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Thursday, March 7, 2002

How to make your teeth scream

Exciting events at Fly Creek's four corners! Next week I'll give you a how-goes-it on our future restaurant. But first I must present stunning culinary news from across the intersection.

Tom Bouton, alert to the hamlet's needs, always ready to educate our tastes, has done it again. The Fly Creek General Store is carrying Moon Pies. They're a confection I've never seen north of the Mason-Dixon Line. And never thought I would.

Moon Pies, you see, just belong 'way down south in Dixie, like hush puppies and boiled peanuts, like thick Brunswick stew made with squirrel, possum, or anything else that can be shot out of a tall tree. Along with those foods (and alligators and fire ants), I just never expected to see Moon Pies up here.

But Tom Bouton, bless him, is not a narrow thinker. He saw through to the essence of Moon Pies and recognized their aptness for Fly Creek.

Down on the banks of the Suwanee (and the Arkansas and the mighty Pee Dee), Moon Pies are nourishment to hulking country boys, ones largely unburdened by schooling or smarts, ones whose forebears may have been a bit cavalier about degrees of kinship.

But they're also cherished by middle-aged and paunchy grads of Texas A&M, Duke and LSU, professional men who don't want to lose the common touch. To these, a Moon Pie, washed down with lukewarm Dr. Pepper, is a kind of sacrament - country communion that restoreth their souls.

So our Tom Bouton, always pushing the envelope, said to himself, "Why not here? Why shouldn't we northern rubes have that same cultural enrichment, that same chance to commune with our roots?"

Thinkers like Tom nudge civilization right along.

I try to model myself on that kind of vision. And so, though I hadn't tasted a Moon Pie in thirty years, I bought one from Tom. Bought two, in fact: a vanilla and a chocolate one. And, for your benefit as well as mine, I took them home and tried them.

Well, was I ever swept away! One bite of the vanilla, and I imagined myself standing in blazing sunlight, steaming heat, in front of a Fill-'Em-Up gas station on Route 301, just outside Lost Hope, Alabama.

Squinting, sweating, I'd just turned back the plastic wrapper (made to crinkle like genuine cellophane) and bitten a half moon out of my Moon Pie. And suddenly I felt at one with all around me - sunstroke-hot day, fireworks displays, rebel flags on pick-up trucks, chiggers, the works. That's the power of Moon Pies.

I'm hard put to describe their taste. The main ingredient is carloads of sugar - or maybe some super-charged kind of sorghum. The sweetness almost closes up your throat. It's principally in the gummy marshmallow filling, but also in what the filling welds together: four-inch dough discs like damp cardboard. The product's name, I guess, comes from that glop of white marshmallow, flattened between the cookies - looks jes' lak a moon.

Before sampling the chocolate version, I cleansed my palate with a glass of skim milk. (Sadly, no Dr. Pepper at hand - it would have done better on the greasy aftertaste.)

If the vanilla Moon Pie is super-sweet, the chocolate one rockets off whatever charts are used by the FDA. The Chattanooga Bakery just slathers that chocolate on. And the full effect? Cookies, marshmallow, chocolate weigh in together with a sweetness to give you brain cramps, blur your eyes, make your teeth scream.

Dunno, Tom. Maybe you're way ahead of the rest of us, but I don't think we're quite ready for Moon Pies up here. Maybe, for now, we better hold our country communion with Li'l Debbies. But, then, I shouldn't bias readers. So, please, go ahead. Stop in at Tom's store and buy a Moon Pie. Or come by my house. I have two that I'll give you, each missing only a bite.

Jim Atwell lives in and takes a cosmic view from Fly Creek.

Reaganite by Association? His Family Won't Allow It
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/15/politics/15memo.html?ei=5062&en=e72eb6da38c65642&ex=1087876800&partner=GOOGLE&pagewanted=print&position=

I always felt Nancy never really understood RWR for who he really was, it seems through the years every once in while something weird would seep through to the media that seem to contradict or go against the soul of RWR.

There are two kinds of stem cell research-

1- is from an aborted fetus,
2- is the discarded issue from the monthly period.

Nancy has always been an enabler to her children rebellion and her unkind attituted toward the adoptive children of RWR.

Sometimes it was like watching Cinderella's step mother.
I think Nancy did enough to protect her relationship with RWR unconditional love, because RWR really did try to live his fait.

Nancy being a news lady was alwaays very good friends with Dan Rather before she met RWR, even so I could not understand why she was NOT upset with DR for through the last ten years as Rather would say terrible things about RWR, she still would grant Rather interviews?

It is picular

I truely admire Michael and know he most likely will never receiving any things from his father estate, but he has something more valueable RWR Love and Respect!

Patty and Ron are such an estrange bio children.