That’s what I heard when I was standing at the salad plate swap table. I had forgotten to bring one of my many vintage salad plates to swap, but I was checking out the selection, anyway. And the pleasant lady was right. Beautiful pieces of china, silver and crystal surrounded me, and I desperately wanted to take all of it home. And so did every other person there.
Here, in this place, my impulses were not weird. I was not strange. I had, at long last, found my tribe.
Last week, I had the privilege of making about 500 new friends at the Beautiful Table Settings Bash in Wetumpka, Alabama. So your next two questions are “What is a Beautiful Table Settings Bash?” and “Where is Wetumpka?”
Let’s take the easy one first. Wetumpka is about 15 miles north of Alabama’s capital city, Montgomery. It’s a sweet little town with lots of old houses, a casino and a pretty iron bridge.
The Beautiful Table Settings Bash was the second annual in-person gathering of the Facebook group, Beautiful Table Settings. The creator of this group is the retired decorator May Ridolphi Eason. In a few short years, this Facebook group has grown to 167,000 members. She started the group in September 2019, and in retrospect, her timing seems divinely ordered, because this group has surely stopped countless china-hoarding Southerners from losing their ever-loving minds during the pandemic.
It’s a community of folks who love decorating their tables and then posting pictures of their settings for others to see. During the dark, lonely days of the pandemic, people from all over the world spent their lockdown decorating their tables for the holiday meals they would never have and posting photos of them to the group. In the comments, you could see the members consoling each other about the loneliness and grief they were experiencing during this cataclysmic event. May's Facebook group offered free mental health care for gracious people who were missing their loved ones and were tired of being alone.
With the worst of the pandemic behind us, those same folks showed up for the BTS Bash — warm people who treasure pretty things and family heirlooms. They were people who love tradition, family and grace. I was perfectly at home.
They are not things. They are memories.
The gathering reminded me heirlooms don’t have to be fancy. Sometimes a person’s most precious possession is a small collection of dishes a relative collected during weekly trips to the grocery store or drinking glasses pulled from a detergent box. These items on their own may have limited value compared to more expensive patterns, but they were the stuff of childhood memories, and therefore, they were priceless.
When I was a teenager, my grandmother went to her small town grocery store week after week to collect eight place settings of Johann Haviland Blue Garland china for my hope chest. I got the works: serving pieces, teapot and a gravy boat. I took that china with me wherever I went. Even though I was young, I always felt like I could host a proper dinner because of her relentless effort to give me what she didn’t have when she was my age.
I treat that china pattern with the same love and care I give to my Royal Albert Old Country Roses. I am as heartbroken to lose a piece of Blue Garland as I am to lose any expensive piece of china from my other collections. That grocery store china represented my coming of age. It was my grandmother’s push from behind into a world of grace and polish that she never had the chance to enter. She could not open the door into that world for me, but she could give me the trappings of it. So yes, that grocery store china is precious to me.
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Prepare to become addicted
If Southern Living is the decor-obsessed Southerner’s bible, the Replacements, Ltd., facility in McLeansville, North Carolina, is the high, holy temple. One highlight of the event was a talk given by a Replacements representative. When he showed us a video with the camera panning through cabinet after cabinet inside their china-pattern museum, every one of us gasped with delight. And we were not the least bit ashamed.
Then he showed us their pattern finding tool I’ve become seriously addicted to. I’ve even gotten some people in my church obsessed with it. It’s not an app or a special website. If you don’t know what you are looking for, you might miss it. It’s a little red camera icon in the search bar.
Click on it and you get these options.
I suggest you take a picture of your item against a plain background and then choose that photo from your smartphone. Taking a picture inside of the tool did not work for me.
Here is an example of how it works. Upload a picture like this,
and you get this result.
But I got a surprise when I tried it on my Waterford Lismore.
Immediately, I pointed my finger and said, "Gotcha, Replacements!" Then I remembered I bought these stems from an ex-boyfriend in grad school. I wasn't sure it was Lismore, but it looked close enough for my youthful standards, and the price was right. But when I entered a picture of an actual Lismore wine glass, Replacements got that right.
Even those odd patterns of sterling and silverplate flatware that I've picked up over the years are stored in this magical machine.
I spent an entire afternoon going down this pattern-searching rabbit hole, and I finally confounded it with several of my more obscure pieces. That is to be expected. But the hours of fun you can have with this tool are unbelievable, and the memories you can make with a friend or a relative while cleaning out Aunt Myrtle's house are priceless.
So grab a friend and pull out those pieces of china, crystal and silver you've always wondered about. And never underestimate the importance of small moments, because they attach themselves to beautiful things and live forever.
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Old Fort is a little mountain town about thirty minutes outside of Asheville. The way they turned their economic prospects around is through making it a destination for mountain biking. First came the trail, then some coffee shops and restaurants, then a brewery, then a bike shop and a bike clothing company and so on and so forth.
What Old Fort managed to do in all this change is maintain a sense of place and an air of hospitality. They did the best they could with what they had and have gone from strength to strength ever since.
It makes sense that Old Fort has a sense of hospitality when you have the stories like Gogo and her hobos to lead the way. I can’t tell the story as well as her granddaughter, Wendy, but she’ll tell you all about Gogo while you are inhaling one of her otherworldly cinnamon rolls. Gogo was the wife of a train engineer and lived right next to the tracks. Back then, hobos who rode the rails knew that if they got off in Old Fort, they could go down into Gogo’s basement and stay warm next to the furnace. In the morning, Gogo would holler down the stairs that breakfast was ready, and they could come get a hot meal before they continued their travels. She never judged and never scolded. She just fed the lost sheep with what she had.
Stories like that seem impossible to imagine in our modern day world. I bet Gogo never even locked her door. But Gogo’s legacy continues to ripple through the Old Fort community even today. When Wendy got laid off from her job during the pandemic, she was desperate to find a new way to make a living. She taught herself how to make cinnamon rolls, and soon her friends were begging her to make more. In the same house where Gogo fed her hobos, Wendy perfected her recipe and then stood in her wrap-around driveway to put hot, fresh rolls in the trunks of customers as they drove past the door that the hobos once used before turning onto the road home. They carried a little bit of heavenly sweetness back to the ones they loved during a scary and confusing period of our lives.
Wendy made so many cinnamon rolls that she could open a bakery right down the street from Gogo’s house, and it is now a fixture of the Old Fort community that feeds both body and soul. If you love cinnamon rolls, follow them on social media. We bet it won’t be long before you can get them in the mail. No pressure, Wendy!
I think what caught my attention about Gogo and her hobos is that we never really understand the lasting impact of the little kindnesses we do for each other. Our small acts of generosity will echo through the years into the lives of people we don’t know. We will influence the people that will come after us just as we were influenced by the people who came before us. It is our turn to carry the torch for kindness and hospitality for this generation, and it is up to us to decide how high we carry it.
You can see Gogo’s light shining in Wendy’s hand from a long ways off.
(828)668-6024
Facebook: gogos.oven
Instagram: gogoscinnamon
Email: mswendybakes@gmail.com
]]>I inherited the agri-engineering gene that has been passed down through my family for centuries. I believe that every Southern home should have duct tape, WD-40, JB Weld epoxy glue and some bailing wire, and that 75 percent of your everyday home and garden problems can be fixed using one or more of these products. Those Mason jars and plastic pots can also play a critical role in solving many household problems.
But I’ve developed another hoarding problem: containers for Tide PODS. Yes, I know you can recycle these containers, but I just can’t help but think they would be good vases/flower pots — if it weren’t for that godawful orange. But the question about how to paint them without doing a lot of prep work has been a problem for me over the years.
Tide PODS containers used to have paper labels, which would bubble up when I tried to paint them. I tried WD-40 and Goo Gone and every other common household solvent I could find, but removing that paper label cleanly always took an hour or more.
But Tide has switched to plastic labels. As it turns out, you can paint right over them. I hung my containers upside down on a dowel and painted them with Rust-Oleum or Krylon spray paint. Make two or three light coats over the course of an hour. If you come back in a few hours or the next day to make touchups, you risk getting bubbles in your paint. Wait 48 hours before making more coats if you can’t get everything done in an hour.
I’m not sure that you want to go all out and fill your house with plants set in Tide PODS containers. It’s the kind of a novelty project that you can laugh about with your crafty girlfriends — did it once, then never did it again. But I’m not interested in things you’ll never do again. I’m interested in taking something relatively useless and turning it into something that can make someone you love happy.
That’s when I realized that these containers are great for passalong plants. When we used to visit my grandmother, she would load my mother up with plants from her yard, and we would have to stack our luggage up like Jenga pieces in order to make room for the pots. We were riding around in a giant station wagon, so we weren’t really hurting for space, but we did sometimes have to move our smaller bags into the foot area of the backseat, and my brother and I had to sit crosslegged all the way home.
But Tide PODS containers are better for passalong plants. Their pleasing design includes two flat sides, making them easier to pack in the back of a car for a long ride home.
I recommend that you use some old corks in the bottom to help with drainage and to lighten the weight of the container. You can decorate the container any way you like or not at all. I made this label using a Cricut vinyl cutter because I wanted it to look cute for y’all. I have forgotten how finicky that kind of vinyl was, and it took me an hour to get the label right. Even then, if you look close, you can see my lack of expertise. Just use a cute round label and record the information about the plant on it in your own handwriting. You don’t have to do anything this fancy to show somebody that you love them.
When your loved ones get home, they can poke a hole in the bottom for proper drainage until they can get their plant into the ground. This container is not supposed to last forever. It’s just supposed to get your heirloom plants where they’re supposed to go and make somebody feel loved in the process.
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I grew up using a riding lawn mower. It was perfect for my undiagnosed attention deficit disorder. I could ride on it and think about things and not worry about making a mistake. Just go round and round the yard until I had that tiny sliver of grass in the middle of the yard that I would attack with a great sense of satisfaction as I made it disappear under my blades.
I’ve always enjoyed living in a place that required me to cut the lawn. Whatever problems I had, I could work them out while I was mowing. I felt like I accomplished something with my day if I got the yard mowed. It smelled so nice and green. Whether it was a riding mower or a push mower, I loved the feeling of having a freshly mowed yard in my rear view mirror.
I’ve had a terrible lawn mower for the past few years. The carburetor kept gumming up, and I had to stop and fix it every time I mowed. So I got a lawn service, which felt like cheating. Somewhere during the pandemic, my service went out of business and left me to my own devices.
During the pandemic, I, like so many others, got back to basics. What did I really need and what was a joyless luxury? Sourdough starters require far too much dedication and discipline for me to use as any kind of therapy. I did try it again last year, and proved the point to myself once again. Besides, I make amazing biscuits, so I’ve got plenty of bread-making street cred.
When my lawn situation became a genuine issue, I looked at the problem through my pandemic eyes. Did I really need a motorized lawn mower? What was up with those manual mowers? Did they still make them? It turned out that you can get a new one at a garden center for about a third of the price of a regular mower.
And you know what? They are kind of fun. They are easier to maneuver around corners, and you have a lot of flexibility about when you can mow. Usually, getting the lawn mower out is a huge ordeal. It’s such a pain, so you make the decision to mow everything in sight while it’s out — and so that you won’t have to wrestle it out of its storage space for another couple of weeks. And then there’s the whole procrastination game. Is the grass too long? Can it wait a couple more days? Do I really have what it takes to wrangle the mower out of its cubbyhole today?
With a manual mower, it’s so small and tidy I can prop it up in the tiny red barn and pull it out whenever I like. If a certain patch of my yard is more overgrown than I’d like, I can pull out the mower and knock it down in just a few minutes. I don’t have to feel guilty I’m not mowing everything in sight, since I can grab my mower any time I like.
