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By Jayme Lawson
~True Love and Homegrown Tomatoes~
Dedicated to Angela and Jeremy, and everyone else in Warren, Arkansas....
If you have found yourself blessed enough to live in Bradley County:
Make sure you have plenty of bread and milk if the weather hints at ice ANYWHERE in Iowa, Texas, Missouri, Mississippi, Hawaii, Oklahoma, Minnesota or El Dorado, because all two grocery stores will be wiped out within an hour.
There are things in your wardrobe adorned with appliquéd tomatoes.
The remainder of your wardrobe which possesses not tomatoes shall be orange and black.
Those garments which are not orange and black should be fireproof and approved by a dirt track or race team.
Further, remaining garments must be camouflage or hunting orange, slightly brighter than Lumberjack shades.
You can no longer follow the yellow brick road because it’s red.
You have rescheduled a wedding, a funeral, or a root canal to coincide with high school football, especially the root canal because the dentist is going to be cooking hamburgers at the game.
The last person out of town really DOES turn the lights out during conference games.
You remember every Saturday morning not to sit in that one particular lil lady’s booth at Molly’s Diner, because she WILL yell at you ‘You’re sitting my booth!‘ The waitresses, apologetically to all parties involved, move whoever dared to post there. Thankfully, I never made that mistake. But I’ve seen three or four times the little lady wander off to talk to the other regulars then return to people at her table. The funny thing is she’ll just laugh and talk with you once you move, and she’s happily seated. I almost dropped my bacon the first time I heard her. I don’t know who she is, but don’t sit in her booth.
You know that Big Boy, Cherry and the Early Girls are not porn stars.
You eat mayo mater sandwiches in the summer and canned salsa in the winter.
You enter an Orb of Stupidity as you approach the four way stop next to the Dollar General and everyone’s commons sense goes out the window. Enter at your own risk. Further, you understand that between Sonic and KFC traffic rules do not apply.
You know not to talk on your cell phone in the gas station for fear of retribution from the phone Nazi (she's my friend and I told her about this already, so don't be offended).
If you want to go out for a real special dinner, you can have Chinese, Mexican, or Chinese.
You still go to the pink tomato festival hoping to find a chilled Bradley to cool you off, even when there haven't been any tomatoes there in 4 yrs counting.
You completely understand why they put a carnival at a tomato festival, but not at a fair. You try not to miss the carnies during the actual fair time when the powers that be don‘t schedule em to appear.
You have a bumper sticker on your van that says try using plastic toilet paper, log a load for kids, or support your dirt track racer.
You learn to keep your basset hounds closely guarded because there is a local long-eared bandit lurking about.
Your cell phone ring is "Home-Grown Tomatoes". What is ‘Homegrown Tomatoes”, you may ask? Well, it’s a song by John Denver and Guy Clark. Wanna hear it? Here it go:
Ain't nothin' in the world that I like better
Than bacon & lettuce & homegrown tomatoes
Up in the mornin' out in the garden
Get you a ripe one don't get a hard one
Plant `em in the spring eat `em in the summer
All winter with out `em's a culinary bummer
I forget all about the sweatin' & diggin'
Everytime I go out & pick me a big one
Homegrown tomatoes homegrown tomatoes
What'd life be without homegrown tomatoes
Only two things that money can't buy
That's true love & homegrown tomatoes
You can go out to eat & that's for sure
But it's nothin' a homegrown tomato won't cure
Put `em in a salad, put `em in a stew
You can make your very own tomato juice
Eat `em with eggs, eat `em with gravy
Eat `em with beans, pinto or navy
Put `em on the site put `em in the middle
Put a homegrown tomato on a hotcake griddle
If I's to change this life I lead
I'd be Johnny Tomato Seed
`Cause I know what this country needs
Homegrown tomatoes in every yard you see
When I die don't bury me
In a box in a cemetary
Out in the garden would be much better
I could be pushin' up homegrown tomatoes
You pull over on the side of the highway out of respect for ragged pickups pulling trailers with bald tires stacked high with waxy cardboard boxes.
You do the same for log trucks.
A night on the town consists of driving to Wal-Mart over in Monticello followed by dinner at Taco Bell, or Wendy’s or Rays or Breaker…anything but McDonald’s or Sonic.
You make fun of people in Banks and Wilmar because you live in a way bigger place.
You quickly learn to lock your bicycle chains because of the notorious hustle gang that roams the streets.
