Southern Life

SOUTHERN LIFE

I know there have been many writings about life in the South. The land of my nativity. Maybe not one like this one, though. Rank this one with the kindly perturbed and mildly defensive.

Would you go to China...or the South Sea Islands...or Egypt...or Paris...or...(well, you get the point) and insist that they serve bagels and lox...or bean burritos...or grits? Would you go to Mexico and pout when they wouldn’t serve you poi? I, for one, would not show up in Boston and demand they make room on their menus alongside clam chowder and baked beans for real Southern Brunswick stew and pork barbecue.

And I certainly wouldn’t move to The Bronx and even SUGGEST that they tone down their accent. Heck, it’s one good reason to visit New York! Each part of this wonderful country of ours sports a way of speech that is unlike any other..the South included. (I’ve had my share of requests to “say something” when traveling out of my region just so that the Southernly challenged can hear my twang...and believe me, it’s a doozy! And I wouldn’t trade it for all the voice coaching in Hollywood!)

Which brings me to another mild beef...why does Hollywood seem to, in large part, place people in obviously Southern-bent roles who aren’t even remotely Southern, and then ask them to speak as if they were? I know quite a few Southern actors who would jump at those parts if only given the chance! And speak quite naturally. No training. No coaching. Then on the other hand you have folks that are definitely Southern who are, fortunately, placed in those parts and even in parts that don’t necessarily call for a Southerner. Strange.

I think that TV and movies have affected the children and teens of the South so much that many of them think they have to change their accent in order to be respected. Pshaw! I want to approach some of them and say, “Sugah, I know your parents and your grandparents, and you don’t talk like them! You get your Southern britches back on and speak like you was raised!”

Now you may think, “Surely she doesn’t talk like that!” Well, of course I do! It’s just plain fun! That’s not to say that I don’t know proper English. It was one of my best classes in school and one that I made some of my best grades in. ‘Cept my freshman year of high school, but let’s not go there. Bad year. It fouled up a lot of my life. Moving on...

Okay, so let’s wrap this up. What I’d really like to say is this: If you want to move down here and live with us, come on, honey! The more the merrier! Test my Southern hospitality! But don’t come here asking that I take up your ways! Incorporate your foods into my menu! Start talking your way! Adapt! I’d have to if I moved to your area! Would you start serving sweet tea just for me? Would you change your accent just to accommodate me? Would you who may not have a hospitable bone in your body all of a sudden become the quintessential host/hostess just for me? Bet not. And I wouldn’t ask you to.

Oh, and should you find yourself thinking that I’m on a high horse let me just tell you this:

I have visited New York City, and I love it. The people, the crowds, the food, the subway (yes, the subway, except after a Yankees game! Yikes! Never again!)

I have visited San Francisco, and I love it. Fisherman’s Wharf, the food, the sourdough bread, the trolleys on the hilly streets, Chinatown.

I have visited Los Angeles, and I love it. The Walk of Fame, Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and the footprints and handprints, the food, the weather, the landscape, the sights.

I have visited Las Vegas, and I love it. The beautiful brightly colored lights, the (cheap) food, the fountains, the shows, the desert.

I have visited Arizona, and I love it. The desert, Hoover Dam, the Colorado River, the Grand Canyon.

And I’ve been to lots more of this country, and there’s very little I didn’t love about it; but it’s always good to come back to The Deep South. The land I love. The land I want to keep pure. Well, it’s a little late for that, but I hope you’ll help me preserve what’s left of my corner of the country. It’s the only one like it. Thanks for listening. Y’all have a nice day, ya heah?

Zaxby's Fries

I know this has absolutely no importance at all in the grand scheme of things, but sometimes you just have to do a little something fun, ya know? And this time the fun thing to do is talk about fries. Whether you call them Freedom Fries or French Fries doesn't matter. For the sake of the "fun" theme, let's just call them "fries." Heck, most folks do anyway.

Kudos to Zaxby's (that is a weird use of three weird letters of the alphabet right there, I don't care who ya are) for serving good old-fashioned crinkle cuts! They are without a doubt my absolute favorite. I have no idea why...they just are. And I will admit that I like them better a little limp and greasy, not crunchy. Again, I have no idea why. I CAN tell you, though, why some other varieties are NOT my favorite.

