Happy Memorial Day, everyone! Lots of cookouts going on today I’m sure. Here at my house we’ll be doing BBQ ribs, corn on the cob, potato salad, grilled tomatoes and eggplant, and sweet iced tea! We’re all waiting for the gardens to come in so we can have our faves fresh from the vine. I can’t wait to have myself a tomato sandwich slathered with Duke’s mayonnaise and sprinkled with salt and pepper. YUM! And I am sooooooo having a fit for watermelon. I LOVE watermelon. Peaches too. I’ve already had fresh picked strawberries.
Everybody knows I’m Southern and damn proud of it, too. I love my Southern accent. Love that slow Southern style in general. Although lately you wouldn’t know anything in the South moved slower than the rest of the world. I blame it on air conditioning. Think about that. Yes, air conditioning changed everything in the South—all over the world, actually.
We used to sleep with our windows and doors open—just the screens in place to keep the bugs out. We would sit on the front porch and fan ourselves and make homemade ice cream to cool off. You don’t see much of that anymore.
With air conditioning big business came. Factories run 24/7 here. No more lazy Southern days. So now we have big cities and big business, big crime rates and big headaches. But I’m not complaining. Well, just a little, maybe. LOL I’ve been looking for bits and pieces of the old South. Wondering if it’s still here. It is, and I want to share a little of it with you.
I live out in the country not too far from town. Wouldn’t have it any other way. However, I just read the other day where the town is trying to zone me in. Oh well, looks like I’ve got to go and yell at people. LOL (If they do? Another good reason to move.) It’s a bit easier to find the old South out in the country.
The first thing that came to mind was my neighbor who lives about a mile or so away. Every year he plants a big garden. And every year he harvests his garden and puts tomatoes and cucumbers, beans and cantaloupes, etc. out on this homemade push cart next to the road in front of his house. He leaves a list of prices and has a little box there for people—on their honor—to put in their money. He says he’s had no noticeable problems with theft. Nice! (Then again…hee hee hee…I know this man. He’s probably got his shot gun hanging out a window and if he doesn’t see the money go into the box? Well…LOL…there have been no reports of missing persons around here.)
A couple of months ago I was on my way to an appointment three counties over and turned down a road I wasn’t familiar with in search of a gas station and a rest room. Yeah, I had to go BAAAAD! LOL It was one of those winding country roads and my sense of direction told me that it would take me to the old road that the new bypass had cut off. I knew there was a store there. But on the way, I saw two white commodes—yeah, toilets—with artificial flowers in them flanking each side of a driveway, heralding the entrance to the home. Uh huh. Sure did. On another out of town excursion, car shopping, I saw a meat packing plant with pig statues out front. Uh huh. Now that’s what I call Southern. Yep, toilets and pigs, and displayed in such a unique way, too! That’s the South---quaint, quirky, qwazy! Lol
I have to tell you, though, where I live is a resort area. Now I’m not part of the resort. LOL But we’ve been invaded by retirees here and they all pretty much speak Yankee. I have nothing against Yankees—truly, I don’t. But I can’t seem to even get a checker at the grocery store to converse with me in Southern speak! Where is the language of the South? Where is my “Ya’ll” and “Honey Child”? Seriously. Well, I found it. LOL Yes, I did. And of all places, at the local Biscuitville. You see, I swapped from Bojangles and my morning sweet iced tea stop to Biscuitville when Bojangles went up on price and down on size. Someone told me just last week that Biscuitville’s sweet tea was pretty good. So I hit the drive-thru Monday morning and stared down the menu, perusing prices, placed my order for a large sweet tea with plenty of lemon.
The voice on the speaker came back at me: “Sure thing, honey. Can I get ya anything else to go with that?”
I blinked a couple of times. “No, that’s all thank you.”
“Drive on around to the second window for your total, sweetie!”
Lawd Lawd. Southern. And the tea was pretty damn good, too!
I don’t have a book trailer to showcase this week. If anyone out there has one they are right
