apples from them.

When Mama is finished picking those apples, she’ll begin peeling and cubing the batch. Depending on the picking’s yield, she’ll sprinkle cinnamon and sugar over the slices and slide them into the oven. Baked apples are one of our family’s favorite summertime treats. For those apples spared from tonight’s baking heat, they’ll be bagged in the freezer for later months, when Daddy’s apple trees lie dormant in the raw of a grey winter.

An older generation has some apple-baking treats as well.

“Old folks used to slice apples and place ‘em on a piece of tin outside until they dried,” Granny explained a few nights ago, as we dined on apple rolls and homemade apple sauce. “They’d bring ‘em back out during the winter months, soak ‘em in a stove pot until the apples plumped back up, and then fry ‘em into apple jacks,” she continued, as she approached the stove and grabbed for her pan of apple rolls. “The old folks would eat apple jacks with turnip salad.”

“How much sugar’s in these apples?” I laughed, as Granny giggled and served a second helping of our apple dessert.

“Back then, folks ate like this and never gained any weight. They worked it off in the fields,” Granny replied. “Honey, I’d go back to school after working the farm all summer, and I’d have lost weight!”

As Granny offered a third serving of apple rolls, I reminded myself that I don’t toil on a farm all day long. And so, with disappointment, I declined the sweet, flaking apple pastry that beckoned me from Granny’s baking pan.

Sometimes, I wonder what I’ll tell the next generation of Eaves offspring when they ask me what “the old folks” used to do.

Yet, I’m certain that as long as there are apple trees and made-from-scratch recipes, there’ll be stories to share about Mama’s apple-pickin’, Granny’s dessert-fixin’, and Daddy’s front-porch smokin’ in a little farm community called Epsom.

Gina Eaves is an Epsom native, a Peace College graduate and an advertising representative at The Daily Dispatch. Her columns appear on Sundays. E-mail her at geaves@hendersondispatch.com.

* * * * * * * *

Apple Rolls

• Buttermilk

biscuit dough

• Cooked Apples

• Sugar

• Butter

Make buttermilk biscuit dough or buy dough already prepared. Roll out with rolling pin and cut into roll size pieces. Put 2 tablespoons cooked apples (not mashed) on top of dough and add sugar. Fold and seal around edges. Place in pan, brush each roll with butter and bake until brown.

Raw fruit can be placed inside dough. It will cook with dough. Substitute blackberries, blueberries or peaches.

Views on a 'Southern' slice of life

My first tomato sandwich debate dates back to 2006, during my two-year employment at Wake Forest’s Heritage Golf Club. It was then, as I cruised the drought-parched greens on my beverage cart – darting irrigation sprinklers and the dangerous drives of hopelessly aspiring golfers – that I daily ordered a tomato sandwich from the club’s restaurant. My instructions were specific: toasted whole wheat bread, a sparing portion of mayonnaise, a dusting of black pepper, and tomato slices so fine that they folded into a river of seeded juice. On occasion, I’d request the addition of bacon, as the restaurant didn’t cater to the fried fat back or hog jowls of my Epsom rearing.

“No, no, no,” sighed the club’s head golf pro one day, while I chomped a bite of my soupy sandwich. “That’s not the way you make a real tomato sandwich.” As he was one of the few native North Carolinians at The Heritage, I humored his tomato sandwich recipe.

“First of all, you use white bread and you don’t toast it,” he began. “And you’ve got to use Duke’s Mayonnaise,” he insisted. “None of those other brands.”

His description of suitable tomato slice size was certainly not the puree placed inside my two pieces of toasted whole wheat bread, as evidenced by the disapproving shake of his head.

Admittedly, I haven’t always been a fan of tomato sandwiches. From childhood to adult-childhood (aka my college years), I’d sustained an aversion for the plump red fruit that’s grown in almost every country garden. My first stand-off with the Southern sandwich occurred during a lunch time visit with my great-aunt Christine. Aware I couldn’t decline the meal she’d prepared for me, I bowed in surrender – and in prayer – to the lone tomato sandwich she’d placed onto my plate. Without breathing, I gulped the feast of thick, vine-ripened tomato slices that she’d piled between pieces of Merita bread.

And then, something occurred. Perhaps it was the Good Lord above, looking down from Heaven onto my pitiful predicament, who declared it heretical that a Southern girl not like tomato sandwiches. For soon after my self-forced consumption at my dear aunt’s kitchen table, I was struck with an immense desire for another tomato sandwich. And after slightly altering the Southern concoction, I devoured what I considered the perfect tomato sandwich.

I’ve learned that there’s one essential factor in preparing the ideal tomato sandwich, and that’s a homegrown tomato. When the edge of my fruit knife pierces the skin of a tomato, I want a burst of sweet sap to splash free from its membrane. A puddle of fruit juice should overflow when the first sliver of severed tomato drops to the cutting board. I’ve tried tomatoes from other sources, and there’s sadly no substitute for the garden-grown variety.