Some days, I feel like I have not accomplished enough, and that makes me feel guilty. My manual lawn mower allows me to alleviate that feeling in 15 minutes or less. I can mow an egregious patch of grass and get in some cardio all in one fell swoop. It’s a twofer.
The manual mower also makes me extra green. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Americans use 800 million gallons of gas each year mowing our lawns. Gas mowers, because of the nature of their engines, emit not only carbon dioxide but also carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides. These add up to 5 percent of our country’s air pollution.
When my neighbor caught me using my manual mower, he accused me of being a hipster and causing the property values to go up. I just smiled and waved. Bless his heart, he doesn’t know it’s the cheapest therapy on the market.
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I love the roll of distant thunder and heat lightning. I love it when the Southern sky opens up and indiscriminately dumps millions of gallons of water on the ground, and all you can do is just watch the water run everywhere and over everything. I love the mist sprayed by the rain when it hits the screens of my porch. I love the smell of rain evaporating off of hot asphalt.
I love the taste of a 90 degree cherry tomato and the way it bursts on your tongue. The thick flesh of scuppernongs and muscadines give way easier when eaten next to a ditch on a dirt road in August with bare feet and sunburned legs. Watermelon seeds fly further and no one tests the lake water to see if it’s too cold.
It’s an invitation to be still and not think, because even the squirrels that runs riot in my head can’t muster a decent effort in this kind of heat. It’s the kind of heat that allows you to deeply appreciate the color green. And like the spring, it will be gone all too soon, and we will lament that we didn’t sit and look at it longer.
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And then BAM! It’s hot as blazes, and there ain't nothing nobody can do about it. We clutch our pearls in the shock and horror of it all, but we know that we should have known all along.
We lament the loss of cooler days and repent binging on Netflix instead of enjoying the balmy evenings that we considered to be too hot at the time. It was only yesterday, for crying out loud, but it seems like a faraway time now. There’s no turning back, and summer has come to stay.
This is the time of year when the Southern gardener goes from DEFCON 5 to 1 in an afternoon. What was once the genteel pastime of hosing potted plants and raised beds in long and leisurely swishes with a garden sprayer set on SHOWER immediately transforms into a rescue mission with settings on JET or FULL.
I’ve never really mastered the art of matching a plant to the proper pot. Drainage or no drainage? Clay or ceramic? I pick pots based on the size of the plant and how its spirit converges with the aesthetic of the container. I know that as a former scientist that I should be more into that kind of knowledge, but gardening, for me, is a creative outlet where I celebrate my successes and mostly ignore my failures. As much as I consider my gardening pastime a retreat from the outside world, there is no escaping the gardening calculus that every Southern gardener must master in order to survive the summer. It involves calculations that would make a true mathematician tremble in her shoes.
Do I add to the water bill or can these plants wait for rain? Are these plants just a little wilty or is it heat stress? Clay pots dry out faster than plastic ones. Pots with drainage holes dry out faster than ones without, but if the pot is in the shade most of the day, then it won’t dry out as fast as it would in the sun. Ferns in giant pots don’t need watering as often as ferns in smaller pots, but all ferns need moist soil. Pots with soil lines that go all the way up to the rim of the pot fare better in rainy stretches and hold more moisture during the dry times. But pots without drainage holes and soil lines that fall several inches below the rim line have an instant reservoir for plants that are in direct sunlight and need constant watering. But if the plant is easily overwatered and needs shade, then the potential for root rot is always lurking around the corner even on the hottest of days. Which means you need to find a different pot and repot it or lose it. Or worse, have a straggly, mangy looking plant that stands in silent rebuke of your gardening skills.
It’s stressful.
But nothing equals the thrill of finding a half dead plant and bringing it back to life. The excitement of dragging the hose halfway across the yard, pulling random empty pots and a sawhorse along with it as the hose’s U-shaped formation drags everything on the ground. Gingerly turning the blistering hot sprayer head to wide open and bracing yourself for the hot, sun baked grip as you blast water into the soil of your dying plant. As the handle of the sprayer head cools with the fresh water running through it, you thank your lucky stars that you got there just in time. As the day ends and the water does its work, you feel a deep sense of satisfaction as the plant is revived to its former glory, not unlike a heart surgeon who has rescued a dying patient when everyone else had given up hope.
And as summer has reached its zenith and your ferns are lush and long and your zinnias are gaily dancing in the breeze, you feel your ancestors smiling down upon you, and you know that all is right with the world.
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The pandemic was very hard for me in a lot of ways even with no one in my family or circle of friends dying of COVID. But my husband had some very serious health issues during that time and finding the right medical care has been a constant struggle. On April 8, he fell down our back steps and got a head injury. He wound up in the hospital for 11 days from complications from that fall. Neither one of us were able to devote much time to our companies for about six weeks. The good news is that he is well on his way to a full recovery, and this traumatic event led to a reevaluation of the medications he was taking. His smack on the head has restored him to the man he was before he became ill and he is better off today than he was more than two years ago.
I have complicated feelings about this phase of the pandemic. I feel like we are reaching the point where we should go back to the way things were in the before times. I feel like I should shed the survival strategies that I adopted during the pandemic. Not just mask wearing and social distancing, but that sense of hunkering down and getting used to not doing the things I used to do. I am an introvert by nature, so I am wired to be self-entertaining in isolation. A quick chat with the cashier at the garden center generally fulfills my need for outside contact. But there was something about all the things we had to do to survive the pandemic that made me close myself off to other human beings - even the ones I know and love. That pandemic-induced unease and wariness about being around other people hasn’t gone away. And when I do try to shed it, I wind up doing something unfeeling and rude. A couple of weeks ago, I was checking out in the grocery line. The woman in front of me was very short and slight and was wearing a mask. I was preoccupied with my to-do list so I stepped up to the register as she struggled to gather her groceries. She gave me an ugly look over the top of her mask as she edged around the checkout station away from me, but I was too busy to notice. It was only after I had driven away in my car that it dawned on me that she may have been so thin because she was ill or immune compromised and she was trying to protect herself from me. So, of course, I felt awful, but it was too late to do anything.
Even when I try to get back to the way things used to be before this new virus upended our lives, I stumble and fall. Who can I hug? How close do I sit next to people? Do people want to have a conversation with me if they are not wearing a mask? Is a maskless face an open invitation to pretend that the pandemic never happened and we can feel joyous and free?
I remember how much the world changed after 9/11 and how those changes grew as time moved forward. The happy and sad moments between families and friends at airport gates were gone instantly. Then the process of disrobing in security lines got longer. Then the increased exposure to X-rays. The act of flying now seems to have more hurdles than buying and carrying a loaded weapon in public. The follow-on fears that came out of the initial insult of September 11 made the snowball bigger as it rolled downhill.
The banking crisis of 2008 hit a lot of people hard and further increased the wealth divide just when a lot of people were thinking that they were finally getting ahead. Time has only increased that wealth gap and the stewing resentments of that trauma are boiling over today.
I’m still constantly marking off six feet in my head whenever I am around strangers. Sneezes and coughs are triggering. Barreling back into a pre-2020 world only seeds the ground for gaffes and awkwardness, if not heightened risk of infection with the latest variant.
If this virus had appeared in 1985, we would have experienced it in a very different way. We would not have had technology to keep us informed and connected. The mental health impact may have been worse since the isolation would have been greater, but we may have been a more cooperative population because we still trusted the media. And the opportunities for spreading misinformation would have been greatly reduced. However, the technology that we have used to cope with our present-day isolation may become an easy substitute for real human contact — especially since the pictures look better than real life. And what will that do to the fabric of our society?
Prisoners of war often exhibit a certain set of behaviors even after their release. These can be listlessness, uncommunicativeness, lack of spontaneity, indifference, slowed reactions, lack of enthusiasm and lack of initiative. I struggle with those feelings these days. I have a hard time getting enthusiastic about things, since I don’t know if something will interfere with it. We went out to dinner recently. It was a lovely spring evening and the meal was perfect. It felt just like the old days. But as I was reveling the perfection of the moment, there was this little voice warning me to not get too attached to the feeling. It could all be taken away in a moment.
I think our priest was right. We need a summer of rest and renewal. Our life looks relatively idyllic on the surface, but there is still a fear of what lurks underneath. I’ve made a commitment to start calling people on the phone more and making more appointments for coffee with people I’ve never met or I’ve lost contact with. I need a renewed engagement with all of you. If you would like to talk on the phone with me or meet with me in the Atlanta area, send your name and phone number to stacy@downsouth.house. I can’t wait to hear how you are doing!
]]>Now, I’m not saying that I’ve done it perfectly, but that’s okay — because I make fantastic pimento cheese. This has lightened the daily mental load tremendously.
I think Southern women are raised to let an enormous amount of shame into their daily lives. Don’t leave the house without lipstick. All of your china should match. Always wear clean underwear so that you won’t be embarrassed in front of the emergency room doctor when you get into that terrible accident one day. Don’t take homemade deviled eggs to the church social without a sprinkling of paprika for color. The list goes on.
Housekeeping is another one of those shame-based subjects that Southern women have to contend with. Not only does the house have to be spotless, it has to be well appointed to reflect the quality of your upbringing. You know, have enough crystal and china out for display so that everyone will know that you come from a respectable family.
I don’t know about you, but my house is beyond disorderly these days. We have lots of really cool things that reflect our personalities, but after spending over two years with the knowledge that no one was coming into our house, quality standards have slipped somewhat. Not that they were ever that great in the first place. Running a creative business like Down South House & Home and launching our sister company, Salvation South, have been distracting to say the least. And I’ve always looked at house cleaning as time that I couldn’t get back.
The funny thing I’ve discovered about my New Year’s resolution is that when I started to feel better in my daily life, I started to find more reasons to feel even better. Cleaning has miraculously become a way for me to feel better fast. That dining room table full of mail? Gone. My Mason jars full of beans and rice on the kitchen counter? Disappeared into the proper place in the kitchen. Piles of magazines that I don’t need? Donated to the refugee community who can use them to learn English. Nothing herculean in these tasks — just 15 minutes worth of work here and there during the day. In fact, cleaning has become my new procrastination. I can feel better about not opening a spreadsheet if I know I’m about to make my life easier with a 15-minute spot cleaning (or even three minutes). Where before I would have made house cleaning a resolution that would have made me dread the next year, I have now found a way to make cleaning more enjoyable. I have long held on to the tiresome belief that if you were going to do a job, you have to do it perfectly. This belief made my simple tasks mushroom into me spending the whole day in chores. Whatever I did was not perfect enough, so I spent hours trying to do it perfectly enough. At the end of the day, it was still never perfect enough, and I was exhausted from my labors. In my mind, I would have created a week’s worth of tasks that I had to do before it was perfect enough knowing that even if I did them, things would not have been perfect enough — so why even bother? This new approach not only makes me even happier on a momentary basis, it fuels me toward doing lots of 15-minute tasks that make my life continuously better.
The daffodils are blooming here in Georgia and the pandemic is getting more manageable all the time. I’m so ready to cook some of my amazing fried chicken for some guests and serve it on my good china. By then, I won’t have to spend two weeks getting the house ready to have them over. And I can focus on making memories instead dreading cleaning the house. And that’s what life is really all about, isn’t it?
Got quick cleaning tips that you want to share with the Down South community? Put them in the comments below, and you might win a deviled egg plate in a drawing at the end of February!
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I don’t read enough books. I don’t read all the magazines that I subscribe to. I don’t have enough money. I don’t go to the gym. I don’t make my bed every day. I don’t post enough to social media. I have a dozen tasks in the yard that I need to do before I’m not ashamed to see the Amazon delivery guy at the door. I still don’t know everything I need to know for my business. I don’t sort the mail and it piles up on the dining room table. I hoard plastic containers from Chinese takeout and those little plastic thingies from delivery pizza. If only, if only, if only. If only I were better.
