Owls
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam tells us about some early morning attacks that are happening in his part of town. You'd be surprised at who is doing the attacking. ----- On the top of the Tangles Hair Salon on Bit and Spur Road in Mobile sits a hat and a headlamp with its light on. The headlamp is the type that an early morning jogger wears before the sun comes up. How it got up there is a heck of a story. Dennison Crocker jogs before daylight nearly every morning. His headlamp lights the way. One dark morning near Bit and Spur Road, a giant thunk, thud, and whoosh caught Dennison off...
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Can I Transfer?
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin' It Real, Cam recalls a time when he was very much out of his element and was slightly afraid for his life. ----- About midway through the fourth quarter of Alabama’s loss to Vanderbilt, my son, who is a student at the University, sent me a text. It read, “Can I transfer?” I laughed. As a Tulane student we were fond of saying that on Saturdays in the fall, the New Orleans Superdome hosted a cocktail party for students to mix and mingle in the stands. Occasionally we would look up and notice that a football game was going on in front of us, but we never let it...
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FBI
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam Marston tells us about a bomb maker he met who sends the bombs he makes to his friends. Oddly enough, you and I should be happy he's doing it. ----- There’s a man on the outskirts of Mobile who spends a good part of his days making bombs. He uses items he finds around town and buys from retail stores. He then sends his bombs to his buddies to see if they can disarm them. It’s a game and, believe me, it’s a game you and I should be grateful they’re playing. I’m participating in a seven-week course called the FBI Citizens Academy. For two hours each...
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Infantilized
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keeping It Real, Cam Marston reacts to a book review about society and how we're raising kids. It's not the kids fault, Cam says, it's definitely the parents. ----- The Economist magazine reviewed a book called Infantilised: How Our Culture Killed Adulthood. The author, Keith Hayward, argues that western society is keeping kids less mature than previous generations. He tells of a young lady who insisted on spelling the word hamster with a P. When corrected repeatedly, she called her mom and put her on speakerphone to tell her boss not to be so mean. That’s laughable, but...
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Lucy At The Vet
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam's family dog heard what he said to the vet. And she has something to say about it. ----- When I walked through the back door our dog, Lucy, looked at me as if to say “you and I have some unfinished business.” Lucy had been feeling bad. She was lethargic and had thrown up in four or five places in the house. On the rugs, of course. I got to my hands and knees to try to clean them up. It was nasty. She definitely wasn’t herself and my wife, who Lucy seems to regard as The Kind One, took her to the vet. My wife texted that afternoon saying, “Please go...
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Questions
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam Marston says he has a question for you. And he's curious if you have a question for him. ----- A story that lives in legend in my family is the day my mother interrupted a story about a boastful largemouth bass fisherman and my mother, in full innocence, asked “Who had the large mouth? The fish or the fisherman?” She had never heard of a largemouth bass. But, considering the context of the story, it was a legitimate question. The group fell silent and stared. Someone then explained to her about the species of fish. While the story gets repeated because of...
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Waxed
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On Keeping It Real this week, Cam reacts to Tuesday's presidential debate and shares something he's learned about himself in the recent years. ----- Trump got waxed Tuesday night. Wow, did he get waxed. I watched the debate not knowing what to expect but man, to me, he got crushed. Trump later proclaimed it his best debate performance ever. He was outgunned. In hindsight, he never stood a chance. The pundits downplayed his shellacking. They emphasized some of the points he made but largely overlooked how badly he performed. Fox News was doing cartwheels to find something to like about...
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Gettin' Lucky
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Cam's back from his one month sabbatical and creating commentaries again. This one he simply calls Gettin' Lucky. ----- Dr Suchan Shenoy is one of the regulars at Restaurant Five in Tuscaloosa on Saturday mornings. I join the regulars when I’m in town visiting my son who is a sophomore at the University. Dr Shenoy is an OBGYN at the DCH Hospital there. He and I sat together and we made some small talk. I don’t know any of the regulars well, but I enjoy their company when I’m in town. Dr Shenoy could relate to my situation. I was a new guy sitting amongst a group of old friends in their...
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Really?
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin' it Real, Cam Marston wonders if we prefer entertainment to anything of substance. And frets over the consequences. ----- I hope everyone had a nice July Fourth holiday. On July 4th, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was officially adopted and signed. It has proven to be one of the most influential documents in world history, generating demands for independence and self-rule across the world. Eleven years later, in 1787, the US Constitution was created and was then ratified about a year later. The energy and enthusiasm and aspirations of these two documents propelled...
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The Roost is Full
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
The roost is full at Cam's house. And on this week's Keepin' It Real, Cam shares that it may never be this way ever again. ----- My wife and I had thought our summer would be quiet and a bit boring. Two of our four children would be living away and the other two would be at home but either working during the day, away at camp for a few weeks, or playing sports. Plans changed, though, and they’re all back home for the summer. Our house is packed. The roost is full. Our four kids are between the ages of twenty-one and seventeen and they’re all living at home until the fall when my two...
info_outlineSome swine content before your Thanksgiving ham.
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This is about pigs. Hogs, too. Sounders. Litters. And it’s timely since many of you, like me, accompany the Thanksgiving turkey with a ham. So, let’s have a quick chat about the magic that is pigs, hams, hogs, and other swine-related stuff.
Next week I’ll spend part of the Thanksgiving break in the woods of Clarke County, Alabama. If the weather is nice, my Thanksgiving meal will be on the porch of my father’s camp breaking bread around 1pm with my wife and kids, my brothers, their wives and kids, and my father. It’s what we do. There will be a ham there.
In the woods nearby will be hogs. Wild ones. And if I understand the story correctly, some of them are descendants of the hogs the first explorers to the Americas tossed out on islands as they came through. The explorers were preparing for return trips to Europe and put hogs on the islands knowing they’d survive because they can and will eat nearly anything and they’d multiply. When the explorers came back through on their way back home, they provisioned with some fresh pork. Some of the hogs that were left behind found their way to the continental US and the ones rooting the woods of Clark County, Alabama could be long descendants of those founding father pigs. Columbian pigs. Mayflower pigs. And I think that’s pretty cool.
But admiring wild hogs in Alabama is taboo. They’re hell on property and no farmer or landowner has anything good to say about them. They are, however, a remarkable species. They survive and they propagate regardless of their environment or circumstances. They’re a mammalian kudzo. They drop multiple litters each year of as many as ten piglets. Controlling them is nearly impossible, as any hunter or landowner or farmer can attest. As an animal, they’re full of vulnerabilities, allowing all kinds of prey to feed on them yet, they thrive.
And they’re tasty. Pork loins are delicious. I once ordered a blue cheese stuffed pork chop at K-Pauls in New Orleans and nearly fainted in bliss. I returned, and ordered it again the next night and had it many times until K-Pauls shut their hallowed doors three years ago. I used to genuflect when I went in.
And then there’s the ham that we will pull from Thanksgiving Day. Magically cut in circles. The kids love it. They fill their plates. The ham has that iridescent sheen that glimmers in the light. Exactly why ham glimmers and forms rainbows like spilled petroleum is unclear. I don’t want to know. It must be God’s will.
Later on Thanksgiving Day, after we’ve cleaned up and after I’ve curled up around my packed belly for an afternoon nap, I’ll step into the woods with a rifle, hoping to take down a distant cousin of the ham I’ve just eaten. Whose ancestor may have hitched a ride on the Niña, the Pinta, or the Santa Maria a long time ago. It’s all a bit gross and weird and magical all at the same time.
And that’s all I got to say about that.
I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep It Real. Happy Thanksgiving.