Take the shoestring variety...please. They certainly live up to their name minus the limpness of a shoestring. I suppose they are more like a shoestring that was dunked in starch and left to dry. Stiff. Hard. Cold in seconds. More like long, skinny potato chips. If I want potato chips, I won't ask for fries...I'll ask for potato chips. The English have properly named these. I.E.--Fish and chips

Then there's cottage fries...and it depends on whose cottage (or restaurant) is serving them. Sometimes they're long and thick, sometimes round and thick...or thin. I don't trust a menu that says "cottage fries" for that very reason...you can't really know what to expect them to look like. I have had some success in the past with cottage fries, but who really wants to take the chance, ya know?

Of course, one can't write a review on fries if one doesn't mention steak fries. You can usually trust them to be long, a bit thick, and not overdone. I can go with these if you're not going to offer me crinkle cuts.

Since my palate is a bit sensitive to highly seasoned foods (don't offer to take me to Taco Bell or anywhere else Latin flavored) or even unhighly seasoned foods...just mildly seasoned foods...I am very skeptical when the menu mentions "seasoned fries." Seasoned? With what? Basil? Dill? Rosemary? No. It usually means CAYENNE PEPPER or some other tiny red sprinkled thing, paprika notwithstanding. My tongue cringes at the mention of anyone's chili except mine. My nose runs when I eat chili that so much as PASSED BY the spice rack on the way to my table.

If you have a new contraption...maybe from Ron Popeil...that slices, dices, and juliennes, I will be nice and try the fries that you have made from a real spud in your real kitchen with your real hands with your real new contraption and your real grease...even though it's not a crinkle cut. You get points because it was a real potato and you really cooked it. Now if your new contraption has a blade that makes crinkle cuts, we are true friends!

If I have offended you by dissing your favorite fry or have committed a faux pas by failing to mention another fry variety, well, I'm sorry. You will just have to forgive me and move on. As I said earlier, this was just for fun. Gimme a break.

It would be fun (again the theme today is "fun") if you let me know of some places other than Zaxby's that serve crinkle cuts. Okay...the floor is yours!

Reunion Secretaries

This is my first time to ever be responsible for sending out the reminders for my mother's people's reunion. I didn't want to take the responsiblity, but I've never done it and I figured it was my turn, so I accepted it...and dreaded it. I wrote a quick, cute, corny little poem, enlisted my husband's help in running it off on postcards, went to the post office to purchase 60 postcard stamps, self-adhesive (or "already been licked," as the postal worker said,) placed them in the obligatory upper righthand corner (27 cents to mail a post card? Well, it's cheaper than gas, I guess) and have them all ready to mail. Then I saw the secretary's book in the briefcase full of "stuff" that has been handed down over several years. (Don't know whose idea that was, but thanks! Very organized.)

The book has information from the very first reunion in July, 1963. My mother was the first secretary. That would make sense...it may have even been her idea to have the reunion in the first place. The first page says:

Record of Collections and Expenses
7/21/63 (with my mother's name beside it)
Collected $3.52
Book, stamps, etc., 1964 2.75
Bal. July 1964 .77

I read down and over the pages and notice (my mother had it again in 1976) the names of those whose names will never appear there again, like my mother's, and the names of those who are unable to come because they are too old and live too far away at least to come every year, and the name of one with Alzheimer's, and the names of those whom I don't even know.

Then...what? What's my name doing there in 1983????? Well, I THOUGHT I'd never been the secretary before! But, lo and behold, there's my name...in MY handwriting...having been the reunion secretary in 1983! I bet my mother had a huge hand in helping me with that because I had a baby by then and lived 120 miles away.

Anyway, I was just waxing nostalgic and wanted to share this with anyone out there who might care. Have a good day.

Quick Post

Our daughter and her husband are expecting our first grandchild on September 14 and they just found out it's a boy!!!!!!!!!!

Errors

Okay...pet peeve time. I hope this is not incredibly insensitive of me, and I don’t know why it bothers me, but spelling, grammar, and punctuation flubs irritate the stew out of me! I’m reading along and all of a sudden I’ll read a sentence that goes something like this: “We took our jacket’s to the beach just in case the weather is chilly.” What’s wrong with this sentence? Well, the plural of jacket is “jackets.” If you want to write about a button on a jacket (showing that the button belongs to the jacket) you use “jacket’s.” “We took our jackets to the beach, and my jacket’s buttons all fell off.” These kinds of errors seem to be cropping up more and more.. I’m not sure why that is, and I certainly don’t mean to lead you to believe that I am perfect at all this stuff. (In fact, you may find some errors in this very blog!) I’m just saying that it bothers me.

Kidz, pleeze get thiss stuff strate wile you’re (not your)still in skool so that you won’t (not want) drive fokes like me krazy!

Whose Words Are More Important to You?

