Rainy Mornings And Musings From The Front Porch

Sheila Hill Colston

Yesterday, I sat on a car seat on the porch and watched it rain. Well, it actually wasn’t a car seat..it wasn’t even a truck seat, but it might as well have been, for I was feeling REAL southern!

Look, I had four dogs at my feet, a cup of coffee, had on my pajamas and fuzzy house shoes (we don’t call them slippers here), and I had just pulled two tomatoes off a plant, wiped them off on my pajama leg, and was eating them like an apple.

I found myself humming, “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” and hollering “ANKH!” once in a while if a dog stepped on my foot or tried to lick my tomato. My Momma would be so proud.

Now, there’s people who live “up North.” I know, because I have been there and met them. I even lived there twice. I was a little scared at first, because my Momma had warned me that you couldn’t get iced tea in restaurants, their beans were not white, and that they don’t take kindly to cutting up green onions on all your food, including scrambled eggs.

So, I was sitting on the porch, pretending it was a car or truck seat… red, might I add.

I was worried about northern people. Down here, we just say “southerners” but when we refer to northerners, we sometimes say “bless their hearts” because we know they are suffering from several afflictions, one of them being they don’t understand when we say things like “over yonder”, “I swanny”, “you can’t cuss a cat in here”, or “crooked as a dogs hind leg.”

I know they beat us in the war, but I still believe it’s because we are so tender hearted. I heard the south is gonna rise again, but that doesn’t make a bit of sense to me, because I don’t think we need to rise when we are already pretty high on the totem pole.

I picture it like this… I am carrying a rusty rifle. The boots I have on are flopping at the soles. I wear a ratty uniform that is too big in the pants and too little in the jacket cause I took it off one of my fellow soldiers, who was NOT dead, but felt sorry for me and let me have it. That’s how we are down here.

I am going through the woods, stopping to look for crawdaddys a couple of times, when I see a Yankee over yonder across the creek. While his uniform fits better than mine, he looks tired and his eyes are sad. He has a little fire built and he’s holding a roastin’ ear over it, stuck on a stick.

“Bless his heart.” I think, because I am southern, and tender hearted.

Now, I know I am supposed to blow him to Kingdom Come, but I just can’t do it. My Momma taught me to be kind to others, no matter where they came from cause they “can’t hep it.”

I don’t know why I think about stuff like this, unless it’s because of my raising. I was brought up, not “yanked up by the hair of my head.” I don’t think I would last long in a war.

You see them sometimes, down here, trying to park at Walmart or strolling around downtown Florence, taking pictures and asking where Muscle Shoals is, cause they heard Cher came down here one time and they want to take a picture of something.

When you start telling them about Rick Hall and all that, they don’t even ask “What did his daddy do?” or “Where was they raised?”

See, if you point and say, “over yonder” or you explain that the Halls were pore as racer snakes, they look other places while you talk.

I actually had this happen one time. I was in Sheffield, and a man waved me down in a parking lot. I knew he was lost because he was wearing white socks with sandals and he had a ten thousand dollar camera dangling from his neck.

He said, “Excuse me, but would you be so polite as to tell me how far away we are from the music studio on Jackson Highway?”

I pointed and said, “It’s right over yonder.”

He said, “Would you be so kind as to tell me if it is open for viewing?”

I said, “If you beat on the door, somebody will open it if they’re there, but they could be down at the Box Car eating salmon patties.”

He and his wife looked at each other, got in the car, and started to drive away.

I couldn’t help it. I ran over to their car and asked, “You ain’t from around cheer, are ye?”

They drove off in a huff. My Momma, in this case, would NOT be proud of me, but for some reason, I got a cruel streak and just had to do it.

It goes back to that time I went to Cajuns after one of those high falutin football games we used to have where we sometimes had to allow northerners to come down here and participate.

Cajuns was packed with wall to wall Yankees. You could tell them right off, because they didn’t sit down and kick their shoes off at a table, and didn’t wave at each other and ask “How y’all doin’?” I didn’t hear a one of them ask, “Y’all got Bud on tap?”

I did overhear this conversation…

Yankee Boy: “Damn, these rednecks are dumb. I had to sit by some of them at the game, and they acted like it was the end of the world when we won.”

Yankee Girl: “Yes, dear, and they all had on those red shirts with that big A on the front, I wonder what that’s all about. I am sure it doesn’t stand for ‘articulate’.”

Yankee Boy: “I would bet they all pick cotton and can’t read.”

Yankee Girl:” Ewwww, look around. They all look as if they are inbred. They all should have been aborted.”

I rose from my chair, put my shoes back on, and tapped him on the shoulder.

I said, “Honey, if you don’t like the way we do things down here, you need to go back up there and freeze your butt off with the rest of the articulate people. I don’t know why we lost the game, I wasn’t there, but I assure you I can birth a baby by the side of the cotton patch and go back to pickin. I can also read, rite and do rithmatic . I could stomp a mudhole in your butt with one hand tied behind me, but I ain’t going to. I will call my brother and have him come over here and slap your Yankee face over on the other side of your Yankee head. When he gets done with you, you’ll look like a greasy spot. Now, go on, I got some okra to pick.”

A woman has to maintain in this world. Instead of saying “I am woman”, I say, “I am Southern.”

Then I grabbed my purse that has Elvis on one side of it and a picture of Graceland on the other side, and I sannered out the door. And if you don’t know what “sannering” is, bless your heart.