I’ve lived in Georgia and Alabama since 1974. I was nine when we moved here during Christmas break. I want to describe life here, so people who don’t live here won’t think we’re all uneducated hicks…then again maybe you will, but if you do, I can tell you with certainty that we don’t care.
I’ve lived in both large and small towns. The large towns are, for the most part, pretty much like any other large town in other parts of the country. There’s ethnic, racial and economic diversity, opportunity for employment, even lemongrass in the grocery store sometimes! Small towns have diversity as well; it’s just usually not culinary diversity. That’s another topic, though.
One thing this town does right, and I mean that in all sincerity, is the Parade. It’s not a Christmas parade, it’s for the Fair. Yes! We have a week-long fair here, complete with livestock competitions, quilting contests, and a Brunswick Stew cook-off. Brunswick Stew is a regional delicacy, thick with finely chopped vegetables and any sort of meat from beef barbeque to possum and raccoon. Everything is chopped fine so as to remain anonymous, and richly seasoned with barbeque sauce and A Secret Blend of Herbs and Spices. Everyone has their own recipe.
The Fair Parade is on the second Monday of October. Everyone who’s anyone is in it: marching bands, the John Deere Antique Tractor Club, the Allis-Chalmers Antique Tractor Club, the Massey Ferguson Anti…oh, you get the picture. Then there is the Contemporary Tractor Societies: John Deere, International, and Kubota. This town has two custom motorcycle companies, those guys that make the big funky choppers. Anyone in the area who owns one is in the parade. It’s remarkable, 35-40 grey haired men who’re probably accountants and dentists roaring around wearing chrome Kaiser helmets with fake braids hanging out the back.
Beauty pageants are huge around here. I imagine they are elsewhere as well, but I can only speak for here. Every beauty princess/queen between Macon and Savannah is in the parade, riding on the back of their uncle’s ’96 Corvette convertible, or on the front of their boyfriend’s Polaris 4-wheeler. Around here we have Teeny Miss Cotton Patch (age eighteen months to two years), Little Miss Corn Pone (three to five), Young Miss Rural Electrical Cooperative (nine to eleven) and Miss Turpentine (seventeen to eighteen, in running for Miss Georgia and hopefully Miss America). Those are the ones I can remember. They all look the same, with the exception of the Teeny Miss Whatever, who’s usually bawling at having to wear that ridiculous dress and wondering why the heck she can’t carry her Elmo doll? The girls are uniformly blonde, hair poofed within an inch of its life (no smoking please or it will go up like excelsior in a lightning storm), and some ridiculous dress full of sparkles and frou-frou. Mama is close behind, admonishing her beautiful doll to sit up straight and for God’s sake SMILE! The girls are doing that silly wave, hand straight up and cupped, turning like a little radar dish seeking approval from the crowd. Oh I know, I should stop being so critical and all. Those girls just want a scholarship.
Nearly last in the parade are the horses. Endless horses, as riding and rodeo are important around here. Most people are dressed Western, with the horses in colorful saddle blankets, but sometimes someone will get their courage up and ride English, in pinks and tall glossy boots and a top hat. That gets remarks. They are followed by a sheepish fellow with a bucket and scoop. I don’t know if he’s doing community service for flashing someone, or if he just drew the short straw.
The parade is the Great Social Equalizer, with bank president and Qwik-Stop clerk sitting side by side. Everyone goes, everyone brings blankets and dogs and buckets of Bojangle’s chicken. Enterprising young people troll around with coolers of cold drinks for sale, and every politician in this quarter of the state is glad-handing and kissing babies. Businesses are handing out coupons and free samples, teenagers are slouching around, trying not to look like they’re enjoying themselves.
The parade is an important part of this town, and the fair that follows is so very important that they just go ahead and let school out for the week. They might as well.
Another important aspect of life around here is Hunting Season. Let me say right off that I have no interest in hunting. I like game meat, but I have a constitutional inability to eat anything that looked at me. I can’t even eat a fish that I’ve caught. I really don’t even like swatting a bug. Well, unless it’s a cockroach, I have no problem stomping those. Anyway, life for many people around here (mostly men, but a fair number of women as well) begins on September 1. That’s the opening day of dove season. Have you ever heard a house being built, that staccato sound of hammers on plywood? That’s very much what small-gauge shotguns sound like from a distance. On the first day of dove season it’s like someone is building a whole subdivision over on the north and east sides of town,6 solid hours of continual *bambam*. You’d think the birds would go somewhere else, but then doves are just little pigeons, and not known for their intellect.
After dove season comes quail hunting, at Thanksgiving. Here’s how it happens. The men stay out of the way while the women cook Thanksgiving dinner. Everyone eats at noon, and the women clean up while the men ages 10 and up go out to the fields and hunt quail. The women don’t mind because the men are out from underfoot, and the men don’t mind because they have tacit approval to go outside and shoot things. Personally, I remember offended by this because I’d much rather shoot a gun than wash a pot. Alas, it was men only, though, at least for that day.
Now, not all men hunt. My father doesn’t hunt, because he is a veterinarian and killing an animal for sport goes against his nature. My husband doesn’t hunt, he used to but now he doesn’t because he’d rather watch the race or play golf. As long as a man has an adequate substitute for hunting, he’s not considered a pansy if he doesn’t partake. No one would ever consider my husband a pansy because he’s 6’3″, weighs 250 pounds, and is probably their boss. If a man can fix a car or bench press an obscene weight, or noodle a catfish, or eat a habanero pepper without cursing, then he can get away without hunting.
*an aside* “Um, what is catfish noodling?” I’m glad you asked. It’s a sport. Here’s how it works: Several grown men drink an entire case or two of cheap beer from cans while sitting on the dock of a lake. Then, one of them says to the others “damn…I’m hot. Let’s get in the water.” So they do. Then another one says “hey y’all let’s noodle!” And no, it’s not what it sounds like. You’ve been watching too much South Park, I think. So, each man finds a bit of lake bank. Rocky bits are the best, with the jutting overhangs. Then he reaches under the overhang, searching for a nook or cranny under the water, feeling around blindly, hoping the others won’t notice how nervous he is about maybe grabbing a water moccasin (a mean and poisonous snake) or a beaver instead of the hoped-for catfish. If he’s lucky, he’ll feel him a fish, grab it by its big prickly mouth or gills while carefully avoiding its barbs, and pull it out. He has to be careful, because catfish can get upwards of 100 pounds, and the big ones are quite capable of swallowing your arm and pulling you under. Now, notice I used the masculine pronoun through this description. There’s a reason for that. Women have more sense than to go reaching in dark corners, even when drunk on Bud. That’s catfish noodling. I’ll leave the judgments up to you. And remember, what’s really fun about this is that a catfish will talk to you. Toss it up on the bank and it will sit there and grunt. “Errnk errnk”
So, hunting and related outdoorsy animal type sports are big around here. Camouflage clothing can be bought just about anywhere, with boutiques offering infant and toddler sized camo. It’s not uncommon to go to Wal-Mart and see entire families wearing Mossy Oak, purchasing large boxes of shotgun shells and clay pigeons, deer grunts, doe pee, and beef jerky. People put camouflage paint on their trucks, because if they do, then the deer won’t smell the diesel fuel or cigarette smoke. No one thinks twice about any of it.
That’s the South, my part of it anyway.