Big Al’s Blog: I miss living in a house
Big Al’s Blog: I miss living in a house

The one thing I miss about living where I live is the family/friends drop by factor. Yes, it can be annoying when people stop by and you are trying to sleep or whatever but on holidays, I think everyone should get a free pass to stop by anyone else’s house. Well, at least family and good friends.

Yesterday, we were having a big spread like we did back in the day when my Grandmother Anthonette was alive. I mean you know you have a lot of food when there is no place to eat at the table because the table is full of food. Well, that was the deal yesterday. I started looking around and my mom’s table seats 6. And there was absolutely nowhere for the 10 of us to sit because the entire table was full of food. My girlfriend and I ended up sitting on the couch while we ate. And as we made our plates, we somehow found room to consolidate the food and people could actually sit around the table eat our food. I said the Grace…I’m so bad at that but when we look around at each other, it’s always a man that blesses the food. I don’t know why, it just ends up like that. and then it was eating time. And who would have known that my girlfriend had never had greens before? She looked at them and said, “what are those?” I said “what?” she pointed to the big bowl of greens and I think I looked at her like she was an alien. greenI had no idea that greens weren’t an internationally known food. I don’t remember ever NOT knowing what greens were. They are a staple for any black family but I just always imagined and assumed that greens crossed all racial lines. But apparently not. She was very quick to point out that if I had dinner with her Cuban family, there would be lots of stuff that I would not be familiar with. BUT GREENS??? EVERYONE KNOWS GREENS! Anyway, My sister named about 5 different types of greens. Turnip greens, mustard greens…Thanks you to the “bubba gump” of greens. She tried them and she liked them…or maybe she was just being polite.

Then, as everyone started to eat, no one was talking. And if you know me at all, you know I can’t be in a room full of people and no one is talking. So, I started the conversation. We talked about the spiral ham that tasted so good. Which led me into a story about the pig plant that was shut down because they were slaughtering the pigs and dumping the blood into the river. Which led me into the story about Hamster the pig that I talked about a couple times on the air and the nice girl that wrote me the letter. That led me into the story about how I got into radio; that story also involved a pig. That story led into another story about radio, I think. I lost track. Anyway, it’s safe to say the dinner conversation had begun. As we finished dinner, the door bell rang. It was a cousin. And then another, and then another. Before long, we had a room full of people. Our dinner of 10 turned into 20 people complete with kids in the back playing basketball on my old basketball goal. It was awesome. As I said before, that is what I miss about living in a big fancy apartment building. I hope you had a Great Easter with family as well!

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