05.02.03
Next Up! Let's turn the mic over to Sherman, who's got a Top Notch interview with editor, publisher, and whipcracker, Ms. Suzanne Fox! An HK woman of mystery, few have met the rurally-located Fox, but I have had the pleasure, along with Sally, of being invited out to Accoceek for dinner at the Suzanne/Ranger Ted ranch. We ate scallops and homemade nachos, drank margaritas, and talked long into the night after Ranger Ted passed out. Then we smoked his fancy cigars.

Sherman: Welcome to HK, Suzanne, may I call you Suzanne? There is so much I don't know about you, it's hard to know where to start. How about the obvious place: your couch after work with a box of Cheezits and a pitcher of martinis. Tell us about your first Cheezit experience. And your first martini.

Suzanne: Of course you may call me Suzanne. I was raised up by fundamentalist Christians who don't drink, and since my dad is a doctor, we kids also didn't get our hands on too much junk food. I lived at home for the first two years I was in college, so I didn't experience my first Cheezit until I was in graduate school. What a revelation that was! I've never looked back. The Ranger is responsible for introducing me to the pleasures of demon gin. He makes a mean, mean martini--five parts Bombay Sapphire to one part dry vermouth. (I'm not, by the way, one of those ninnies who only want two drops of vermouth in a martini. If you want it that dry, quit asking for martinis and drink vodka on the rocks.) I don't remember what occasioned me to ask for one, but I do know it was in Los Angeles--pretty much the perfect place to drink gin and get crazy.

On one memorable spring weekend, I was having some asparagus with my dinner, which The Ranger is allergic to. He always claims that his malady shouldn't stop me from eating asparagus, so I took him at his word. Unfortunately, he brewed up a truly lethal batch of martinis and after he slugged one back, asparagus lust overtook him--I had to grab my plate and race out onto the back porch to finish it off, with The Ranger in hot pursuit. Needless to say, I haven't cooked asparagus since.

Sherman: Oh goodie! Love the asparagus story. It sounds like you had a strict, aka no fun, upbringing and have lots of lost time to make up for. Are there other sins and/or vices you like to play with? Remember this is a family site. I suspect TV wasn't allowed in your house either.

Suzanne: No, we had TV. My dad loves gadgets. I think we had one of the first color TVs in town. But actually, I never really rebelled that much against the obvious restrictions--no drinking, no dancing, no short skirts or tight clothes, no premarital sex (obviously!)--so much as I rebelled against what underpinned it, which is a pronounced misogyny. The females in that particular church carry all the sins of the world on their shoulders--if a man had an "evil thought" about a woman, obviously it was the woman's fault, and she was the one who got blamed for anything bad that man (or men) visited upon her. The truly curious thing is that my dad is an entirely self-made man--I am literally one generation off from poor white trash on his side, two generations off on my mom's side. He decided when he was 15 that he wasn't going to stay on the family farm, and he left home the day after he graduated from high school (at 16!) and went off to work so he could put himself through college. He expected me to do well in school, to go to college, even to go to graduate school.

It's a puzzler--strictly speaking, my parents should have married me off at a young age to some crazed preacher type. So the answer is, no, not really. As much as I like martinis, I can only have two before I'm out like a light. Cheezits are a different story, of course.

Sherman: Would it be too personal for me to ask when, where, and how you met the Ranger?

Suzanne: No, it's not. In the fall of 1991, I got hired to establish a publications department at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, WY. In the fall of 1992, The Ranger came to work there as a guest curator. I was remodeling a house when he showed up in July, and a friend of mine had come out from St. Louis to spend the summer helping me, so I didn't pay him too much attention, and besides, the other single ladies (of which there were a multitude) were buzzing around him like bees after flowers. But then one weekend, the education director, who was one of the buzzees, called and asked if Elisabeth and I wanted to go up to Bear Creek with a bunch of other folks, to drink beer, eat some Mexican food, and watch the pig races. (You probably know that in states like Wyoming, people routinely drive hundreds of miles to shop and eat out. Bear Creek was about 30 miles from Cody and had maybe 200 inhabitants, tops, counting the pigs. There are probably fewer there, now.) Mr. Fox was one of those Ms. Educator brought along with her. That was the beginning of Our Story.

Sherman: Oh, that is SO romantic! Your love was hatched at the Pig Races in Wyoming. I've always suspected that the Ranger was a flower around whom many bees buzzed. So, here are three words. Free associate for us: music, food, grass skirts

Suzanne: Music--Dwight Yoakam, (early) Randy Travis, Sheryl Crow, Rolling Stones, big, bad-ass, steel-string guitar, pedal steel guitar, Beatles, Candy From Strangers. And Johnny Cash's American recordings--awesome! My current musical obsession. Food--big fat steaks (sorry, JM!), The Ranger's steamed clams, chicken enchiladas. Grass skirts--standing on the balcony with The Ranger of our hotel room on our honeymoon (the Big Island) and watching some tourists trying to do the hula (very embarrassing for them, very entertaining for us), AND looking at a house in Glendale, CA, which had a full-blown tiki motif throughout and a tiki bar with grass-skirt type decorations in the basement. My realtor said, "This looks like a three dumpster job."

Sherman: Ha! An interesting book about the misogyny inherent in religion is called The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd. It's a little touchy-feely but still worthwhile. We've come to my final very important question: Why aren't you a Friendster?

Suzanne: I don't know--it never occurred to me to become one. It probably has something to do with my general suspicion of organized groups (and we know where that comes from). I'm not much of a joiner, I guess. Most of my friends are people I worked with, so we're still in touch for professional reasons quite a bit and we keep up with one another in between times. Other than that, the HK folks are Friendsters enough for me.

Sherman: Thank you Suzanne Fox for a fascinating and informative hour.

**************************