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Show High Time- if By FLORENCE BITTNER Along with turkey and trimmings, Thanksgiving brings relatives. Mostly they're welcome and are counted in the list of blessings, bless-ings, but sometimes enough comes quick. AUNT MARTHA and Uncle Jim joined the crowd at my groaning board this year. Some days they seem to have settled their 45 year feud, other days they're practicing for a real spit'n holler. They weren't speaking to each other, so they carried on their fight through other people. "WILL YOU please tell your Aunt Martha she got too much sugar in the pumpkin pie again? She knows I don't like it that sweet, and she skimped on the whipped cream." "Tell yqpr Uncle Jim I made that pie just exactly the way I've been making them all my life. If they tasted sweet it was because of his sour face." "PLEASE EXPLAIN to that woman if I have a sour face it's because she insists on having the bedroom window so wide open it's all I can do to hang onto the covers in the gale." Aunt Martha sniffed indignantly indig-nantly and tugged at her apron. "If your Uncle Jim had his way, I'd wake up in the morning done to a nice brown in that bedroom. He keeps it so hot he could grow-orchids." grow-orchids." UNCLE JIM rubbed his gnarled farmer's hands over his shiny pate and walked to the window. He mumbled some about the condition of my garden, unprepared as it is lor winter and by the time he had finished explaining about my bare roses, I felt so guilty I went out and mulched them very next morning. "Sure seems like a long time to spring," said Uncle Jim: He promised to come next week to help me rake leaves to spread on the flower beds. I would have declined his help out of pride except that I know he only counts the hours he spends digging in dirt. THEN HE returned to his lament about his life's partner who does not share his love of the garden. "You ought to be out there while the sun's new. Late day gardening garden-ing work's no good. The ground gets tired." "Some people also get tired hearing about his turnips and tulips. He takes better care of his dahlia bulbs than he does of his car." "SOME SLUG-a-beds who don't know how wonderful it is to get out in the garden in the fresh of the morning, miss the best half of their lives." Aunt Martha threw up her hands. "Would you please explain to me why it is that a person who likes to sleep till a normal hour is sure to marry someone who bounds out of bed full of ginger and rushes out to crack the dawn?" She shuddered. "It's positively barbaric. He thinks he's a rooster, and the sun wouldn't get up if he didn't see to it personally." UNCLE JIM forgot himself and spoke directly to her. "All 1 ever get out of you before noon is a grumble and a grunt. You stumble around the kitchen fixing my break-' fast and I'm sure one day you'll fry yourself as crisp as the eggs you thump down in front of me." She shrugged. "So eat in a restaurant. They get paid to listen to early morning chatter. chat-ter. I can't even hear before ten o'clock." She smiles a saccharine smile at him. "Everyone knows it's gentle folk who sleep till the world is ready for people. Only peasants get up before the birds." "SPEAKING OF birds," said Uncle Jim. 'That turkey was delicious. Done all the way through, too. That woman thinks meat should moo when you eat it." "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, is not a recipe for cooking a steak." Aunt " Martha insisted Uncle Jim's 0 favonte dish ai""lackbib"" i VAINLY WP , e a truce kM" ;i taxes it seriously 4;" Uncle h'' Pii however, when ha?t' "Why didthey " 2 the 'rest, ITS the early riseri? 5 night bloomer anJ'i it crisp girl? , |