A few weeks ago, I conducted a poll at The Daily Dispatch on how to make the perfect tomato sandwich. Few fancied the slender slices I favor, stating their preference as hearty wedges. While most female employees preferred whole wheat toast, the majority of male employees favored untoasted white bread – that is, unless the “woman of the house” volunteered to toast the bread for them. Duke’s Mayonnaise was elected the mayonnaise of choice, and black pepper was unanimously voted a necessary component of tomato sandwiches, with the addition of salt close behind.

One employee preferred her tomato sandwiches “without the tomato.” I guess the Lord hasn’t struck this Southern girl with a taste-bud transformation yet.

Yet, thanks to a fixin’ of fresh tomato sandwiches, prepared years ago by my great-aunt Christine, the Good Lord struck me. And I’m now proud to claim my country roots with the Southern slice of life known as a tomato sandwich.

Read more: The Daily Dispatch - Views on a Southern ‘slice’ of life

Tippy the not-so-friendly ghost cat

It was just last week, as I yawned “good evening” to bedtime’s approach, that I crawled into the line-dried sheets that draped across my mattress. A nearby floor fan hummed a noisy lullaby as it wafted the smell of sunshine and summertime from the pale green sheets that had been baked stiff by July’s heat. I lay on my side as the fan cast its breeze onto my skin, evaporating the dewy condensation that glued my flesh to the sheets and pillow shams.

It was then, drifting somewhere between consciousness and sleep, that I was roused by a revelation: I was not alone.

Mama’d encountered a similar scenario weeks before.

“I thought I heard a meow,” she explained that evening over a dinner of fried pork chops, mashed potatoes and green peas. Having never cared for green peas, I’d eliminated the pungent peas and doubled my portion of potatoes.

“What’s that?” I asked, as I flattened my crispy pork chop between two flaky layers of a buttered biscuit.

“Earlier today, I thought I heard a meow,” she repeated, while our 17-year-old cat, Sassy, chomped on her pork chop scraps.

“And then I felt something rub against my leg,” Mama continued, while I searched for another pork chop among the leftovers.

“Did you give Sassy the last pork chop?” I turned to Mama, while our somewhat senile cat licked her curved, white-mittened paws and then collapsed near her food bowl.

The telephone rang, and while Mama handled the habitual dinner-time telemarketer, I frowned and settled for the remaining green peas. Meanwhile, a satisfied Sassy purred as she dozed for a cat nap.

Several interruptions followed, and it wasn’t until the dinner table was cleared that Mama finished her meal time story.

“It wasn’t Sassy?” I asked, as Mama described the rubbing sensation on her leg, and likewise, the meow she’d heard while washing dishes earlier that day.

“Sassy was outside,” Mama replied. “But of course, it could have been my imagination.”

I’d heard of ghost cats before. But I’d never considered the possibility until now, after hearing Mama’s encounter. Although Mama dismissed her experience as an over-active imagination, I deemed it paranormal cat activity.

Following Mama’s ghost cat incident, I searched for the ghost of our dearly beloved, recently-deceased cat, Tippy. I beckoned it with cat treats and “Here kitty, kitty.” Yet, after a series of unsuccessful communications, I deemed any paranormal cat activity unlikely.

That is, until the night I succumbed to slumber as the fan’s breeze combated my sweat. It wasn’t a meow that startled me from my rest, nor was it a ghost cat’s rub that alerted me of a paranormal presence.

Instead, it was the sound of a cat relieving itself.

Contentious in her last days, Tippy frequently “did her business” in my bedroom. Although I’d positioned a litter box inches from my bedroom door, Tippy seldom found use for it. Instead, she squatted in carpeted corners and occasionally aimed for walls. I assumed it was Tippy’s rebellion against a series of Mama-mandated diets.

Admittedly, it wasn’t the deceased Tippy I initially blamed for stirring my sleep. It was Sassy, not yet gone to Jesus, with whom I found fault.

“Sassy,” I groaned, flipping the switch to my bedside lamp.

But no Sassy appeared.

And so, I began my hunt. I searched beside, behind and underneath my bed. Yet, I found no feline. I assumed an all-fours position and sniffed my bedroom’s beige carpeted floor. Likewise, there was no odor indicative of a cat’s trail.

It was at that moment, pajama clad and crawling with nose pressed to the floor, that I realized what had occurred.

I’d been visited by the ghost cat.

There are those disbelievers who quantify such findings as wishful thinking, delusions, daydreams or even psychosis. And perhaps those pragmatists are correct.

Yet, who’s to say our departed pets can’t return to their earthly homes, bearing messages for their earthly caregivers. Perhaps it’s these paranormal visits that bring closure to our furry friends, allowing them to frisk forward to “the light.”

