3
" One day a year - this month – we celebrate [mothers], and if we're lucky enough to have them with us on this earth, we send flowers and take them to the buffet at Western Sizzlin'. The other 364 days, we worry that they'll trip over the dog. It is what the children talk about when we gather in secret to share our misery.
"Momma just won't do right,” someone will sigh.
"Well, she's just headstrong, the dear,” omeone else will reply.
“Are you talkin' about me?” a momma will shout from across the house. They can't hear a lick when you ask them about blood sugar, but whisper something about them, and suddenly they have bat ears. "
― Rick Bragg , Where I Come from: Stories from the Deep South
6
" Mostly I love Halloween because it is the orange-and-black beginning of a season that tumbles into Thanksgiving, which tumbles into Christmas. And Zombies just seem a little out of place in that. Thanksgiving should have nothing to do with armies of shuffling undead. Don’t get me started on Christmas. The only undead at Christmas should be Jacob Marley, wailing about greed.
The iconic image of Halloween should be the pun’kin. The pun’kin, carved into faces that are scary only because we want them to be, winking from every porch. The pun’kin cast in plastic, swinging from the hands of knee-high princesses, leering back from department store shelves, until it gives way to tins of butter cookies.
But I fear for the pun’kin. How long before before he is kicked down the street by zombie hordes, booted into obscurity? Young people tell me that no one—no one— wants to dress up like a pun’kin any more. All a pun’kin does they say is sit there, and glow.
This may be true, all of it, but try to make a pie out of a zombie, and see where that gets you. Though I hear that, when it comes to pies, your canned zombie is the way to go. "
― Rick Bragg , Where I Come from: Stories from the Deep South
