My sister married a Southerner nearly five years ago. He was definitely a gentleman, but I could tell that when he moved to Idaho to become her husband, his heart was still in good ol’ Rocky Top. It was only a matter of time before his discontent with life outside of the area of former succession would spill over and he would be compelled to move back to his homeland. My sister managed to move from Idaho to Tennessee, which I often wonder, was a lateral or horizontal motion. For some reason, the girl seems to be fond of areas that contain a multitude of hicks, and I’m not sure why.
In honor of the birth of her first child, my sister asked us to come visit her in the South. I’m more than happy to oblige, because there’s nothing quite like realizing that the kid you tortured in your youth is suddenly a momma, and that you must make friends for life with that new baby, because you have a desire to continue torturing your sibling well into adulthood. I can’t wait until Savanna becomes a little rebellious, and I can send her gift cards for Hot Topic and give her advice on how to properly dye her hair blue. It will be my adult way of sitting on my sister’s chest and letting that line of spit nearly drop on her face before slurping it up.
Tuesday morning, Rachael and I are off to one of the last states in America where you can legally marry your first cousin. I’ve never been to the South, except for Florida, and that was just to go to Disney World, so it doesn’t count. I can’t wait to see if all of my suspicions about this area are true. I’ve heard so many things about the racism, the resentment of those who are not from the South, the many extreme uses of pork products in the Southern diet, and of course, there’s Graceland.
Munchkin Pants and I will be flying into Nashville where we will rent a car, meet up with my stepdad and brother, and drive two and a half hours to my sister’s tiny town. She lives in a town where there are five churches, a Sonic burger joint, and not much else. She has to drive 25 minutes to shop at a grocery store, and 45 minutes to get to a clinic that will prescribe emergency contraception. Her husband has cousins upon cousins, and in this town she found out that she is related to both the town asshole who's always in jail and the upstanding sheriff who is always putting him there.
Jeff is using his new business as an excuse to forego a Southern adventure, which is okay with me, as long as he’s aware that I will be taking the weekend I return off to enjoy a spa somewhere. Rachael has been flying at least every couple of months since she was just 12 weeks old, so in her short life she has clocked more air miles than most adults. I don’t anticipate a negative flying experience on Tuesday, and hopefully I’m right. The long-assed drive might be a bit touchy, but at least I have a portable DVD player and a half dozen Dora the Explorer discs.
As for the upcoming Tennessee experience, I might be wrong in my presumptions that I’m going to a racist, backward area of the U.S. where inbreeding is as much of a sport as eating gargantuan amounts of pork, but we’ll see. I’ll have a chance to explore Memphis, where my sister will take me shopping, hopefully not just to Wal-Mart, and on the last day of our visit, we will all fly out of Nashville, so I’ll peruse Sun Studios (the original home of the early rockabilly movement) and Graceland. I can’t wait to see the house that Elvis built. When a hillbilly comes into money and uses it to pay for something called a “jungle room” it’s worth the charge of admission.
I have no affinity for any modern country music, but it might be neat to see the Grand Old Opry, where Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn and Hank Williams performed. They were the real soul of country unlike that Faith Hill/Shania shit that’s plopping off of Hot Country radio nowadays. We’ll probably wind up at a barbecue joint or two, which is fine by me since I won’t be able to eat most of anything they will have to offer down South. As someone who foregoes all things pig, I look forward to my weeklong Southern Diet Boot Camp.
Thankfully, my week in Tennessee will culminate with a week in Southern and Northern California where I can regain perspective. It’s kind of wild to think that in one day, I will wake up in Tennessee and go to bed that night in California, but what will be even better will be the opportunity to live in two completely different worlds all in one day. This is the type of entertainment that you can’t pay for, which is what I’m hoping from my Tennessee experience. Everything I’ve heard might be true, and if it is, I’ll be more than happy to tell you about it in graphic detail as soon as my adventure is through.
6 comments:
Just in case you must nosh: Kosher restaurants in Memphis. Enjoy your trip.
Arie's Grill & Deli
5545 Murray Rd, Suite 150 (901) 767-9659
Schnuck's
Truse Parkway
(901) 682-2989
Ok, so I live and have lived in TN most of my life. And, yes, it often sucks. There is racism, sexism, homophobia, radical ridiculous right-wing Christians who help breed religious intolerance. It can be a very hard place to be a liberal, progressive open-minded person. But, that is not all that is here. And to write us all off as hillbillies, particularly when visiting the Deep South, non-mountain western part of the state rather than the mountainous Appalachian region of the East, is to fall into the same trap that continuously paints all of our state, and region, as ignorant inbreeders simply because we are poor, isolated, and proud people. It is buying into mass commercial crap that does not know who we are and ignores the unique cultures that have flourished under the weight of poverty, wealthy outsiders who come in and destroy small farms and small towns, segregation, and horrible coal and timber companies that rape our land, leaving the locals with nothing to return home to. We are no more the Beverly Hillbillies or Hatfields and McKoys of popular culture that the Frito Bandito was Mexican culture or Sambo represented African American life. I hope you enjoy your time in the state that helped bring to birth bluegrass, blues, and jazz.
It sounds as if you are the one who "pre-judges" people and cultures. I have lived in TN most of my life and found what you say about my heritage to be untrue and inacurate. You surly do not beleive everything you see one tv., that television not transvestite. (Since you are from CA I guess I need to clarify.)
My, such hypocrisy in that last comment, eh?
"YOU'RE the judgmental one, but since you're from CA, "TV" means transvestite to you lolhahahaomg."
Christ, that's exactly the kind of closed-minded, anti-intellectual generalization that serves to feed into those nasty southern stereotypes the commenter was supposedly railing against. Not to mention the spelling and grammar is terrible, which does a hell of a job of serving to perpetuate the rumors pertaining to the general IQ of the region. Fine job there, kiddie.
Sorry, my snarkiness comes out in spades when people trying to make a valid point make a mockery of themselves like that. Get your damn ducks in a row before you enter into verbal sparring, y'know?
pffft.....HO HO HO HO. ignorant inbreeders!!! :D six-toed mongols abound! preserve our precious state! you comedian, you.
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