Friday with Friends "Ramona Richards"

One of my all-time favorite people! Seriously... all-time...

Lizards, Tales, and Fried Chicken

They looked huge to me, those trestle tables under the picnic shelter behind the Baptist church. They also seemed a bit rickety, like they’d never hold all that food, that long array of fried chicken, green beans, potato salad, and gallons of ice tea. A dish of something dark red warned me where the congealed salads lay in wait, and at the far distant end . . . oh, what a gathering of pies! Coconut, chocolate, chess, pecan.

Mother would stand me on a somewhat shaky chair, hand me a dish towel, and say, “Keep the flies off.”

Pure torture for a hungry little girl, all of four, waiting for the rest of the food to emerge from cars and coolers. The scents of all that chicken made my stomach growl and my mouth water.

Welcome to dinner on the grounds, that beloved Southern tradition that brought kith and kin from near and far to their home church.

Tall oaks formed the leafy roof over our heads, which gave some, but not much, relief from the blistering heat of an Alabama summer. Sweat coated my face, and I whined until my mother dug a pair of shorts and a cotton shirt out of her bag and told me to go change.

I fled to the car and changed in the back seat, peeling off soaked crinolines and wriggling into the shorts and shirt. Then I scampered out to the cemetery, where the rest of the kids dashed around, hunting lizards in the sweltering heat. We squealed and ran among the family plots, occasionally stopping to pelt each other with marble chips scrounged from one of the graves. Reverent we were not.

Then we heard the preacher call everyone to prayer. Time for the blessing. Everyone bowed their heads as he gave a full-blown Southern Baptist prayer.

For a kid, this takes about the same time as eternity. We squirmed, swatting flies and gnats, until one of the mothers cleared her throat in an ominous threat aimed at every person under 12. Didn’t matter whose mom – we all stilled.

Finally . . . FOOD. Glorious piles of unforgettable, delicious delicacies. Deviled eggs, which made me ask Mother how chickens could sin. Watermelon. Homemade ice cream.

Then came the tale-telling. Women gathered up the remains as the old men circled chairs and told stories about the past, about all those folks out there in the cemetery. Folks we should remember, whose trials and faith had blazed the trail we all walked.

When we finally left, I was sunburnt, sated, and full of dreams. And impatient for the next dinner on the grounds.  


Bio: Ramona Richards, fiction editor for Abingdon Press, started making stuff up at three, writing it down at seven, and selling it at eighteen. She’s been annoying editors ever since, which is probably why she became one. She’s edited more than 350 publications, including novels, CD-ROMs, magazines, non-fiction, children’s books, Bibles, and study guides. Ramona has worked with such publishers as Thomas Nelson, Barbour, Howard, Harlequin, Ideals, and many others. The author of eight books and an avid live music fan, Ramona loves living in the ongoing street party that is Nashville.


(Black and white photo of young Ramona, singing at a Dinner on the Grounds."

Monday Musings on All Things Southern

Just the other day I wrote a scene in my WIP (work in progress). It takes place in the late 50s. It's summertime. It's Florida. It's hot.

My character Veronica--called Ronni--is sitting on a front porch swing with her beau, Billy. She is holding a hand-held funeral home fan, this one with the image of Heinrich Hoffman's famous painting of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane.

And, of course, it got me to thinking about growing up in the South and going to church and all those hand-held fans. They were often called "funeral home" fans because funeral homes advertised on the back of them. I cannot remember anything on the front beyond famous biblical paintings.

But this brought to mind one Sunday when my family and I were invited to go to church with friends. Theirs was a small country church. White brick. Chapel in the front, fellowship hall with Sunday school classrooms jutting out to the left, making the whole thing look like a giant white L. The pews were brick-hard. There was no carpeting on the floor, just linoleum. And, by golly, no air conditioning.

But there were hand-held fans and the stained glass windows did open. Which mean the gnats and mosquitoes had free access to the house of God as well. Parishioners sat and listened to the preacher, all the while fanning their faces and blowing those pesky critters away from their sweat-drenched faces. And no one complained because, hey! Dinner on the grounds was coming just as soon as the service was over.

I say "no one." I was doing my fair share of griping ... inwardly, of course. My mother thought nothing of taking my brother and me out of the church for a little "hands on" discipline when necessary. Not that she would have "spanked" me at that age. I was probably fourteen at the time. But I would have lost privileges, which--if I had to guess--would have been watching television, something I loved to do.

So I endured.

But after an hour of fanning and blowing and listening to the Word of God preached by a down-home pastor, and after fried chicken and potato salad and homemade macaroni and cheese and some pound cake, all served with enough sweet tea to sink a ship...I was bored.

My brother wasn't bored. He'd found some kids to play with. My father and mother were happily chatting with the "brothers and sisters." But I didn't really know anyone there and I was (did I mention?) bored. I asked Daddy for the keys to the car so I could go outside where, yes, it was even hotter than inside because, after all, I could at least listen to the hit tunes offered by WBBQ out of Augusta, GA. God willing.

I rolled down all the windows and turned the key to the left so as to drain the battery but not rev the engine. And certainly not use the air conditioner! But the tunes came in--although reception was sketchy at times--and I was given a moment's reprieve from my adolescent angst.

But not the heat and certainly not the pests. Gnats covered the inside of the windshield. Millions of them. I wondered if we'd ever get them out or if we'd have to make household pets out of them. Then the sweating started in full force. Dripping down my back in large streams. Along my face. My makeup (Cover Girl, no doubt) was obviously ruined.

Determined to stick out my own agony, I went back to the chapel of the church, pulled one of the fans from the pew rack, and returned to the car. I waved like a maniac--Jesus' imagine flying all over the place--while Daddy Dewdrop sang, "Chic-a-boom, chic-a-boom..."

Don't you just love it?

Hey! Do you have any hand-held fan stories to tell? Share them here! Remember any particular painting on the front side, advertisement on the back? I'd love to hear it!

Eva Marie