My South

My South by Robert St. John

Thirty years ago I visited my first cousin in Virginia. While hanging out with his friends, 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, and 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 amazed, amused and downright rude when I described our restaurant as a fine-dining restaurant.

“Mississippi doesn’t have fine-dining restaurants!” she demanded, as she snickered 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, but resisted. 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.

~~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-and-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 mown 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.

~~My South is humid.

~~In my South the only person who has to sit on the back of the bus is the last person who 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 . . .

My South II ~by Robert St. John

While channel-surfing on the idiot box the other day, I came across another one of those clichéd programs about the South. These supposed Southerners were talking about eating a possum.

As long as I have lived in the South I have never eaten a possum. No one I know has ever eaten a possum. I have never been to anyone’s house who served possum. I have never seen possum offered on a restaurant menu, and I have never seen possum in the frozen meat section of a grocery store.

I have, however, seen possums running through the woods. And I have seen a few possums (who weren’t good runners) in the middle of the road.

In the South, we might eat strange foods, but possum isn’t one of them.

As far as Hollywood is concerned, the South is still one big hot and humid region full of stereotypes and clichés (they got the humidity part right). We are either Big-Daddy-sitting-on-the-front-porch-in-a-seersucker-suit, sweating and fanning while drinking mint juleps beside a scratching dog— or— the poor-barefooted-child-in-tattered-clothes, walking down a dusty-dirt road beside a scratching dog. There is no middle ground. Most of the time, we are either stupid or racist or both.

A year ago I wrote a column titled “My South." In light of yesterday's possum experience I would like to add to the list of things that make up my South. The South of movies and TV, the Hollywood South, is not my South.

~~In my South no one eats possum. We do, on occasion, accidentally run over them.

~~In my South little girls wear bows in their hair.

~~In my South banana pudding is its own food group.

~~My South doesn’t have hoagies. In my South, we eat po boys.

~~In my South the back porches are screened and the front porches have rocking chairs and swings.

~~In my South the ham is as salty as the oysters.

~~In my South everyone waves.

~~In my South we know the difference between yams and sweet potatoes.

~~In my South we eat every part of the pig, just like they do in Paris.

~~In my South we use knives, forks and spoons, but we let cornbread and biscuits finish the job.

~~My South has tar-paper shacks but it also has tall-glass skyscrapers.

~~In my South people will put crabmeat on almost anything.

~~My South has tire swings hanging under live oak trees.

~~In my South grandmothers will put almost anything inside a mold filled with Jell-O.

~~In my South “cobbler” is a dessert, not a shoemaker.

~~In my South the only things that “squeal like a pig” are pigs.

~~In my South ice cream is made on the back porch instead of in a factory.

~~In my South grandmothers always have a homemade cake or pie on the counter.

~~My South has bottle trees.

~~In my South we give a firm handshake.

~~In my South “sopping” is an acquired skill and could be an Olympic sport.

~~My South is oleander and honeysuckle.

~~In my South we celebrate Easter a month-and-a-half early with a two-week long party called Mardi gras.

~~In my South fried chicken is a religion with its own denomination.

~~My South has sugar-sand beaches, pine forests, plains, hills, swamps and mountains.

~~In my South we still open doors and pull out chairs for ladies.

~~In my South we eat hushpuppies instead of wearing them on ourfeet.

~~In my South it’s OK to discuss politics and religion at the dinner table. As a matter of fact, it is required.

~~In my South we don’t hold Elvis’s movies against him.

~~My South has shrimp boats and multi-colored sunrises.

~~In my South we move slowly because we can.

~~My South has covered dish suppers and cutting-edge fine dining restaurants.

~~In my South young boys still catch fireflies in washed out mayonnaise jars.

~~In my South 50% of the dinner conversation deals with someone’s genealogy.

~~In my South we don’t burn crosses, we worship them.

~~In my South the dogs are still scratching.

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Y'all are welcome to come to My South any ol' time you please.
Please check your preconceptions and assumptions at the door.
And y'all come back now . . . y'heah?