My grandma on my mother's side was truly one of the greatest women I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. I loved and respected her more than I can ever put into words. She could buck alfalfa bales, pull calves in the dead of winter, and spit plug tobacco like a man. Come to think of it most of the toughest men I have ever known have been women. That's just one of the realities of being an Okie. However, at times she treated my young body like it was a science experiment in Frankenstein's laboratory. Confused? So was I. Grandma and her brood of brothers and sisters grew up in south-central Kansas in the worst days of the dust bowl. She relished saying "they didn't have a pot to piss in or nary a window to throw it out of." I doubt many of us alive today have ever been poor enough to not know where our next meal would come from but that was often their reality. South of the Mason Dixon Line that is the difference between being poor and what we often call "PO." Needless to say, pinching a penny until it became a quarter was, her forte and she carried that practice into motherhood.
Grandma had an affection for anything that was made with white flour. If it could be stuffed into a recipe, she would find a way. Cookies, cakes, pies, cinnamon rolls (award winning mind you) and of course Oklahoma's number one "beverage" country sausage gravy, often consumed with a straw. She made it all with good old American white flour. It was cheap, sustainable, and always at the ready. But this often causes an intestinal problem in that once it hits bottom it sets up residence like a squatter who has stolen your home while you are on vacation and is cooking meth in your living room. Once flour hits your digestive system it essentially becomes like a cinder block in your colon. To borrow another southern term, I think they refer to that as being "bound up." It has become my undertaking in life to point out absurdity anytime I see it and it was that old gal's job to make nutrition as absurd as possible. White flour, like any ingredient has but one recourse. In keeping with the traditions of all the great scientist of the world I should remind you that whatever goes up must come down and whatever goes in must eventually come out. But in this instance, it would first have to be purged. Why did grandma feel the need to feed me copious amounts of flour only for it to set up in my stomach and two days later purge it from my system like some kind of half-mad priestess performing what was essentially a nutritional exorcism? I assume that answer is above my pay grade. I'll bet grandma put a LOT of toilet paper executive's kids through Ivey league schools without her knowledge. "Occasional irregularity" is not a popular topic at dinner tables these days, but it seems to be rampant on television commercials. If I am not mistaken there is a book out called "Everyone Poops." So, I didn't make these rules, I'm simply abiding by them just like you. I beg you not to shoot the messenger.
Grandma had a whole plethora of laxatives in her arsenal. First there was her ultimate old standby Castor Oil. She demanded that we take this with a bottle of lemon-lime seltzer and a soda cracker although nobody knows why. If you have never known the joy of taking castor oil allow me to unravel the mystery for you. The next time you have time to kill on a Saturday night (not to mention Sunday morning) try drinking a glass of used SAE 30wt motor oil. Just make sure that you are set for bathroom reading material and understand that that it will essentially make your intestines like a slip-and-slide that has been rubbed down with Slick 50. When it comes to reading material that has been retired to the throne room my wife says that those magazines, books, and periodicals should be flagged as not to make it back to the living room coffee table. As usual, she is probably right. Now on to the topic of Epson Salts. I never bought into the idea that bath salts were good for either the outside or the inside, how could it possibly be good for both? That's not natural folks. Then there is the dreaded Ex-Lax, which is a scam because it appears to be nothing more than a chocolate bar and this is an abomination to legitimate confections everywhere. I often wonder how many times a child has accidently ingested a whole bar in all of their innocence and then ended up in the emergency room setting for the better part of a week on an inflatable donut.
Then there are the lesser known (or what I call class B) laxatives. These consist of Magnesium Citrate, Dulcolax, and Colace, none of which are fun to say let alone experience. And then (in a class all by itself) is a product called Sal-Hepatica, this stuff is like swilling a liquid antacid minus the joy. Unless you are exceedingly old school chances are you have never even heard of this stuff. Lucky you! She would insist that I down it while it was still fizzing, although (again) nobody knows why. Maybe it would lose its magical qualities if it were allowed to go flat first. Only the intestine Gods know the real truth at this point. On occasion the laxatives she was using worked just a little too well and then she would have to counter act those. This tradition is better known as the reverse purge, see what I mean, insanity. I always figured I could make a bloody fortune if I could come with a product called Liquid Cork. One thing is for certain, my childhood would have gone much smoother had granny believed in the medicinal qualities of leaf lettuce and good old H2O. However, if she had, what would I be writing about today? Thanks to granny, to this day I never walk down isle 12 at the local pharmacy without a crucifix in my pocket. Even though grandma was a devout Christian she still sometimes dabbled in "brown" magic.
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