Tom's Famous Breakfast

That would be my brother Tom, Tom Cairns, who lives in Noaf-ka-lyna and can whip up the best breakfast you ever et this side of the Mason-Dixon Line. If yer settin' down ta Tom's breakfast, yer in high cotton.

What's in Tom's Famous Breakfast?

• Eggs prepared to taste; we usually do scrambled.
• Bacon and/or sausage prepared to taste.
• Quick grits and anything and everything you want to put into it. Tom starts with cheese, that's what adds the orange color. These are called "cheese grits" or "cheesy grits." You can then add sausage, bacon, pork, beef, salt, etc. Grits by itself is fairly tasteless.[1]
• Biscuits (fresh are great, frozen is fine)[2]
• Sausage gravy (quality pouch gravy with loads of you own sausage is fine)
• Variety of toast; up north this usually includes a hearty nutty/multi-grain, pumpernickel, and rye.

Here are some videos and pictures from 2004 and 2011 of Tom preparing his famous breakfast:


2004 in Norlina, NC Unfortunately, I have only pictures.



2011 in Erie, PA


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[1]
A linguistic curiosity regarding "grits" usage: these sentences sound right to me, but I defer to my brother to comment from personal experience:

* I like grits and anything you want to put in it.
* Grits are good for you.

Wikipedia maintains plural agreement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grits ➚), but does say:

The word "grits" is one of the few words that may properly be used as either singular or plural in writing or speech and can be used with a singular or plural verb.

I suspect there are regions in the South that would take sides on this.

[2]
Did you know that down south, a bag of Pillsbury frozen biscuits has 20 biscuits in it? The same size up north has only 12. Lawso'mercy, don't let me commence!

Cicadas in Erie, PA July 16, 2011

 

Bethel Baptist Church Directory from 1982 (Erie, PA)

It’s strange how at one time we want to run away from everything that represents rules and propriety and consequences. Then gradually, as if influenced by a mollifying infection or an abject ennui, we slowly grow to treasure the people and places that provided those things, people and places that are no more.

It’s not so strange after all, is it? It’s the Prodigal’s Son writ across a lifetime.

The PDF is here[1]:

http://home.comcast.net/~cscairns/1982%20Bethel%20Baptist%20Church%20Direcotry%20736%20E%2026th%20Street%20Erie%20PA%20B.pdf

 

[1]
I know the PDF is named 736 E 26th Street, but as you can see, by the time this directory was made, that church had been sold and were were meeting at 1781 W 38th, where the church remains today. I don’t know, but I suspect this directory inaugurated the new building and body. It was a difficult transition and many families left. I don’t remember any photo family directories from the old building.

When a writer doesn’t have enough time in the day….

… to write even a paragraph that isn’t related to work or the grocery list or paying bills, how can he call himself a writer that day?

I do find a few minutes at night to listen to OTR.

This one kept me up. The scariest episode of CBSRMT (CBS Radio Mystery Theater) yet, “The Crack in the Wall.” Listen alone, at night, in the dark. Chilling.

http://www.cbsrmt.com/episode-94-the-crack-in-the-wall.html ➚

Q: Why do Baptists avoid premarital sex?

Regarding what I wrote earlier: "The Santa I knew looked a lot like the one illustrated by Coca-Cola. Not precisely, but nearly so."

We fully enjoyed secular traditions in our house. I never sensed any conflict or sidestepping around secular celebrations. Children are sensitive creatures, they know when parents have difficulty accommodating or reconciling something; if my parents had had issues with Santa or the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy or anything else, I'd have known it, yet those were real to me and still are in a visceral way that only childhood beliefs can be.

We didn't bake Jesus a birthday cake on Christmas or have a fall festival at church on Halloween. I'm sure my parents wouldn't have objected to those things, but they weren't needed to reinforce the meaning of Christmas or avert the sinister aspects of Halloween. Conscientious Christian parents of my generation did that in the same way they guided children in all things.

Alternatives to secular celebrations arise out of fear, and not the fear you might initially think - not the fear of the other as wrong, but a fear of losing our beliefs and practices in a quagmire of competing beliefs and practices, not the beliefs and practices themselves, but the time they consume and take away from what we consider the truth and center. The distinction between "The other is wrong" and "the other is interfering with me" is very real, but we often conflate the two.

Nevertheless, each generation adopts old ways in their own way. Sometimes it's a reverent attempt to refine, sometimes an irreverent one to change.

Christmas to me (aside from Jesus) is Bing Crosby, Percy Faith, Nat King Cole, and modern interpretations of the songs from that era, such as those by Toby Keith, Vince Gill and Mannheim Steamroller. (I'm not a big country music fan, but no genre does classic Christmas better.) Those songs were old when I was a child. I was introduced to them by a generation that was recalling their childhood, and I embraced them as my own, along with the TV images that the previous generation didn't have.

As much as I dislike holiday change, I know that each generation that modifies old ways doesn't realize what they are doing, they are just getting closer to the meaning of the season, polishing off a little patina to reveal the ever-never-changing magic underneath.

If you grow up with it, you know no different.

Oh, why do Baptists avoid premarital sex?
Answer: Because it can lead to dancing.