You can pretend you’re vacationing in Tijuana the opening week of harvest.
Ninety-seven percent of the air you breathe is sawdust.
You try to guess the secret sound on the radio every morning while you brush your teeth.
There are more car washes than there are any other business in town.
You have seen more than once the guy with spinner hubcaps have to get out at the red light and start his spinners spinning again.
There’s nothing like Cash’s coffee and fresh morning air scented with diesel fumes.
You may have a next door neighbor who has been arrested for assault charges over getting in a scuffle over a 25 cent Nora Roberts novel at a garage sale.
There are more flea markets on the square than there are fleas on LULU the shop dog.
You cower in fear as Hoosier, the other local shop dog, stands over you with his big humungous slack jaws drooling dog slobber all over the fried bologna sandwich you got from Molly’s. But you love him anyways.
The sound of the tornado warnings grow more familiar than your spouse's voice.
Instead of cookies you leave Santa a helpin' of fried green tomatoes.
You get used to living in a town where the population is a citizen/cop one-to-one ratio.
You’ll realize the loud booming at noon on Friday is not a shoot out at Molly's, the equivalent to high noon at the OK Coral, but is just the weekly tornado warning yet again.
You still sigh in nostalgic wistfulness as you cross what used to be the big bridge.
You know the legend of the 20 point buck.
You spend the weekends between football season perfecting your ringers for the local horseshoe tournaments.
You known not to disturb anyone who has a dale Earnhardt flag on their porch during Sunday afternoons.
You know where Possum Valley is, but you don't tell anyone.
You would let a blind folded drunk edward scissorhands cut your hair before you would venture near that blonde at the yadda yadda hair salon.
You think the Mad Butcher is way better than the Piggly Wiggly.
You know the Family Dollar crackers taste better than the Dollar General crackers.
You have been to Spanky’s, but you don't admit it….unless you’ve been awarded the ‘I got spanked at Spanky’s’ teeshirt.
You know that Food Stamp racing isn't something that happens when they open the door of the Harvest Foods on the third.
Weddings still resemble the 1989 one in Steel Magnolias, including the shot gun, grumpy old women, ugly dogs and possum for dessert.
You have been snipe hunting ….and caught one.
You aren't shocked when your kid comes home and says someone called him a "punta".
You really wonder why there isn't a Taco Bell in warren.. I mean really.
Every time you go by the YMCA, you wanna sing ‘Hey, young man….come and listen to me….’
You’re tired of hearing Feliz Navidad in stores at Christmas time.
You have been naked at some point at Ozment’s Bluff.
You plan your swimming activities by how high the river is at the bridge. Similarly, you have submitted your urine sample as a donation during droughts to the Saline River.
People in Florida, California and Timbuktu email you on Facebook and want to know if you've ever been to the Pink Tomato Festival. Likewise, people in Georgia email you and want to trade peaches for maters.
You will always think the guy that sells 1999 Nike tennis shoes, fur rugs and Fubu suits by the motel is a little scary.
You know not to sit on in the last booth on the right side of Molly’s after church because there is a picture of a man’s butt that says ‘Say no to crack.‘ And speaking of Molly’s, when you haven’t been for a week, you start suffering from sign withdrawals.
The only biker gang in town is comprised of 14 year olds and steals schwinns and huffys.
Oh I just remembered…it’s probably not there anymore, but once when I went to the sno-cone stand, the summer town attaction, there was a chalk outline of a person in the parking space in between the sno-cone stand and courthouse, and a bunch of YMCA kids were trying to see how many could fit inside the body at once.
Who needs a Wal-Mart? We have a co-op.
The only season that outshines racing season is deer season.
You aren’t popular unless you spend New Year’s Day at Wilmar Hunting Club with their barbecued hog snacks wrapped in aluminum foil and strapped to the back of your four-wheeler, whilst out of 4,876 people, 4, 874 of ’em get stuck, lost or go a’swimmin in da crick.
You will become a master at rotating your daily wearing of FoodStamp racing, Arkansas Hogs, Budweiser & Mossy Oak caps almost as well as you rotate the tires on your skidder.
In conclusion, we love God, our families, our friends, tomatoes, and Wal-Mart even though they didn’t love us and put their store here instead.
We even love the Super Bowl, but we still just can’t understand why our beloved Lumberjacks hadn’t made it there yet.
~If you live in Warren, you understand the only two things that money can't buy...that's true love and homegrown tomatoes~
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