Editor’s Note: There are a hundred stories to tell about the Editorial Staff’s recent sojourn on the Western Shore of America. It will take a little while to sort them out- fractured families, new unified versions, great joy and a lovely bride. This is an image of a proud father and a joyful Groom. A more unified version will follow. In the meantime, Marlow chimes in with his thoughts about joining the Coastal Empire- the East Coast one! But here is the proud Dad and about to be Groom, former brother-in-law Tom at left, Vic and Eric center:
And now, here is a trip to Marlow’s magnificent Coastal Empire!
– Vic
Author’s Note: In contrast to an earlier companion piece on my Coastal Empire First Impressions, I offer up these more deeply marinated, chunky thoughts.
– Marlow
Random thoughts after five years of living in the Coastal Empire
Coastal Empire cotton field
Eating and Drinking
It’s difficult to think anything but the most pleasant of thoughts while eating something made with locally grown, personally canned, Coastal Empire tomatoes during the depths of the following winter. If you’re not careful, it could become an extremely pornographic moment. Pull the kitchen shades down.
I used to think the only way that I could improve upon Georgia’s native drink, Coca-Cola, one of life’s most enjoyable elixirs, which even snooty Northern university studies prove that it heals the sick, cleans car battery terminals, and occasionally raises the dead, was to put bourbon or rye in it. I now consider that to be a waste of Coke, bourbon, and rye. This is the wisdom of old age. So sayeth Marlow. Amen.
Never make love standing up in the kitchen. Your Baptist neighbors might see you through the windows and think you’re dancing. Perhaps, consider pulling the shades down.
One recent behavioral modification nugget of Southern plague wisdom: when drinking in a bar or eating in restaurant, we’d now much rather sit next to a smoke-ring-blowing cigar smoker than a nose-blower.
Southern chili dogs after a long evening session in a pub always bark right back atcha later that night.
Georgia-made Hot Reds for chili dogs
Southern green things: (a) properly fried, leafy ones are alright; (b) okra is acceptable only in its tiniest, uncooked form in a Bloody Mary.
After eating my way multiple times through Savannah’s eateries, who the hell thought inventing and selling frozen fried chicken and instant grits in grocery stores were good ideas?
So, say YES to:
Savannah’s Olde Pink House fried chicken livers,
gizzards, and spinach atop house-made creamy grits
But say NO to:
Mortal violations of all things sacred and Southern
I can’t explain why, but complex ingredient list, sweet, whiskey cocktails are drinks for the inexperienced or folks whose mothers made them practice the recorder or a flute a bunch when they were young. They were the Lord’s special, dutiful types. Real whiskey drinkers are a bit belligerent. “What’ll you have, sir?” asks the bartender. “Bulleit. No water. One rock. No damn fruit.” barks a bourbon or rye drinker.
You can draw on the napkins but never order fruity drinks at Savannah’s Abe’s on Lincoln.
Rye and bourbon are poured honest and fast there.
Down here you gotta pay real close attention to people who drink vodka or gin. Folks who drink see-through whiskey will likely get crazy or are already stark raving mad. Sometimes you’ll hear one tell the bar that they just left home to get a loaf of bread and dropped by for one drink. Three hours will pass, they’re still there. Several weeks later, upon entering the same watering hole for a Friday Happy Hour, you’ll spot them at the rail with a loaf of bread next to their gin rickey. Sit on the stool next to them at your own not inconsiderable risk.
Don’t even get me started ranting about those fools who order Pinot Grigio in our local dive bars. Where the holy hand grenade of hell do they think they are? They despoil these places, where we, the Elect, receive the holiest of holy waters of life everlasting distributed by the high priests and priestesses from behind their wooden altars. Supremely-handed-down-from-the-heavens wisdom spews forth from its communicants’ mouths after our second slug — not happening with some farcical grapey drink from a jug sipped out of a cheap stemmed snoblet . . . why do they think these places are some Campari-land, where the clink of crystal glasses gently mingles with the murmur of the millions of mosquitoes just outside the entrance door and across the river in the swampy-assed state to our north? We got no Disneyland waterfalls in here. Whiskey washes away the worries of us — the world-weary, no designer gin-n-tonics jingle here in some gyroscopic jubilee of mellow. GTFO, you wanking, misguided multitude of do-gooders!
