Turnips

[NW Mailing List]

 This is the best start to a Monday I have had in a long time.  I feel the same way about beets.  And Mr. Burnett, I have a turnip story which I would be happy to share.  It is not, however, fit for wide dissemination.
Best regards,John B. StroupeMemphis, TNAt the west end of the Memphis - Charleston.

    On Monday, May 8, 2023 at 06:22:07 AM CDT, NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:  
 
    So, Comrade Milosh Shockelevski wants a confession from me on "the Turnip thing" ...  Hummmmm.  How much I should own up to ? 
    
   Well, I could make up a long-winded cock-and-bull story about how my Great Uncle Throckmorton left me a fortune in Turnip Futures at the Bank of Transylvania, or some such.  But instead I will just tell you the truth, which is less glamorous but much simpler.   
   When I was a kid, I heard the old folks say that someone was such a bumbling rube, he surely must have just fallen on the Turnip Wagon.  Now that was a very poignant expression, said I to mah'seff !   
   At thirst I thought they were talking about me... and would probably have been a very apt description.  But then I discerned that this eloquent expression quite likely a figure of speech, a metaphor.   
   Now, I was a city urchin and had no idea what a Turnip was.  But the man down the street, Mr. Ramsey, a retired machinist from the N&W's East End Shops, had a back yard vegetable garden.  As I was coming home from my newspaper route each eveming, he was generally out hoeing weeds in his garden.  So one day I stopped and asked Mr. Ramsey if he could tell me what a Turnip was.  He reached down, pulled out of the dirt an ugly ball of purple and white protoplasm with a noxiuous-looking root on it, handed it to me and said, "This, Sonny, is a Turnip.  Take it home and have your mother cook it for you."   
   I did.  And it was absolutely revolting.  Even with butter and sugar on it, it was still a no-go.  For a half century I remembered that awful taste.   
   Then one day a few years back, I was in a grocery store I saw Turnips on sale.  It occurred to me that the Turnip Experience might be better the Second Time Around.  So I took one home and had the wife cook it for me... and guess what?  Still just as disgusting as I had found the taste ro be sixty years before !   
   And thus Turnips became my Freudian satirical by-line about the unpleasant experiences of a city urchin.   
   So there you go.  This is my Confession and of you, Father, I ask absolution and salutary penance.   
   But before I go...  You wanna buy some Turnips, Mister ?   
     -- abram burnett   Sovereign Indigenous Tribal Turnip Nation   
   
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