I’m still not making predictions about the election’s outcome. And I’m so over searching for the hidden meanings in polls.  My record of not answering the non-Hurricane flood of robocalls remains unbroken. Not least, I voted two weeks — seems like two months — ago.

So now there’s only one big question hanging over the official end of this endless campaign season, namely:

What am I gonna do when we have a winner?

I think I’ve found my answer. It’s in a compact box in the cupboard, that turned up at a nearby market: the key ingredient for a forbidden feast.

It’s something I’ve been waiting for a long time. So if the post- voting wrangling lasts til January 19, 2025, I think I can hold out that much longer. (After that, we’ll have to see.) Or if I get trapped in a hundred-hour traffic backup between Niagara Falls and the Canadian border, all bets are off.

But enough of such catastrophizing: time for a bit of untrammeled fantasy:

If the election turns out the way I’m hoping, I’ll soon be sitting down to a heavy round plate covered with a too long-eschewed gourmet array of (be still my heart) S.B.G.

Like this one, from a fondly-remembered repast from the halcyon days of 2010.

YES, that’s Sausage Biscuits & Gravy. With real pork sausage (more is waiting in the freezer). And plenty of Texas Pete.

But this time, the emblematic Carolina delicacy will come with a special contemporary twist:

Gluten-Free  biscuits.

And GF gravy  — OMG (Oh, More Gravy!)

You see, there was a period when I was determined to become a certified SBG connoisseur. I traveled a lot in my job, which put me in the way of numerous diner-type eateries, and had just begun to realize that after a decade of resistance, I was feeling a deepening urge to stay in the South after I turned 70 in 2012. Maybe call it regional dysphoria.

I wasn’t “out” about this transition yet, but had caught myself saying to puzzled friends Up Nawth that Carolina was turning out to be kinda like kudzu and mildew: it could grow on you. (Besides politics and all that other stuff up there was different, but not all that much better.)

Sure, all my previous bad-mouthing about the South still applied: the politics mostly sucked, racism was everywhere, poverty, militarism , yada yada.

But I had begun to notice some compensations: for one thing, in making the shift, there weren’t that many new pronouns to learn: “Y’all” covered most of them, and then “Bless your heart” (which here means exactly the opposite of what Northerners think it does) deals with the rest, except for the all-purpose, “Honey,” though there are rumors that Waffle House is grappling with pressure to replace it with “Honey-X,” at least in the college towns.

And for me, the two clinchers were, first: the fact that winter mainly comes to visit here for a week or so at a time. That beat its habit of moving in for months when I lived in Pennsylvania and (Brrr) near Boston. There it tracked sloppy melting shoeprints all over the house, iced up the roads, delayed the daffodils and generally ruined my disposition.

The other hook was the food: soul food (except, I confess, chitlins), much barbecue and back in the day, Krispy Kremes still warm and damp from their hot oily baths.

And SBGs.

For a couple of years I sought them out, inhaled them, by the plate, and was even beginning to compare and keep track –  maybe for a guide book, or a Top Ten list (and in time, a stab at SBG Tik Tok reels; believe it or not many southern Mickey Dee’s served them, and they were darn good.) The glimmer of true elder influencer stardom began to flicker and beckon.

It was lovely while it lasted. But then, while preparing to resettle in Durham NC and pursue there  the geezer’s grail of aging in place, a bountiful Thanksgiving indulgence was followed by an abrupt introduction to the fact that even in this cozy Piedmont hideaway, Friends, Instant Karma’s Gonna Getchoo, and even with the most dulcet accent, Karma is still a beeyotch.

That is, I found myself on a gurney, looking up at ceilings rattling past overhead, clad in one of those dignity-removing hospital gowns, coming to a halt under the hands of a skilled cardiologist.

The doc deftly inserted two stents in blood vessels next to my heart, through a cut that took only a band-aid to cover.

They didn’t even put me out, just kept me somewhat stoned; I was able to watch some of it on a monitor: as a show, it had decent rhythm, but not much of a plot. 

I went home with the stents, a bunch of pills, and diet instructions: cut salt, fat, the usual. Pretty soon I decided to test shedding gluten as well, and my body said a big Yes to that.

All of which  put on the No-Go list, among other things, just about everything in SBGs: both biscuits & gravy were full of gluten, plenty of salt, and empty carbs; the sausage was loaded with heart-clogging lard. Its only remaining appeal was just eating the damned things.

I took the pills, bid a sad farewell to the hopes of guidebook fame, and tried to recall what was left 7on the Aging in Place menu, besides the despised kale.

Then years passed, and the awful politics got worse by quantum leaps in 2016, followed soon by a pandemic, all with baleful effects on my mood and morale. Yet withal, the unrelenting engines of capitalism kept turning, and spat out new gluten free stuff: now there’s decent GF pasta, and a couple years back some GF gravy appeared.

Two out of three ain’t bad; or rather, two out of five: biscuit & gravy carbs were empty, and lard was still lard.

But without the biscuits, it was all but a dream. There’s now tolerable GF bread, but it’s not the same thing.  So I tried to shelve my SBG fantasy, and kept doing my small bit for the democratic resistance.

This autumn, after five Covid shots and almost nine years of Orange obsession, the country is approaching what is elegantly called an inflection point in the 2024 elections. My thoughts have been turning to marking the momentous outcome, whether favorable or not.   But how, and with what?

A week ago, with  SBGs in the back of my mind, I turned down the bakery aisle of a nearby market, wondering if on their GF shelf there might be a biscuit recipe on a package of GF flour?

There wasn’t, but at long last, something better: a box of a new GF biscuit mix.

It felt like a sign. New box? New beginning? Turning the page? Not going back? It all fit, right?

I regained some balance on the way home: Did the Higher Power really speak through a biscuit box?

Get a grip, Grandpa. All the smart people say it’s a coin flip. Don’t count chickens, etc.

Okay. But it could work either way, couldn’t it?

Now I was onto something:

If what starts on November 5th ends as I hope, then yes, I’ll break open the box and go nuts.

Go ahead, Gramps: pardon yourself for the lard, the sodium, the carbs. It beats getting drunk & wasted, and it’s only this once.

But if the worst happens— the page isn’t turned; the system and enough of the voters do want to go back;  the Orange Cyrus is again anointed — there will be a long tunnel of despair and depression to work through.

We, including I, managed to get through the first rounds of this ordeal, and can hope the Higher Power will help us learn to persevere, or as Dr. King used to say in another lost era of hope, “Keep on keepin’ on.”

And somewhere down that bleak road, I’ll begin to find my lost appetite. Then the box can be opened in an almost ritual manner, and consumed as a kind of makeshift manna for an early stop on what looks like long time of wandering in the wilderness.

So I’m covered, either way. And I’m wondering, Friend, what are you going to do when it all shakes down?

I mean, after you vote?