Last Splash

The gene pool could use a little Chlorine.

Oh, how I love living in the South. Really. I love it. Although Raleigh is a fairly medium-sized city with all the amenities a girl could ask for (pro hockey, great downtown scene, a beautiful park) the nearby towns are really just that perfect, down-home, Americana life that I'm after. We spent Easter with his family, since mine was out of town, and the weather was gorgeous! I took a nap on mother-in-law's porch, we drove around and looked at houses in that area (it's a 45 minute commute but what do I care now that I have a car with an AC and CD player). It was so nice to ride with the windows down and just smell the air...more grass and trees and open land...more driving on all those back-country roads. It's beautiful out there, without being in "the sticks".

Later at the grandmother's house, she was passing around all these old notes and yearbooks she kept from the kids growing up. Let me tell you...I was looking through a 1966 yearbook of 1-8 grades, and spotted more than a couple people I've met. (I was not alive in 1966.)  Family members, cousins of J's mom, I even saw the name of one third grader and said "hey, I think I sat next to him at church this morning". It's really kind of neat...as much as the pace of life has changed, here is this community that is much the same as it was fourty years ago. J's mom lives on a street with pieces of land and houses belonging to two sets of aunts and uncles. His grandparents (paternal) live across the street from their brother and his wife. A set of sisters married a set of brothers...nothing shady going on there, for those of you with that picture of the south...the gene pool was just a lot smaller then...you met people at church, and through your other friends, and if they lived more than 1/2 hour away it was a long distance relationship. So, basically his great aunt is married to his great uncle. They all live in the same place they grew up, which is touching and quaint to me.

I can imagine us settling there and in ten years I might still be "the outsider" because my great-grandparent's farm was one county over, and I grew up in the "city". Well, hey, I may have grown up in the 'city' but we had woods and a swamp behind our house, too, and I pretty much grew up a tomboy b/c only boys lived on my street and we built forts and went to the creek to catch frogs. My dad lived near the coast for a period of his life in a place that we call "Down-East". You may have heard the accent, but most likely it's only presented as the "Ocracoke" accent to you. They are very similar. My dad doesn't have the accent because he was already 9 or 10 or older when they moved there, but he does say "house" like a Canadian. My mom grew up in downtown Raleigh, so she's really the city girl of us all, although I think she's probably the most Southern of anyone.

What's amazing is that everyone else around the country thinks of Southerners as closed in and "yokel", but my parent's and J's family are some of the most well-traveled people I know. Brazil, Germany, Australia, Italy, Alaska, Japan...my dad spends half of his working life in Taiwan. He eats sushi and goes to fancy business dinners, even though he's a big old redneck.

Anyway, back to J's family...anytime you get sent home from Easter with homemade bread pudding (or "plain-boy") and homemade apple butter, you have to count yourself lucky for being from the South!

posted by: Cannonball14 at 13:11 | link | comments (2) |

Comments:

#1  18 April 2006 - 16:50

 

Yeah, but do you guys have pork tenderloins? Best sammiches ever. ;-)

Maybe we can do a cultural exchange...you guys come out here for a week, and I'll go out there for a week.

greeneyes

#2  20 April 2006 - 14:31

 

The country ham biscuits are popular here, but I remember the first time I had a pork tenderloin biscuit. (We don't even sammiches for breakfast down here, we eat biscuits...go back to Bob Evans and try it, with the sausage gravy.)

Cannonball14

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