Fellow Southerners: Let's Talk

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
81

You can’t limit it to the panhandle of Florida (my birthplace, btw).

There are some serious crackers in N. Central Florida, for example, and in the southern swamps. Yes, there’s plenty of Yankee/foreign encroachment on the E/W coast and around Orlando, but not everything south of the panhandle is transplanted.

I don’t consider Texas to be Southern. Texas is Texas. It’s its own thing.

Runs the gamut. We got the non-dancers up in the north part of the state (I’m in GA now) who wear sensible shoes, closet Country Club queens in Columbus, paranoid small-town right-wingers, respectable doctors who keep their secrets close to the vest, hard-drinking tattoo freaks, and you name it.

Flannery and Faulkner, for my money. REM and the B-52s.

We had one family split off and fight for the Union. Some of their descendants showed up at the family reunion one year. They were treated with impeccable politeness. So of course they never came back.

Several ancestors owned slaves, and not just the wealthy ones. It’s a myth that slaves were reserved to the plantations. Many small farmers owned one or two slaves, just as they might own a couple of horses or mules. (Not pretty, but true.)

One interesting tale we’ve pieced together from local records… Just before the explusion of the Indians, my great-x uncle purchased a native man’s home and property for $1, and in the following census this man was listed as my uncle’s slave (and likely his wife and children, too, tho we can’t be 100% certain). After the removal, the man was freed, and his property sold back to him for $1.

Sometimes, things are not what they seem.

My father’s people have been in the South for centuries. On my mother’s side, the Cherokee branch has been here for who knows how long.

Yes, I’m a product of the Cherokee and the whites who took their land. I’m a classic American mutt.

No, not really. I like both, altho I’m mostly a bluegrass person.

I don’t get around enough to hear any questions about my home state.

82

There were also many men, especially in Tennessee and border states (which Tennessee technically wasn’t but essentially was), who served in both armies during the course of the war. Often it was a case of changing sides when captured.

One famous non-southerner/non American by birth who served on both sides was the Brit journalist Henry Stanleywho would one day be famous for asking “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”. He had a horrendous childhood in Wales and England- the stuff of a Dickens novel rewritten by a drunk Jackie Collins (drunken/druggie prostitute mother, continual sexual abuse, grinding poverty, workhouse, more sexual abuse, runaway to find fortune, finds more sexual abuse, etc.) and wound up in New Orleans where he took the surname Stanley to honor his benefactor (who went from “yeah, you’re a good kid… but STOP BEING SO CLINGY!” to eventually “we’re goign to move, pay the servants and the neighbors to tell Henry we died, plant a fake grave if needed, but we’ve got to get rid of that freak!”) and joined the CSA army. When captured at Shiloh he switched uniforms in exchange for his freedom; being Welsh and pretty much new to the U.S. anyway he had no political allegiance and the Union paid and fed better.

The bootlegger (turned legit distillery owner and millionaire) Jack Daniels was a bit young and too tiny to fight in the Civil War (he was 19 by the end of the war but never topped 5’0 by some counts) but his many brothers served on both sides, and some served on both. I’ve done a lot of research on my ancestors who were in Wheeler’s Cavalry Corps (Army of Tennessee) and went on constant raids and missions through the state and it was amazing how one town would welcome them with open arms while the next in the same county might open fire on them; Shelbyville particularly was pro Union in spite of having a large number of wealthy slaveowners.

83

Are you familiar with Judson Mitcham? “Somewhere in Ecclesiastes” is one of my favorite books of poetry.

And then there’s Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Dien Cai Dao” – probably the best war poetry since Auden and Wooster.

84

I remember scribbling in the margins of that book “Fitzgerald was a hack!”

What an amazing writer.

85

Here’s an example I overheard not too long ago at work.

Woman gets off the phone, lets out that percussive sort of sigh that sounds almost like a cough. “They been drivin’ roun’ 285 for the last hour and a ha’f.” (Referring to out-of-state relatives on their way to town – 285 is the Atlanta bypass, and if you’re trying to go through Atlanta to get south of it, where we are, and you get on 285 inadvertently, you can drive forever until you realize you’re going in a circle.)

Co-worker: “Well, bless their heart!”

I don’t think it’s meant as an insult. There’s an element of “There, but for the grace of God go I” to it. It’s tinged with a self-conscious humility.

It means something like, “Well, what do you expect, they just don’t know any better”.

86

Yes, yes, yes, and yes.

