Friday's At the Farout Mansion

Best to get there early and don’t forget some food and drink. It’s Friday again and time to celebrate. It’s hat week, Carmen Miranda’s birthday, toga, toga, toga. We all had another week taking care of 80 children at the local mental hospital and anything one could think of was the theme of celebration. The only difference between “US” and “THEM” was we carried the keys. Circa 1970’s and The Rocky Horror Picture Show so if you hadn’t had something too bad and was sitting on a tree limb in the big tree on the corner, come 11:00 pm grab your paper, rice, watergun and toast. Off to the movies we would go dressed in our favorite costume. Summer time and the living is easy. The pit was dug and a pig on the spit. We all came the night before and took turns rotating the pig at a slow and careful pace. If you spent the night, we brought blanket and pillow and slept under the stars by the pig fire. We all participated in the watermelon seed spitting contest. Saturday night was barbeque and bluegrass night at Buddy’s. The Knoxville Grass, BBQ and pitchers of beer to share unless UT was playing. Then Friday night we’d celebrate at Buddy’s. We finally had to faced we were addicted to food. We small band of addicts branched off to middle of the week gatherings with irreverent honoring to St. Porker of Assisi. All meeting in a kitchen and cooking at the same time. Making “Gone with the Wind” to “Away with the Breeze and someone wearing a pair of curtains they had looked lovely in the week before and each acting out a different character. Then children came and jobs changed and some moved away. Looking back, it was the best of times and the best of food and friends.