Poorboys and Pilgrims: graveyard

ATTENTION EVERYONE: tonight marks the first night of Fall 2012 that my HWBB (hot water bottle baby) made an appearance and I am both extremely excited and a little saddened about this. I'm mostly excited because it is oh-so toasty and I'd forgotten how lovely it is to carry this thing around under my shirt while I'm cooking dinner, surfing Pinterest, or climbing into bed. I know Car-Sex is probably really missing this event, so I figured I'd give her a little shout-out to feel like she's a part of this.

ALSO--perhaps the strangest coincidence of ole HWBB showing its rubbery face is that I got a call tonight from the one and only amazing and wonderful Alex, the woman responsible for me owning a HWBB in the first place!! Obviously, the HWBB gods are shining down on us. I love that girl so SO much, and I already feel revived after playing some serious catch-up. I cannot WAIT to make the trek up to Beantown to visit her (and my wonderful wife, obvi). I will pack my parka and make a serious trip of it.

Meanwhile, here in VA I had a productively lazy weekend, filled with sheepdog trials; fall fiber festivities; drunken, 3AM cookout stops; bike rides downtown; and family reunions in the holler. Sometimes I think I could write a book about the eclectic mix of people I have in my life....melting pot may not begin to describe it.

Like any lazy weekend when I have nothing to do but I'm itching to be outside, I head to my local cemetery and lounge around, creepily, looking at all the different headstones and wondering about the people underneath them. My mom and I drove out to Crozet to check on the dead relatives...they're still there, so that's good.

**Fun Fact: The ones on the end aren't actually buried in this spot. One of my crazy relatives from back in the day decided it would be swell to have these headstones resting on this mountain rather than the one where the bodies are actually planted. The only logical move? Uproot the stones and move 'em up to better real estate. Location, location...?

On Saturday, I headed into Orange with Molly and Lindsay to visit the Fall Fiber Festival!! Isn't that exciting? Who wouldn't want bushels and bushels of wool and kettle corn thrust upon them? The best part about all this was the sheepdog trials that were running all day. If I can birth one child that's half as smart as these border collies, I will be immensely satisfied. They are amazing!! They made me run home and Google "border collies for sale charlottesville virginia" and my dreams came to a crashing halt when I realized these pups sell for a cool $5,000-$6,000. Each. Yes, that's 3 zeros. Yikes. Anyway, after we'd had our fill of fall fun, we headed to Barboursville Vineyards for $5 wine tasting! Yum! This place is great because they give you like, 1million tastings and it's beautiful.

Happy cows drink Virginia wine.

Afterwards, I went to Whole Foods and bought approximately 8 blocks of "fancy" cheese and crackers to eat for dinner. Have you ever had cheese drizzled with honey on a cracker? Sweet lord, get on that. It will turn you into a raging maniac over your cutting board. Or maybe that's just me.

As beautiful as Saturday was, today was mofo disgusting. Rain. Cold. Wind(ish). Perfect day for a "family reunion," right? Umm...only in the holler.

So my family works like this: one side of my mom's family is about as old a Virginia clan as you can get. They have "Charlottesville" accents, can trace their lineage back to fancy-pants kings, think the sun shines out of their Albemarle asses, have family portraits/paintings from the 1700somethings hanging in their houses, and name everyone the same three names for generations (I'm looking at you, Page**, Hugh, and Anne....).

The other side of my mom's family has lived on the same plot for as long as human beings have eaten squirrels. In fact, they still eat squirrels! And opossum stew! And livers! And chitlins, probably! Their family tree doesn't exactly branch, and most need subtitles a-la Swamp People to decipher what they're actually saying. Luckily, I speak fluent 'country-folk,' and can hold a conversation..but it can be tricky.

Anyway, my great aunt Ethel's house is the hub of any/all family festivities, so around 2:00pm today the family came creeping out of the woodworks (literally) to feast on deviled eggs, potato salad, hot dogs, pistachio pie, spinach dip, chicken fingers, baked beans, and any other picnic-genre food you can imagine. It is delicious.

While catching up with these cousins/uncles/aunts/people who are related but I'm not sure how, this is what I learn:

If you ever need to trap a raccoon, use sardines as bait.
If you ever need to trap a groundhog, use a cantaloupe.
You can buy a fleece camo hoodie jacket for $12 and it will last you four years, at least!
The best/new type of pepper to plant are Revolution peppers.
The apple moonshine is more potent than the peach, but neither will make you as tight as the blackberry.

Overall, it was a good day, filled with simple mountain folk with a knack for driving jacked-up Jeeps and knowing how to unclog kitchen sinks with a tin can. There are just some things they don't teach ya in school.

I am left with many leftovers and I am thrilled. Off to bed to start a new week...hopefully one that includes tons and tons of bike riding, because I am obsessed and it's basically all I want to do. I guess there could be worse addictions, so I'll take it.

xoxox,

Hannah

"I will never forget, years ago, driving through the city one November 1 and seeing a family, dressed as if for church, filing through a cemetery gate with what appeared to be a picnic basket and an Igloo cooler. Later, I saw people eating oyster po'boys and drinking root beer in the shade of a crypt. I saw fathers and sons toast grandfathers and great-grandfathers with a clink of Abita bottles.

As I walked between the rows of stained granite and crumbling brick, trying not to look like a ghoul or an armed robber, I smelled something on the breeze that seemed odd here in such a holy place, a smell harsh and sweet at the same time. Only one thing smells like that. "Bourbon," I said. I watched two middle-aged men, brothers, I guessed, take a drink from a pint bottle of brown liquor, pour a swallow into the grass and dust, and shuffle away, not drunk, but apparently feeling better than when they shuffled in.

What a lovely notion, I remember thinking, that no matter what your faith, you really do live on and on, as long as someone, anyone, is willing to come see you.

One fall I went to Holt Cemetery, a resting place for the poor, where generations are buried not in stately crypts but in this almost liquid earth, and watched old men get down on their knees and smooth the dirt the best they could in a place of wooden crosses and tinfoil angels. One old man could not remember the name of the little daughter he had buried there, but came to see her, anyway."