Andy A.

This piece, written by a Southerner, is a great expression about the place I now live.


MY SOUTH!


This was written by Robert St. John, executive chef and
owner of the Purple Parrot Cafe, Crescent City Grill and Mahogany Bar
of Hattiesburg, MS.

Thirty years ago I visited my first cousin in Virginia.
While hanging out with his friend, the discussion turned to popular
movies of the day.

When I offered my two-cents on the authenticity and social
relevance of the movie Billy Jack, one of the boys asked, in all
seriousness; 'Do you guys have movie theaters down there?' To which I
replied, 'Yep. We wear shoes too.'

Just three years ago, my wife and I were attending a food
and wine seminar in Aspen, Colo. We were seated with two couples
from Las Vegas.
One of the Glitter Gulch gals was amused and downright rude
when I described our restaurant as a fine-dining restaurant.

' Mississippi doesn't have fine-dining restaurants!' she insisted and
nudged her companion. I fought back the strong desire to
mention that she lived in the land that invented the 99-cent breakfast
buffet.

I wanted badly to defend my state, my region, and my
restaurant with a 15-minute soliloquy and public relations rant that would
surely change her mind. It was at that precise moment that I was hit with
a blinding jolt of enlightenment, and in a moment of complete and
absolute clarity it dawned on me -- my South is the best-kept secret in the
country. Why would I try to win this woman over? She might move down
here.

I am always amused by Hollywood's interpretation of the
South. We are still, on occasion, depicted as a collective group of
sweaty, stupid, backwards-minded, racist rednecks.. The South of movies and
TV, the Hollywood South, is not my South.

This is my South:

My South is full of honest, hardworking people. My South is the
birthplace of blues and jazz, and rock n' roll. It has
banjo pickers and fiddle players, but it also has BB King, Muddy Waters, the
Allman Brothers, Emmylou Harris and Elvis.

My South is hot. My South smells of newly mowed grass. My South was kick
the can, creek swimming, cane-pole fishing and bird
hunting.

In my South, football is king, and the Southeastern Conference is the
kingdom.

My South is home to the most beautiful women on the planet.

In my South, soul food and country cooking are the same thing.

My South is full of fig preserves, cornbread, butter beans,
fried chicken, grits and catfish.

In my South we eat foie gras, caviar and truffles. In my
South, our transistor radios introduced us to the Beatles and the
Rolling Stones at the same time they were introduced to the rest of the
country.

In my South, grandmothers cook a big lunch every Sunday, so
big that we call it dinner (supper comes later).

In my South, family matters, deeply.

My South is boiled shrimp, blackberry cobbler, peach ice
cream, banana pudding and oatmeal cream pies.

In my South people put peanuts in bottles of Coca-Cola and
hot sauce on almost everything.

In my South the tea is iced and almost as sweet as the
women. My South has air-conditioning.

My South is camellias, azaleas, wisteria and hydrangeas.

In my South, the only person that has to sit on the back of
the bus is the last person that got on the bus.

In my South, people still say 'Yes, ma'am,'
'No ma'am,' 'Please' and
'Thank you.'

In my South, we all wear shoes....most of the time.

My South is the best-kept secret in the country.

Please continue to keep the secret....it keeps the idiots away!
--
Be yourself- everyone else is already taken.

__________________
Congress only does two things well...Nothing at all and overreacting.

DD

Love this!

__________________
I love Jesus, but I drink a little. ~Gladys




DD, I toad you it was pucking hot.~~Kitty

cp

Robert St John's Purple Parret rules!!!! He and Wyatt Waters (watercolor artist from Clinton Ms) have some wonderful cook books also. I'll try to find a link.

sunspotbaby

Yep, that sounds like home.

__________________
Don't confuse having less with being less, having more with being more, or what you have with who you are. Noah benShea

30A Skunkape

Thanks, Andy.
My south was swinging on a rope tied to a moss draped oak toward a plunge into black water in the summer.

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goofer44

Andy, great article.
Makes me think about the south where I was born....the South Bronx in NY. I don't remember it as the Bronx that was depicted in the film Fort Apache. My south was Little Italy on Arthur Ave....Yankee Stadium....The Grand Concourse...and some of the best Kosher Delis and Chinese restaurants on the planet. Close families...Sundays at Grandma's with all my cousins and Aunts and Uncles. Those were great memories. BTW the South Bronx is having a resurgence.

