Tuesday, December 27, 2011

An Indiana Christmas. Apparently.

One of my daughters-in-law is from the state of Indiana, otherwise known as the "Hoosier State".

Unlike Lumpkin County, Georgia, where the word "hoosier" would always be followed by "daddy", no one can say why Indiana is known by this nickname or what the word even means.  What's a Hoosier?  I don't know, nor does anyone else.  I researched it on the Intraweb to no avail.

But I digress.

Friday (Christmas Eve Eve here in Georgia) a truck carrying at least 40,000 pounds of ice cream overturned  on an Interstate 69 on-ramp, releasing over twenty tons of Vanilla, Chocolate, Strawberry, Chocolate Chip, and whatever else Edy's Ice Cream makers make all over the road.

But that's not the real story.

Click on the link above and you'll see a picture of an Indiana Health Inspector inspecting the Interstate Sundae and declaring "Looks good to me...sell it."

I am not making this up.  Apparently most of the ice cream was "salvageable" and therefore, fit for sale and consumption.  Which makes me think of Jerry Clower.

He and I were eating breakfast one morning at a Shoney's restaurant.  For the uninitiated, Shoney's had a breakfast trough with enough food to choke a horse.  Bacon, eggs, grits, biscuits, and gravy on one end and an IV with straight cholesterol on the other.  Take your pick, the results would be the same.

Anyway, I got some "breakfast potatoes" at the "breakfast bar" and sat down to eat across from Jerry.  He looked at my plate and asked "Whatchu got theyah, Rayanday?"  When I told him they were "breakfast potatoes" he replied, "Son, I grew up poor, but I was never so poor I had to eat taters for breakfast."

And like he said, I grew up poor, but I was never so poor that I had to eat ice cream scraped from off of the highway.

But then, I'm not from Indiana.  Hoosier Daddy?

1 comment:

Michael Ruffin said...

Richard Betts? OK. Jerry Clower? Oh please...