Pretty uncharitable, right? I’d actually be ashamed of myself if I said these things to someone I love — or even someone I don't love. No one deserves to be called a fat, lazy slob. But that’s pretty much what I do to myself every single day. Most of the time, I don’t even notice that I do this to myself. It’s just part of the background noise of my daily life.
The funny thing is that there have been times in my life when I did go to the gym and got down to a size 6 or 4 or 2. I looked awesome, by the way. But I didn’t feel any better about myself. The holes left on my Perfect Me to-do list by that herculean accomplishment got filled with other drastic changes that I needed to make before I was acceptable. I really just couldn’t win with myself.
I once heard a funny proverb that has always stuck with me. Wherever you go, there you are. Which means that you can move across the country, change your wardrobe or buy a new car, but at the end of the day, you are who you are and these external things can’t change that. Change has to come from within.
So that is my promise to myself this year. Whenever I remind myself of one of my many, many shortcomings, I am going to remind myself of one of my many, many strengths and accomplishments. We are already in the first week of January, and I can tell you that it is not as easy as it sounded on January 1. But it is a resolution that has no deadline, and no one but me can really tell when I fall short, which would be a great time to remind myself that my buttermilk biscuits are to die for.
P.S.: Those little plastic thingies from delivery pizza make great supports for narcissus bulbs when you force them indoors.
]]>Eight years ago, my husband, Chuck Reece, launched an online publication dedicated to dismantling stereotypes about Southerners. He was recognized by the New York Times and Time Magazine as a person changing the South. His podcast won an Edward R. Murrow award. When he left that publication last year, he decided to spend some time writing personal essays for Down South and listening to what was going on in the world around him. My husband is a very good writer, as you are all aware. But he is an even better editor. Chuck is a writer’s editor. He knows how to coach up young aspiring writers and tease out genius from the most seasoned of accomplished authors. I know that my writing has benefited from his gentle guidance and for the first time in my life, I feel confident in my writing abilities. He has that effect on people.
Over the past year, Chuck has spent a lot of time listening and thinking about this age we live in. This divided angry age fueled by malice and uncharitable disdain for people who have different beliefs than our own. This is not the South we want to live in. This is not who we are.
When a hurricane hits and the Cajun Navy rolls up in their massive convoy of pickup trucks, boats and American flags, they don’t decide whom to save based on race, religion or political party. A hand is extended to everybody. Everybody gets a blanket. Everybody gets fed. That is the South we want to live in and celebrate.
This new publication, Salvation South, will be about hope, grace and understanding. It will be about getting back to the Golden Rule. It will be about acting like your mama raised you right.
We have some truly amazing Southern writers lined up to contribute to Salvation South. We will be featuring young writers with fresh ideas about what it means to be Southern. Some of that writing may even spill over into the Down South blog, and I can’t wait for you to read their work. Then, of course, there will be contributions from award-winning authors with their own take on the South they love.
We don’t expect the work from our little cottage and tiny red barn in Clarkston, Georgia will instantly change the South we love so much. But we can offer hope. You can take that hope and use it in your own community to make your part of the South a kinder and more gracious place. Together, we can become our own kind of Cajun Navy, rushing into the chaos and lending a helping hand to all of God’s children. We do hope you come along with us: We can’t do it without your support.
If you can contribute to this effort, we will make it worth your while. There’s even a tea towel or a t-shirt in it for you at certain levels. But even if contributing right now is not possible, come see us anyway. Our content will always be free, and there soon will be a section called Salvation South Dry Goods and Notions where you can purchase Southern goods for the people you love. So y’all come in and stay awhile. There’s room at the table for everybody.
First I needed a way to clean them that was fairly painless, and I needed something to do with them. Then I realized that I could make cute hostess gifts with paperwhite narcissus bulbs.
First of all, candle wax is flammable, so you need to be careful when using heat. My first step is to pour boiling water into the used candle container until the container is full. This should melt the majority of the wax and it will float to the top.
Once this wax has cooled, you can remove it and discard it - or reuse it in another similarly scented candle. Your container will still have a waxy residue on the walls.
To get rid of this, turn the oven to warm (no greater than 200 degrees). I use an old baking pan lined with aluminum foil. Turn the containers upside down and put them in the oven for about 10 minutes. Do not go off and forget them. Clean out the dishwasher while you wait in case the wax starts to burn.
When you take the containers out of the oven, they will be quite hot. Let them cool for about a minute and carefully remove any labels that are on the bottom and sides of the glass. Then pick the glass up with a dry dishtowel or oven mitt and wipe the inside clean with a paper towel. Once you have wiped all the visible wax from the inside of the container, give the inside a quick spritz with WD-40 and wipe clean with a fresh paper towel. This should remove the last of the residue from inside the container. You can also use WD-40 to remove any warm adhesive left by the labels on the outside. Then you can hand wash it or put it in the dishwasher to make it sparkling clean.
I chose paperwhite narcissus bulbs for Christmas gifts, because they are available this time of year, and they don’t need a chilling period like other bulbs. They are also very small bulbs that fit easily into these containers. You can fill the containers with tiny pebbles to support the bulbs. Or if you also hoard the little plastic thingies that come with your delivery pizza, you are in even better luck. They are perfect for stabilizing the bulbs inside of the pebbles.
Some of these candle holders are even a perfect match for gas station plastic cup lids, which can make a great cover for traveling with your hostess gift.
Otherwise, you can use some Saran Wrap. While writing this piece I discovered some old water gel beads that swell with water. This would be a great choice for a gift going to a house full of children because they let the roots show while the bulb is growing. The plastic pizza thingie works great here, too.
This cleaning technique would also be great for anyone planning a wedding this spring. Now is the time to recruit friends and family to donate their used votive holders to your big day. And since it is so easy to clean them, you can save a lot of money on your tabletop decor.
This quick and easy method of cleaning stubborn wax from pretty glass containers is so simple that you may go buy more scented candles just so you can clean them. And the joy you can bring to the people around you for very little money is just priceless.
]]>I had a question I needed an answer to, a question I’ve had for almost 50 years. Not having an answer to this question had sent me down negative pathways at various points in my life. Not knowing the answer had caused me pain, and I was done with that.
And there was only one person I knew of who could answer that question: my cousin Martha.
A couple of weeks ago, I returned to my hometown of Ellijay, Georgia, to tell stories at a folk festival, and I thought I would use the occasion to visit Martha. I called her on Friday before we left for Ellijay to confirm she would be around. We arranged for Stacy and me to drop by her house after I finished my lunchtime storytelling gig on Saturday.
My father was the 11th of 12 children, and I arrived 21 years into his marriage to my mother, thus I have only one first cousin who is my age. Martha is a generation older than me. She has told me many times that my parents made her feel like she was blessed with a second mama and daddy. She’s also told me that she got a little jealous when she learned that I was coming along. But for a long time now, Martha has called me her “little brother.”
My mother died of cancer when I was 11 years old, and in the six months Mom spent in and out of the hospital leading up to her death, Martha and her husband Harold were around a lot, taking care of things for my dad and me.
On our phone call, Martha asked me if she could feed us lunch, I happily accepted the offer. She told me she had a chicken casserole in the freezer she could take out and warm up. It was delicious, simple country comfort food — the sort that warms your belly and your heart at the same time.
And as we ate, I finally got up the gumption to ask Martha my question.
For the six months prior to Mama’s death, she never once told me that her illness was terminal, that she would not be around for much longer to take care of me. So I asked Martha: Why? Why had she made that decision? I needed to know the answer.
“Because she didn’t want to put you in that much pain, honey,” Martha replied. “She thought it was better that you didn’t know.”
Over the next couple of days, I spent a lot of time thinking about that. What would any parent with a terminal illness do in the same situation? What the parent might do today, I expect, would be very different than what my mom could do in 1972, the year of her death. She had no internet that would allow her to talk to people all over the world in similar situations. Today, there are a wealth of books about the topic, both for parents and for children. There were far fewer four decades ago. The idea of sending me to see a therapist would never have occurred to country people like her.
In short, she and my dad and others in the family had to make the best decision they knew how to make. And ultimately, what she felt in her heart was that I should be spared the pain for as long as possible. That’s a big kind of love, and I was lucky to have it.
And that answer, I finally decided, was big enough to allow me to let go of some lingering resentments I’d held against my mother, to allow me to move on without feeling that I was carrying too much weight, to allow me to stop feeling like a victim.
I have not peeked into the freezer in the big kitchen of the Episcopal church that Stacy and I attend in Decatur, Georgia. But I have heard tell that inside it, a casserole cache exists. It is used when folks are in need. When someone has lost a loved one or when life has thrown an unexpected curveball — when someone is carrying too much weight of their own — someone else in the church grabs a casserole from the freezer and delivers it to the person in need.
That’s the way that the world goes ’round. Or at least that’s the way it ought to.
All of us want to know there is someone out there who, when we are in times of trouble or suffering, might bring us a casserole. My cousin Martha brought me some truth that I needed — and served it up with a chicken casserole. It was delicious. Chicken breasts, a can of cream of chicken soup, a can of cream of mushroom soup, half a pound of sour cream, a sleeve and a half of Town House crackers and half a stick of butter. And finally, an unmeasurable amount of love.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Mix the soups and sour cream together in a mixing bowl. Sprinkle in some powdered spices of your choice: You probably don’t need extra salt. Add the cooked chicken and mix again.
Grease the baking dish and add the mixture. Crush the crackers down to a coarse meal with a mallet or potato masher in a clean mixing bowl. Pour melted butter over the cracker crumbs and mix well. Sprinkle the buttery crumbs over the top of the casserole until evenly covered. Bake at 350 degrees for about 30-40 minutes or until it bubbles steadily around the sides and the crackers are a deeper color of brown. If you feel the need to measure it, the internal temperature should be 165 degrees. Allow to cool for a few minutes before serving.
Note: You can make this recipe in smaller dishes if you want to share with a neighbor. Just cook until it bubbles around the sides. Smaller dishes can have a shorter baking times.
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My mother is a Master Gardener who is engaged in three or four garden clubs. She has been volunteering at the State Botanical Gardens at the University of Georgia for many years. And my father’s mother could make a shovel handle take root in her country yard.
As for me, I have excelled in growing massive ferns only because I have found spots for them in the yard that offer access to water and partial sun. And I have a basement that lets them survive the winters here in Atlanta.
I wouldn’t say that I have a brown thumb or a green thumb. It’s kind of green with some yellowy brown spots here and there. I’m more of the “let’s stick it here and see what happens” kind of gardener. The French have the phrase “comme ci, comme ça,” which means so-so - neither good, nor bad. I’m a so-so gardener, and I am OK with that. Gardening feeds my soul and makes me happy. I revel in my successes and ignore my failures.
I hope my Christmas cactus turns out a success this year. The women in our family treasured this plant, and it held a place of reverence in their holiday decor. To have a lush Christmas cactus full of blooms during the holidays elevated your status among your gardening peers, and it was remarked upon both in and out of your presence.
I have had little luck growing these plants over the years. The work-around, of course, is to buy an expensive heirloom quality plant that’s guaranteed to make you first among your peers. I, on the other hand, have to buy the tiny affordable Christmas cactus at the garden center and hope for better days.
My tiny affordable Christmas cactus from last year survived, and I remembered to water it this week. I saw something pink nestled in one of the corners of its pointy leaves. It’s too small to tell if it is a new bloom, lint or an infestation, but it encouraged me enough to look at what the Old Farmer’s Almanac says about caring for them. I’ve copied it below — and here is the link for you to read it on the Almanac’s site. I can tell you I have already made several mistakes in the care of my cactus, but I haven’t killed it. I’m going to fertilize it and hope for the best. If it blooms it blooms, if it doesn’t it doesn’t. You know, c'est la vie. I will revel in my success and ignore my failure. It’s the act of gardening that makes me happy.