87

Sweet Bleeding Jesus, the things I gave up to convert and marry a lovely Jewish woman…My Grandmother’s redeye gravy, made with coffee and ham fat.

88

If I can add a question:

What’s your favorite Southern dish that you just don’t find much outside the south?

For me it’s fried corn. I don’t mean the “battered and deep fried on the cob” abomination but corn kernels- often with a bit of milk and a spoon or so of sugar- pan fried in butter, deliberately allowed to stick to the pan for browning and then being continually stirred until done. It’s something you hardly ever see in restaurants even down here.

Black eyed peas with fatback for sidemeat and served with crackling bread would be close.

89

Fried okra.

Watermelon pickles aren’t a favorite, but they annoy the New Englander Mrs. Plant. :slight_smile:

90

Oh, yes, with coffee. The only way to make it.

You gave that up for love?

Does your wife appreciate what you…

No, wait. Of course she doesn’t.

You are a saint.

91

Cornbread.

Corn bread.

Not corn muffins.

Cornbread ain’t dessert. It’s bread, for God’s sake!
Greens. Triple washed and cooked with streak-o-lean, sauced with pickled peppers. I’ve never seen them outside the South.
(When I was a kid, we had 5 condiments on the tables at my school luchroom: salt, pepper, ketchup, mustard, and peppers pickled in vinegar. Your choice of bread was cornbread or biscuit.)
Maybe they have this elsewhere, but if so, I don’t know. Where I live, on the counter at the corner store you have jars of pickled eggs and pickled pigs’ feet.
Country ham, cat-head biscuits, and sawmill gravy. You can get it at any self-respecting biscuit shack, the kind that open well before dawn during deer season.
Black eyed peas with chow-chow.
Chickory coffee.

92

I’ll leave the Creoles and Cajuns out of this…

[ul]
[li]Biscuits that are worth a damn (they are not just for breakfast) and the gravy to go with them. And that gravy can have a spectrum of flavor, depending on what kind of pan drippings it was made from. Everything from spicy pork sausage, to fried chicken, to country fried steak, etc.[/li]
[li]Coconut Layer Cake at Christmas[/li]
[li]Mississippi Mud Pie[/li]
[li]Banana Pudding[/li][/ul]

93

When you get the corn at the peak of ripeness, you don’t need cow’s milk. The corn makes its own milk as you scrape it from the cob. You catch that and fry it all together. Restaurants don’t serve it b/c it’s too much work. You can only get that at home. And of course my mom always makes me shuck the corn. She didn’t go to all the trouble of bearing and raising boys just to be stuck with that job! When you go home and you’re told to scrape corn, you say “Yes’m”.

94

I may start another poll thread in this.

Cornbread: Sugar, yes or no?
and, where are y’all from?

Sugar in cornbread, for God’s sake, no.
Arkansas.

95

Depends on the cornmeal

White - absolutely not
Yellow - just a touch

Grew up in NE Tennessee

96

There is a new sig for me in that post…

97

Absolutely no.

Furthermore, if you want to make it right, you heat the iron skillet first, so that you get a crispy crust when you pour in the batter, which seals in the moisture.

I have a square iron skillet just for cornbread. I also have my grandmother’s cast-iron corn stick pans.

98

Don’t know if it’s the term everywhere in the south, but where I grew up we call cornbread with sugar ‘Yankee cornbread’…

[Piper Laurie as Carrie’s mom]"AND I LIKED IT!!![/PLaCm]

Actually I like both Yankee and Southern cornbread. My absolute fave is the triangular cut piece buttered with real butter when it’s still smoking hot from a cast iron skillet- one of life’s truly great pleasures.

I stock up on corn meal and grits whenever go through north Georgia where there are still a few mom & pop grist mills left. You can so tell the difference; you can actually taste the corn in the grits for example.

99

Since Ogre isn’t in here I don’t think he’d mind me telling that one of the worst moments in the history of his family was when an in-law who “knew not our ways”- and with the best of intentions- dunked the century old multigenerational cast iron skillet in soapy water. For those not familiar with the heirloom cast iron skillet, think “taking the grail past the great seal”.

100

My Grandmother…who came her at 13 from Illinois…wow, I don’t remember how she did it. I think she preheated the skillet in the oven and then put it on the burner. When it was indeed quite hot, she poured the batter in, I tought to brown it, but probably to seal it as you mention, and then put it back into the oven.