Fashions, Hormones and Farmers Markets

I don’t know why it took me until the middle of July before going to the farmers market for the first time this summer. Where else can you pay $7.00 for four Lemon Dream cookies and feel good about it because all the proceeds go to charity or see people with their dogs impatiently waiting for them to pay for homemade beef jerky sticks or watch kettle corn being made next to a vendor selling goats cheese? I bought more cut flowers than healthy eatable’s but that’s okay. I gave up on having a Twiggy-like figure the first time I had the stomach flu and if you understand that statement, you probably came-of-age in the 1960s. Thunder-thighs that I was back in those days (and still am) I both hated and loved Twiggy for the impossible standard of anorexia induced beauty she set. Who didn’t want to look that skinning in a polyester knit A-line dress? Raise your hand. I really want to know.

On the way home from the farmers market the prime country radio station was playing a song by Billy Currington and I was smitten with his ability to tell a sweet, boy-meets-girl story. If I had a pinky’s worth of musical talent I’d try my hand at writing songs but I spent so many years trying to learn how to flesh out my written thoughts that it would be difficult to condense my words down to the just the important ones to carry a story along. But mostly songs like Billy’s Good Directions have me reminiscing about what it felt like to experience sexual attraction like I did back in my husband hunting days when I wore A-line dresses and go-go boots. I can’t even remember the last time that actually happened. Even George Clooney and Matthew McConaughey have lost their power to make my heart skip a beat. Raise your hand if they still have power over your hormones. I really want to know.

“I was sittin' there sellin' turnips on a flatbed truck

Crunchin' on a pork rind when she pulled up

She had to be thinkin' this is where rednecks come from

She had Hollywood written on her license plate

She was lost and lookin' for the interstate

Needin' directions, and I was the man for the job.

“I told her way up yonder past the caution light

There's a little country store with an old Coke sign

You gotta stop in and ask Miss Bell for some of her sweet tea

Then a left will take you to the interstate

But a right will bring you right back here to me.”

It’s not hard to guess that after a few more verses Billy Currington wrote the girl “of his dreams” coming back to the flatbed truck with the last line of the song saying, “Thank God for good directions...and turnip greens.”

Recently I went to a fashion trunk show. Yes, you read that right. Me, the woman who’d gladly live in a bathrobe all day long if society wouldn’t judge that as an indicator of poor mental health or senior depression. But it’s true; I’ve gone from the A-line dresses of my best fashion plate years to a look that says if-my-breasts-and-tushie-are-covered-up-good-enough. I didn’t actually sign up for this trunk show. An acquaintance was offering the ticket to anyone who was available on short notice. I spoke up with no more forethought than I had the afternoon open.

I’d been to a couple of trunk shows in my past but this one was different. It was a like Tupperware party for what they called ‘investment pieces’---blouses, jackets and gauze vests one supposedly can wear for decades. They were all bright, floral and geometric prints that---to me---were so memorable I’d have trouble wearing them two seasons, no matter how many different basic, solid colors you can wear underneath. They also showed a line of ‘investment’ bling. “A woman should never leave the house without her bling” and if you bought into their spiel you’d be stacking bracelets up your arm like cord wood on an Amish farm. They talked about earrings and keeping them in scale but I stopped listening when they brought out the chunky hubcaps "for our bigger gals" that would elongate even a young person’s earlobes under their weight. Flabby, Golda Meir earlobes makes a person look older than gray hair and I fear them more than liver spots and arthritic knuckles. I did have fun at the trunk show, though, resisting the temptation to laugh in all the wrong places. Raise your hand if keeping up with fashion still matters to you. I really want to know.  ©