Do you have any tips for growing your Christmas cactus? Share in the comments below!
By The Editors
The Christmas cactus is a very popular houseplant—and for good reason! When they bloom, they produce colorful, tubular flowers in pink or lilac colors. Their beautiful flowers, long bloom time, and easy care requirements make them a wonderful plant. We’ll bet someone in your family has a Christmas cactus!
Unlike other cacti, the Christmas cactus (Schlumbergera x buckleyi) and its relatives don’t live in hot, arid environments such as deserts or plains. In fact, these epiphytic succulents are native to the tropical rainforests of southern Brazil, where they grow on tree branches and soak up the high humidity, dappled sunlight, and warm temperatures.
The bottom line: Don’t treat a Christmas cactus like it’s a run-of-the-mill cactus or succulent. They can’t take the same sort of sunny, dry conditions that other cacti can. It’s important to water these cacti more regularly than most succulents, but to also be cautious of keeping them too wet. (See detailed care instructions below.)
There are three main types of “holiday” cacti out there: the Easter cactus (S. gaertneri), Thanksgiving cactus (S. truncata), and Christmas cactus (S. x buckleyi). Each holiday cactus typically blooms closest to the holiday that it’s named after. However, most of the “Christmas cacti” sold today are actually Thanksgiving cacti, which tend to bloom from November through February and therefore pass unnoticed as Christmas cacti. To learn more, see our article on the different types of holiday cacti and how to tell them apart.
Note: For simplicity’s sake, we refer to all three of these species as “Christmas cactus” on this page, since this is the most commonly used term and our care advice applies to all of them!
The blooms of Christmas cacti and its relatives are triggered by the cooler temperatures and longer nights of fall. The three main types of holiday cacti generally bloom according to this schedule:
If your cactus is not blooming, it may be receiving too much light or too-high temperatures. Here are some tips to encourage yours to produce flowers!
Blossom drop: If your Christmas cactus is exposed to any type of stress, the plant will likely drop its blossoms. This could be related to the amount of light, or a sudden change in temperature, as discussed in above plant care section. Also, ensure that your soil doesn’t get too dry while buds are forming.
The plant may be susceptible to mealy bugs and, if over-watered, root rot. If you have problems, cut out infected areas and repot in clean soil.
There are three main types of “holiday cacti” available:
I’ve been a lazy, small-c conservative for most of my life, which mostly amounted to wanting a government that curbed excessive spending, used reason and logic to make policy decisions and stayed out of my personal life. I adore tradition as long as it doesn’t interfere with what I want to do.
My feelings about the Old South are complex. I grew up in a family that celebrated our ancestors’ participation in the Confederacy. These are ancestors who owned other human beings and fought for the right to keep them. I’ve revered Greek Revival architecture since I was a girl and knew the difference between Ionic, Doric and Corinthian columns by the time I was in middle school. I venerated the traditions of grace and gentility of the Old South and mourned the loss of them in the modern day.
But I didn’t understand that the infrastructure to maintain this revered level of charm and hospitality required the oppression of every person with one drop of African blood. Now, as an adult, I can’t look at my beloved antebellum mansions without thinking about the subjugation of so many slaves attached to them.
Now that I and so many others have come to a better understanding of our whitewashed past, there is a justifiable movement to remove the statues that idolize the celebrities of the Civil War. As a child, I loved those kinds of statues for their masterful craftsmanship and how their presence seemed to enhance the public square. As these statues continue to come down, I feel a little sorry for the poor fellows. They were a product of their own day and didn’t know any better than I did growing up.
As a society, we have moved to a place of reckoning such that these statues no longer represent who we are a culture and a people. But I worry that by removing this art, we are robbing ourselves and future generations of the opportunity to make a choice for freedom and equality.
In 2013, the Republican governor of Georgia relocated a statue of a 20th century white supremacist, Tom Watson, from the grounds of the State Capitol. There was not much public debate and very little uproar because he was not “removed”; he was “moved for renovations” off the Capitol grounds and there was “no money” in the budget to reinstall him. It happened over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, and he still lives in a nearby park where people who think like him can go to salute him. I thought that move was rather slick, and I got a chuckle out of our governor’s masterful manipulation of public response, because Mr. Watson definitely needed to be put out to pasture.
Even though Mr. Watson was put out to pasture, I am glad that it was a public pasture. I believe the public square should have more art, not less. Furthermore, I wonder if we are missing an opportunity to juxtapose art that communicates the misery and horror of the Black experience in the South in the same setting as statues of the people who oppressed them. What if instead of taking down the statue of General Lee, we surrounded it with art that expressed 400 years of oppression? What if Mr. Watson was surrounded by figures of young Black children suffering under the tyranny of Jim Crow?
I think my thoughts are leaning in this direction because I am frightened about the rise of autocracy, not only in this country but around the world. After Nazi tyranny was vanquished in 1945, the world said, “Never again,” and they meant it. Now, as the last of the veterans of World War II are dying off and there’s no one left to remember its true horror, we see more and more public figures embracing autocracy under the guise of freedom and equality.
I think it is easy for people who love freedom and equality to envision a day when all this racial ugliness is behind us and we no longer have to fear it, like polio or smallpox. We pine for a day when we reach herd immunity, and everyone will just act right because they were raised right. I’m doubtful that day will ever come.
Autocracy and racial supremacy are very seductive because they offer a safety net for those on the dominant side of the power dynamic. It seduced the Germans to persecute the Jews and the British colonists to enslave the Africans. These iniquitous impulses of human nature will always find a footing in human civilization because they feel good and powerful to those who indulge in them. There is no Never Again. There is only Not Today. We maintain freedom and equality with the infinitesimal choices we make every day. Every single one of us is a standard bearer for tyranny or for justice, and every single one of us gets to choose every single day.
Art can uplift, inspire, comfort and educate. It can also challenge us. What if we surrounded the art dedicated to oppressors with art that evoked empathy for the oppressed? Every person who experienced that commingled art would have to make a choice about freedom and equality. They may not understand that they are making a choice, but deep down inside they would have to make a choice about whose side they were on: the oppressor or the oppressed?
Unless we have public art that forces viewers to take a side on that question, we are missing the opportunity to educate future generations about the choices they will have to make in their own day. They will have to choose which impulse to indulge.
They are going to need all the help they can get.
]]>Samantha was beautiful, talented and kind, and I wanted to be just like her. Gladys was old and mean-spirited, and I vowed to never be like Gladys Kravitz.
Southern traditions of hospitality are very important to us here in the tiny red barn. By that I mean dignity, grace, equality and discretion. One of the true marks of a gracious hostess (and human being) is pretending not to know the gossip you have heard about someone while you are talking to that someone.
I’ve been around gossips all of my life. My grandmother was a world-class gossip, and she set the tone for her entire family when it came to interpreting the tiny bits of information she was able to acquire in her extremely rural surroundings. When I came of age, I surrounded myself with friends who gossiped. I engaged in gossip myself. It was fun. Information is power, and gossip gives you the illusion that you have power. But the problem with gossip is that information is the currency to gain more power, and you often have to betray the confidences of those closest to you in order to feed the beast. I once had to make the heartbreaking decision to end a longtime friendship because my friend wouldn’t keep the private details of my life private. So yes, I understand gossip and the pain it causes.
I am dismayed at this new abortion law that just went into effect in Texas. This is not a post about whether abortion is right or wrong, it’s a post about dignity and privacy.
According to The New York Times, “The Texas law deputizes private citizens to sue anyone who performs an abortion or ‘aids and abets’ a procedure. Plaintiffs who have no connection to the patient or the clinic may sue and recover legal fees, as well as $10,000 if they win.”
This law turns the most private and heartrending decision a woman ever has to make into a profit center for people willing to do the work of proving the law was violated. How many women are going to be dragged into the public square by the hair of their heads so that someone who was never harmed by her decision can pocket some money? How many Gladys Kravitzes will be lurking outside the windows of families in pain and mourning in order to prove their case and get rewarded? At what point can idle gossip wind up triggering a lawsuit? What if your friend uses the private details of your life as currency to pay the gossip beast and the people who helped you in a crisis wind up losing a crushing amount of money and their personal reputations? When do friends become profit centers? When does the craven need for personal gain warrant the destruction of other people’s lives?
If this law withstands court challengers, it will most likely spread to other Southern states, including my own. This is not a South that I want to live in. It’s dishonorable and unkind. It gives the Gladys Kravitzes of the world a temporary balm for the emptiness of their own hearts by causing pain in the lives of others at their most vulnerable moments. It rewards public shaming and unleashes our baser instincts.
But mostly, it’s just downright trashy.
]]>Digging down into this grease with a serving spoon unearthed layers of fat like a geological dig, each layer browner than the one before. If you scraped the bottom of the container, you found a dark fat layer with tiny crunchy bits in it that had made it through the holes of the strainer. You did not want to cook with this layer. You wanted the pretty ivory colored fat on top.
My grandmother put a dollop of this grease in all of her vegetables every day. She fried her hamburgers in it. She died at 88 after smoking two packs of Virginia Slims a day and two different cancers.
We don’t really fry enough in our house to warrant the old-fashioned grease container. I reuse the oil from frying chicken in a mason jar I keep in the refrigerator. There is something oddly satisfying about storing fat in a clear glass container. You can clearly see the layers of fat that form as the grease cools, and it gives me the same amount of joy as looking at an ant farm or a jar full of Sea Monkeys. It also lets me avoid the dark brown fat at the bottom that will scorch the next batch of chicken.
I had an aunt who went into a nursing home right before the pandemic, and she let me come and pick out some things of hers that I liked. I took home a car full of wonderful treasures, and one of them was this beautiful flow-blue Victoria Ironstone shaving mug. It immediately became my bacon fat container. What’s perfect about it is that it is small enough for our limited counter space and has three little holes on top. Once your bacon grease has cooled off a little, you can just pour the grease on top and it strains it out just like the old-fashioned grease container. It fits perfectly in our little kitchen.
I don’t really need a grease container in my kitchen. I just want one. It reminds me of all the women in my life who devoted their time and talent to making food for their families. No one ever pays attention to all the hard work that goes into making a meal. Everybody just loves how it tastes and comments on the table settings. Creating and keeping the infrastructure to make all those meals requires dedication and constancy.
For me, the grease container represents the conservation of resources for future meals and family gatherings when plenty wasn’t guaranteed. It represents responsibility and frugality, two values that are very important to me. I feel my family history every time I see my converted shaving mug on the counter. It reminds me to be grateful that I live a life of plenty, and that I come from women who always know how to make do in times of want.
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You may not have heard of any of these outfits. They had their heydays from the late 1940s through the early 1970s. This was four-part harmony— lead, tenor, baritone and bass — typically accompanied, at least in the beginning, by only a piano player. A phrase often used to describe it was “four men and a piano” (although many groups included women in their lineups).
That description sounds like a recipe for a somber affair, doesn’t it? But this style of music drew thousands of people to arenas and auditoriums all over the South. Why? Showmanship. I could describe the level of showmanship, but words don’t really suffice. Just watch this video of Hovie Lister & the Statesmen performing “Get Away Jordan,” and you’ll see what I mean.
The promoter who raised this sort of music to national attention was a man from Adairsville, Georgia, named Wally Fowler, who started his career in music by leading a country band called Wally Fowler & the Georgia Clodhoppers, whose lead guitar player — Chet Atkins — would go on to become a musical legend.
Fowler staged “all-night sings” in cities all over the South, and my only experiences of downtown Atlanta when I was a kid happened when Mama and Daddy would take me to these shows at the old Atlanta City Auditorium (now Georgia State University’s Alumni Hall). Those concerts — each of which featured at least a half-dozen groups — were my first exposure to live music on a large scale.
