Money for Nothing

Way back in the mid-1760’s, two men – Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon – surveyed land south of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, creating the demarcation line between several mid-Atlantic states.

Those new lines helped define West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, and became known as the Mason-Dixon Line.

I’m not sure if you’re aware, but this marked the location where any politician who lived in Maryland was mandated to be ultra-liberal, and pro-tax.  Delaware took the leftovers.  But I digress.

My sainted wife and I often travel up and down the Eastern Seaboard, usually Interstate 95.  Even on secondary roads and byways, travelers are greeted with signs proudly offering peaches and fresh local corn.

Once, I obediently followed the 312 signs made from elderly plywood to find a ramshackle road stand selling over-priced peaches to unsuspecting Canadians for $12 a half-dozen.

At that price, someone had better be chewing it for me.  But I digress, again.

But it wasn’t until this last trip south that I noticed something that had been hiding in plain sight.  Several main arteries on The Eastern Shore have folks with rusty pickup trucks with those aluminum turkey deep-fryers, with propane burners, in the beds.  Adjacent to them are hand-written signs – in poor penmanship, I might add – noting they are selling “boiled peanuts.”

I’ve passed these yokels for years without so much as an inkling as to what a boiled peanut was.  This year, though, was different.

My sainted wife was born and reared in The South – below the Mason-Dixon Line. 

People in The South are a funny bunch.  They have their own language own and their own food system.

The South’s official language is “Fah-zhoo.”  Most Southerners say, “Fahzhoo, I wouldn’t make fun of the way we talk.”

Education-wise, Southerners are gleeful when they tell you they dropped out of elementary school when they were only 19-years old.

And their food system consists of staples found nowhere else.  Vittles such as grits, that taste like buttered sand; greens that closely resemble, and taste like, lawn weeds; and their all-too-famous boiled peanuts.

It was about time to find out what boiled peanuts tasted like, if only to allow me to give the rest of America a personal epicurean report.

Our exit from I-95 led my sainted wife and Smokey and me down a dirt road peppered with cardboard arrows pointing toward “delicious boiled peanuts.”

The drive wasn’t too far when we came across a typical boiled peanut vendor and his I pickup truck.

Yummy boiled peanuts.  Sure.

I exited our vehicle and asked this toothless entrepreneur “how much?”

His five-day shadow changed shape when he grinned and said, “Tree dol…”

This South Carolina capitalist was evidently speaking Fah-zhoo when I translated his utterance as $3.

Not knowing the going rate for boiled peanuts, I agreed to his price.  He pulled out a large Styrofoam coffee cup and ladled some brown liquid, along with some turd-like lumps into this vessel.  Money exchanged hands.

I got back into our vehicle and my sainted wife began shaking her head in her special I-can’t-believe-you-just-did-that look.

The last time I saw that cluster of facial expression and head movement, I had just invested in a guaranteed generous cash-return earthworm farm.  But that’s another story for another time.

Smokey was poking his nose through his travel cage in the back seat, anxious to figure out what that foreign smell was.

We reached our destination and I opened the cup lid.  My mind began taking many twists and turns about what this concoction looked and smelled like.

I wasn’t sure whether the shells should be consumed or discarded.  What about the red skins on the peanuts themselves?  I am an Olympic-class salted-in-the-shell peanut eater.  This, however, was something new altogether.

After some contemplation, I drained the peanut juice and replaced the lid before it when into the trash can.

Oh, those wacky Southerners know how to live.

Medical Breakthrough

Regularly, my sainted wife and I watch television shows about cooking.  In case you didn’t know, there are shows about making meals from scratch, grilling, barbequing, baking, and even using-up leftovers.

There are programs about cooking competitions with kids, adults, and celebrities.  And many of these shows occasionally provide not only entertainment, but also valuable knowledge.

For instance, I have learned that you can make your own buttermilk with regular milk and vinegar.  Or that you can substitute the herb savory for sage.

While this may not be critical to the nation’s security, it is important to anyone trying to replicate some of these lip-smacking recipes.

During the early spring drinking season – otherwise known as St. Patrick’s Day – I usually make a corned beef brisket.

A brisket is a tough cut of meat, akin to a cordovan penny loafer.  The trick is to cook it slowly with the appropriate additives, such as vinegar, beer, and some concoction called pickling spice.

Pickling spice is a conglomeration of cinnamon, allspice, mustard seed, coriander, bay leaves, ginger, cloves, black pepper, cardamom, and mace.  I learned this from watching cooking shows.

 A quick trip to Tallmart proved fruitless as they don’t carry pickling spice.  Of course you can order it on-line, but it is clear there is no room on the store shelves for 37 different types of hair gel, but not one small plastic bottle of pickling spice.

So my sainted wife and I began selecting the appropriate ingredients to make a batch of our own.  For your information, a bottle of pickling spice costs about $2.50.  All the ingredients sold individually goes for about $37.

A trip to a dedicated supermarket proved productive.

Just recently my sainted wife visited some doctor who informed her she needed another product to fill up our bathroom medicine cabinet more quickly.

It seems as though she has excessive oil on her eyelids.  Not excessive enough to lube up the riding mower, but enough to warrant buying eyelid wipes.

The box indicated it is “for daily eyelid hygiene.”

If I woke up with my head sewn to the carpet I would never guess there was a special product to prevent “irritation to the eyes.”

Thinking back to those informative cooking shows, I decided to peruse the ingredients list and simply replicate it.

Water, PEG-80 Sorbitan Laurate, Sodium Trideceth Sulfate, Cocamidopropyl Hydroxysultaine, PEG-150 Distearate. Sodium Lauroamphoacetate, Sodium Laureth-13, Carboxylate, Sodium Chloride, PEG-15 Cocopolyamine, Quaternium-15, and citric acid, were exactly what I read.

All this may actually be country well water; I really don’t know for certain.  But I digress.

Not being sure how to pronounce these $7 words, I had no clue where to buy them or who to ask for them.  The 13-year old kid down the street who sells weed in the town couldn’t pronounce many of these ingredients either.

It was at this time I remembered an old saying that holds true to this day.

If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with BS. 

How true.