Posted on 02/14/2002 9:01:00 AM PST by sheltonmac
Thirty years ago I visited my first cousin in Virginia. While hanging out with his friend, the discussion turned to popular movies of the day. When I offered my two-cents on the authenticity and social relevance of the movie Billy Jack, one of the boys asked, in all seriousness; "Do you guys have movie theaters down there?" To which I replied, "Yep. We wear shoes too."
Just three years ago, my wife and I were attending a food and wine seminar in Aspen, Colorado. We were seated with two couples from Las Vegas. One of the Glitter Gulch gals was amused and downright rude when I described our restaurant as a fine-dining restaurant. "Mississippi doesn't have fine-dining restaurants!" she demanded and nudged her companion. I fought back the strong desire to mention that she lived in the land that invented the 99-cent breakfast buffet.
I wanted badly to defend my state and my restaurant with a 15-minute soliloquy and public relations rant that would surely change her mind. It was at that precise moment that I was hit with a blinding jolt of enlightenment, and in a moment of complete and absolute clarity it dawned on me -- my South is the best-kept secret in the country. Why would I try to win this woman over? She might move down here.
I am always amused by Hollywood's interpretation of the South. We are still, on occasion, depicted as a collective group of sweaty, stupid, backwards-minded and racist rednecks. The South of movies and TV, the Hollywood South, is not my South.
This is my South:
- My South is full of honest, hard-working people.
- My South is colorblind. In my South, we don't put a premium on pigment. No one cares whether you are black, white, red, or green with orange polka dots.
- My South is the birthplace of blues and jazz, and rock n' roll. It has banjo pickers and fiddle players, but it also has B.B. King, Muddy Waters, the Allman Brothers, Emmylou Harris, and Elvis.
- My South is hot.
- My South smells of newly mowed grass.
- My South was the South of The Partridge Family, Hawaii 5-0, and kick the can.
- My South was creek swimming, cane-pole fishing, and bird hunting.
- In my South, football is king, and the Southeastern Conference is the kingdom.
- My South is home to the most beautiful women on the planet.
- In my South, soul food and country cooking are the same thing.
- My South is full of fig preserves, cornbread, butter beans, fried chicken, grits and catfish.
- In my South we eat foie gras, caviar, and truffles.
- In my South, our transistor radios introduced us to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones at the same time they were introduced to the rest of the country.
- In my South, grandmothers cook a big lunch every Sunday.
- In my South, family matters, deeply.
- My South is boiled shrimp, blackberry cobbler, peach ice cream, banana pudding, and oatmeal cream pies.
- In my South people put peanuts in bottles of Coca Cola and hot sauce on almost everything.
- In my South the tea is iced and almost as sweet as the women.
- My South has air-conditioning.
- My South is camellias, azaleas, wisteria, and hydrangeas.
- In my South, the only person that has to sit on the back of the bus is the last person that got on the bus.
- In my South, people still say "yes, ma'am," "no ma'am," "please," and "thank you."
- In my South, we all wear shoes....most of the time.
My South is the best-kept secret in the country. Please continue to keep the secret....it keeps the idiots away.
I am smack dab in the middle of midtown, right on Peachtree Street ... about a mile (as the crow flies) from Mary Macs ... Also, there is a Picadilly over on Howell Mill near I-75 that has excellent southern cooking ... many of the Picadilly's are pretty mediocre, but that one gets it right.
And, btw, I didn't grow up in Atlanta ... we had a farm down in Ellaville ... I didn't move here till I was 20 (back in the early 80s.)
You can get a T-shirt or sweatshirt with that message on it from Cracker Barrel. An in-law gave one to me for Christmas one year.
Just saw your reply this a.m., sorry.
Yes - NCSU is having a good year. Last night's old-fashioned country a$$-whoopin' by Duke was embarrassing, though.
Especially after we played so well the first half.
It has been hard to be an NC State fan for these last 10 years, but I have stuck with them.
As far as Orange County Community College (UNC) goes, they & their fans are getting their just desserts for being so arrogant all these years.
I hope that this season will be a character-building, humbling experience for them.
I hope the same for next season, as well. If they could somehow lose every game, that would be wonderful.
Dean Smith is gone, true, and I guess he was the secret to their success. I still couldn't stand him, but Matt Doherty is even more annoying.
I didn't like Doherty when he was playing there and now I just want to punch the TV when I see him.
Don't even get me started on ECU.
My mom got her BA & MA from there and ragged me so bad after they beat NCSU in the Peach Bowl.
Tell me, did you vote for Clinton both times or just in '96?
I spent a decade in North Kingston RI, one year.
You know 3 poor souls are buried under a few 1000 yards of concrete in one of those huge middle columns on the old bridge....they forgot they were still in the cassion and just dumped all over them.
There used to be an old Texaco there on old 61 just north of the old bridge where 80 meandered out of the Military Park. Inside I remember an old photo they had from the 20s when ice floes during the winter were as far South as Vicksburg during a peculiarly harsh winter....very strange.
I suppose you know about the old Ghost in the Park over near the train trestle with the cannon ball shot clean thru him....Union fellow of course.
Pardon my nostalgia.
Yep, that's me! I've even got the T-shirt!
They'd better not forget it if they know what's good for them! Many of them met their wives there and brought them back North with them after the war! The girls from Hattiesburg and surrounding towns would come out for dances with the soldiers; that's where my Aunt Gertrude met my Uncle Frank who was from RI. They married while he was there, and she moved back to RI with him after the war.
And vinegar on their over cooked rice.
My dad graduated from ECU when it was still East Carolina College. You gotta hand it to them, they're pretty loyal fans. They hardly ever win anything, yet they keep showing up for the games.
When my mom started at East Carolina in 1965 I think it was called East Carolina College, but they changed it before she graduated in '69.
You mean because Don Quixote was the first novel, as such? Please, please don't confuse me with someone else. I know my own history--ALL of it. You seem only interested in certain aspects of Southern history, and you don't know my background at all. Don't let the caricatures you have stored in your brain stand in your way of getting to know the real thing.
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