Temporary Fruit-Related Rating System

On a scale of 1 to 10, my trip back to Indiana was this frowning apple.

My poor mom got a churningly bad stomach flu and spent her days mostly sleeping or barfing. She was extremely angry with herself for getting sick for the entirety of my visit. She's like that. My mother blames herself for getting the flu. This is where I learned to blame myself for such things.

Still, it was fantastic to be in my tiny hometown. I didn't mind playing nursemaid. I'd been homesick and now I was a galaxy away from the filth and noise and wall-to-wall illegals in Phoenix. Back home, everyone speaks English. Or at least a backwoods version of it. Very refreshing.

There was a fall festival taking place in the park, right next to the condo where my parents live. Carnival rides came to town. 20 or so booths sold cheap, tacky crap like glittery ceramic dragons and Dale Earnhardt memorial T-shirts. I took a walk to investigate while Mom and Dad were napping, Mom on the verge of hurling, Dad overjoyed to be napping with her all day. His favorite thing.

One booth at the shindig was nothing but knives and guns. Fake military guns that looked just like the real thing, or at least real enough to get you swiss-cheesed by armed police if they saw you wielding one. The knives were overly ornate and bejeweled and effeminate looking, in a butch way. The guy running the booth was 65-ish, no bottom teeth, and looked very much like Mr. Haney from "Green Acres." He sat on a tall stool and had a fat chihuahua on his lap.

He looked at my T-shirt, which bore the name of my former university.

"What kinda school is that?" he asked, as though my shirt said "Running Diarrhea University."

"Uh, the one in the state next to this one," I said.

He looked to his left, within arm's length, at another guy about his age who was manning the adjoining booth filled with tools and flashlights and household gadgets you can buy more conveniently at Kmart. This second guy wore a Clemson t-shirt.

The chihuahua holder looked back at me and said "You know what kinda school Clemson is?"

"No," I said. "What kind?"

"It's a n*gger school!" And then he belted out a laugh that woke the chihuahua, and raised his spidery eyebrows repeatedly at me, as if to punctuate the funny hanging in the air. The Clemson shirt guy looked at me with a pained smile, obviously the butt of this joke a hundred or so times. All because he chose badly when renting booth space.

"So," I said to the comic. "You talk to total strangers like that and nobody's killed you yet?"

"Oh hell no they ain't." It was then that I looked down at the assortment of knives and saw one of those mean-ass circular blade things that you zip through the air like a deadly frisbee and slice someone's neck so deeply they become an instant Pez dispenser. I thought it best not to get into a discussion on race relations with a guy who sells death-blades. Still, I found his dog of interest. It cuddled up against him in a desperate way.

"What's your dog's name?" I asked.

"Oh, that's Puppy Dog," he said, as he scratched Puppy Dog's neck. "Wanna hear her story?"

"Are you going to say anything foul?"

"Nah."

And then he went on to tell me that he'd gotten Puppy Dog (creative, no?) from the humane shelter when she was 10 weeks old. She had been owned by a wealthy couple. A couple who fought a lot. Once when the woman got very very angry with her husband, she took his tiny puppy and lowered it into a pan of boiling macaroni and cheese, burning the hide off its hindquarters. The husband called the police.

"All that bitch got was 200 hours of community service. But then she hired somebody to go do them hours for her. And when the court found out, they gave her 12 years." Puppy Dog was looking up at his owner's face, I swear, as if to say "THIS story again?"

"And I took ole Puppy Dog to court when that bitch got sentenced, just so she could see it happen." Scratch, scratch, scratch on the dog's head. "It didn't mean nothin' to her, but I wanted her to be there."

"Was this in Indiana?"

"No...back home. South Carolina."

I had a new story from the outside world to take home to Mom. It was time to buy a Lemon Shake-up and head back to the condo to check on her.