Dixie Divas

The new washer and dryer set that arrived to take up residence in my laundry room looks like it was sent over from George and Jane Jetson’s home in the outer galaxy.

What we have here is a serious inability for the opposite sexes to understand what is sacred for the other side.

Take for instance, the significance of flowers to women and ballgames to men. Neither side understands why it is important to the other. The matter is further complicated by the human need to understand before we can accept. Due to the serious lack of understanding, these two issues become, without a doubt, the biggest source of constant conflict in the battle of the sexes.

In case you haven’t noticed, Mama has been banished from this column for several weeks.

Have you missed her?

It all started when she, for the first time ever, took exception to a piece I wrote on her crankiness following heart surgery. If I thought she was cranky before the piece, it was nothing compared to what came after that one ran.

You probably know someone like him. Undoubtedly, you have encountered a villain-like character that connives from a personal agenda that is often vindictive and petty.

After receiving numerous requests, columnist Ronda Rich is issuing an open invitation to readers of her Dixie Divas column to Dixie Dew’s sixth birthday party.

It may be interesting to you and even completely unbelievable to learn that I am an incredibly sought-after single woman. Many desire to make my acquaintance in unmasked hopes of leading to long-term romantic relationships.

Men seem to be coming up short on sex appeal these days. Have you noticed how short in stature the men are who are widely proclaimed to be the world’s sexiest men?

Funny, the things you learn when you tuck manners away and allow yourself to eavesdrop.

My friend, Mary Noble (a Southern woman who goes by two names), and I had just slid into the ancient red leather and steel booth of the old-fashioned diner on the outskirts of Birmingham and placed our order for breakfast.

The voice mail was simple, straight-forward and one of those lovely surprises that I much prefer over the ones like, “I’m calling from your accountant’s office. Please call immediately,” or “This is your plumber and I’ve got some bad news.”

Have you noticed how many people don’t have any common sense? A serious epidemic has swept our country and wiped out a lot of common sense.

His hand-prints are all over my heart. He held it for years in an uneasy, complicated grasp that I could never escape. Though I tried. Lord knows I tried mightily.

Ring the sirens. Raise the flags. Kiss the babies. Praise the Lord. I have run across a truly enlightened Yankee woman. One whose admiration for Southern womanhood runs to such mammoth proportions that she is willing to shout it to the four corners of the earth.

The financial power of black-eyed peas and collard greens

Write this down. Mama was right. That’s right. I said it and I mean it. Mama was right.

Let’s see where this Christmas story begins. Oh, yes. Now, I remember. It started with my godmother, Mary Nell, who was shopping with me back in the summer.

Do you know of any kids out there who are making mud pies? Have you seen any kids lately with stained hands, dirty fingernails or a smudge of wet dirt across their shirts or faces?

Life is wearing me out. Nothing is simple anymore. And despite what some may think, I am just a simple girl at heart.

The mid-afternoon sun of a waning Saturday streamed through the sparkling windows of the soda shop and cast its spotlight on quite a sight to behold.

Every year as crisp cold weather approaches, I find myself thinking back on the Thanksgiving days of my childhood.

On the first morning following a night’s hard frost that arrived to kill the kudzu and finish off the raggedy remains of summer gardens, Daddy would step out on the porch, fiddle with the zipper on his jacket, and then when fastened into his coat, gaze out on the glimmering frost. He’d draw in a lung’s worth of the nippy air and then smile, his green eyes twinkling brightly.

Karen and I were meeting up on a secret beauty mission. En route to the appointment, I talked to two other friends on my cell phone.

Years ago, when my friend’s Aunt Belle quit her husband, the news spread through their small Alabama town like kudzu growing on a hot summer day.

No sooner had the ink dried on the column about my friend, Stevie, who rescues possums than I found myself joining her posse of possum preservers.

My friends, I will admit, are vain. That’s because chicks of a feather flock together.

Since you tend to group with similar personalities, I run with a pretty high maintenance bunch.

Just when you may have thought that you had heard everything possible, you haven’t heard about my blue-blooded-raised-in-society friend who rescues possums.

Just when I thought that Mama’s star had peaked and was beginning to fall, Reader’s Digest called.

“Is your mother really like what you write or do you embellish it?” asked a Hollywood screenwriter.

Lately, I’ve found myself in mourning over the escalating loss of something that clearly distinguished the South from the rest of America’s regions for over 200 years.

I think it’s safe to say that I am now officially through with blind dates.

After all, I am usually the only one blind on the date because chances are that the other person has some kind of acquaintance with me through the media. It is, I have decided, an unfair advantage.

So, this is how my first on-screen kiss came to be.

I was painting my kitchen cabinets, a task thrust upon on me because I could not adequately explain my vision of Country French distressed to others nor was I willing to pay the exorbitant price for their vision of what I knew was not what I wanted.

Ever so often, life gives you magic.

That’s what happened to me when I met an important childhood hero.

Reg Murphy, one of the most esteemed newspaper men of the last half century, grew up in my hometown of Gainesville. Dreaming of being a journalist one day, I avidly followed his career. At the impressive age of 34, he became the editor of the influential Atlanta Constitution. Importantly, he had been the protege of the legendary editor Ralph McGill, who nurtured Murphy to become his successor.

I had yet to recover from being subjected to the ridiculousness of a New York City diner that sold out of grits two mornings in a row when I encountered a more traumatic travesty – a Southern town that sold out of buttermilk.

My friend and beloved diva, Pinky, found herself in the hospital requiring back surgery. After that ordeal, she was forced to go into a transitional care facility for physical therapy. One day while Dixie Dew and I were visiting her, she took up the subject of being kind to others.