__________________
No good deed goes unpunished.

Miss Kitty

...is this a great country, or what???

__________________
The mind is like a parachute, it works best when it is open.

traderx

As Lewis Grizzard said:

American by birth;
Southern by the Grace of God!

aleonard

The peanuts in the coke really hit home. Some of my best memories are of me and my mom, when I was little, was sharing a small bottle of coke on the back porch with peanuts in them. Thanks for reminding me of those times, Andy A.

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Purvis

Hey Y'all! I'm from the Hattiesburg area(have lived here in Sowal for 3 yrs...yea!) and have had the pleasure of working for Robert St. John for several years in two of his businesses. He worked his way up from busboy to successful business owner & author. He's a stand-up guy and as you can tell, very passionate about the south. My sister just happened to e-mail My South, II yesterday and I thought y'all might like the continuation.

My South ~ II
by Robert St. John

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~~In my South everyone waves.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~~My South has bottle trees.

~~In my South we give a firm handshake.

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

~~My South is oleander and honeysuckle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~~In my South the dogs are still scratching.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Miss Kitty

well, damm...this is the thread of the day!

__________________
The mind is like a parachute, it works best when it is open.

Andy A.

Thanks again, Purvis. I asked my wife, a Louisiana Coonass, what the difference between yams and sweet potatoes was and she told me right off! I didn't know there was a difference. Thanks for the sequel and a great post!

__________________
Congress only does two things well...Nothing at all and overreacting.

Minnie

Love, love, love banana pudding.
DD, that one is for you.

__________________
"A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes." Gandhi

DD

I love Part II as well!!

__________________
I love Jesus, but I drink a little. ~Gladys




DD, I toad you it was pucking hot.~~Kitty

traderx

I visited some friends in the People's Republic of Massachusetts a few years ago. My buddy said that for dinner he was going to get out the BBQ and BBQ some steaks. I asked: so, are we having BBQ or steaks? He said, no I am going to BBQ steaks on the BBQ.

Of course I was dumbfounded because in the South, BBQ is always and only always a noun and always refers to pork which has been ceremoniously smoked in a fire pit fueled by oak and hickory wood. He had to actually show me what he meant. He got his grill out of the backyard storage building(we discussed why he hides his grill in the storage building instead of leaving it on the deck where it belongs but that is nutter whole story in itself) and said: This is a BBQ. I am going to put charcoal inside it, light it and BBQ steaks on it.

I had no choice but to launch into a lecture. Look pal, we share our grilling technology with you and y'all cannot even keep the nomenclature straight. The thingy you got out of the storage building is a grill. There are specialized versions of grills called smokers but they are never called BBQ's. When you use a grill to cook steaks, you are grilling steaks, not BBQ them. In the South where BBQ is a religion, BBQ is a noun and always refers to the finished food product that you eat.

Then I told him that the Spanish in Florida invented BBQ. Look it up in your history book. It was Bubba Cortez and Rusty Santiago. So I told him: keep abusing what we share with you and we are going to shut you down.

He burned my steak.

Gypsea

Purvis! Keep 'em coming.

Miss Kitty

I need a bottle tree, Master Gardener!

__________________
The mind is like a parachute, it works best when it is open.

30A Skunkape

Shall we start one in Watercolor?

__________________

DD

Why, yes you do. I'll start saving bottles. I think some of our friends are saving them too. Right, friends?

Just tell me where to take the bottles...Dallas or WC.

__________________
I love Jesus, but I drink a little. ~Gladys




DD, I toad you it was pucking hot.~~Kitty

Gypsea

I suggest a certain porch in WC.

30A Skunkape

I agree, we need to 'fancy-up' Watercolor

__________________

Miss Kitty

genius!

both

maybe they should all be bottles from sowal?

you'll do that and then I will come back and ruin all your work.

__________________
The mind is like a parachute, it works best when it is open.

DD

I need specs.

__________________
I love Jesus, but I drink a little. ~Gladys




DD, I toad you it was pucking hot.~~Kitty

traderx

Here's an inspiration...

DD

LOVE THESE!!!
Drink up my friends!! Kitty and I need you!!

