Columns

We all know people who just hate mushrooms (they taste musty) or onions (too strong) or pickles (they’re vinegary) and a LOT of people really can’t stand Brussels Sprouts. Those little unassuming baby cabbage looking vegetables that our Mothers always told us we had to “at least try”. Someone posted on Facebook a pretty good looking picture of some covered in cheese sauce and asked, “Does anyone actually EAT these?”

My answer is YES! I do and have a real good sounding recipe for them. Wait, wait I know you’re getting ready skip to another portion of the paper but hear me out. The Title of the recipe is actually the four ingredients that go into it “Olive Oil toasted Brussels Sprouts with Alfredo Gruyere’ Sauce” so I don’t have to bother you with the actual recipe. I thought that they sounded good paired up with a Shrimp Scampi or Broiled Snapper main so I thawed out a handful of Sprouts in preparation for the Friday night dinner.

We all know that Thanksgiving is a time to express gratitude for the big stuff: family, friends, good health, food, job, and home.

But I also like to give thanks for those “little random things” that are easily overlooked.

This year, a few things come to mind, in no particular order:

The lifting of the mask mandate at LSU Baton Rouge. Now my college freshman son can finally live un-muzzled and free.

“Larry’s Chicken” at El Cabo Verde on Southern Loop in Shreveport. It is just perfection.

The YouTube channel “Eternal Call.”

Amazon. Need I say more?

4C Coffee in Grand Cane, and the upcoming Rhino Coffee on Southern Loop. (Hey, I’m just thankful for good coffee!)

Our recent purchase of Blink home security cameras.

Reruns of The Golden Girls.

Cinnamon TicTacs being available after a decade of being discontinued.

In the past this column has been devoted to individuals that have made contributions to the parish in various ways. Today’s person was born in DeSoto and devoted to making it a better place to live and rear a family.

J.A.H. Slawson was born in June 1893 on a small farm in Ward 5 DeSoto Parish and his father, Joseph William Slawson, taught him how to plow and do field work at an early age. He attended primary school in Carmel, La. and went to Rambin School from 1905 – 1907. He once stated that when he moved back to Carmel in 1908 and worked for Mr. A.V. DeSoto he saved $75.00. He spent $15 of that money then bought a horse for $50 but the horse died after three months.

Only the Recipe! I’ve always loved Mexican Cornbread but have never (ever) had good results. I know the theory and all the different good ways to make it – Heck, I can cook up a plain cornbread pretty darned good. But I always get carried away. The last time I added baking powder AND baking soda to the self-rising meal and had a beautiful, puffed up, fissured brown top …. With an underdone middle. Yep, when I dumped it out on the chopping board the middle just kinda oozed out. Of course the top few inches and the bottom were done but we all had to just laugh. This recipe from Bill

This recipe from Bill and Cheryl Jamison called “Spicy Jalapeno Cornbread” looked so good that I thought I’d try it with the big pot of chili I was planning on making during the weekend. For fun I’m going to list the actual ingredients that their recipe called for and in parenthesis what I’d planned on adding or substituting;

In an over - heard conversation the other day (not a participant), “Old Geezers” was being discussed. Not being familiar with the term, it interested me; therefore, I set out to find out more about what an Old Geezer was.

Most everyone is carrying a “chip on their shoulder” about nick names. This word sure sounded like one of those bad names. So this is what I found by asking people and doing some real “serious” research about “What’s an old Geezer”.

At a sporting event when the National Anthem is played an Old Geezer stands and holds his hat over his heart and believes every word in the song. An Old Geezer might have been born in the Great Depression or his parents were and he knew what a penny was. Gosh – an Old Geezer might have gone bare footed in the summer to save his shoes to wear to Sunday School and Church.

An Ack-a-neyam?

My funny friend really has a way of butchering words but, somehow, it turns out right. She was talking about a “Word” that is made from the first letters of its name or of its members – or, in other words – an “Acronym”. Think “SCUBA” or ‘Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus’ which is what my friend, Bill Olive, called a “Latin word for diving” in his Speech Class presentation. Oh, Ha Ha! AND this all is actually going somewhere but, first, let me tell you about the unusual but good dish I created last weekend.

Arlington Cemetery has been in the news for the past few months without many of us knowing the tremendous history involved. As Paul Harvey said, “Here’s the rest of the story.”

George Washington’s adopted son – his wife Martha’s only son – bought the land know as Arlington in 1778 to be closer to his mother at their beloved Mount Vernon home. General Washington advised him on the purchase in correspondence from his winter camp at Valley Forge. However, three years later her son contracted fever at Yorktown and died leaving a six-month-old son. George and Martha raised the six month of boy whose name was George Washington Parke-Custis and nicknamed “Wash”. Wash became of age and inherited the Arlington land his real father had purchased but his lifelong mission became to honor his adopted father.

The Presentation is so important for so many things and I was reminded of that this past weekend when I tried a good sounding recipe by Angela Latimer on the All Recipes website. How could you go wrong with a recipe called “Creamy Lemon & Garlic Shrimp Over Penne Pasta”? Well, if you have me making the sauce you have a huge chance of messing it up! When will I ever learn? When will I remember to just buy a jar of Alfredo Sauce at the Supermarket and just add any of the special ingredients to that??

I don’t want to waste precious column space detailing the recipe but will get it to you if you respond to reechjr@yahoo.com with the title “Shrimp?” or call 318-540-7500 or just come by the Mansfield Female College Museum on Monroe Street. I am in the Director’s palatial corner office – the “New Versailles” in Mansfield! ;-)

One thing that has spanned the decades as a popular teen pastime is toilet-papering houses.

“Going rolling” was pure fun in my day, and now it’s apparently still the rage.

When I was a teenager, we “went rolling” pretty regularly, perfecting our “silent laugh” while tossing the cheapest brand of one-ply toilet paper into the oak trees of various friends in Stonewall.

Sometimes “rolling” also included “forking,” which meant sticking hundreds of plastic forks all over someone’s yard. Lots of meticulous work just for a real good chuckle!

I recall how the mom of a friend caught us rolling and forking her yard one night. We all ran away like crazy in the pitch-dark down Collinswood Road in Stonewall.

“You girls get back here now!” she bellowed in her robe from her front porch.

We dove into the ditch and laid as still as possible. She never found us, but the fire ants found us on her behalf.

Probably the most successful article that I have written is the paper on Louis Moses Rose, the only deserter of the Alamo. A doctoral candidate from Rice Institute of Houston sent a small clipping to the Logansport Interstate Progress newspaper desiring information on Moses Rose who was buried in the Aaron Ferguson Cemetery six and half miles northeast of Logansport, La. Koy Pace contacted me and the search was on for the Ferguson Cemetery and Moses Rose. No one that we contacted had ever heard of either but around the turn of the century the name had changed from Ferguson to Whitten Cemetery. The article written on Moses Rose ran in the Shreveport Times, featured by Bob Griffin, and I gave a speech at St. Augustine, Texas. The Historical Group from there placed the article in the Alamo.