Bena Mae’s Kitchen: Wild Critters and Other Stuff

Following up on Don’s article last week about the raccoon invasion on Corbin’s Main Street set my mind to thinking. Why not turn it into a horror movie? Call it “Raccoon’s Devour Downtown Corbin” or some such title. And cast Arnold Schwarzenager as the hero who saves the town from certain ruin. Just a thought. And speaking of wild critters, I never know what to expect when I visit my son Steve in Knoxville. He has a screened porch where I love to sit and read and listen to birds chirping and watch the squirrels stealing seed from their feeders. Recently, my son had to install a storm door in order to keep a family of ground hogs from sneaking onto the porch at night and doing away with what’s left in the dogs’ food dishes. Once he had to extricate a little ground squirrel that had gotten wedged between the walls in his kitchen. This was a major job, I can tell you. One day while I was enjoying the sounds of nature all around, I heard a loud ‘garump, garump’ coming from the water feature in his back yard. “What was that?” I cried as I jumped out of the swing and started looking for the source of the mysterious sound. “It’s a couple of bull frogs,” Steve said. “Come and look at how huge they are.” What I saw were two bull frogs with their bulging eyes sticking up out of the water. They were each a foot long in size, the biggest frogs I had ever seen. Not believing my eyes, I asked if they were mutants. They were a far cry from the little frog I always encountered, when, as a child, I was asked to fetch the milk from the spring house when I visited my grandmother. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Being a sentimentalist, I found it sad that so many businesses that made up the Corbin that I once knew had been torn down. I like to think of it as it once was, a bustling, busy downtown with shoppers going in and out of stores and bringing life to Main Street. Sadly, this is true of most small towns anymore. And more’s the pity. The town in which I live was dying on the vine, with boarded up and papered over windows, little walking traffic, no life so to speak, when a group of enterprising people got together and rescued the old Main Street. They formed a guild and turned the street into an antiques haven. Today the old buildings house about fifteen antiques shops that are doing well and drawing people in from all over the country. The shop owners also sponsor a spring and fall festival that brings in hundreds of people. This has revitalized the rest of the town and has resulted in new businesses starting up, many of which are good restaurants and motels. We have benefitted greatly from the help of a few good people who found a way to turn a lemon into a lemonade. Corbin Chamber of Commerce, are you listening?