SOUR GRAPES AND ONION- the story of a dip

You ever get a good whiff of something and it takes you back? It might be the smell of freshly washed sheets hanging on the line, or the perfume of jasmine blooming in the moonlight that you sneak past toting a bag of apples that the owner of that tree is never gonna miss, or the rich, thick smokiness of flames rising like the Holy Spirit from a cross that burns in the new family’s yard. You get transported to a moment or a time in your life, right through your snoot, and for a minute it’s just like you were still there.

For me, it’s the sharp and unmistakable essence of the onion. This vegetable has been a part of my cooking, and my life, for as long as I can remember.

When we were children my MawMaw Boopers used onions as a homemade medicine; you sliced them into rounds and then you put them on your feet and then you put your socks on right up on top of them. You had to find your socks without the holes; otherwise you mash that onion down every time you take a step and squeeze out all the juice and I’ll tell you what. As much as the beating that’ll get you hurts, you deserve every hit from that switch, and then some. Our Lord Jesus Christ the Lover of America wrote in the Bible all about the Lake of Fire and Sulfur, and you know that let out a cloud of sin reeking all the way to heaven, but that ain’t nothing next to a patch of shag some foot onion got tromped into. That stink ain’t never gonna go away, no matter how many ferrets you get.

MawMaw Boopers swore by the usage of foot onions as a cure, like if we felt the sniffles coming on, or started running a fever, or that one time Lil’ Pud got bit by a feral hog.

I think it’s important to say that as much as MawMaw Boopers knew, she didn’t know everything, and onions on your feet are not in fact a cure for every single thing, for example they are for sure not a cure for getting bit by a feral hog.

Poor Lil’ Pud. Smallest casket I ever saw.

But while one of my very first memories is of the stench of onions fuming over my retread bassinet, before growing into a small and sickly child who just kept finding her way back from the woods no matter how far in they dumped me, their pungent odor is not just a part of my distant past. It’s part of my present.

Onions ain’t just for cooking, or for anointing the moldering footstumps of the ill, or for scaring the badgers off from eating a small and sickly child dumped in the woods. Onions have mystical and magical properties that can call into your body the spirit of Jesus Christ, Who May Have Talked About Loving One’s Neighbor But You Know He Dint Mean EVERYBODY. From there you then release him in a salty sea of purity that flows out from your eyes to defeat Satan Who I Mean In The Pictures They Show The Devil Red But We All Know What Color He Is.

It was with that knowledge that I went on a crusade to hear the words of the Man of Holiness and Purity Donald Trump, Sent By God Almighty Himself to the White House and meant to stay there, regardless of the deception of the Devil’s Tools of Numbers and Math. I was ready to do whatever I needed to do to keep him where he belonged.

It was the biggest moment of my life and I arranged myself accordingly. Jesus Christ Who Was Most Definitely A White Man With Blonde Hair wrote in The Book of Revelation, “It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.”

Now, I don’t know what that all means to y’all, but to me that says two words.

PIANO.

SCARF.

(to be completely honest I wanted to wear the washtub vest MawMaw Boopers knitted out of roadkill pelts way back when she had hands, but Medium Pud claimed it first as my traveling companion and after all he is the father of three of my children. And as Saint Bobby With The Hat says in his Sermon at the Piggly Wiggly, “it is unto the woman to bring forth an army from her loins, and also to shut her whore mouth”.)

Knowing I looked my best, I set upon the rest of my preparations and packed my towel- and my onion. My mission was to cast doubt upon those who would besmirch The Grandeur Of The Trump. Now I lack the strength to hoist a rifle; even a lifetime’s worth of onions on my foot (there was a thing that happened a while back with Jimmy Suet and some uncertainty about a bear trap but I can’t be mad at the father of four of my children) isn’t gonna cure my weakness enough to make me a worthy enough fighter to storm the gates of the Kingdom of Perdition.

Like Our Holy Lord Jesus said in what was surely English and not the snotty European kind, you muddle through. There was no way I was going to survive another trampling; the first one might have made PeckerNose Jed finally fix his fence but since then I got the PTSDs and to this very day I am no use with crowds OR goats.

The best of my abilities allowed me to serve not in combat, but in subterfuge. I marched upon the Capitol raising my flags high, one for the Confederacy and one for the President who can take us back to those better days. When the crowds stormed the castle, I primed my eyeball pumps with a Vidalia in a dishrag. And when I saw the cameras, I knew what to do and I was ready. I told my story. I told it right. I told it well. I called upon the godliness of the onion to bring forth cleansing waters from my eyes, and was able to bear witness against the bringers of the gas without having to have the gas brought.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

So is that onion! After its moment of God’s glory, this is what I did with it:

“We Ain’t Gettin’ Baptized, But We’re Taking A Dip!”

• One cup mayonnaise
• One cup sour cream
• The remains of small and holy onion
• Teaspoon mustard powder
• Pinch salt
• Pinch pepper

Mix them all together then dig in!

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