Southern Exile

Food Chain - by Hugh Griffith

I came across a rat in the middle of one of the less-travelled, more frightening paths, a black rat, a European "pest" species common in North American port cities. It was shivering, maybe rabid, certainly depressed. It didn't try to flee as I approached. "Hey rat, you hungry?" I had two Fig Newtons in my pocket, and gave him one. He started nibbling immediately. I crouched and watched him. He was a hungry little vermin! It takes a while for a rat to consume an entire Newton, so I continued on to a stream where I sat on a rock hoping no maniac was lurking among the hemlocks. There was a brief, reflective moment during which I thought of absolutely nothing useful or beautiful.

Feds Attempt to Sue Pants Off Big Tobacco Under Federal Racketeering Laws

The Tobacco Industry now faces the biggest civil racketeering suit in history. 280,000,000,000 dollars are at stake as the Feds sue under RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

Big Tobacco is currently paying out over 245 Billion US dollars to the States under agreements with the US states in 1998.

How Segregation Ended in The South

The following quote comes from the Virginia Black History Archives 'Church Hill Oral History Project'. I currently live in Church Hill.

"My mother took us downtown before the integration of lunch counters and sat at the Woolworths Store with my sister on one side and me on the other and ordered. The clerk behind the counter was so taken aback she really didn't know what to do. She did not know how to handle this brown woman and two brown children sitting there and the whites on either side looked and then in embarrassment looked straight ahead, no one wanted to deal with this. We were served. And she did this repeatedly and they never knew what to do. So rather than create a great bruhaha they would serve us. My mother took us, I will never forget it, into Charles' Department Store. They had a colored fountain and white fountain, water fountain, and she took us to the white water fountain to drink and a woman came running up and said you can't drink there and my mother said "drink", and she looked her dead in the eyes, said "Why?" and the woman walked away. But it was the presence in which she did this "Why?" And she went into Montaldo's when Montaldo's would not sell, let blacks come in bought clothes and she went in and bought clothes. She went in Thalhimer's and I remember I was with her one day. She went in to try on a hat and the woman said you can't try on that hat, we don't let colored people try on hats and my mother had a very sharp tongue and she just gave her a tongue lashing and tried on the hat and said I don't think I need it and walked away. But anyway these were the kinds of things she would, I think the prototype of perhaps women throughout the South who might have been doing this, but the movement itself hadn't coalesced. But if you didn't have that kind of spirit and you didn't have that kind of model for being able to stand up for your own rights, then I don't think that we would have finally got tired and had enough of a mass, a critical mass of people in the 1960's to have pulled it all off. "

-Dr. Jean Harris Ellis, from an interview conducted September 29, 1982 by Akida T. Mensah.

'Elvis and Jesus at the sports bar'

28" x 22" / Acrylic on canvas/ 2003 / $800
Artist Jerry Kirk

Religion, Southern Style

"Well I woke up Sunday morning, with no way to hold my head that didn't hurt,
And the beer I had for breakfast tasted good so I had one more for dessert."
- Johnny Cash, Sunday Morning Sidewalk

It's a beautiful Southern Sunday, and I'm not drinking beer, but I am not going to church either. Religion is a much bigger part of everyday life here in the South than it is out "on the left coast" as my conservative colleagues like to call it. Most people belong to some sort of Baptist church, of which there seem to be many varieties. Some folks are Methodist, Pentecostal or other varietions on the fundamentalist/evangelist theme. In fact, 80-90% of the churchgoing folks here belong to some sort of fundamentalist/evangelist faith. And most people do seem to go to church.

This map from the Christian Science Monitor shows the distribution of religious faith in the US.

People of the liturgical faiths (Catholics, Lutherans and Episcopalian) live in the South as well, but the rituals and practice of receiving Eucharist is held in some suspicion by many fundamentalists. My Catholic heritage has been a great benefit since moving here. It provides me with the modicum of religion needed to fit in down here, and prevents well meaning friends of evangelical faiths from trying to 'save my soul'. I gave up franchise foods for Lent this year, and my religious friends are concerned with helping me keep my pious commitments.

