I answered the telephone and immediately recognized the accent. It was my Tennessee friend, Bobbie. We chatted for some time and after we said good-bye, I hung up, amazed as always at our unique friendship.
We met 12 years ago at a street-rod show in Moab, Utah. Her husband, Charlie and Dick hit it off and Bobbie and I also did. Even though my home in Minnesota and hers in Tennessee are almost as far away as possible in the lower 48, and even though southern and northern cultures differ, we found much in common. She’s an artist. I’m a writer. We shared a similar religious upbringing. Our sense of humor meshed, and she was just plain nice.
When the car show ended, and we went our separate ways, we exchanged email addresses and made tentative plans for us to attend their huge end-of-the-summer annual redneck party in Tennessee. But the reality of busy lives intervened, and it never happened.
The long and short of it is that our friendship has not only survived but thrived although we’ve never seen each other faceto face again.
Bobbie and I share our lives through email. Through the years, we’ve shared stories of personal tragedy, wacky relatives, holiday traditions and just day-to-day living. In the summer she describes a heat I find incomprehensible and in the winter, I tell her stories of Mount Everest size snow drifts and arctic temps that must defy her imagination.
Our friendship has shared both good, bad and some unique times. Every Christmas, she tucks a poem she has written in a card featuring her artwork, which, (by the way) is beautiful.
She has a generous soul. When she discovered that juicy ripe really-red tomatoes are rare in northern Minnesota, she decided to do something about it. She and Charlie sent a well-insulated huge container filled with true, ripe tomatoes from their garden. Every time I took a bite of those delicious red globes, I uttered a little, “God bless Bobbie and Charlie.”
Bobbie is not only a generous friend and wonderful artist. She’s also a fantastic storyteller. Her hillbilly jokes are unsurpassed and her tales of wacky relatives make my off-beat family members look normal. She reads my columns, and often has a story of her own to tell on the topic.
One of the stories I best remember from Bobbie was her story of “turkey” beans. She said the beans were supposed to have been taken from the craw of a wild turkey and regarded as delicious. Her granddaddy and possibly her father had grown them but she hadn’t seen any in many years.
Her story piqued my interest, but I never discovered anything more about these “turkey” beans until recently while looking through Seed Savers Exchange catalogue. There it was in the bean category: Item 1515A—Turkey Craw. Heirloom beans from Tennessee and Kentucky, original seed said to have been found in a wild turkey’s craw.
She and her husband live near Sevierville (think Knoxville) in a lovely spot in the country where she paints and holds classes in a small workshop overlooking a lake. That’s where I always imagine her to be, happily daubing paint and creating lovely art.
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