They kinda blew my mind, and they were certainly the seed of my lifelong love of live music. But among all those concerts in the late 1960s and early ’70s, I never saw a Black quartet on stage. It wasn’t until I hit my 20s that I learned that the same thing I was seeing in Wally Fowler’s shows was simultaneously happening in Black communities all over the South.
In fact, the Black groups and white groups were often singing the same songs. Check out this recording of Dorothy Love Coates & the Original Gospel Harmonettes performing their own version of “Get Away Jordan."
Neither of these traditions have faded away. The gospel quartet form is one of the most resilient in music. Thousands of quartets perform all over the country, but sadly the performances remain largely segregated. The big event for white quartets is the annual National Quartet Convention in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. For Black quartets, the big annual gathering is called the American Gospel Quartet Convention, and it typically happens in Birmingham, Alabama, but was held virtually this past January.
A few weeks ago, I got the chance to hear some brand new Black gospel quartet music. Listening to it, I flew straight back to my youth. Although the players and singers are African American, the feeling their music produced inside me drew out long-forgotten memories. It took me home.
And now, I can’t stop thinking what kind of show we’d see if somehow the racial barriers fell, if somehow all the groups who come from this grand musical tradition could come together on a single stage.
A guy can dream, right?
]]>The folks who run the festival play it up big on their website: a “juried folk art show, mountain music, storytelling, traditional foods — AND don’t miss the goat beauty contest!”
I have no idea how a goat beauty contest works. Put “goat beauty contest” into the Google machine, and you will find many references to a small village called Ramygala, Lithuania, where there is an annual goat parade. For the parade, villagers dress up goats, as you can see in this photograph, then parade them around their village and ultimately choose which goat is the most beautiful.
How this tradition migrated to my hometown is a complete mystery to me, but I will see with my own eyes — and ask folks a lot of questions about it — next month.
In my youth, I loved community gatherings around the Ellijay town square. In the 1960s and ’70s, when I was growing up, the biggest gathering of all was the annual wagon train. The Murray County Saddle Club in nearby Chatsworth staged it. Folks from Chatsworth and Ellijay would meet up with their horses and horse-drawn vehicles at Nine Mile United Methodist Church, about halfway between the two towns, then roll out toward Ellijay.
I think the parents of every kid in town brought the young’uns to the town square to see a long parade of folks on horseback or riding in wagons, carts or buggies around our square. If memory serves, they would head southwest of town to the grounds of the Gilmer County Saddle Club and camp out for the night before returning to Chatsworth.
That tradition — at least Ellijay’s part of it — died many years ago. According to a 2014 article in the Dalton, Georgia, newspaper, “Everything was fine until participation grew so large that Ellijay officials said there was no longer room for everyone.” The Murray County Saddle Club keeps the tradition going, but it now revolves around the club’s grounds just outside Chatsworth.
These days, the Dancing Goats Folk Festival is just one of many events that happen on the Ellijay town square these days. What was a very sleepy little town in my youth has become quite a hopping place, a popular place for folks in Atlanta who want an easy weekend getaway or to build, as they say, “a mountain house.”
These days, restaurants and bars downtown offer “craft cocktails.” When I was young, restaurants couldn’t serve any kind of alcohol. Your only option was to buy beer or wine from a “package store.”
These days, the restaurants offer dishes like lobster bolognese and concoctions with locally grown oyster mushrooms. When I was young, I remember the choices being fried chicken, hamburger steak, and other simple dishes you’d be just as likely to get at home as you could in a restaurant.
It some ways, it makes me happy as I can be to see these changes in my hometown. In others, it makes me sad. But resisting change has never done me a lick of good, really. My job now is to celebrate the progress of my little hometown and to cherish my memories of how it was long ago.
Can I do both things at the same time? I think so. And who knows? Maybe I’ll tell a story about that at the Dancing Goats FolkFest. I hope to see you there.
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“Have you taken a vacation since I’ve been seeing you?”
“No,” I replied.
“You should,” he said.
That’s why Stacy and I will soon leave town to spend a few days on Fripp Island in South Carolina.
Doctor’s orders.
I don’t know why we’ve waited so long to take a vacation. I expect part of the reason was the Pandemic Fear — that reticence to spend even an hour in a place that wasn’t our own home. But gradually over the past few months, we’ve been breaking out. We’ve gone out to dinner with friends at restaurants. We’ve seen some live music. Last week, we actually saw a movie in a theater.
And now, we’re going on vacation.
There is evidence that vacation is good for you.
Last year, Forbes contributor Carolina Castrillon talked to Adam Galinsky, professor and chair of the management division at Columbia Business School. Dr. Galinsky’s has done extensive research into the links between between travel and creativity.
“Foreign experiences increase both cognitive flexibility and depth and integrativeness of thought, the ability to make deep connections between disparate forms,” Dr. Galinsky told Forbes.
Good news, but delivered in words that are entirely too wonky to inspire folks to take a vacation.
I prefer the words of one of my favorite writers, the late Maya Angelou, in her book “I Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now.”
“Every person needs to take one day away,” Angelou writes. “A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future. Jobs, family, employers and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence. Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for. Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.”
Wow. Some time to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.
The truth is, in the days since we booked our vacation at a little place on Fripp Island that’s just a quick walk to the beach, my mood has already lifted. Just the prospect of having some time to withdraw from cares makes me happy.
The prospect has also made me think about vacations I took with Mom and Dad when I was a child. Even though the cares of adult life and work did not then burden me, I remember how wonderful vacations made me feel. I also remember how our trips lightened the moods of my parents, even though we never traveled very far from home.
Daddy grew up in the mountains of North Georgia, and he loved the mountains so much that when it came time for a summer vacation, he figured the best thing to do was to head farther up into them. That’s why almost every childhood vacation I can remember was in the mountains of western North Carolina.
Maggie Valley was his favorite destination for us. Maggie Valley, if you’re not aware of the place, sits in Haywood County, about 35 miles west of Asheville. I remember it being a tiny town, and evidently it still is. The U.S. Census Bureau says 1,763 people live there.
Dad would book us into one of the small roadside motels, and we would spend a week mostly driving, wandering the Blue Ridge Parkway and taking in the spectacular mountain views or roaming through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I think those two activities alone would have satisfied my parents completely.
But of course, they had a kid to entertain, too. Which meant trips to places like the Oconoluftee Indian Village in Cherokee, where I could talk to members of the tribe and come home with souvenirs like a feathered headdress or a plastic tomahawk.
My favorite destination of all was Ghost Town in the Sky. It’s out of business now, but it was a replica of a Wild West town that sat on top of Buck Mountain. You had to ride an inclined railway to get up there. And every so often, gun-toting Hollywood stuntmen would appear from the buildings and stage gunfights in the street. They were shooting blanks, of course, but they did fall from the roofs of buildings into the street occasionally. Then they would all get up, dust themselves off, wave to the crows and talk to little kids like me.
I didn’t think about it back then, but on those Ghost Town days, Mom, Dad and I were consciously separating the past from the future, as Ms. Angelou advises. And we always came home the better for the experience.
I don’t need to be in the middle of fake gunfights anymore. All I need is what Angelou a day “in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.”
Fripp Island, we’ll see you soon. And we won’t be in search of solutions.
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P.S. If any of y’all have been to Fripp Island and have some tips, we’d love the information. Just leave a comment at the bottom of the story. We’d appreciate it.
]]>When my dad got off the plane in Dallas, Texas, he didn’t know anyone. He had just graduated college, and at 22, had moved far south to start his new job. Not knowing what else to do in the city he found himself in, he went to a baseball game. It was August, and even at 7 p.m. the temperature on the scoreboard read 100 degrees. He got up to visit the concession stand and met a man with gray hair and cowboy boots. My dad, who tends towards being the quiet, listening type, struggled to make out the man’s heavy Southern drawl.
My dad was born in Owatonna, Minnesota, about 60 miles south of Minneapolis and St. Paul, in March 1964. The average high that month for the Twin Cities was 37. He was my grandparents’ firstborn, and he spent his childhood in that small Midwestern town. He and his siblings spent summer days at Lake Kohlmier, or, as they called it, “The Pit.” They shoveled snow, walked to school and got into trouble around town. They went to their Czech grandma’s house and listened to her speak in Bohemian, while the aunts and uncles played cards and cribbage.
When my dad was old enough, he worked for my grandpa as a part of his roofing and heating business, spending scorching summers on the tops of industrial buildings, spreading tar on roofs. In high school, my dad was a cross-country captain and a good student. He was the first in his family to go to college. He attended a Catholic college, Saint John’s University, studying accounting for four years. Then, after a lifetime of cornfields, silos and snowdrifts, he moved south.
Moving south wasn’t a part of his plan. Really, he had no plan. He just wanted a job. So when a company offered him a job he took it — it didn’t matter to him where he ended up. He stayed in Texas for two years, and outside of the weather, it didn’t take much getting used to. He says now that there are a lot of similarities between the South and the Midwest, that both have good, hard-working people. He didn’t move to the South with any expectations of what it should be, or what the people would be like. He just came to work.
After Texas came Georgia. My mom and dad met at work in Atlanta. My sister and I like to hear stories about their office romance, their work friends and my dad’s Smyrna apartment, which had a scorpion problem. But their romance wasn’t entirely conventional. My mom already had three kids when she met my dad, and they weren’t always supportive of their new relationship. My sister, Wendy, once stood in the yard with a sign that said “Go Home Steve!” when my dad was coming over. Now, she says she’s glad he stayed.
My dad didn’t just have to earn the approval of my mom’s kids, though. He also had to earn the trust of the rest of her family, a close-knit group who’d lived in the same part of Georgia for decades. My dad was, in more ways than one, an outsider. He was from the Midwest and he was Catholic, which might as well have made him an alien. Whenever he was at my mom’s house, he felt like her brother and dad, who lived practically next door, were watching him. He jokes now about watching for little red dots around the room, as if my uncle was aiming at him from down the street. My mom’s great uncle, an unreserved World War II vet who always had an unlit cigar in his mouth, once said about my dad, “He’s a pretty good guy, even if he is a damn Yankee and a Catholic.”
But my dad learned to love the South. He learned to cheer for the Georgia Bulldogs and to pull over whenever my mom spotted a Krispy Kreme. He embraced the differences and the similarities that he found between his home state and his new home. He tried biscuits and gravy and okra. (He says that when he first saw okra on the menu at a restaurant, he was clueless as to what it could be, and thought it might be some kind of fish.) As he learned to love the South, my mom’s family learned to love him. Although he would say none of this about himself, people in my family almost put him on a pedestal. He exemplifies goodness, minus his dozens of speeding tickets.
Part of the reason my dad had a somewhat easy transition to Southern living was his mindset — he didn’t come here with any expectations of what the South would be. He didn’t judge people. He kept an open mind, whether he was trying a new food or trying to find acceptance. Through this mindset, he ended up finding more similarities than differences between the Midwest and the South. The similarities of the regions, both made up of spreads of agricultural land and dotted with vibrant, multicultural cities and communities, are often overlooked. It’s not uncommon for them to be left out of the news cycle, or reduced to stereotypes found in movies like “Fargo” or “My Cousin Vinny” — which is my dad’s favorite. He realized both regions were full of good, hard-working people. And he stayed.
My dad has lived in the South now longer than he lived in Minnesota. Sure, he lacks the accent and doesn’t like sweet tea (I don’t either, to be honest), but in my mind, he’s a sort of “honorary Southerner.” He is selfless — he doesn’t hesitate to help where help is needed, whether that’s helping me with math homework or helping me hang up shelves in my room. He is quiet in a good way — he is an attentive listener and is never obnoxious. He’s funny, caring and tough. He doesn’t worry about how others might judge him, because he isn’t one to judge others. It’s these characteristics that make me associate my dad with other Southerners I know and admire. It’s these characteristics that make my dad who he is, and make me grateful to have him as my father.
