My Trip Down the Pink Carpet Read Free Page A

Aqua Net.
    I was so proud that she was my mom. Her name was Peggy Ann and to me she was the most beautiful woman in the world. I thought she was a fairy princess. When the other mothers showed up for the Parent Teacher Association meetings in frumpy housedresses, my mother was always perfectly turned out. Until I was almost out of grammar school, she wore white gloves when she left the house. She looked like a fashion model from the pages of a magazine.
    I also adored my mother’s mother. Her name was Mary Lucille Griffin. My mother was the baby of eight children, and I suppose that’s why she was so spoiled. When she was growing up, what she couldn’t get from her mother and father, she got from her brothers and sisters. Mary Lucille had raised all of her children on a plumber’s salary and was known for feeding the neighborhood kids as well. She was the best cook in all of Hamilton County. It was more than just a rumor that Grandmother Griffin’s red velvet cake could make a Baptist get up and dance.
    When poor Mary Lucille was practically on her deathbed, my mother decided that it would be a shame for all those wonderful recipes to go with her. My grandmother, like most Southern cooks of her era, cooked without any written recipes. It was a pinch of this and a little of that. I know, because out of all the grandkids I was the only one who took a real interest in the way she cooked. I would follow beside her in the kitchen as she whirled about in her flour-covered apron, making her delicious tea cakes.
    My mother decided that it was up to us to get all those recipes on paper. So off we went to Grandmother’s house with my Big Chief tablet in hand. Mary Lucille was trying to nap, but my mother was not to be deterred. She gently poked her and whispered, “Mama? About your biscuits?”
    “What?” Mary Lucille asked, without opening her eyes.
    “Leslie Allen and I are going to write down the recipe for your biscuits.”
    “Oh Lord, Peggy Ann, do we have to do it now? I wanted to rest a little before my stories come on.”
    Mary Lucille’s “stories” were her beloved soap operas. She watched them every afternoon without fail. One time we went to her house and the television was off. She was in bed during her stories and got us all worried. Granddaddy Griffin explained that Lynette had been framed and was in jail. She’d just found out she was pregnant with Hawk’s baby. Poor Lynette was going to have the baby behind bars. It had upset my grandmother so much she had to take to the bed. We thought he was talking about some of our trashy relatives, but it turned out Lynette was the heroine of Mary Lucille’s soap opera.
    My mother persisted. “It’s now or never. How much flour, Mama?”
    Mary Lucille thought for a while, then opened her eyes. “Well, let me see. Enough to make a nest.”
    “Make a nest? That doesn’t make sense.”
    “I know what she means,” I piped in. “You pour enough flour in the bowl to pat it out and then it looks like a nest.”
    “Well, all right. Write that down. How much shortening, Mama?”
    As I scribbled in my Big Chief tablet, Mary Lucille held up two shaky fingers, then promptly rolled over and went right back to sleep.
    My mother sat there looking befuddled.
    “I know what she means,” I said again. “She means you take your two fingers and scrape them into the Crisco. And that’s how much shortening you plop in the bowl.”
    “Well, Lord help us all, we can’t write that down.”
    So our little project came to a disappointing end.

    I get most of my sense of humor from my Granddaddy Griffin. Homer Howard Griffin was a stitch until the day they put him in his grave. Even in his nineties he had the nurses at the hospital eating out of his hand because of his amazing sense of humor. He liked to talk a little dirty, much to the delight of us grandkids. And Lord knows, with eight children there were a lot of grandkids.
    One time, he was cutting up at the dinner table,