I dislike it when I get perturbed in church. One of the reasons is that I dislike it when folks grumble in church. You know the ones I mean: “It’s hot!” “It’s cold!” “The carpet is dirty/ugly/torn.” “Why do we have to study this topic in Sunday School?” “That preacher is so long winded!” So when I’M one of the perturbed grumblers, I double dislike it!

However, I must say I was a grumbler at church yesterday. Hopefully, though, it was righteous grumbling! As I looked at the church bulletin, I noticed that the nicely printed front with an open Bible and a cross and some yellow flowers was accompanied by a large-print quote: “The Bible is alive, it speaks to me; it has feet, it runs after me; it has hands, it lays hold on me.” Martin Luther

Then I noticed waaaaay down in the bottom right-hand corner in tiny little print (my husband had to hold it up close to read it) another quote: “Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures.” Luke 24:45

These are stock bulletins that are sent to us, and we just add our announcements, etc., to them, so when our wonderful, Godly pastor's wife printed them up, I'm sure she never even saw it.

But...what’s wrong with this picture? It’s not what was said but the fact that God’s words were relegated to the far reaches of the bottom corner in tiny print and Martin Luther’s were given the “best seat in the house” and in huge print. This says to me that some people...in the church...think man’s words are more important than God’s.

Does this speak to you as loudly as it does to me about the condition of the church now?

Dogwoods and Antiques

I have just returned from a lazy drive to and from a little town about 15 minutes or so from my house, said trip having been made to the Dogwood Antiques Show/Sale in that little hamlet (names and places changed to protect the innocent, namely me since I didn’t request permission to write this little blogette.)

Every year the garden club in that fair town puts on this happy little event to raise money, for what I’m not sure, but I’m guessing it’s for a good cause. Antiques dealers from here and there, around the South mostly, set up tables for buyers of the four-dollars-at-the-door tickets to browse and make purchases, if they so desire. I mostly just like to look, but if you’re so inclined, you can pick up some very old and some not-so-very-old furniture, dishes, books, jewelry (lots of jewelry,) kitchen utensils, dolls, pictures, figurines and whatknots, and (my favorite) depression glass. (No, I didn’t buy any.)

The dogwoods along my drive, drenched in their beautiful white, cross-shaped flowers, seemed to be saying, “See? We didn’t let you down!” As if the ladies of the club would have been dismayed if their little blossoms hadn’t appeared to help lead the way to the Civic Center. After all, it WAS the Dogwood Antiques Show/Sale. The population of the little town was 455 at the 2000 census, so for them to even have a civic center is quite astonishing. It appears to have once housed their school, maybe in more hustling, bustling times when maybe there were more hustling, bustling children.

This was my second year to visit their to-do, and once again I enjoyed every minute of it, from registering for the door prize to be given away at 2:30 p.m. (no, I did NOT win,) to the tea room which served lunch for extremely fair prices. Barbecue plates for $5.00 (you ain’t been to the South if you ain’t had pork barbecue!) and pimiento cheese or chicken salad sandwiches for $1.50. The desserts appeared to have been home made by the ladies themselves: coconut layer cake, chocolate layer cake, pies, and caramel layer cake, my choice for this trip. Delicious. At one point a hard-working gentleman helper walked into the tea room and one of the ladies behind the counter asked what time he closes. He told her he closed at 1:00. It was 10 minutes till two, so she assumed her forthcoming request would be moot. He wanted to know her request anyway. It appeared that she needed some primer (he must own a paint or hardware store) and he said he’d get it for her. She told him just to leave it on his step and she’d pick it up. I love small-town America.

I downed my pimiento-cheese-on-wheat sandwich, chips, and one bite of the dill pickle (dill’s not my favorite) and about half of my soft drink, savored every bite of the cake (I was good...I didn’t get the thickly coated caramelized end piece that I wanted) and it was back to the antiques tables where I took another stroll through to admire all the items of antiquity and the few new/newer items and decided to make my purchase and go home. Oddly enough, my purchase was something brand new, three linen bread cloths to line my baskets at Thanksgiving and Christmas, my old ones having been stained and greasy from my yeast-roll bakings at that time of year.

Okay, so this turned out not to be a blogette after all but a full-blown blog. Those of you who know me knew it wouldn’t be a blogette, didn’t you?

So what makes someone like me, who doesn’t blog often, want to write about something so plain and unintellectual? The fact that God is good...all the time, whether you can see it today or not...and loves us enough to not only send His only Son to provide for our sin atonement but also allows us simple pleasures. Lazy dogwood-scattered drives, caramel cake, pretty colored glass, and reminders that, even though wars rage around us and gas prices are swallowing us alive, small-town America can still be good.