A five gallon bucket of lard

I was reading Jen's post yesterday about churches in Georgia and while I don't want to copycat, it got me thinking. As someone who has spent quite a lot of time in the South (Alabama to be exact), I'm fully aware that it takes some getting used to. I was lucky, I guess, in that my time in the South started practically at birth, so even though I can see how different things are I'm so used to it that it doesn't even phase me. Not everyone is this lucky though, and this is what I started thinking about yesterday.

I was born in Michigan and lived in the Detroit suburbs until I was eight. That was when my parents divorced and my mom and I moved to Southern California, the place I consider "home". My grandparents on my mom's side also lived in Michigan, but they were both from Alabama and went back several times a year to see their family. When my grandfather retired they moved back to the house they owned there. When I was growing up I spent summers in Michigan with my dad and my grandparents and always made at least one trip to Alabama with them. My love of road trips started with these journeys and I always had a great time on the way. It was when we arrived that my troubles started.

I always felt a little Bipolar (Tripolar?) with this Michigan/Alabama/California hat trick, but was usually able to fit in somehow. Alabama challenged me. I had family there I loved and it was certainly familiar, but I was always the odd duck out. The family home was down a dirt road in the middle of frickin' nowhere and there was not a bathroom in the place until I was about twelve. The last time I forced myself to go into the godforsaken outhouse something in the corner rattled. Standing in the middle of the yard with my panties around my ankles I swore "Never again". I spent my days trying to talk people into driving me to the gas station in town so I could pee. I would come up with all kinds of fictional errands that always went right by the Sinclair station. I developed the largest bladder in three counties.

Then there was the fact that I was terrified of bugs. (One day I woke up with a spider in my mouth and now, all these years later when I sleep I cover my mouth with a sheet). And I'm not a big meat eater. And there aren't any tornado sirens. Or basements. And I hated the fact that every time you went to the Piggly Wiggly or the Jitney Jungle you ran into twenty people you knew who all had to ask you which you liked better - Alabama or California. I was a mess. And my family, who loved me, made excuses for my eccentricities and wrote me off as a bona fide city girl. To be fair it was my own teenage inflexibility that made it such a problem. My family just thought I was a whack job and went on with their lives.

By the time I took The Film Geek to my grandparent's house for the first time I had made peace with the whole situation. I was finally able to see the good and tolerate the bad with fairly good humor. I was comfortable there. I fully expected, forgetting entirely where I was and who I was married to, that he would fit right in and have a great time.

As Humphrey Bogart says in Casablanca, I was misinformed. It was, plainly put, a train wreck, more aptly a train wreck driven by Homer Simpson. It took me a long, long time to laugh, but it was worth the wait.

FG is from a military family and had lived in California, Hawaii and Arizona. He was used to moving around but he was mostly in the Western US. He had, to be fair, spent time at his dad's house in Dallas, but by his own admission usually stayed inside in the air conditioning to read a book. And his dad was in the city, not the country.

I was already in Alabama with the infant Sasquatch when FG arrived, fresh off a job that had fallen through at the last minute. At some point during that first day my grandmother, not sure what to feed him, suggested we go to the Piggly Wiggly to buy some food. It was summer, which means hot and humid. He was extremely cranky about the world at that point. When we got into the store he told me he was going to go get some sparkling water and walked off. I called after him to let him down gently.

"You can't buy sparkling water here," I said.

"Whattya mean you can't get sparkling water here?" Mr. LA asked. "Of course they have sparkling water. It's not like it's caviar or anything." And then he stomped off.

Five minutes later he came back empty handed.

"You can't buy sparkling water here," he said accusingly.

"I know", I replied. "They don't carry it. If you want water you have to take a container to the gas station." ( See? I worked the gas station into everything).


He took a deep breath.


"Are you trying to tell me that you can buy a five gallon bucket of lard but you can't buy a bottle of sparkling water?"


Bingo.


The next day he got a little cabin fever and decided to go out for a walk. Well, you don't really walk in the ultra polite South. He lost count of how many cars pulled over on the road to ask him if he'd had car trouble and needed a ride. He was gone for hours, but I wasn't a bit concerned, because every few minutes someone would call and say to my grandmother, "Bill (her nickname), I think I just saw Julie's husband walk by on the road. Isn't he wearing a blue t-shirt?" We tracked him for hours and knew when he was headed home because one of my cousins saw him turn onto the road, so she called from the Dairy Dip to let us know he was coming so we could warm supper up for him. Riiiight.

He walked in smiling and in a mood fit to live with again. Walking eight miles on dirt roads will do that to you. As he got a glass of water he said I'd never guess where all he'd been.

I didn't have the heart to tell him.