What's Salisbury Got to do With it?

Salisbury and the many missionaries before him knew that all of this-the powerhouse, the gardens, the growing fields, the barn, the hospital-were all part of...I have to admit I don’t know of anyone named Salisbury, and this could just be some on-going narrative, but of course the popularity of Salisbury as a steak-flavored-dinner by Stouffer’s comes to mind? Much more interesting, spread out here in this prompt, is the almost immediate connection to what Francis was just telling me on the hemlock floor of her rented house on 5th street about this amazing community with some sharp tooth doing some real, real-good down in Mi-ss-iss-iss-ippi (pronounced the way one learned to spell, but I’m sure I don’t need to point that out to all of you erudite who don’t need an insulting explanation to go along with every door-lock never mind story, or re-telling of the story that came from any ‘ole Internet intra-spy-phone-camera a regurgitation like that stupid ad I keep getting in which people with giant fat rolls scoop them up in super tight, all body girdles before jumping into skin tight t-shirt dresses, single ply, Walmart $8 knockoff. I don’t bother, I mean with spanks, I just wear high-waisted Gap jeans size tall I bought at the Park City thrift store for $1 knowing anyone in LA or Astoria would die for the original, tough-skinned eighties in order to keep fat rolls bound to the point you don’t eat that day. All this because my phone must have heard me tell my daughter my gut was getting fat and I supposed it was all to blame on MEN-again, better known as, an alias, a new moniker, wait for it, menopause!

Geez, not so hard to keep spinning a line on this too fat to think trending, my mind races, in fact back to Ernest Limner, “Dough Friday" I used to call him teasingly, since our “marital visits," began. These usually on those days when I couldn’t swallow work due to the clown paint I’d applied to bruises. I knocked at his door, the Spanish paneled, heavy one, brown-black looking seventies stoner amongst the other cherry reds all original to this ninety-forties Springville Motel that now wasn’t kept up so well, the lawn scratched from pounded dirt, the cheapest line of apartments in town. Ern had several cats and two tables filling the little room with three computers and printers, the kind with film-feed on the edges, I mean the paper that spat through, coughed and chugged as if the entire machine would heave itself onto the speckled linoleum floor trying to type to the speed the fake brain relayed information. There, into a huge plate of spaghetti, the entire pile of my planetary readout poured and accordion folded its way into that fake smelling poppy orange grease, the kind all church people and scrounges seem to have just eaten when you arrive for the first time and can’t leave soon or cover your mouth and nose without making up some bizarre cover-up excuse. Of course we also had our before ten a.m. salty dog, grapefruit we reminded one another is a breakfast juice, before launching into the latest confessions on our abusive spouses. He swearing to me in between bites of leftover garlic bread from the Elks Lodge that she once hit him over the head with a cast iron frying pan even though it seemed entirely too clichéd for anyone to believe.

“I’m telling you, one time I called the police and the short cop looked me up and down, laughed and shook his head and the other tall one told me to stop wasting tax payer dollars before spinning on his heels!”

“How selfish you are,” I teased and shook my finger as he asked if I wanted any garlic bread while pushing the last of the rubbery crust into his gold fished lips. As if!

“So, I see he got you again last night,” old Dough pointed at my left cheekbone and eye.

I turned away, started rummaging through my Dooney and Bourke looking for my pack of Benson & Hedges menthol 100’s, more a way to not be making eye contact then needing another smoke. It’s just that I knew the tears would start in rivers from all sides if I looked at his blue eyes now, the way he always knew each time, we were bartender/cocktail waitress team in the men’s bar and in this way we shared everything after our together drinks, tall-vodka- cranberries to disguise drinking on the job, these for our own work-time sell-away, a boat of light in any which way it will come. And, he wouldn’t charge me for any draft beers or coke’s throughout the night so that I could at least pocket enough for a getaway tank of gas, even to sparkle, if just for the night.

Link to Mississippi Community I learned of tonight
https://cooperationjackson.org/intro

And another because I love to copy my dear friend @sukhasanasister who leaves great gift ideas, so here's one for you! A Salisbury steak necklace! Please search Ciera Hunt on Esty if so inclined.

Computer keyboard photo credit: Wang Kenan/unsplash
BOLD sentences were part of three part weekend freewrite challenge for @marianewest