You have not officially lived in the South for US Census purposes until you have bought your jars of booze from a bootlegger from below the counter at an El Cheapo gasoline station at least twice.
Someday before I die, I hope we are seated in a restaurant to hear our server say “Today we have, for appetizers — moules marinières, pâté de foie gras, caviar, eggs Benedictine, tart de poireaux, that’s leek tart, frogs’ legs amandine, and oeufs de caille — little quail eggs on a bed of puréed mushroom. It’s very delicate, very subtle.” We’d order it all and skip the entrees.
Talking
You realize you’re no longer a carpet-bagging Yankee when you start correctly using without thinking the Southern way of talking with nuance. Once converted, we understand that even slight pronunciation changes are required depending on the needs of the story you’re telling. See, for example, naked and nekkid.
To expand further, let us take, for instance, the word redneck — a term that is now terribly abused. Where I came from, as in the South, a redneck was a farmer who worked the fields all day and got his neck sunburned trying to feed his family and the rest of us city perckerwoods. Nowadays, it’s not even honorable or humorous but pejorative. Shee-it, that sucks to the 13th power.
It’s a fruit jar not a Mason jar. Or just a “jar” when it contains shine.
Our card-playing, native Georgian, Bloody Mary making and drinking friends, Art and Grace, across the river have made us to understand there is no such thing as being too Southern. Many vocabulary and pronunciation lessons have been provided to that end during day-long card games while listening to Art’s old jazz record collection. They both have PhD’s in sarcasm, irony, metaphor, puns, parody, and satire.
On Dying
I used to whisper to my girls, when I dropped them off for the fall semester at some distant college, “Don’t forget to call your mother.” Like most of us old farts down here in the Empire, I sure wish I could call mine.
Most of my favorite musicians and singers are deceased. Many mornings I awake not feeling too good for myself. I cheer myself upon realizing that Happy Hour will soon arrive at 5 PM sharp. While I wait, I play their old tunes.
In thinking about this section’s topic, my mind wandered to the 90s, when I retired from active duty in the Navy. I asked myself back then, why I joined the Navy in the early 70s? For the water-skiing and the travel came first to mind. Not for the killing, mind you. I asked them to put on my service jacket: “no killing,” especially if it involved me dying. I wasn’t a total pacifist, though, since I liked breaking shit. I was cool with large tonnage bomb drops, full fields of silo battery intercontinental ballistic missile launches, mushroom clouds, you know, all the standard Dr. Strangelove and conventional Navy Alpha Strike iron bomb stuff.
A lot of people won’t listen to old men like me. A lot of people are stupid.
One last thought: at the end of one’s life, it’s the friends you’ve made and kept close that count as your greatest achievements. True friends are ones you trust to know and keep your secrets. Got a start on that here, but I’m still working on it.
Errata
I think today’s people are a bit too sensitive than we used to be. I can’t even listen to my Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, and Red Foxx LPs and cassette tapes without fearing, even down here, that some nose-pierced, tattooed, and oddly hair-colored outrager might appear on the porch angry-ringing my doorbell. Perhaps all these wanna-be Messiahs’ being difficult is a kind of a trade for them. Look, I’m not saying that the job of being a professional outrager is a bowl of cherries. But, I suppose it’s a living. I mean, you could try marching and waving obtusely worded protest signs and endless digital social media screeds in people’s faces demanding compassion compensation. It’s a damn tough way to make ends meet and support some meme stock investing and online team gaming. However, to sum up, I still can’t recall hearing anyone normal, let alone sane, shout out on the streets or online “Oh, look at the violence inherent and systemic in the system. Help! Help! I’m being repressed.”
Having written about all kinds of things over many decades, one of the few new things left for me to explore is shoes. That means I gotta research and interview people who handle 40 to 50 pairs of strangers’ feet per day. I expect they’ll be drinking a lot to get that day’s rancid-smelling memories out of their skulls, so I expect this piece’s gotta pick a side — working title Savannah Confidential –Stinky Feet or Stinking Drunk.
You know, there are many people in the country at large today who, through no fault of their own, are sane. Some of them were born sane. Some of them became sane later in their lives. Only here in the South do we, one and all, defiantly remain mad hatters to the very end.
In conclusion — man, I do love the South — it still has its sense of place.
Savannah restored and soon to be
Freezing snowy days do not mean turning off our fountains — AP photo Jan 3 2018
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