Turnips

[NW Mailing List]

Speaking of turnips: See today’s https://www.gocomics.com/adamathome/

 

Craig Close   BORHS/C&A Live Steam/FoGFLP/HFRHS

Balimer Merlan

OK: Far West Catonsville

Or: Greater Oella

 

From: NW-Mailing-List <nw-mailing-list-bounces at nwhs.org> On Behalf Of NW Mailing List
Sent: Monday, May 8, 2023 11:47 AM
To: NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
Subject: Re: Turnips

 

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. Stroupe

Memphis, TN

At 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 <mailto: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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