Are You a Little Bit Country?

Do you know anything about rural life, gardening, or urban farming? If not, can you wing it? If your answer is YES, then you might be interested in writing for Capper's. They are the same people who bring you The Grit.

Anybody out there read The Grit? My mom used to buy it from a woman selling it door-to-door way back when I was a kid. It was black-and-white then, on thin, newspapery stock. But I read it from cover to cover, black hands and all. I was starved for eye-candy. Not an adult, good-looking-model version of eye-candy. Reading material. We didn't get magazines. I saw an occasional Saturday Evening Post from my grandma next door. And some kind of dry farmer's magazine about planting from my other grandma's house. But other than that, it was Scholastic Book orders once a month, and a visit to the local library every two weeks during summer vacation.

Getting back to Capper's...have you ever played a prank on someone? Or had a prank played on you? I knew you did. You can submit that to Capper's Heart of the Home department. Here's a link about submissions for both Capper's and The Grit. Or maybe you want to query a regular article. Check out their guidelines. The main requirement is that you be a little bit country. The call for Heart of the Home prank stories does not specify that it be countrified. But I'm guessing that those would be given preference. There's a 300-word limit for the pranks.

And just in case anybody out there doubts my countrification, feast your eyes on this:

That's my old outhouse. Circa 1989. At one time, it had an actual working door, and the coil of drainage hose was not leaning on it. Hick built the outhouse for his personal use while he was building our barn. Because contrary to Jeff Goldblum in The Big Chill, the outdoors is NOT just one giant toilet. How many more times can I use that reference this year? I think this one makes three. But who's counting?

My outhouse is real life. Not a prank. But I've got a couple of tales to tell.