RELOCATED THE PICKLE IN THE JELLY

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Chapter 2 How a Wife Can Learn to Fish, Part 1 Fish Out Of Water

Pickle In The Jelly Chapter 2

How a Wife Can Learn to Fish

Part 1 Fish Out Of Water

He was born, or it might have been hatched on the first day of Spring, under the Pisces sign of the Zodiac just before the moon was full, which is the best time for hatching or catching fish. His father looked him over and said, “We got somethin’ here I can’t figger out. Our first ones looked like human babies, but this ‘un, I don’t know. Look here, are these things ears or gills? Still, I don’t see any scales. If it had waited a few days it mighta developed whiskers and been a catfish. Let’s find a bent pin and put it on a string and see if it’ll bits. Whatt you say we throw this thing in the creek to see if it’s gonna swim or not? Well, it is breathing, so we’ll keep it for a few days and find out whether to keep it in the cradle or a washtub. Be sure to keep a tub under the rainspout so it’ll be ready in case we hafter toss this into it.”

They had trouble with his formula and he cried a great deal until they fed him some raw cornmeal balls they were using for dogfish bait. As he grew older these cornballs had to be cooked, he stopped crying and that’s how hushpuppies got started. He would not leave the goldfish bowl alone until at the age of six months his father gave him a fishing pole. He kept his little knees and toes worn to the bones crawling to and from the fishing hole. When he learned to fish, he stood such long hours that to this day he has to wear steel arch supports in his orthopedic shoes. The other night while we were out riding he showed me their old fishing hole. He added that this was where he eventually learned to swim. But he was really born swimming.

When we first met, he was working at a large dam on a river in Tennessee. He stayed on that job only eight weeks, and though he said he left it so he could be near me, I still strongly suspect he was discharged because he spent too much time fishing during working hours. Even yet it is miraculous how I, a mere woman, held his attention long enough to get him married to me. It could be that it was Spring again and he mistakenly took his natural Pisces cycle and the just-before-the-full-moon-when-fishing-is-best-feeling of love. Or possibly, he was sad and lonely because he had not caught any fish in several weeks and I caught him on the backlash.

It is a well-known fact that in Spring, normally a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love, but when someone mentioned Spring in his presence, all it meant was a hole of water that might have a fish in it, and thither not only his thoughts but his footsteps turned. Well, I had his attention for a while, but it took only a short while to learn that a wife can be widowed by water; that most wives can hold their own against anything as insignificant and unimportant as a beautiful face, a perfect thirty-six figure, undulating underpinning and glamorous gams; but against gasping gills, flapping fins, elongated eyeballs and twisting tails, she might as well make up her mind to get with it, resign herself to becoming a fish-widow or resort to becoming a fishwife.

Too, there is always the possibility of getting to be a real widow unless she gets further hooked by becoming aware of the fact she must go with him sometimes. Or he will go alone if he can’t persuade any of the boys to go. Everyone knows the first rule of safety is never to go fishing alone. A wife doesn’t want to become a widow by her husband becoming a statistic in the files of the Game and Fish Commission. So she might as well come to the conclusion that at least she tried to keep him from coming to a conclusion. She has to take it in stride, and even if her legs aren’t as long as his, she darned well manages to keep up with him.

Some men fish as a hobby. With my husband, it’s a hobsession, and far from a magnificent one. Hemingway’s Old Man of the Sea with all his perseverance and determination in bringing in the ONE fish was an infinitesimal anemic amoeba when compared to my old man. I often wonder if Hemingway’s Old Man had an Old Woman and if she waited on shore for that shrimp’s boat to come in.

This Old Woman’s Old Man has more power than an atomic submarine in staying in, on, around, under, on top of, or above water trying to catch a fish. It makes no difference whether the fish are edible – just so they are something out of water. He will be happy with anything that swims, from bass to barracuda, minnows to marlin, shiners to sharks, tadpoles to tarpon, whiting to whales, or guppies to gar. He was the originator of the college craze for gulping goldfish. He is convinced that nuclear fission is some kind of new development relating to his favorite pastime.

One of his ways of influencing people is to win fins. He never took Dale Carnegie’s course, but he can win more friends with fins, and influence more people with plates of pan-fried perch and potatoes than with anything out of a book. When there’s nobody to impress but me, we have beef patties and Bonanza or weenies and Welk.

Pickle In The Jelly1

Val Willis is my grandmother who passed away in 1997. She lived her life in Manchester, GA with my grandfather J.W. Willis. They jointly owned Willis Furniture there. Grandma Val had a great sense of humor and was very wise. She had a knack for writing good stories and eventually had a book called “Pickle In The Jelly” published in approximately 1973. I have recently uncovered the last known copy of this book and will be sharing it here with you at Redgage through consecutive blogs. This is the introduction, which Grandma Val used to explain the characters in the book as well as the background and tone of the book. Please enjoy! It’s all great fun and be sure to keep coming back as I put up more chapters as documents as time passes! Please let me know what you think!