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But I was lucky enough during the latter part of that stint in New York to find an apartment in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn with a tiny backyard. I bought a Weber charcoal grill — the original 22-inch kettle model — and went to work. I would make my own barbecue.
It did not take me too long to learn it was possible not only to grill meat, but to smoke meat in a Weber. The trick is to build a charcoal fire, supplemented by water-soaked hickory nuggets, on one side of the lower grate, then put the meat you’re barbecuing on the top grate on the other side. Keep the fire low, just smoking, and in a few hours, you’re eating.
I found a little paperback book called “Texas Cooking,” from which I pulled my basting-sauce recipe (mostly butter and lemon juice and spices). I also used the book’s barbecue sauce recipe as the starting point of a series of experiments aimed at creating sauces like the ones I grew up on in Georgia. And throughout my time of barbecuing, I cooked only ribs. With my process and sauce recipes perfected, at least to my own satisfaction. Along the way, I invited many friends into the backyard to eat my experiments.
Among these friends is where the fight started.
Southerners living in New York tend to gravitate toward each other, and along the way, I had become friends with a pair of North Carolinians, Patrick and Jane Day.
They had eaten my barbecue and had told me several times that North Carolina barbecue was different from — and better than — my barbecue. I defended my Georgia barbecue fiercely. Years later, I learned that barbecue experts do argue frequently over whether a thing called “Georgia barbecue” actually exists. Last year, the food journalist Mike Jordan took on the question in a piece for Eater. Here is Jordan’s conclusion:
Georgia barbecue could be seen as amalgamation, taking some of the best of what Southern barbecue has to offer and putting it all on one plate. Georgia touches the borders of four states known for barbecue: Tennessee and the baby-back ribs of Memphis slathered in thick, sweet sauces; South Carolina’s tangy mustard blends; the peppery vinegar sauces of North Carolina; and the zesty mayo-based white sauces of Alabama barbecue.
Whether Georgia has its own distinct style of barbecue is still rightly up for debate, but one could loosely characterize it as super-smoky, pork-driven plates paired with homey Southern sides of mac and cheese, cornbread, and smoked ham-infused collards.
All those years ago in Brooklyn, I knew nothing about these expert opinions, but I danged sure knew that the right barbecue did not have a vinegar-based sauce. Throughout 1989, I argued incessantly with the Days about this until finally we struck a deal. We would throw a party in my backyard. Each of us would smoke some pork and make our own sauces. When we had eaten our fill, everyone in attendance would vote, and we would thus know whose barbecue was best.
Until I began to write this story, I had not spoken to Jane Day in almost 30 years — not because of our barbecue fight, but because that’s how life works when folks move off to different places. But I figured I should call her up to check my facts. It was a delightful conversation.
“So I remember that y'all were telling me that North Carolina was better,” I said to Jane.
“Well, it was the truth,” Jane replied.
It reminded me of the godawful ways we behaved that summer of 1989. The Days and I shared a group of friends, all in our 20s or 30s then, and we ran in a pack. We were constantly together, gabbing about anything and everything, including our upcoming barbecue cook-off. And every time conversation turned in that direction, the sniping would begin.
We drove our friends crazy.
Finally, one of those friends, a good fellow named Bob Meetsma, told us straight-up they were all tired of listening to our arguments and asked whether we might change our tune and just do the barbecue “in a spirit of harmony.”
We tried to be nicer after that. Jane remembered us agreeing that we should both choose the same cut of meat.
“You and I got together — and I'm trying to think who else was there with us, or if it was anybody else — but we got in the car, and we were driving around some neighborhood in Brooklyn looking for this pork market,” Jane said. “It was a Polish pork market, and we were trying to come up with what was the best thing to cook on that grill and we both ended up pork butts.”
Pork butts, in case you don’t know, are the delicious, fatty sources of all pulled pork barbecue. Also, you should know that I had never cooked a pork butt before then. Ribs were my thing.
“And you had a very elaborate plan, from what I recall,” Jane told me. “Do you remember that? You had this very elaborate plan on how the perfect Georgia barbecue was going to be, and it involved a syringe filled with something to baste it with, and you were going to insert this into meat. I thought that was heresy! Why are you doing this? This is not what you do to a piece of pork. God, for the honor of your barbecue, get with it!”
Looking back, I am guilty on all counts. Jane didn’t baste her pork butt.
“I didn't baste anything,” Jane said, “because when you get a pork butt, those things are kind of self-basting.”
I must say, to my credit, that I have never since taken a syringe to a piece of meat.
Then, Jane proceeded to remind me of something I must have blacked out completely. In my mind, for all the years since, I had believed that after Bob Meetsma told us to do the barbecue in the spirit of harmony, we had agreed that there would be no vote on which barbecue was best when the party was over.
I was eager to confirm this with Jane.
“And then we decided on everybody who was going to come,” I said. “But if you came, you'd have to agree not to say which one you liked better, right?”
“We had a contest,” Jane replied.
“We did have a vote?”
“We had a vote.”
“Well, who won?”
“Me,” said Jane.
I already had the ending of this story planned out, something all touch-feely about how we all remembered day when we allowed friendship and harmony to defeat sniping and argument, which is, after all, our ongoing prayer for our nation these days.
But no. That ain’t the truth. I got beat. Fair and square.
Still, I remember that little celebration on Labor Day weekend of 1989. I remember how Meetsma showed up with a painting he had made on an old cabinet door. “Spirit of Harmony Barbecue” has hung on the wall of every house or apartment I’ve lived in since.
And Jane remembers it fondly, too.
“That was probably my favorite party we ever did,” she said. “It was the two of us cooking up food. And you know, it was introducing a bunch of people who thought barbecue was a hamburger to the concept of barbecue, Barbecue wasn't something you're going to see around there, unless you went way out in Brooklyn.”
In other words, we brought the South — all of which can unite around barbecue, if not its particular styles — to our deprived friends in New York City.
The Days have long since moved home to North Carolina. They live in Carrboro. Patrick works for the University of North Carolina, and Jane works for Duke University. And I think we have a precious memory we’ll share until we leave this mortal coil.
As England grew its empire, so grew its enthusiasm for using enslaved African labor. The British families who grew wealthy from the slave trade and slave labor could do it relatively discreetly since most of this part of British commerce occurred thousands of miles away from the grassy meadows of merry old England. They could refer to themselves as West Indian traders and West Indian planters, and it all sounded exotic and modern. It also precluded the milky and self-satisfied countenances of the aristocracy from cringing at the disconcerting crack of the lash while they enquired if their guests would like one lump or two in their tea.
As with all old-blood Southerners, my family was obsessed with knowing our own genealogy — with the not so secret hope of finding a direct line to nobility or royalty. The red dirt patches in the front yard and the poor man’s paint of whitewash on the clapboard siding of the farm house were a little more bearable when you might be the 15th great-granddaughter of a king. My family can trace some of our ancestors to the early 1600s in this country. Certainly some of them were yeoman farmers and indentured servants. A few came with their own wealth or a land grant from the Crown. I have read 17th, 18th and 19th century wills of my ancestors who bequeathed their slaves to their wives and children.
When my 18th century ancestors had enough of British arrogance, they left their wives and children and slaves to take up arms for our independence. But when the founding fathers were writing the Constitution, my ancestors would probably have been the first to howl at the prospect of freeing their slaves. After all, most of their wealth was tied up in land and chattel. As British citizens, they had already become addicted to the institution of slavery, and when they became Americans they couldn’t put the crack pipe down. After all, they grew up with their parents and grandparents telling them that white people were biologically and morally superior to the African, and this order was ordained by God.
Somewhere between America ratifying its constitution in 1788 and the British storming our capitol in 1812, the British got a conscience and decided that the slave trade was bad and that everyone just needed to stop doing it. In 1807, the British raised a pale and uncalloused hand to the world and said, “We’re sorry, but no more fresh stock for you. You must do the best you can with what you have.” And then they proceeded to try to stop everyone in the world from engaging in the slave trade. But really, slavery was still cool to the Brits. After all, they did fancy a sweet from time to time.
By the 1830s, England had decided that slavery was actually no longer cool and that slaves should be freed and reparations should be made. But the truth is, the reparations went to the British slaveholders. In 1834, the British government transferred £20 million from its coffers to the slave owners to compensate them for their loss of chattel. This represented 40 percent of the total government expenditures for that year. This would be about £17 billion pounds, or $23 billion in our own currency. The British taxpayers finally finished paying off the bonds for this in 2015.
As for the freed slaves, they had to spend the next four years working 45 unpaid hours a week for their former masters to compensate them for their own manumission. I guess this seemed like the most sensible thing to do. After all, white people were biologically and morally superior to the African, and this order was ordained by God. And civil wars are just ghastly and make for very awkward garden parties.
So by the time our Civil War was about to break out, my ancestors were crystal clear on the fact that most of their wealth was tied up in land and chattel. I daresay that all of them had personally spoken to a relative who was alive during the American Revolution. And all of them had been told by their parents and grandparents that white people were biologically and morally superior to the African, and this order was ordained by God. I’m sure many of them were spoiling for a fight.
So fast forward to January 1, 1863. Lincoln emancipated the slaves but left it to the slave owners to tell their property about their freedom. In Texas, 250,000 slaves labored for another two and a half years beyond their own manumission because nobody saw fit to tell them otherwise. But on June 19, 1865, Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger, the commander of the District of Texas, issued General Order No. 3, which informed the good people of Texas that slavery in the United States had come to an end:
The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection therefore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired laborer.
Forever after, the day would be celebrated by African Americans as Juneteenth.
Formerly enslaved people at a 1900 Juneteenth celebration in Texas
The 99 years that passed between the first Juneteenth and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were awash with outrage, indignation and lament over the loss of status white people felt for the good old days when everything and everybody were in their proper places. While little old white ladies researched their noble and royal lineages, the oppressed labor of free black men and women allowed them a shabby and hollow simulacrum of how they believed their ancestors lived.
From one generation to the next, white children were told by their parents and grandparents that white people were biologically and morally superior to the African, and this order was ordained by God. They were told these stories at the same time their parents and grandparents told them fairy tales about heroes and endangered princesses. And Santa Claus.
Once a child endures the trauma of learning the truth about Santa Claus, other revelations follow soon enough: There is no happily ever after. Good guys don’t always win in the end. These are harsh realizations that sit like bitter ash in the back of the nose and throat. But the wedding industry has created an empire based on the desire of every little girl to be a princess, even if it is just for a day. And movies don’t become blockbusters if the bad guys prevail and the heroes suffer the ignominy of defeat forevermore.
The dirty little secret of bigotry is that is serves as a psychological safety net for white children and the adults they will become. For a white child, it doesn’t matter how low you and your white trash family fall in the eyes of white society, because at the end of the day you are irrefutably and irrevocably superior to any black person alive. When an idea like that is fixed so indelibly in the minds of children, and bolstered by the adults around them, that belief can be harder to supplant than any sparkly notions they were fed about heroes and princesses. And when you are feeling down and out, exerting your natural born superiority can take the edge off.
Racism is taught to us by people we love and who love us in return. Racism makes white people feel safe and secure. Therefore, racism is going to be around for a very long time.
In 2010, two British researchers started digging into that list of slave holders who were compensated in 1834. They took their findings, created a database and made it public, showing the name of every beneficiary of this act and the extent of their human holdings. I hear tell that there was no small amount of gasping and pearl clutching as one proud Brit after another found surnames similar to their own listed among those who were made whole for their losses. Welcome to the club, y’all. Your dues are paid up and your membership lasts forever.