__________________
I love Jesus, but I drink a little. ~Gladys




DD, I toad you it was pucking hot.~~Kitty

cp

thats what I call a bottle tree forest!

cp

Purvis!! So glad to have a native Southern Mississippian on the board. I grew up in Petal.
keep posting!

cp

http://www.robertstjohn.com/store/28...late-cookbook/ A link to this cookbook.

MissCritter

The only line I might take exception to. On the other hand . . . I guess flip flops are shoes.

Great essays. Thanks!

__________________
The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain

Miss Kitty

OMG....the one at WC needs a SoWal.com sign on top! Or a can of bean dip!

__________________
The mind is like a parachute, it works best when it is open.

Miss Kitty

I just got some new ones at Lenscrafters...you are going to just fall on the floor at my feet when you see them.

I know that meant measurements...I don't do numbers.

__________________
The mind is like a parachute, it works best when it is open.

hnooe

I think all part of the country are unique and important; West Coast, East Coast, Mid west and the South. I have lived in all 4, I consider myself very well rounded as a result.

Expand your vision of the whole country, and you expand your vision and understanding of yourself and the World.

Just as a for instance, I spent today in a rotting boat fishin' for Catfish near Dothan, Alabama Fla.with a folk painter named of, god of all things, "Hoot..."

I would not trade this beautiful day for any of the nights I spent doing lines (not the ones outside) in Studio 54 in NYC in the late 70's.....

Perspective, eventually makes all elitists, rednecks; and all rednecks, elitists.
Naivete is always the starting point.

Minnie

I like this one.

__________________
"A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes." Gandhi

traderx

That's purdy!

Now, where is my BB gun?......

Minnie

That would be very bad Karma, especially to a Bottle Tree blessed with the Delta Blues harmonica blessing.

Voodoo might get you.

__________________
"A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes." Gandhi

cp

I have a friend that lives out in the country from Natchez around Chruch Hill Very old place. Infact there are so many old plantations on the road it is known as the"little river road"
Anyway,her bottle trees are along her 1/2 mile driveway which is a very old road bed with high banks and moss covered trees and her bottle trees all have vodoo dolls on them.

Miss Kitty

...new thought...Tapa Boca and other various candles from skunky, punzy and jdarg!

__________________
The mind is like a parachute, it works best when it is open.

Gypsea

New idea for you MK. We went biking today and had lunch at the Doublewide Grill here in the 'burgh: http://www.doublewidegrill.com/. If you click on this link and watch the video carefully you will see beer bottle light fixtures above the booths. It could be a new look for your condo and will not take as many bottles as a bottle tree! The girl in the video has a pretty sorry fake southern accent.

traderx

How does that song go.....instant Karma's gonna get you?

Something like that.

I never outgrew the boyhood shoot-everything-with-a-BB-gun phase. But maybe if Karma is going to hunt me down with a Greyhound bus....

Santiago

I've actually seen one in Watercolor.

jdarg

I am lighting that candle today and praying that it works.

30A Skunkape

Did somebody mention pulling the car over during a funeral procession?

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goofer44

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOoSck8ghx0

__________________
No good deed goes unpunished.

Miss Kitty

...now, that'll class up the joint! I have a new idea for the f balcony...a mini bottle tree to sit on the table. I really don't have much room for all the furniture we crammed on it...and I need a centerpiece, since hk or a renter stole ot took away my driftwood I found.

...where?

light it again!

is this thread dying?

__________________
The mind is like a parachute, it works best when it is open.

Here4Good

When we came through Atlanta on Saturday, there was a funeral procession on I-285; the deputies stopped the traffic completely when the procession entered the freeway, then drove straddling two lanes right behind the hearse so that no one could pass, while the procession drove in the far right lane. Never seen that before.

When my sister-in-law died, her procession pretty much shut down Denham Springs. We passed a house where two workers were putting a new roof on, and they stopped what they were doing on the roof, went down on one knee and took off their hats.

I cried like a baby.

Minnie

Baby Bottle Tree


small tree

__________________
"A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes." Gandhi

cp

have you notice that it is rare when a thread stays on the orginal topic?

LuciferSam

I think there's a thread that deals with that issue.

traderx

There is but incredibly it also got off topic.

Andy A.

Exactly what I was thinking just before I read your post.

__________________
Congress only does two things well...Nothing at all and overreacting.