Pickle In The Jelly - Introduction

By Val Willis September 23, 1909 – January 27, 1997

Dedicated to the descendants of “Pickle In The Jelly” without whom the jelly jar would be minus participating pickles and jam-up jellies:

Barry & Babs – the Crystallizing Crooners

Scott – the Whole Hamburger Dill

Hardy – the Artful Arti-Joke (formerly Lee, the Li’l Pickle

Krista – the Jelly Beanie

Jubal – the Big Briny Barker

Lamar & Twila – Lam and Twi, the Cucumber Cools

Stacia – the Peachy Preserve

Gaye Anne – the Sally Delite

Jana – the Dilly Dolly

Spot – the Chow-Chow Bow-Wow

Floyd & Bev – the Krispy Kandied Kukes

Cindy – the Sweet- Apple Ring-a-Ding

Bill – William, the Bill Pickle

Diane – the Fig-ure Preserve

Joni – the Jelly Roller

Pickle In Your Jelly?

If there’s a PICKLE in your jar of JELLY,

You don’t just stand there

Staring at – holding it tight in your hand.

Pick the PICKLE from your jar of JELLY

Your life will be free

To hold all the happiness

At your command.

Don’t ever expect all the good things of life

To seek you and find you;

Don’t ever sit back, hoping all hopes fulfilled.

Break out of the bonds that hold you away

From the sweetness around you –

Break ‘way from defeats that keep

True Life from being instilled.

The JELLY is your life in all its wondrous

Fulfillment and glory!

The PICKLES, despairs barring you from your

Own wonderland.

Pick the PICKLE from your jar of JELLY –

There’ll be more love and

Contentment than your life

Ever could plan.

P.I.T.J

PICKLE IN THE JELLY – OH!

PICKLE IN THE JELLY – those few who still may not be familiar with the phrase get an odd look on their faces when they hear it; like, “Are you SURE?” That’s after they ask, I BEG your pardon?”

A word of explanation might be in order as to what PICKLE IN THE JELLY is and what it means. A newspaper column, it appeared in three or more newspapers for three or more years. The column had no name. Then at breakfast one morning we innocently opened a new jar of jelly and there on top of the jelly rested a whole cucumber pickle. Yes, a whole cucumber pickle. The gang around the breakfast table looked at me in open-mouthed astonishment as I yelled, “THAT’S IT! THAT’S IT!” “What’s it? What’s what?” they asked in alarm. “MY TITLE! MY TITLE! The colum- the col-, the ti-ti-ti-title for my col= col= column! PICKLE IN THE JELLY! THAT’S IT! THAT’S IT!” And I did handsprings, cartwheels and somersaults all over the kitchen.

Forthwith a letter was dispatched to our editor requesting that henceforth he place at the heading of our column the title, PICKLE IN THE JELLY.” The phrase describes exactly what the columns are; a study in contrasts, a mass of organized confusion or a group of conflicting paradoxes. Each column is both sour and sweet, ridiculous and serious, consistent and unstable, nonsensical yet intelligent, absurd but wise, uncertain and explicit, perplexing yet clear. Sad and whimsical they are, nonchalant and cautious, incongruous and harmonious, normal but unconventional, intellectual and scatterbrained, both positive and negative, angelic and/or devilish. We’re conformist and reformist, conservative and radical, and if the need arises, Democrat and Republican. You name it – synonym or antonym.  As a fan stated “PICKLE IN THE JELLY always makes me laugh, yet there is always a lesson to be learned.” That is the sole aim and purpose of the column – long may it rave.

Now we have graduated to a few column inches in most all the newspapers in the corporation. We had our own radio program, written and performed by The Pickle. We have made several guest appearances on television and social events.

Our theme song was composed by the Sweet Dills, Nina Valk and Mildred Edge of Miami. Piano and vocal on tapes are done by Lam and Twi, the Cucumber Cools. Their name originated from the fact they are as cool as ‘cumbercubes’ when they sing. Solo piano was taped by the Beat Pickle. There are other assorted Pickles ranging in age from one to forty-four years including Joni the Jellyroll, Lee, the Li’l Pickle, The Sally Delites, William the Bill Pickle and the Chip Mon-kees who have their own version of the theme song. Week before last,m the column was prepared by fourteen-year-old Georgia Peach Pickle, who seems to be a slice from the Sour Cuke. Another paradox.

PICKLE AND THE JELLY and I have stayed up nights, bored our family, kept our jelly jar with the pickle in it in the fridge – we have spoken at dinners and conventions. According to some people we speak too often and too much. For example, when we get going on reforms such as school reforms, tax reforms or government reforms, many who have to hear us wish we had chloroform.

All in all, we have a wonderful time. There are those in sympathy with us, for when the Man of the House acted like one and yelled, “WHO SPILLED THIS STICKY STUFF ALL OVER THE KITCHEN FLOOR?” we were told, “It’s too bad there has to be a pickle in your jar of jelly.”

We are convinced our mission in life is to help create a few smiles and laughs here and there. That is not too hard to do, for even when we come out of the beauty shop looking as if we didn’t get our money’s worth, there are smiles on every face we see, all the way home. When view ourself in the mirror, we wonder, too, how they could help smiling……

"Check back soon for Pickle In The Jelly 2!"