Search Words for 5/16/2011

It's so much more than just a list of terms plugged into Google Search by people I will never know.  It's how they got to me, to us, to Marlinspike Hall, and somewhere in the intervening space is a story, are many stories.  It's about how they got here from there, proving not just that you *can* get here but that you come different ways for different reasons -- detours, bridges, toll roads, backseat drivers, and that rare bird of a map reader who interprets west as a left turn (I'm just sayin').

periwinkles and driftwood::This is the way we went to the beach when I was a kid. 

As soon as you hit Kinston, you could smell it. We would stop at the grocery store that sits right there when you come off the bridge from Morehead City to Atlantic Beach -- for bleach and ammonia, hot dogs, and Maxwell House in the big can. We ate Wonderbread at the beach and whole wheat the rest of our lives. Setting the indoor picnic table sometimes just meant spreading out newsprint and big platters of boiled shrimp, salad, and loaves of decent crusty bread.  Garlic butter.  Melons for breakfast, and toast.  No one in the ocean before 9 AM, curfew starts at 9:30 PM, remember to tie a flipflop to the umbrella in case you get lost.  They sent out a search party for me one night after I fell into a huge sand dune and just stayed there, mute, trying to decipher constellations and my Mother, both. I'd just had my appendix out;  Chiggers crawled on my legs, ate me up, I scratched myself raw..  Not chiggers, sand fleas.  My aunt chaperoned a bunch of us for Junior/Senior Weekend -- a boy fell off of someone's porch -- he was perched (backward) on the railing that jutted out over a concrete driveway.  Lois made us all godawful sloe gin fizzes; He died.  He wasn't from our school but was good friends with the Bennetts.  My cousin and I made a chowder out of periwinkles and all the grownups actually ate it.  (It was full of sand.)We spelled it "perrywinkle," wrote out an official recipe in pencil on a lined index card that we stuck in the middle drawer of that old-fashioned enamel table in the kitchen.  I went to the cottage one winter, alone, and sat on the porch, right on the stormy ocean.  They called that The Front Porch.  Visiting the cemetery in Beaufort was important but I couldn't begin to tell you why.  After my summer months there found a rhythm, time fell into bayside days and oceanside days, interrupted by stormy afternoons when we'd pile into the drugstore, where everyone got to buy one paperback, just one.  Dusk.  The running lights on shrimp boats.  The pay phone on the pier.  Swimming past the breakers. Knowing who was boss when the undertow took you twisting down.  Yogurt on sunburn.  Ice clinking, bourbon, scotch, beer.  Hearts, spades, bridge, Scrabble and crossword puzzles.  Turning into the wind.  The stories about my sister Copper being born smack dab in the middle of Hurricane Hazel.  Driftwood fires, sparking.

topiary and gingerbread::I like this road because of that house, the one with all the wild flowers.

I turn left a good half mile before I have to just to see it.  There's the wire form for a bear topiary -- kind of a Pooh -- that sits in the middle of one patch, and they decorate him for the least little holiday.  National Teachers Day, Cinco de Mayo.  Canada Day, Bastille Day, big football Saturdays.  Past Sterling and Oakdale, but before Clifton Road.  One year the yard was overgrown and the bear undecorated.  I mean, he stayed in his Santa duds until they just wore off him.  I think a baby died.  Then, like nothing, the bear grew rich, thick, and green again and there were raised beds of every kind of flower, as if from nowhere.  Can't even recall the house now -- brick, compact.  One of the gingerbreads, big slants to the roof, dark masonry.  Everyone felt special, peeking at those flowers, that bear, like it was a private kiss you'd sneak.  I thought, What if they move?  What will I do then?  Who will change the bear?

 waffle cones and cockapoos::There used to be a Dairy Queen right there.

I would pick up my parents' Saturday evening dinner order on the way home from a day of tennis in the park:  a pound of barbeque, a pound of slaw, and hushpuppies.  Then I'd cut through the dirt lot, through the heady smoke from the pit, and drive on up to the DQ in my 1965 baby blue Cadillac.  It was a minor revolution, delaying that vinegar-heavy chopped pork for a vanilla shake.  That's right, I was every bit as exciting as they were, me and my vanilla shakes.  The vet we liked was right across the highway, on the westbound side of Hwy 70, heading back into town.  I hated going home once they lit the downtown courts -- I could have picked up games all evening, and if Teresa didn't have to babysit, we could play doubles with the country clubbers who forgot to make a reservation.  It'd be okay at home for a little while -- setting sun on the lake, the attack of pastels, the dog chasing geese. I'd follow him down to the water, turn 'round and look back at the house, their dream house, but you could tell just by looking that nobody lived there.  Mom made me a big salad  so that I could keep company while they ate their pound of barbecue, pound of slaw, and hushpuppies.  I stayed a vegetarian for 25 years.  Sometimes she'd ask me to stop at the Dairy Queen and bring home hot fudge sundaes.  I always told her I forgot and kept the extra money for gas, always planning to get in that car, pick east or west, and go, go, go.

We generally find what we're looking for.  My "stats" page says these are the words that brought folks here today after being plugged into Google Search.  These aren't the only pathways and story lines, of course, but they are all I have as clues tonight, and they suffice.

ina mae oxendine
serena williams catsuit
pesach 
venus williams ass
canned peaches al swearengen 
dame marjorie charden 
dr schwartzman rsd 
ketamine coma february 2009
"andrea gianopoulos"
mike vermeer tennis
3 invisible dicks
picture of bouillabaisse 
pollyanna woodward naked
cushingoid
serena williams catsuit
serena williams cat suit 43
serena williams underpants 
lindsey baum 
taiji dolphins
monopoly game pieces 
taiji
focaccia di recco 
anna kournikova tennis skirt
taiji japan
kamasutra 
dr schwartz rsd puzzles
sequential frame spinning back fist
rebecca allwine
dolphin killing
andrea gianopoulos

carrara marble quarry

and

((pfizer or wyeth or johnson&johnson or j&j or "johnson & johnson" or "johnson&johnson" or "j & j" or hoffmannlaroche or "hoffmann la roche" or roche or novartis or glaxosmithkline) and (tsunami or earthquake or erdbeben or quake or japan or japanese)) and (donation or donate or donates or spende or spenden or spendet)