We heard the school bus long before it crawled out of the mist, yellow fog lights on and windshield wipers whacking away. As we climbed in, the bus driver gave a wicked grin and remarked: “It’s thicker than sea poop out there today!” There was silence as the entire busload of children absorbed the spoonerism.
My friend Pinkie was aghast. “He said ‘poop’!” she whispered, and then dissolved into nervous giggles. The older boys hooted with laughter.
Actually, we kids were experts on both fog and pea soup. The cook in our school’s lunchroom had been forced by wartime rationing to offer greatly abbreviated menus, and her staple was a grizzly concoction she posted as “bowl of hot pea soup.” It was tepid, not hot, and it was grey and thick and lumpy and utterly without flavor. The rumor was that she had simply warmed up the library paste. It wasn’t long before poor Mrs. Alderson lost her job, as the lunchroom shut down in “a patriotic sacrifice,” and we began having to bring our own lunches in boxes. I doubt there was a child who mourned that pea soup.
These days, if I find myself longing for fog, I can always drive up into the Smoky Mountains for a far view of fog lying low in the valleys (we call them “hollows” around here). It’s a beautiful sight, but the plumes of moisture rise up. They don’t pour down, or if they do, I’ve missed those moments.
I have long lived a couple of thousand-plus miles away from that wonderful house on the California hill, but my memory still sees the fog rolling down the slope of Skyline, or hears the two-notes-descending sound of a fog horn from far up the bay. I recall how it felt to sit, fog-dampened, at my classroom desk, uncomfortable and fidgeting until recess. The fog had usually burned off by mid-morning, and in the sunny, dry California air, my cotton dresses dried fast after a playground round of hopscotch or tag or dodge ball.
The other night, it was foggy in North Carolina, the kind of fog that emerges from damp ground, or seems just to coalesce in the air after a good rain and a cool night. This fog has no shape to it; it doesn’t roll in; it simply appears in situ. A Californian would call it a heavy mist, of the kind that sometimes hangs low along river beds. At night, the street lights go all dim and fuzzy-looking in it. The evening weather reporter on a local television station warned everybody to “drive real slow,” because “it’s thicker than pea soup out there.”
“Ah no,” I thought, and I smiled to myself. “It’s a lovely, thick mist, very atmospheric, but dear lady, it’s nowhere near a good sea-pooper.”
I reckon you can take the girl out of California, but ….
©2012 Julia Sneden for SeniorWomen.com
Photograph from Wikipedia: Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco
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