Denial

So I was born in Pensacola, Florida, and grew up there. I went to school in Tallahassee, Hattiesburg Mistersippi, and New Orleans. I also lived in Gulfport Mississippi, and Fort Walton Beach. I guess this makes me a southern boy.

However, I always had a travel bug. In 1987, I packed up all my belongings, including a pair of 15" Electro Voice PA speakers, and moved to LA. Lived there for 2 years, moved back to Florida, back to LA, then followed a girl to Seattle.

I really liked Seattle. However, I noticed that I am strongly susceptible to SAD, or Seasonal Affective Disorder. What does this really mean? It means that I go friggin' stir crazy if I don't see the sun. How did I know that I actually had it? Well, it never occurred to me until I moved to Seattle, and the sun decided to hide behind the clouds in September, and not appear again until May.

It got to the point where I would drive my convertible East until I crossed the mountains...then, lo and behold, the sun. So I kind of figured out how to deal with the weather.

At a certain point, I really didn't care what I was getting paid. This meant that I would wake up at 7:00 in the morning, and then stare at the ceiling until 9:30, because I couldn't bring myself to go in to work and write another damned COBOL database program. Couldn't do it.

So I packed up the plantation and moved to the only school that would take me with my abysmal undergrad GPA: the place that gave me the undergrad degree in the first place: the University of Southern Mississippi. After graduating, I went to Tulane University in New Orleans. I was accepted at Case Western, but I could not imagine living in Cleveland all year round.

When it comes time to graduate, I end up going to Moscow, Idaho. People often ask, "Is that the potato part or the white supremacist part"? It's the white supremacist part. Anyway, after 2 years there, I take a job at University in Chicago.

I love working at this school. I honestly could not imagine a better situation.

I have a different attitude about Chicago.

Finally, after all this traveling and all this denial and now living in Europe for a 6 month stint, I've come to realize that I truly am a son of the south. Not a redneck, in the racist sense, but I belong in a place that's a little more relaxed. A place with at least 80% humidity. A place where I can go to make groceries and get some decent mayonnaise and some decent spices.

A place where people clap on 2 & 4.

I belong to...I belong in New Orleans.

Some friends told me that New Orleans is the only place that would have me, even though I did once get kicked out of a bar for some...er...extracurricular activity. Of course, the fire did hit the wall and stick there...

Here are a few things that distance me from the typical Chicagoan:

Give me fried catfish instead of grilled trout.

Ray Charles.

Tennessee Williams.

I make gumbo from scratch, including the roux.

Elvis.

I hold the door open for ladies, and I say "yes ma'am", "no ma'am", "please" and "thank you". I offer my seat to women and the elderly when I'm on the EL.

Unless you are European, if you call me a Yankee, you will encounter repercussions.

Fried chicken.

I don't want a pop, a soda pop, or a soda. I want a Coke, and you should ask me what flavor, and I'll tell you Dr Pepper. And put it on ice.

George Washington Carver and Martin Luther King.

Café au lait, not a latte. Preferably with beignets.

Y'all is actually more grammatically correct. Because English, unlike Romance or Slavic languages, does not have a distinction between plural and singular forms of "you", y'all is used for plural. "All y'all" is plural collective.

There are 2 kinds of tea: sweet and unsweet, and you better not order unsweet.

Monday is red beans and rice day.

Why should you sacrifice for Ash Wednesday if you don't blow it out on Fat Tuesday?

John Kennedy Toole's "A Confederacy of Dunces" is like no other Pulitzer prize winning novel ever written. Too bad the yankees wouldn't publish it.

Cornbread.

I know what a "Sherman's Necktie" is, and it makes me mad.

Unlike about every other place in the US, Louisiana was established by the French.
The rest of the colonies were established by people whose religious beliefs were so extreme, the tolerant Dutch evicted them. This may explain why Northerners think that New Orleans is a bastion of debauchery, and New Orleanians think that the rest of the country is just too uptight.

William Faulkner, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters and BB King are all from Mississippi.

I prefer to sit on a front porch in a rocking chair and say hello to my neighbors, rather than sit on a deck in the back yard, secluded.

Johnny bleeping Cash.

I can't wait to get home.

Comments

[Mark Folse]

Damn.

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