First, an apology. I’ve been missing in action from my blog. I could make excuses, but I would rather cue the Lonestar song, “No News,” and leave it up to my readers to decide if I was on the road with Pearl Jam, or locked in a bathroom stall. * At any rate, I’ve come out of hibernation just in time for picnic season. The flowers I planted at the first hint of spring are in full bloom, and the weather hovers around the “perfect” mark. Not only am I eager to participate in a season of outdoor concerts, bonfires and cookouts, I hope to do it in style. A flea market and antique mall junkie, I have become obsessed with customizing old picnic baskets.
I owe the onset of my obsession to an edition of Country Living Magazine which featured vintage picnic hampers from the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s. I latched on to the idea of dressing out one of these hampers with linens and picnic ware as a gift of practical nostalgia for my good friend Suzanne, who received it with enthusiasm. Since that first basket, I have taken a class in Impressionist painting, and my basket projects have evolved to include original artwork on the lids, and removable hand-sown liners. This season, when my husband and I traipse off to Little Vine in Villa Rica, GA, or Groovin on the Green every Friday in Cashiers, NC, I will enjoy a favorite past-time even more with my one-of-a-kind picnic hamper full of colorful and useful goodies. Of course, the most essential ingredient to a successful picnic is the fresh air, both literal and figurative.
According to one celebrated British author and playwright who died during the same year in which I was born, “There are few things as pleasant as a picnic eaten in perfect comfort.” *
Because I believe that perfect comfort is not essential to the enjoyment of a picnic, I would rewrite the quote. There are few things as pleasant as a picnic, period. An elementary school field trip to Sleepy Hole Park in Suffolk, VA may have included skinned knees and a smattering of mosquito bites, but all I remember is a day enjoying slides and swings with playmates, and riding paddle boats on the lake. I sat with friends at old wooden picnic tables, opening a crumpled brown paper sack that yielded greasy potato chips and a peanut butter sandwich with Welch’s grape jam, hold the crust. Food always tastes best after a day of play.
My family picnicked on the beach. There were days at Virginia Beach or Sandbridge, before the advent of sunscreen, when I slid a t-shirt over sunburned shoulders and wet swim suit, and hid from noonday sun under an umbrella. There, itchy with salt, I sat cross-legged on an old bedspread and dined on ham biscuits and chunks of watermelon, grains of grit finding their way into my snack and between my teeth. I am in that moment. Sunned and sated, I remove my hat and recline with my face pressed against the softness of the spread, and just beneath it, the still-warm sand. Listening to the muffled pounding of the surf, I lull to sleep.
The joy of time unmeasured by anything but the flow of conversation! Family reunions and church dinners on the grounds are sacred to my southern heritage. If there were no folding tables, there were card tables covered with checkered cloths, or plywood thrown across a pair of sawhorses. These were laden with cantaloupe, potato salad, squash casserole, butter beans, sweet pickles, cole slaw, and let me tell you about the chicken (!), fried golden crisp by aunts and grandmothers wielding generations of know-how for making your mouth water. There’d be a whole table of desserts, and you can be sure nobody nitpicked around it, worrying about their Keto diet. Peach cobbler, lemon pie, coconut cake, fudge cake, and homemade sugar cookies all made us kids feel lucky to be there, even if we had to endure a little cheek-pinching. In my family, it wasn’t a picnic without homemade vanilla ice cream, which we took turns hand-churning until the mixture got too thick and hard and we gave up. Then a grown-up took over until icy salt water soaked the porch and it was time to pull the dasher and dole out the summer treat in plastic cups.
Church dinners were often preceded by “singin’s” or even softball games, despite the mid-summer heat. What we lacked in perfect comfort, we gained in our sense of fellowship, breaking bread together and passing the sweet tea cup of communion.
Now I am the old-timer at the picnic, and presumably wiser, though not necessarily more sophisticated. For me, the charm of dining al fresco will always outweigh the ants. And while I should probably omit all those wonderful church ladies’ desserts, I consider such things as live music and a glass of sweet red wine suitable treats for an afternoon in the shade or a night under the stars.
While it is often said that “life is no picnic,” it is also said that “you bring your own weather to a picnic.” I suppose that enjoyment of both life, and picnics, depends more on appreciating simple pleasures than obtaining perfect comfort. But it doesn’t hurt to carry along the necessities in something beautiful.
* 1996 hit single from the album Lonestar, BNA Records, written by Phil Barnhart, Sam Hogin and Mark Sanders.
* Maugham, Somerset. 1943. The Razor’s Edge.
See more of the picnic baskets on the projects page!
