LAZY DAYS AND NIGHTS
Later years brought sweltering, muggy nights. A recent addition, an air conditioning unit was installed in the eight foot square upstairs bedroom, providing a temporary respite from the heat. Card games were played here and one year an Atari game console was hooked up to a small TV. Unfortunately the relief from the humidity was short-lived, because it was someone’s bedroom, and vacating it was painful. Enduring the weather was better than suffering through withdrawal from the air conditioning.

THE MAIDS AND THE MEALS
Virginia, a family presence of long standing, accompanied Dammo from Johnson City. Her first priority was Dammo, and she dutifully prepared her breakfast and lunch and filled her dinner plate, while Dammo …show more content…
We didn’t tarry after that announcement. You’d think we’d been starved all day. Adults met in the dining room and children crowded around the porch dining table. From their suggestions of what they liked to cook, Maggie and Rosetta prepared what we bought: artery-clogging feasts of fried fish, chops, chicken, shrimp and grits or boiled shrimp, along with fresh vegetables purchased that day from the local vendors: sweet corn tasting as if it were just picked; juicy red tomatoes with flavor that only home grown could attain; butterbeans right off the vine. If okra was the vegetable of the day, extra quantities were necessary to satisfy everyone with that fried delicacy. Biscuits and jam, cornbread or Virginia’s hush puppies were always available. All this food was washed down with jugs of either Chablis, pronounced "shabliss" by Millie, or a heavy Burgundy. Both were purchased by the gallon and resembled nothing close to gourmet. Drinking that heavy red wine in the heat and humidity was tantamount to insane. All meals included some type of fried food, which made tiny mother Millicent shudder and complain. She ate it anyway. We ate like pigs, not thinking about