This week, finally, our own blessed country created a national holiday in remembrance of Juneteenth. Hallelujah. It’s about time. We should never forget. I don’t know if this country will ever make reparations to the people of African descent whose lives, property and opportunities were stolen from them generation after generation. If we do, I hope we portion off a large amount of that number, make two copies of an invoice, march them straight to the black lacquered door of No. 10 Downing Street in London and hand whoever lives there one copy. The second copy can go to whoever is living at Buckingham Palace.
]]>The summers of my childhood were made up of walks down the path to Memaw and Papaw’s house, the Fudge Rounds she’d send us home with and tractor rides through the garden. Summers meant weeding around the cucumbers, camping trips with my cousins and playing Animal Crossing on the Wii when the sun became too hot to bear. Summers tasted like blueberries, blackberries and honeysuckle — the taste wasn’t as good as the pride I found in discovering and plucking them off their branches. In the summers, freshly tilled soil stuck between my toes, leaving the bottoms of my feet red and dusty.
Growing up in the South looked like a lot of things. But it always had something to do with family.
In the fall we’d sit around a cinder-block fireplace in my backyard and listen to frogs and crickets sing as the sun set and stars climbed high into the sky. My uncle and cousins would come down to my house with camp chairs, and we’d roast marshmallows, always burning them beyond the point of being edible.
I’m not much of a talker, but my family has enough personality to make up for my shyness. I always loved listening to them and their crazy stories — sometimes funny, sometimes sad, sometimes straight-up gossip. Sometimes just listening was a relief, knowing I wouldn’t be called on to reply or tell a story of my own.
The promise of seeing family now lures me home from college. I relish cruising down the interstate and watching my exit pop up, and watching the streets transform from something foreign to the sights of home.
My family was the foundation of my childhood, and I constantly recall the memories they gave me and the lessons they instilled in me. Part of growing up in the South, however, meant that everyone was family. My biological family was the first family I ever knew, but as I grew up I found myself in countless more along the way.
My mother and her family are Southern Baptists, but my Catholic father raised me and my twin sister in his church. I found family there, where I’d overhear conversations in Spanish and marvel at the traditional dresses worn by Nigerian parish members.
I also found family in elementary school classrooms, and at the houses of friends who had swimming pools where we could escape the summer heat.
In high school, I found family in the marching band, on the cross country team and in the school parking lot. I found family waiting in line at the gas station after the high school football game, and on the bus home after a track meet. I found family at my favorite park and at graduation parties.
Being at college and away from my hometown, I find comfort in things that remind me of home. The tradesmen — electricians, pipefitters, maintenance workers — who come to the sandwich shop where I work remind me of my Papaw, my uncles, cousins and brothers. When I’m at a gas station and hear an interaction between old friends, it reminds me of shopping with my mom and running into people she knew from her high school. These interactions remind me how closely knit the South is, how the relationships formed here are rich and deep.
While all the little families I’ve found in my hometown keep me coming back, I’ve found family in college, too. I found family at my first University of Georgia football game, in the dining hall and in class GroupMes. I found family at the tiny local grocery store, at the botanical garden and in my apartment complex. I’ve found family with my three roommates and with my coworkers.
Part of the reason I’ve found so many families in my life is because I’ve always been taught to treat people, even strangers, like family. Growing up, I watched my mom bend over backwards to help people — from family to friends, and even strangers. I’ve always been taught to treat a stranger the same way I’d want them to treat my mother, sisters, brothers, nieces, nephews or cousins. I was taught to hold the door, say please and thank you, and treat servers with kindness. I was taught to let people over on the interstate, and to stand up for one another. Really, I was taught that if someone asks you for help, you help them — not with the hope of something in return, but in the hope that maybe one day someone will be there for you when you’re in a time of need.
When you treat people like family, you don’t have to look far to find little families of your own. Most of the time they’re at home — but they’re often found at work or in the park, at the coffee shop you love or at the concert of your favorite band. When you realize all the different families that complete the community around you, anywhere can feel like home. The idea of Southern hospitality can really be boiled down to the mentality of treating people as family. This action defines what being a Southerner means to me.
For a period of time, I was uncomfortable even calling myself a Southerner. Despite the hospitality and welcomeness I always found in the South, I couldn’t ignore the hatred I also encountered. The Confederate flags on the way to school, the insensitive Facebook posts, the stinging political ads and homophobia I heard and witnessed made me want nothing to do with the region. I eventually realized, with time, that I didn’t have to give up my identity as a Southerner in order to be a loving and understanding person. I just had to try and make the South better.
The South, like any place, is imperfect. But it’s also special — incredibly diverse and interesting, full of great culture, food and music inspired by cultures that were left out of the conversation of the South for centuries. It’s no secret that the South has a horrific history. But for generations, Southerners have worked as community leaders, activists, parents, preachers and teachers in efforts to advance our communities — to make them more inclusive and to foster more opportunities for success. I think, and hope, that I speak for my generation when I say that the idea of the “Old South” is dead — we’re just waiting for it to keel over.
My hope for my home state and home region is that we can embrace the communities that live here, so that they may thrive here. My hope is for every Southerner — or transplant, visitor or tourist, for that matter — to feel at home in the South, regardless of color, creed, who they love or what they do for a living.
Being a Southerner means being a part of a family. It means being home.
Using this word made me a hillbilly, a rube, a dummy among my new work colleagues and the few friends I was making. Most of these folks chose instead to use the phrase “you guys” or “youse guys.”
One night, frustrated with my inability to explain my use of the word, I thought back to my early English classes where I learned about pronouns. In our common tongue, there are subject pronouns (used when we speak about ourselves) and object pronouns (used when we are speaking about others). All these pronouns have first-person and second-person versions.
Let’s look first at the first-person pronouns. When I speak of myself as the subject of a sentence — you know, the word before the verb — I use the pronoun “I.” When I speak of myself as the object of the sentence (after the verb), I use the pronoun “me.”
Simple enough, right?
Now let’s look at the second-person versions of those pronouns, the ones I use when I talk about you. When I speak of you as the subject of a sentence, I use the pronoun “you.” And when I speak about you and others, the English books say I am also supposed to use the pronoun “you.”
Say what? Could a language as rich as English fail to manage original words for second-person singular and second-person plural pronouns?
When I realized this, I had ammunition for my fight. Ever after, when my use of the word “y’all” made me the brunt of a joke, I had my answer ready. “Don’t you realize that the English language uses the same *%)# word for its first- and second-person plural pronouns? That makes no sense. We need a second-person plural pronoun that’s different from the first-person. And y’all is the perfect word. It is the missing and much needed second-person plural pronoun that our language needs. And by the way, it also has what I call the ‘plural emphatic’ version — all y’all. As in, *(%# all y’all!”
This argument has been the rock I’ve stood on ever since.
I’m sure I was not the originator of this argument, but I love to see it echoed in the writing of others. In 2019, NPR ran an interview with Catherine Davies, a professor emerita of linguistics at the University of Alabama.
In late 2018, Davies had published a book of essays called “Speaking of Alabama: The History, Diversity, Function, and Change of Language.” In that book, there was an essay titled “A Southern Improvement to the Pronoun System.”
“Well, I would say that Southern English is doing a great job,” she told Scott Simon, the host of “Weekend Edition.”
The two discussed how English evolved into the you/you problem. Davies said that earlier forms of our language had pronouns for both the singular second person (thou or thee) and the plural second person (ye or you). Of course, we all know those archaic words eventually disappeared. And Davies, a New Yorker by birth, made the argument that “y’all” is the ideal solution.
“It seems very useful,” Davies told Simon.
In early 2016, Vann R. Newkirk II, a senior editor of The Atlantic, published an essay called “America Needs ‘Y’all.’”
“‘Y’all,’ that strange regional and ethnic conjunction, offers a simplicity to speech that can’t be found elsewhere,” Newkirk wrote. “It is a magnificently elegant linguistic creation.”
Newkirk’s essay explores the historical factors that led the English language into the you/you problem, and the ways we have improvised solutions for the problem.
That last sentence is my favorite. Y’all is our precious gem.
What do you like about the word y'all? Leave a comment below!
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My grandmother built her yard from plants that she had gotten from someone else — most of the time with their permission. When my mother married into her family, she already had a love of gardening from her own mother, so my mother and my grandmother were often partners in crime, digging up flowers off the side of some backcountry road where property rights don’t really matter so much. The official Southern term for plants that someone gives you from her yard is “passalong” plants. These plants are given in a spirit of hospitality and kinship with fellow gardeners, and they strengthen the bonds of friendship between them for years to come. I don’t know the official term for snatching plants on someone else’s back 40 without their knowledge. Stolen? Pilfered? Felony on public lands? The statute of limitations has run out on their crimes, so I can share these things with you.
When I was growing up, I thought everybody kept a shovel and plastic pots in the trunk. I don’t know how many hours I have spent sitting in a car waiting for my mother to dig up a plant to carry home. The worst was when she actually knew the plant owners and she talked to them for what seemed like hours. Old, old ladies with names like Edna and Mabel and Inez who had yards teeming with irises and jonquils. They were just overjoyed to share their wealth of bulbs and rhizomes and even a few cuttings from their gardenias and hydrangeas stuck in a Mason jar so they would last until we got home. As I got older, I discovered these old ladies were just fascinating to talk to, but when you are 10 years old and sitting in a car under the hot Georgia sun with nothing more than a book you’ve already read twice for entertainment, these visits were interminable.
The worst of the worst was when my mother, grandmother and one of my aunts were traveling together. I melted into the hot and sticky vinyl seats of our Ford station wagon countless times, sitting and waiting in a little caravan of cars parked halfway into the ditch of some red-dirt road while they looked for plants to appropriate. These women garnered strength from their numbers. Bolstered by the fact that there was more than one adult present, they became courageous enough to venture deeper into the snake- and tick-infested woods to look behind masses of scuppernong vines for even more plants to take home. My grandmother would stand on the side of the ditch smoking a cigarette, waving her arm expansively toward the tree line while she explained how it was perfectly fine for us to be here doing this because this was Elrod McSomething-or-other’s property, and our families had known each other for generations.
It was so hot and so quiet out there. When my aunt wasn’t rooting my mother on to venture deeper into the woods — or my grandmother wasn’t explaining how Mr. Elrod’s great-grandfather was double first cousins with her third cousin’s great-grandmother — the deep and humid silence was broken only by the regular coos of a mourning dove or the faint whirr of a car passing on the paved road. These impromptu forest-filching adventures inevitably occurred en route to the yard of somebody named Miss Hilda who lived in the middle of nowhere and shared a common 19th-century ancestor with my grandmother. Needless to say, these visits took a while.
As I got older and discovered my own love of gardening, I came to appreciate the value of passalong plants and the occasional roadside pilfering. When I look at these plants in my own yard, I remember friendships and adventures. I think on fond memories and remind myself to put a trowel and some black pots in my own car for future plant emergencies.
My grandmother always had a saying that you should never thank a person who gave you plants from her yard or the plants would wither and die. You should just promise to take good care of the plants given to you. Given my grandmother’s fractious relationship with facts, I always thought this was something she invented in her fervid imagination to increase the drama of the conversation. It turns out that was actually a real thing that people used to say.
My grandmother passed away 15 years ago, but she can come alive for me in the blink of an eye or the turn of a spade. I’d give anything to be out on a dirt road with her again, smelling the mineral hardness of wet red clay and her menthol cigarettes, while she stood by the ditch and told me her tall tales and which plants to dig up and put in her trunk.
What is your favorite passalong plant? Did you have to sit in the car and wait for your mother to dig up plants? Share your favorite memories in the comments below!
