this is a page for
Browsing Tag: #south
Like, restaurant? Or locale? Or city? I don’t know, and it seems unfair to only list one, so I’ll do three. Place to eat: Aubrey’s. Good food, drinks, and atmosphere. I always have a good time, no matter what time of day or who I’m with. I used to frequent the one off Papermill nearly every Tuesday afternoon, meeting a friend for $2 pints. Eventually, I transitioned to the one at Strawberry Plains due to traffic and I was kind of outgrowing the bar scene. Now I have one in my worktown! Lunch spot!! The food is excellent, with emphasis on local meats and produce. The ambiance is warm and it the restaurant is clean. The waiters are attentive and friendly, the TVs are always set on something of interest (as if I actually watch them), and the bartenders have never let me go dry. They will even mix you up something special if you don’t see anything to your fancy on the menu or you’re feeling adventurous. Locale: I really like the Apple Barn. Especially now that they have a brewery. I always feel right at home. It’s so homey & cozy, and I’ve bought several decorative items in the barn. The best thing about the restaurant, besides the creaking, gleaming, burnished yellow pine floors, is the apple fritters. Gah. I can taste them now and my mouth is watering. There aren’…
Sometimes I dream of moving. Living elsewhere. Like the Oregon coast. Or the forests of Idaho. Then I laugh and know I can’t– I’m southern through and through. I talk southern, I cook southern, I dress southern. I love horses and God and football. Lord, how I love football (SEC football, that is). I love beer drank on a tail gate and sweet tea sipped on a porch swing. I love cotton fields and apple festivals. I love Dolly Parton. I love magnolia trees and pearls and swimming in the lake. I love old stately homes and hound dogs and athsmatic preachers. I love old ladies who wear hats and whose pocketbooks match their shoes. I love flamingos in the front yard and rusty mailboxes and picking squash. I love taking the long way home and giving directions that include “turn right where Charlie Maples’ grandson used to live”.I love barn cats and pocketknives and flipping over rocks to hunt for crawdads. I love novels set in the south, movies set in the south, and people who come here searching for the real south. I love butterflies and bluebirds and barn swallows. I love fishing from a riverbank with worms you just dug from under the apple tree. I love blue tailed lizards and groundhogs and counting the stars. I love tomato sandwiches on white bread with Duke’s mayonnaise and a dash of salt. I love knowing summer’…
A lifetime ago, I was the new girl at the Co-op. I was continually dazzled and awed by the celebrities that darkened our doors. I’ve seen Phil Fulmer, Bill Landry, countless local politicians, loads of Partons (my favorite is Bobby), and the mule man from Silver Dollar City. Seems like everybody needs the Co-op at one time or another. But some of the ones I remember the fondest are the ones who aren’t famous at all. There was an old gentleman, always neat, always precise, always cordial, that came in regularly. And to be honest, I was terrified to wait on him. I didn’t want to mess up. He frequently had one or two sons with him, and their presence just added to my nervousness. More witnesses to see me mess up. One afternoon I didn’t have a choice but to wait on him and his five pound bag of bolts. Gary wasn’t there to bail me out and I had to look up every single size in “The Book”. That’s not the good book, but it is the Co-op Bible. Before the internet, it’s what we had for information. It was like a condensed farming encyclopedia with item numbers, descriptions, pictures, and prices because plenty of Co-ops still wrote hand tickets in the early 2000’s. Anyway, there were several pages of tables for pricing bolts. First you…
Church bells & sirens. Jackson Cathedral startlingly white against a cloudless sky. Artists dragging out their easels, hanging their wares on wrought iron railings. Business owners pressure washing the remnants from the night before into the sewers. Locals hustling to work nod, smile, & offer “Good mornin’.” It’s seven a.m. in the Quarter, & everyone is headed to Café Du Monde for café au laits & beignets. Newspapers snap & the light becomes a little brighter as the sun shines down proudly on New Orleans. Streetcars clatter their way down the cobblestone streets, & steamboats rest along shore. The smell, not unpleasant, wafts in from Lake Pontchartrain & the great Mississippi River. The city is waking up, & with it comes the street performers. The saxophone players, the moody bluesmen, the break dancers. Just as soon as the music begins to fade behind you, another tune picks up just ahead. Tourists are carted by in wagons pulled by mules who have red glittery hooves. Happy to be alive, guides call to each other & provoke laughter at every comeback. Beads hang everywhere, like a manufactured Spanish moss. They are in tree limbs, electric lines, rooftops, across fences, lying in the street. They are draped around doorframes as decoration, looped over mailboxes & front yard fences for passerby to take if so desired. The food alone is worth the trip. A fantastic mix of creole-Cajun, French, Italian, & American, you can find anything you…