If that’s the case, what was Tippy’s message to me, as her kitty spirit squatted on my bedroom floor and relieved herself?

Never mind. I’m sure I was just dreaming.

Gina Eaves is an Epsom native, a Peace College graduate and an advertising representative at The Daily Dispatch. Her columns appear on Sundays. E-mail her at geaves@hendersondispatch.com.

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Storyteller stands as tall as the mountains

Some say the mountains tell a story. They claim the tales of earth’s evolution — likewise mankind’s metamorphosis — are ensconced in the rolling, oftentimes rigid terrain of Mother Nature. That the mountain’s memoirs are etched in trails that bend to its timbered peaks and slither past the weathered stones of forested creeks. Yet, these stories aren’t bound solely to the dirt and rock of ages past. Instead, they’re sometimes told by a passerby, as all folks are on this temporary stomping ground.

I met my storyteller last weekend, during a trip to our western Carolina mountains.

Pestered by a week of incessant cell phone and Internet activity, I turned off all forms of communicative technology as I settled into the hilled haven of Etowah. And while unpacking an overnight bag at my cousin Lucy’s, I grumbled at my self-induced stress and then medicated my sleep-deprivation with coffee grains and diet cola.

After a few hours of family storytelling, followed by a good night’s sleep, I was eager to conquer a small hike at Pearson’s Falls with cousin Lucy and Granny, who’d accompanied me for the weekend visit. Outstretched tree limbs masked the summer’s sunlight as we climbed the wooded trail to the waterfall’s plunge. Yet it was at dinner time, a few hours following our hike, when the Carolina mountains awakened me with a story told not by its geography, but by one of its inhabitants.

The storyteller wasn’t a native to these mountains. Instead, he’d settled there seeking reprieve from the flat land’s heat. For years, this mountaineer had waded through the rivers, lakes and streams of Henderson County as he cast his rod using the ancient method of fly fishing. A doctor by profession, he’d medically championed the cause for children. Yet this advocacy extended to nature’s clinic as well, where he both mentored and sponsored children in the sport of fly fishing and likewise golf, another of his extracurricular activities.

The storyteller, a good friend to my cousin Lucy, had invited us to dinner.

“I need a two-hander,” Dr. Mike said, as he heaved himself from a wooden chair that was seated at a modest kitchen table. With practiced precision, Dr. Mike hoisted the non-functioning left side of his body from his armed chair, and with the strength of his right side, dragged his dulled limbs to a nearby kitchen stove. Answering his cue, my cousin Lucy joined Dr. Mike, where the pair prepared our dinner plates.

Diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease three years ago, Dr. Mike’s fly fishing days and golf outings have ended. And after claiming the movement of his left limbs, the disease, known for its never-ceasing tremors, now threatens his vocal strength as well. Despite Dr. Mike’s physical handicap, he daily devotes himself to helping others, specifically those newly diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. Whether its sharing informational materials, coordinating educational events, or visiting those affected by Parkinson’s, Dr. Mike is a steward for those with the same life-altering condition.

A supporter of local causes, Dr. Mike is known to frequent the town’s farmer’s market on Saturday mornings, bearing baked goods for its organic farmers and vendors. Likewise, he’s an advocate for the local arts. And following the four-course dinner Dr. Mike had prepared for our trio, we accompanied him to a local theater for “The Betty and Beau Wedding Show,” an interactive wedding play that ended with a dance, reception and wedding cake. As the audience danced to the swing jazz of the featured musicians, The Space Heaters, the bride bobbed from patron to patron, soliciting tips with a lavender satin purse.

“That man over there says he’ll tip the bride $20 if you’ll dance with the groom,” the theater director informed me as she pointed at Dr. Mike, who chuckled as he leaned on a nearby support railing.

A bashful, tuxedo-clad groom stood before me as I sputtered protestations. Yet, after my unsuccessful objections, I accepted the groom’s gracefully extended arms, lifted my sandaled front foot – and stepped onto his polished black shoes. Several times.

As the pained groom and I cavorted, I glanced at Dr. Mike, whose crimson face bellowed at my awkward routine.

It was then, as I glimpsed his spirited glimmer from across the theater’s dance floor, that I realized I’d found my mountain storyteller. Despite his medical adversity, this sage tells the story of selfless servanthood through his daily gifts. And while Dr. Mike’s deeds enrich those who are granted the fortune of entering his life, his own blessing is the joy known only to those who’ve placed the well-being of others before themselves. And that’s a metamorphosis, the mountains would say, few folk make in this lifetime.

Gina Eaves is an Epsom native, a Peace College graduate and an advertising representative at The Daily Dispatch. Her columns appear on Sundays. E-mail her at geaves@hendersondispatch.com.

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