SOUTHERN BY CHOICE, MOSTLY

I LIVE IN THE South. Flat out I love it.

Sometimes the people make me nuts. So kind in general, etiquette is incredibly important to them, unless you choose to turn around in their driveway without notifying them first or ring their bell without calling ahead, then they will shoot you dead and not blink twice. They will make a dish for your memorial though, and check up on your children until they are grown with children of their own, bless their hearts, poor things. They will invite your kids to call them memaw and papaw <insert last name here>. In short, you couldn’t pick a more genuinely loving group to be cold bloodedly murdered by.

Sometimes the weather makes me nuts. I know every place has erratic weather. The South has its own brand of climate though. We don’t just have OUR erratic weather, we have EVERYONE’S erratic weather.  Eight year long droughts? Yep. Got it.  24 inches of rain in 24 hours? Ha! The DOT has no choice but to replace or repair all those washed out wobbledy ass bridges they have been ignoring for years. God making government work, we love it! Blizzards? Been there, done that, thunder snow and all. Hurricanes? All. Day. Long. So often that hurricane parties are really a thing, and plywood is our best friend. Subzero temperatures? We scoff, -9 for a high isn’t unknown every 30 years or so. Wanted to change out those water pipes anyway… Fire season? I told you about the droughts right?  Tornados? A given, everyone has a designated safe spot. Ask any 3 year old and they will tell you where to go if the sky starts turning green or it hails. 105 degrees? Yawn, it’s why God invented ice cream and sweet tea and swimming holes. Throw in massive ice storms every few years, a random earthquake or two, floods, 84 degrees in January and 45 degrees in June, and you start to get the picture. The old jokes about first spring, real winter, second spring, last winter, third spring etc all occurring in March are truer than you know. Weather men and women are roasted mercilessly, especially by people who come from places where fall is more than any 5 random days between October and December and snow lasts more than 2 days. And, it’s true, we CAN’T drive on ice, but you know what? We see those miles long pile ups on the news, we got real channels and everthang down here, hyuck hyuck, you guys can’t either.

The food will make you fat at best and definitely kill you slowly, but with love. It’s just so damn good! Buttermilk makes everything it touches better, duh.  Pecans and bacon go in just about everything. Pecans and bacon with brown sugar? Manna from heaven dontcha know. Beans cooked with ham hocks, corn on the cob, and squash from the garden along with eggs from the backyard chickens make summer time a glorious time to be alive and a foodie. Tomato sandwiches (as well as peanut butter and banana) are on most people’s top ten lunch foods, guaranteed top five when the tomatoes are still warm from the garden sun and doused with salt and pepper. Southerners love seasoning and aren’t afraid of a little heat.  Too much salt might kill you but apparently not from boiled peanuts. Black, red, cayenne, green… we love ALL the pepper. Corn bread, hot and dripping butter, was surely found first in the Garden of Eden! Hush puppies are corn bread that needed an oil bath, because fried fish, ‘nuff said. Sweet tea, known as tea down here, is a whole cultural thing.  People have their own recipes (yep, for tea with sugar and ice) and are divided into two camps, team tea with lemon and the withouts. I am team lemon myself, but I am sad to say one must always ask for tea with lemon, we are definitely in the minority. Barbeque enthusiasts are a subset of our culture, and not to be confused with those that like to grill out. Once again, I seem to fall on the minority side, enjoying grilled pork chops and chicken way more than the same barbequed or smoked. I will probably lose my southerner card because brisket is meh to me. I do love me some ribs, any style, wet and messy and tasting like they were cooked by the angels on a giant green egg in the sky. Oh yeah, southerners aren’t afraid to eat with their fingers and gnaw the bones of something like the above mentioned ribs. A roll of paper towels on the table isn’t laziness, it’s a sign that your host knows this meal is good enough to use way more than one cheap paper napkin.  If your chest or lap isn’t spotted with dibbles and crumbs, if you don’t have to groan and pop a button or two, if you don’t say ‘I couldn’t eat another bite’ while greedily accepting a slice of homemade lemon pound cake,  your host will feel like you didn’t really enjoy the meal and vow to do better next time. Oh, also, they will talk about you once you leave. Everyone does it, but we aren’t afraid to claim it.  

Sometimes southern art makes me crazy, just angry crazy. Rebel flags, ‘Gone With The Wind’, overly ornate ceramic belles and beaus, mammies and lawn jockeys, in short, things that have disappeared from most places still can be prevalent here. Not only are most politically incorrect which should be enough to put them out of favor, they aren’t attractive, a lot just plain ugly. Like giant trucks and spittoons they are outdated and tawdry. On the other hand, I LOVE primitive art and it abounds here. Sculptures made out of old farm equipment, windmills from shovel blades, chickens made from gourds, I love them all. It isn’t at all unusual to be driving through the mountains and happen on an impromptu front porch or parking lot concert featuring blue grass and country music or classic rock by insanely talented ‘big boned’ guys named Bubba or Mike. Every little store is overflowing with homemade soaps and pillows and pottery and candles and wood worked with divine inspiration that could sell for a million bucks anywhere. You are likely to find phenomenal chutneys and salsa and pickled garlic on a shelf at the local hardware store, between the boot scrapers and the chicken feed. Home grown and homemade is EVERYWHERE and I hope that never changes.

Like I said, I flat out love the south. I have lived a lot of places, and a lot of them outshine us in some things, but for me, the genuinely caring and talented and dedicated and well fed people keep me here. The random day in the dead of winter, when all of my cold and dark fed demons are on full display, that dawns sunny and warm enough to open all the windows and KNOW summer is right around the proverbial corner makes it all worthwhile. If you haven’t visited us, do. Every bad thing you ever heard is probably true to a degree but the untold abundance of good things will astound and amaze you.

OH! And watch out for deer!