STEPHANIE’S CHIC ON THE CHEAP

STEEL MARBLES
BY JERRY CLOWER

When I was a yougun growing up, the mainmost sport was marbles.  (Whatever happened to playing marbles?)  We’d draw a great big circle in the dirt and put the marbles in the center of the circle, and we’d get down on one knee and we would come to taw (the shooting line) and we’d shoot that good aggie — the taw, we called it — at the the marbles.  How many you knocked out was yours,  and you could keep ’em if your mama didn’t find it out.

I remember one time my brother, Sonny, he played hooky from school.  Helped ’em build a highway one year.  He’d help ’em work on them old bulldozers.  One day they was working on that bulldozer and they done found some of them steel aggie ballbearings, and we never had seen none of them.  He decided he’d come to school with five of them.

He gave me three of them.  Then they piled all the marbles into that circle, and I got down there with that steel aggie.  Oh man, I done busted up the game!  We had a fellow named Ben DeLaughter.  He was meaner in school than Marcel Ledbetter was.  He was forevermore vicious, Ben DeLaughter.  I was scared of him as I was a bear.  Ben said, “I want you to give me one of them steel marbles.”

I said, “I can’t do it, man.”  He commenced whipping on me, and the bell rung, and we run in the school house.  He was sittin’ in that little old desk — been in the eighth grade eight times — and he would whisper, “I’m gonna beat you to death if you don’t give me one of them big steel marbles.”

I didn’t know how in the world I was going to get away from Ben.  But what I did was ease out of my desk and went back to the back of them room in the study hall like I was cold.  I took two of them big steel aggies and put them on top of the stove.  I got them forevermore red scalding hot.  I had me a brand new pair of them Red Rider gloves I had got for Christmas — had the fringe on the side right there, and Red Rider’s picture on the top.  And when them steel aggies got hot — I mean forevermore hot — I went back there with my Red Rider gloves on, and I picked them up right quick and went and put them down in that little trench at the top of my desk what your pencil went in — right there by the hole where your ink bottle was supposed to go, but we never did have no ink.

Then when I laid them two hot aggies up there, I went to the pencil sharpener like I was going to sharpen my pencil.  Miss Minnie Lee Stone, the teacher had us studying, and she was just sitting up there at her desk.  Big Ben seen them aggies on my desk.  He come easing up there, you know, like he wasn’t up to nothing so the teacher wouldn’t get on him.  He had on a right new pair of  overalls, and he just kind of squatted down and that back pocket was open right there.  And he took his pencil and just raked them aggies into his back pocket, just like nothing had happened.  He eased back to his desk and sat down right quick.

Ahh!!  Aha!  Ohoo!  Ben started jumping up and down in that desk and he hung in it — he was overgrown anyhow.  Miss Minnie Lee Stone, the teacher, run up there with a big paddle and commenced to beating him.

“Ben, what you screaming about?  Boy you got ants in your pants?”

“No ma’am, hot steel balls!”

~ STORIES FROM HOME
COPYRIGHT 1992 JERRY CLOWER
Reprinted with permission of University Press of Mississippi

EASY CLUB CHICKEN

This recipe is quick, easy, delish!
Serve with a small side salad of butter lettuce, chopped tomatoes, peeled, diced cucumbers, thinly sliced radishes and a vinaigrette.  I like a sweeter vinaigrette to pair with this recipe.
If you’re feeling like a little more something should be on the plate – diced, boiled potatoes, fork mashed with butter and a sprinkle of minced fresh parsley or long grain/wild rice mix with herbs.
This recipe serves 6

HERE’S HOW WE MAKE IT

• Cooking Spray
• 3/4 cup rectangle-shaped buttery crackers, crushed via a rolling pin or however you do the crushed cracker thing (think old-school Club crackers that we all knew/know of but they kinda get lost in the shuffle because there are so many choices on the market shelves now)
• 1 (0.7 – ounce) package dry Italian salad seasoning mix
• 1/2 cup butter, melted
• 6  – 6-ounce boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• Cracked black pepper to taste

1. Preheat oven to 375*
2. Spray a 13 x 9 x 2 – inch pan with nonstick cooking spray
3. In a medium bowl combine the crushed crackers and dried packet of Italian salad seasoning mix, still well to combine and transfer to a pie plate
4. Place the melted butter in a separate bowl
5. Dip the chicken breasts in the butter
6. Roll breasts in cracker crumb mixture
7. Place breasts in prepared baking pan
8. Sprinkle with pepper
9. Cover with foil
10. Bake at 375* for 30 minutes with foil on.  Remove foil and continue baking an additional 30 minutes or until the chicken is fully cooked