Our story was reprinted on Southern Living's Grumpy Gardner's blog! We were just delighted! https://www.southernliving.com/garden/grumpy-gardener/passalong-plants-memories
]]>Mayberry, of course, is the fictional North Carolina town that was the setting for “The Andy Griffith Show,” which was an enormous hit for CBS from 1960 to 1968. The show has always fascinated me. It was already running when I was born, in 1961, and I don’t remember any other television show from my childhood as vividly as I remember “The Andy Griffith Show.”
Many years ago, a colleague of mine from Louisiana, the now-famous political operative James Carville, told me he believed there was nothing you needed to know about living life that you could not learn by watching “The Andy Griffith Show.” And I think he was right. Sheriff Andy resolved problems through reason and friendliness, not force. He respected everyone in his community, from the oddballs like Briscoe Darling to the drunks like Otis Campbell. For those of us who grew up in towns like Mayberry, the voice of Sheriff Andy still conjures up the voices of parents or neighbors who could set us straight if we got out of line.
I’m not sure that it’s possible, in the 21st century, to grow up in a place like Mayberry. (But if you live in a town you think is still like Mayberry, I’d love to know about it. Heck, I’d love to visit it. Just leave a comment at the bottom of this story.) Still, I believe that for millions of Americans, Mayberry feels like a representation of what is good about our country. Was Mayberry representative of the diversity of Southerners in the 1960s? Of course not. In the entire history of the show, there was only one Black character with a speaking part.
But the experience of community represented by the show crossed racial barriers. When Griffith died in 2012, Rochelle Riley, a prominent Black columnist for the Detroit Free Press, made that case forcefully. Riley grew up watching the show in her hometown of Tarboro, North Carolina.
"My family didn't watch 'The Andy Griffith Show' to count black people," Riley wrote. "We watched to see our way of life, one that included spending hours picking plums in the plum orchard, then sitting under a chinaberry tree eating them, or walking along ponds to collect cattails. I lived in Mayberry.”
I lived in Mayberry, too. In fact, I was Opie. Andy was a widow. My father, Clarence, was a widow, too. Opie was an only child. I was, too. Opie had free rein to wander the streets of Mayberry. I had free rein to wander anywhere I wanted to go in my hometown of Ellijay, Georgia. The only difference was that we didn’t have a live-in housekeeper — an Aunt Bee — in our home.
Not too long ago, I watched several episodes of “The Andy Griffith Show” on the TV Land channel. My fond memories of the show itself did not come rushing back. Instead, it was my memories of my hometown. I remembered how I’d head to my father’s insurance office every day after school, my base for an afternoon of roaming.
One typical stop was Starnes’ Drug Store on the town square. They had a soda fountain, and my standard afternoon snack was a hot dog and a Sprite. I’d wander from there up North Main Street, back toward my dad’s office, and stop at a camera shop owned by a fellow named Walter (if memory serves me correctly). It spurred a lifelong interest in photography. I bought my first serious camera there: a used 35-millimeter Petri 7S. After the camera shop closed, the space was occupied by Willie’s Ellijay Record Shop, where I fed my music habit and spent hours combing through the racks. After a while, I even talked myself into a part-time job there.
Sheriff Andy Taylor and Clarence Reece shared a common problem: the challenge of raising, on their own, young boys. As I watched those episodes of the show and let my memories of growing up in Ellijay flood my soul, it occurred to me that Andy and Clarence didn’t raise Opie and me by themselves. They both had an entire town to help them with the job.
If there are any Mayberrys still out there, the kids who grow up there should count their blessings. They are fortunate indeed.
]]>“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
“She looked at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity.”
“Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.”
“I write to discover what I know.”
“I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.”
“Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.”
“Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it.”
“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.”
“Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.”
“All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.”
“I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.”
“Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it”
“Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.”
“Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better.”
“Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to was never there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place... Nothing outside you can give you any place... In yourself right now is all the place you've got.”
“People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them.”
“She would've been a good woman," said The Misfit, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”
“There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. When he reads a novel, he wants either his sense tormented or his spirits raised. He wants to be transported, instantly, either to mock damnation or a mock innocence.”
“If you don't hunt it down and kill it, it will hunt you down and kill you.”
“In yourself right now is all the place you've got.”
“Only if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of the universe.”
“I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.”
“She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.”
“The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.”
“To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.”
“Total non-retention has kept my education from being a burden to me.”
“I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.”
“A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is.”
“The old woman was the kind who would not cut down a large old tree because it was a large old tree.”
“He loved her because it was his nature to do so, but there were times when he could not endure her love for him. There were times when it became nothing but pure idiot mystery...”
“Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.”
“I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe. I know what torment this is, but I can only see it, in myself anyway, as the process by which faith is deepened. A faith that just accepts is a child's faith and all right for children, but eventually you have to grow religiously as every other way, though some never do.
What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe. If you fell you can't believe, you must at least do this: keep an open mind. Keep it open toward faith, keep wanting it, keep asking for it, and leave the rest to God. ”
“Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not.”
“I love a lot of people, understand none of them...”
“Your criticism sounds to me as if you have read too many critical books and are too smart in an artificial, destructive, and very limited way.”
“If you live today, you breath in nihilism ... it's the gas you breathe. If I hadn't had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now.”
“Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't try to write fiction. It's not a grand enough job for you.”
“You have to quit confusing a madness with a mission.”
“It's easier to bleed than sweat, Mr. Motes.”
“I come from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation. In some this tendency produces hives, in others literature, in me both.”
“The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience.”
“Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place.
Nothing outside you can give you any place," he said. "You needn't look at the sky because it's not going to open up and show no place behind it. You needn't to search for any hole in the ground to look through into somewhere else. You can't go neither forwards nor backwards into your daddy's time nor your children's if you have them. In yourself right now is all the place you've got. If there was any Fall, look there, if there was any Redemption, look there, and if you expect any Judgment, look there, because they all three will have to be in your time and your body and where in your time and your body can they be?”
“All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal.”
“The Catholic novelist in the South will see many distorted images of Christ, but he will certainly feel that a distorted image of Christ is better than no image at all. I think he will feel a good deal more kinship with backwoods prophets and shouting fundamentalists than he will with those politer elements for whom the supernatural is an embarrassment and for whom religion has become a department of sociology or culture or personality development.”
“Most of us have learned to be dispassionate about evil, to look it in the face and find, as often as not, our own grinning reflections with which we do not argue, but good is another matter. Few have stared at that long enough to accept that its face too is grotesque, that in us the good is something under construction. The modes of evil usually receive worthy expression. The modes of good have to be satisfied with a cliche or a smoothing down that will soften their real look.”
“He and the girl had almost nothing to say to each other. One thing he did say was, 'I ain't got any tattoo on my back.'
'Haw, haw,' the girl said politely.”
“There are all kinds of truth ... but behind all of them there is only one truth and that is that there's no truth.”
“To know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility . . .”
“I hope you don’t have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.”
“Your beliefs will be the light by which you see, but they will not be what you see and they will not be a substitute for seeing.”
“Conviction without experience makes for harshness. ”
“Children know by instinct that hell is an absence of love, and they can pick out theirs without missing.”
“Our age not only does not have a very sharp eye for the almost imperceptible intrusions of grace, it no longer has much feeling for the nature of the violences which precede and follow them.”
“Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological. That is a large statement, and it is dangerous to make it, for almost anything you say about Southern belief can be denied in the next breath with equal propriety. But approaching the subject from the standpoint of the writer, I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted. The Southerner, who isn't convinced of it, is very much afraid that he may have been formed in the image and likeness of God. Ghosts can be very fierce and instructive. They cast strange shadows, particularly in our literature. In any case, it is when the freak can be sensed as a figure for our essential displacement that he attains some depth in literature.”
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The Blind Boys have been singing gospel music since 1939. Of course, the members have changed over the years, but the group has never gone out of existence. The group emerged originally from the chorus of the Alabama Institute for the Negro Deaf and Blind in Talladega, Alabama. I can’t wait for the return of live shows, because the experience of seeing the Blind Boys in person is simply transcendent. It feels like you’re going to church, because you are.
There’s a town called Bristol that sits astraddle the Tennessee/Virginia border. Ralph Peer, a record producer from New York City, traveled to Bristol in 1927 in search of “hillbilly” musicians to record. The days Peer spent in Bristol in late July and early August of that year are now called the “Big Bang of Country Music.” Among the musicians Peer recorded was the Carter Family — A.P., Sara, and Maybelle. No other group ever had such broad influence on the evolution of an entire genre of music. Their music transports any listener to the Appalachian mountains, with a sound that’s as timeless as the mountains themselves.
Just as the Carter Family essentially invented country music, there’s a strong argument that jazz would never have evolved as it has without the work of Louis Armstrong. A product of New Orleans, Armstrong emerged as a pioneering trumpeter in the 1920s, and he retained his influence on jazz until his death in 1971. Ken Burns, the documentary filmmaker who produced a multi-episode history of jazz for PDF, once said, “Armstrong is to music what Einstein is to physics and the Wright Brothers are to travel." But I think Armstrong might did something neither Einstein nor the Wright Brothers could do: He brought delight to everyone, every time he picked up his horn.
If you want to go really deep into the roots of American music, the people to help you reside at the Music Maker Foundation in Hillsborough, North Carolina. For more than 25 years, Music Maker has preserved the music of blues, folks, and gospel musicians who were rarely heard outside their own communities. (Bonus: Music Maker also helps these musicians meet their daily needs.) I spent a lot of time rummaging through the vast Music Maker catalog over the last few months, and the most precious thing I found was a woman named Precious Bryant, who was born in Talbot County, Georgia. Her fingerstyle blues picking and her warm voice found a special place in my heart.
There are several places around the South that folks say gave birth to soul music. Muscle Shoals, Alabama, Birmingham, Alabama, Memphis, Tennessee, New Orleans, Louisiana. But too many folks forget to mention Macon, Georgia, the hometown of Otis Redding. In the early 1960s, Redding met Macon record producer Phil Walden, who would later turn Macon into the birthplace of Southern rock with the Allman Brothers Band and others. But to my ears, Walden’s greatest discovery was always Redding — the Big O. He died far too young, only 26, when he died in a Wisconsin plane crash, but he left behind an amazing body of work, all created with a voice that was like no other before or since.
]]>Come check out our list of favorite Southern makers, bloggers and podcasters.
Bonne Terre - https://bonneterrelouisiana.com
Providence Farm - https://www.providencefarmnc.com
Black Southern Belle - https://blacksouthernbelle.com
Mama Steph - https://www.instagram.com/mamasteph_whatsouthernfolkseat
Southern Made Simple - https://www.southernmadesimple.com
Southern Made Simple featured us here!
Reconstruction South - https://www.instagram.com/reconstructionsouth
Coghill Farm - https://www.thecoghillfarm.com
Biscuits & Burlap - https://www.biscuitsandburlap.com
Southern Soil - http://www.southernsoil.org
Southern Spirit Podcast - https://southernspiritspodcast.podbean.com
The Buttered Home - https://thebutteredhome.com
Island Indigo Gals - https://islandindigogals.com
Girls on Film - http://girlsonfilm.biz
Mama Geraldine's - https://www.mamageraldines.com
Pagoda Paper - https://pagodapaper.com
Steel Magnolias Podcast - https://steelmagnoliaspodcast.com
Southern Tribute - https://www.southerntributegifts.com
The Cabro - https://thecabro.com
Southern Hospitality - https://southernhospitalityblog.com
Okra Magazine - https://okramagazine.com
Southern Media
Okra Magazine - https://okramagazine.com
Southern Living - southernliving.com
Garden & Gun - https://gardenandgun.com
Southern Soil - http://www.southernsoil.org
Bitter Southerner - https://bittersoutherner.com
Oxford American - https://www.oxfordamerican.org
It's A Southern Thing - https://www.southernthing.com
Southern Foodways Alliance - https://www.southernfoodways.org
Southern Soil - http://www.southernsoil.org
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