Today's post will be like a book for toddlers....lots of pictures and not many words. Maybe-but you know me...maybe not (probably not). I'm too tired to even try to be funny but not before one quickie. I learned something I should have know a long time ago - size does matter. Small cuts of watermelon rind ended up being mushy after they were cooked and I was the designated fisherman to get them out of the pot o' pickles before they were placed and sealed into jars. Anyway, as you can see above, we finally finished the job and the watermelon rind pickles look exactly like they're supposed to but they were so damn much trouble to make, I'm not sure they'll ever taste as good as the ones Mother made. A jar is in the frig, tomorrow we taste test them and I'm a little scared. We've tasted the hot pickles and they were good but I always eat them cold so that will be the final test. When I started unpacking the jars first thing this morning, all I could think about is what I used to say to my parents when we were on long road trips, "How much longer"? What I know now is that as I was unpacking these jars we still had a long, long way to go. Where ever there was, we weren't even close.  ..

Sometimes less is more so this post will (maybe) have fewer words and more pictures that will tell the story of my mother's children and grandchildren trying to re-create something magical - her Watermelon Rind Pickle recipe. It takes a village. Are you surprised? The cast of Hackney characters to tackle the project from left to right, Lou's son and my nephew, Robert, my sister Lou, my 'sister-in-law', Susan, my brother, Johnny, and the glue that's holding it all together in the rear of the picture, well that's your pickle tour guide, me. Read on: ..

Recently, Susan and I were invited to a Porch Party at the beach. Friends had purchased their cousin's interest in their family cottage ensuring the ownership would pass on to the third generation and it would be saved from the wrecking ball, a fate these days for many older cottages when they slip out of the original family's hands. Just after closing the deal, they had installed a fantastic new front porch for the cottage built by their grandparents in the 1960s. I had spent many days at the house when I was young because our mothers were college friends and they would sit on the front porch and gossip while all their kids played in the garage. Through the years our generation became friends too. The party was to celebrate the new generation owning the family place and of course the new porch. I'm always glad when an old Atlantic Beach cottage passes forward to a younger generation-and younger is a relative term since this generation of friends are 50 and 60ish. Yep-that's still young by my estimation and if you don't agree, take a long walk down a short pier. That's beach speak for don't talk smack about age with someone who's almost 60 and a little sensitive about it.  ..

In the 1960's and 70's my mother and her best friend Anne Brunson would make watermelon pickles. It was a several day labor intensive process but the end result was worth it. Our family never had a Thanksgiving or Christmas without Watermelon Pickles (yes, capitalized...these pickles are that important) accompanying the meal. And everyone in our family loved them and we all still do. In the late 70s they stopped making the pickles because watermelon rinds became thinner, which was the one thing in the world my mother didn't want to get thinner. Doesn't it always work out that way? Evidently, thinner rinds are what people want for the watermelon fruit but of course those didn't make great pickles. They stopped making homemade Watermelon Pickle and we started buying them at Deans Farm and the hardware store. Those are OK...actually, they're very good....but we longed for the homemade pickles that our mother and Anne made from their old recipe.  ..

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Sometimes funny, sometimes serious and always honest, that's the way a good post should be. This post might be a little more serious than most but that's OK. I hope it's still funny because no matter what I go through in life I have to find humor in it. And in all things that happen, there's always a lesson to be learned.  ..

Our friends, Jim and Cindy Cash, in one of my favorite paintings ever. There's nothing more to say....other than enjoy!  ..

Last night I went to the grocery store to buy breakfast and lunch items for today. That task was completed but before I went to check out, I decided to buy a special dessert for my grandchildren which had to pass the following tests:  ..

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The Gulf Stream is a warm ocean current about 40 miles off-shore from Morehead City, NC where fishing has been great for as long as I can remember, and I'm sure as long as people have been able to get boats out to it. In the summer of 1970, when I was 13 years old, my friend Doug and I decided to go the Gulf Stream to go fishing aboard the Captain Stacy. Docked in the downtown Morehead City waterfront, it was a "Head Boat" which we thought was a funny name, but it was called that term because it charged a fixed fee per person, or per head, for regularly scheduled trips. I still think it's a funny name.  ..