I am not positive, but I am guessing that segregation applied to churches just as much as it did to schools, drinking fountains and busses. There still seem to be 'black churches', some of these even advertise on the TV. The ads (Fifth Street Baptist Church is the one that comes to mind) usually feature a very impressive, charismatic preacher and pictures of members of the faithful as they sing and worship. The ads promote the church as the place to go for answers to today's problems: war, drugs, bills, family problems. The ads are very welcoming, and although there are no white people featured in their ads, I doubt I would be turned away at the door for melanin deficiency.

'Faith' is something that fascinates me. In the Catholic liturgy, there is a part where the priest says, 'Let us contemplate this mystery of Faith'. I always get hung up on this. To me, gaining and losing 'the faith' is the most compelling, complex and intimate part of our human-ness.

I have an uncle who was raised Mennonite who had an 'epiphany' in the corn fields one day. The Lord descended upon him in the form of a tongue of fire which hovered above his head for a while. It filled him with the gift of the holy spirit had he began speaking in tongues. Now he is Pentecostal. He sold the farm and is operating a religious bookstore called 'Gifts of the Spirit' in West Point, Nebraska. He determined that it was his duty to 'propagate the faith' instead of the corn.

I have another Uncle who was in the seminary in Ireland as a young man. He left the seminary, married, and had a successful career as a mathematician and computer scientist. He kept the faith for many years, and was a devout Catholic. His wife, my Godmother, is still a faithful Catholic. This Uncle lost the faith several years ago and has become an evangelical atheist. He has done his best to share his new epistemology with his family - with some success. I believe he has converted two of his siblings (a priest and a nun) to this new view. As any good evangelist should, this Uncle has interesting writings backing up his views which he is happy to share. After visiting with him last Christmas, much to my delight, a book arrived here at my door in Richmond about 10 days later. The book is called "The Ghost in the Universe", by Tanner Edis. This book paints a picture of a universe 'not animated by any spiritual reality, but endlessly fascinating nonetheless'.

My personal spiritual quest has yielded more questions than answers. I feel more spiritual alone in the woods than I do at any public place of worship. I question any epistemology that refuses to question. I enjoy the ritual of church services, especially Catholic Mass:

"It takes me back to something, that I lost somehow, somewhere, along the way."
-Johnny Cash, Sunday Morning Sidewalk

Patrick's Restaurant

I like the food of the American South. As a German colleague once pointed out, "It must be good, it looks like they eat a lot of it." Some folks do look well fed down here. I attribute it to the liberal use of fats - especially lard and other 'shortenings' - sometimes in the strangest places. Who knew greens could get so greasy?

Patrick's Restaurant is a little dive on Jefferson Davis Highway. (Yes - J.D. WAS the only president of the short lived Confederate States of America). Patrick's has a good crowd of afternoon drunks, a blaring jukebox filled with Allen Jackson and Ted Nugent classics, Darts, and best of all-their menu actually features SHIT ON A SHINGLE. It's right there on the breakfast menu, politely abbreviated as S.O.S

For those of you blessed enough to have come this far in life without enjoying shit on a shingle, this delicacy is made up of white toast (the shingle) and creamed, chipped, beef (the shit). It is usually served up saltier than a deer's saltlick. I find the sog-factor to be a little nauseating if the dish isn't consumed rather quickly. It makes a regular appearance in the southern breakfast, often rotating in as a substitute for the beloved biscuit-with-sausage-gravy (another dish which can suffer the soggy/salty blues).

Patrick's is great because the burgers are handmade, the lettuce is crispy and the service is perfect. Not that it may be the fastest, but it embodies the charm of the south. It's not "no, we aren't serving breakfast, instead, it's "I'm sorry honey, the grill's all messed up from cookin' burgers". And I got to see the strangest thing there today: One of the women who works there has a son with Down's syndrome who hangs out while she works sometimes. Today, as I was dining, I watched him fiddling with a dart at the table he was sitting at. Then, he got up and walked to the dart area, stood back, and threw it perfectly into the bullseye. It was amazing! He just went over, pulled it out and sat back down.

