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When my
wife and I first moved to Alabama for my job with the Co-op, I found
slight differences in traditions from my birthplace a few hundred miles
away. For instance, the industry of north Alabama has brought in a lot
of outside influence. People still eat peas, pork and greens on the
first day of the year but if they have corn bread, it might have sugar
in it. That’s enough to give people where I’m from the heeby jeebies.
Speaking
of deeply imbedded Southern tradition, back where I’m from, there are
still folks who are old enough to remember when people first started
recognizing the Fourth of July as something other than the day Vicksburg
surrendered to Grant. Plantation owners there might drive a Ford pickup
but would never put their family in a car named after Honest Abe. Heck,
we had an entire family…mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, nieces,
nephews, cousins, grandmaw, grandpaw…the whole shootin’ match, walk
out of a church for good when a traveling music director requested the
flock sing Battle Hymn of the Republic. They didn’t just change
churches either…they changed denominations!
Our
second or third visit back there to see our parents after moving to this
great state ended on the weekend celebrating Mother’s Day. On our way
home, we decided to take small state and county roads to see some of the
beautiful scenery Alabama has to offer. We passed a quaint old country
church in the middle of nowhere and as we were looking at the church, we
both saw in our peripheral vision the bright colors of the small
cemetery across the road and down the hill. We went on through forest
and pastures for many, many miles without mentioning the graves. Then we
came upon another much larger cemetery covering at least ten acres that
was absolutely covered with silk flowers and ribbons. I was so startled
that I can’t remember if there was a church. A half-dozen cars were
dotted amongst the headstones with family member standing here and
there, some with bowed heads. My immediate thoughts were, "Was
there some catastrophic natural disaster I wasn’t aware of? I hadn’t
been paying much attention to the news while I was gone. I knew there
had been some storms but I had no idea they had been so severe as to
wipe out a whole community! But, wait a minute! These aren’t fresh
graves and there’s not a single funeral home tent. What’s going on
here?" Though it’s a wonderful tradition here, we don’t have
Decoration Day back where I’m from.
I came
here not knowing that a "hose pipe" is what we traditionally
call a "water hose" or "garden hose." I’d never
heard a bow or ribbon that a girl or young woman wears in her hair
called a "hair bow," though it makes perfectly good sense. A
"cold drink" refers to a cold beverage such as those sold in a
vending machine. I didn’t know that "chocolate gravy" was,
as the name implies, flour gravy made with cocoa that is poured over a
biscuit. I knew what a "chili dog" was but didn’t know what
its cousin, a "slaw dog" was. I didn’t know what "white
sauce" was since I grew up eating tomato-based barbeque sauce. I
have accepted nearly all and now find what I call the "Tuscaloosa
style" of barbeque superior to what I have always eaten.
There is
just one popular local fare that I don’t think I could ever develop a
taste for. I hadn’t been here a week when a fellow employee offered to
take me for a hamburger at an establishment Elvis Presley had frequented
when he came to town visiting a band member. I’m certain that a single
bite of one of these gut busters will convince you that Elvis’s
longtime physician, George Nichopoulos, should be exonerated. When I
walked into the long, narrow building nestled between a hardware store
and an abandoned dry goods business, my senses were assaulted by steamy,
hot air and the pronounced smell of scorched tallow.
To my
right was a large boiling vat filled with thick hamburger patties. I
asked my escort if that was some sort of sauce they soaked the burgers
in. He looked at me like I’d just fallen off of a cabbage truck and
explained that it was "grease" and that that is what made the
burgers taste so good. He went on to tell me that the raw hamburger
patties are made up of about half meat and half breadcrumbs. I don’t
know if it was vegetable oil or beef fat…and I don’t want to know.
The hot, dripping meat was ladled out of the cauldron and onto a cold
bun smeared with mustard then topped with a thick slice of onion. I
managed to get it down before the grease coagulated. An hour later I
thought I might pull off a reenactment of the Graceland tragedy. The
restaurant has been in operation nearly sixty years and is packed every
day. Many people I know make it a tradition to eat there at least once a
year.
Thanks to working with
Co-op store personnel, interfacing with farmers from around the state,
and after making several embarrassing faux pas, I have leapt over most
of these educational hurdles and tripped over the rest. After nearly
twenty years, I have succumbed to the slight traditional and colloquial
nuances and now consider myself a "local" (or at least they
tell me I don’t talk as funny as I used to). |
