526 Davis Lane
Providence Flats, Alabama
December 26, 2025
5:26 p.m.
“Frank! I heard you the first time! Bring me a beer, bring me a beer. Okay, okay. Gimme a minute. If you can’t wait, Frank, why don’t you get your butt out of that recliner and get it yourself? I can’t do but six things at a time, and the hamburgers and fries are almost done, dear. Don’t want them to overcook, now, do we?”
That man would have Job a-cussin’! He certainly curdles my milk sometimes. Lots of times lately. God love him, though, he’s been through the fires with me. Ain’t burnt us up yet.
But.
Ever since he retired from the post office after forty-five years, he has been a lump around this house, just melted into the couch.
At first I was, like, well, at 65, he deserves to relax and to be able to take stock of his life. After all, forty-five years of running people’s mail to them in all kinds of weather takes a lot out of a man. But now … he’s turned sitting around and yelling at the TV or at our neighbor’s kid when he cuts across the yard into an art form — more like modern art, I’d say: loud, unappealing, and (no, not putting on airs), oh yeah, sloppy.
I remember when the man actually felt the urge to move. He did stuff. He’d mow the yard, trim the hedges, maybe throw up a little paint. It always had to be a production, of course. I had to ask him nine or ten times, and then he’d get to it with a sulky look on his face like I’d just peed all in his corn flakes. Then after he grudgingly did whatever minor task I’d asked him to do, even if it was only C+ work, he’d strut around like a peacock, like he expected a cookie. Or sex.
But the point is he did it. Not the happy camper I would’ve liked, but he did it, more or less.
Now that he’s living a life of leisure, it’s Fox News on when I leave for the breakfast/lunch shift over at Hattie Kate’s on the square at 5:30 in the a.m., Jiminy Christmas! At around 3, I go back home dead on my feet — usually with leftover ham biscuits, which he gobbles up without swallowing almost.
Lord knows, I’ve begged that man to stop gulping that food down without chewing. I mean, I know he’s got dentures, but that’s what we bought them for. And anyway, after ten hours on my feet, I do not feel like sitting in the ER all night because he can’t control himself when it comes to Hattie Kate’s baking skills. Well, if it comes down to the ER, Hattie Kate can take him. Haha! I’m sure her pretty little self will be all over that one.
When he gets through leaving crumbs all over the kitchen floor, back he goes to the den, plops down in the recliner (I like to put my feet up, too!), searches for the remote, which has been pushed in between the recliner cushion and the chair arm by his biscuit-chomping butt, and flips it to Newsmax — for a little variety.
One unfortunate affliction that has come over Frank since his retirement is that suddenly he’s lost the ability to cook (not even chili or spaghetti, you know, basic stuff, but, I must say, he was good at it. And I always told him that.). It must be said, though, that he has compensated for that by never complimenting the chef, no matter how much time that chef spent making that seven-layer chocolate cake for someone’s birthday. Not that I’m upset — I could’ve just chomped a ten-penny nail in two is all. Still gets my hackles up. I’ll bet if Hattie Kate had made it, he would’ve been naming stars after her, planets even.
Now, when I said I’d let Hattie Kate take him to the ER that was a joke. This. Is. Not. I was PO’d. A little gratitude would be nice is all I’m saying.
“Dinner’s ready, Frank!”