I also got to hear a great story about this good ole' boy some of my friends had worked with. He was apparently a hunting/fishing type who drove a crappy old van with a bed in the back of it. He must have been of the slightly leacherous/Casanova school, after all, who else would have a bed in their vehicle? Anyway, some of his co-workers slapped one of those gay pride rainbow flag sticker on the back of his 'love van' one day. He didn't notice for several weeks, but when he did, boy was he pissed off.

That's a slice of my new life.

The Dixie Line




A resource for confused transplants like myself who have found themselves exiled here. The haunting midi Lenyrd Skynyrd background music adds to the experience. This site has a lot to offer!

There is a great map of Dixie clearly showing the distinction between Yankees, Southerners, Wannabe Southerners, Hillbillies and more. There is also a fairly coherent argument in favor of the much disputed 'stars and bars' flag.

I have been reading first person narratives about life in the historic South. There are a lot of writings out there - everything from narratives of slave life to schmaltzy reminisces of the ole Dixie days. It is fascinating and may help ease some of the STILL MISERABLE culture shock.

A Grandmother's Recollection of Dixie



This woman was from a well-to-do plantation owning family. She lived through remarkable changes and wrote her memoirs as a gift to her grandchildren. Her perspective is fascinating, and her love and reverence of her own mother is truly admirable. The high importance placed on female members of Southern families is something that escaped me until moving here. And, as this narrative taught me, this reverence of female family members is a core value of the Klan, also.

One moving part of this story is the part where the war reached their area. The families in the area had all prepared extra dinners, expecting the confederate soldiers would be by to eat. However, they ended up having to evacuate with the meals still cooking on the stove. She reported that they left a years worth of provisions - hams, canned vegetables, pickles and jellies in their pantry. They returned and found their plantation leveled.

Some of the ideology is highly conflicted. At one point, someone is quoted as saying 'there is no more noble of God's manifestations than a self made man' and later in the text, a man is admired for his overwhelming concern that 'none of his children should ever have to work a day in their lives'. Though it is hard to pity some of the situations described in this writing, it is very easy to get swept up in the drama.

The Union Forever

"The union movement that swept the industrial regions of the United States in the late 1800s and early decades of the 1900s did not do well in the South. Southern workers, living in small, widely dispersed villages, were difficult to organize. Some historians have argued that Southern workers’ values, which emphasized family and personal relationships, made them naturally skeptical of the "new" kind of formal community that unions represented. Importantly, mill owners rarely tolerated union activity. During the first flurry of union organizing in the South at the turn of the century, a common response by mill owners was to fire workers associated with union organizing and kick them and their families out of their homes. If there was a strike, sometimes the entire workforce was fired. Even after the passage of Federal labor laws in the 1930s recognizing the legality of unions, such responses were not uncommon. The South was and is the least-unionized region of the nation."

From The Southern CultureClass at Vance-Granville Community College, North Carolina

You Are Not Alone: A Message to Others Suffering in The South

"Once a vibrant and outgoing person, I moved to the south and am now convinced that everyone here is a racist, a homophobe, a Christian nut or an imbecile. Perhaps some are a nuanced combinatoric of the above traits. In any case, I now live as a social hermit with only my wife and my cats to keep me company."

It's terrible, ain't it? This quote comes from an anonymous compatriot in exile (Anonymous because of my failure to ask permission to use it - on any grounds of being timid about his dislike of The South).

Unlike my aforementioned compatriot in exile (who incidentally lives in a much cooler town than Richmond), I am forced to pursue urban hermitage all alone. I feel compelled to go out sometimes, just to reassure myself and others of my socio-psycho wellbeing. The worst thing that happened so far involves a ride in the 'trunk' area of a bright yellow, vintage 280Z with some guy with a moustache who tried to kiss me. I survived it and actually had a good time that evening. Pathetic.

On The Culinary Front

I am doing my best to cultivate a liking for grits. At worst, they can be a miserable, luke-warm slurry, reminiscent of chunky wallpaper paste. It's less appealing than a watery polenta. At their best they are damn right delectable. Cheese grits are a favorite around here. The cheese does something magical to ameliorate the paste-like blandness of the ordinary grits breakfast.

It must be noted, however, that the bland, pasty-style grits breakfast is rumored to be a hangover panacea. Further research in this area is necessary.