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Journal
Entry September 14, 2003 Okay, I’ll admit it, I don’t like the
South. I’ve never liked the South, and it’s quite possible that
I will never like the South although I don’t know that for sure since that’s
the future, and Mrs. Cleo doesn’t call me anymore to tell me my future after
my former roommate cussed her out. I
was raised in the city, and the city is where I’d much prefer to be so you can
imagine that it was quite a culture shock to move from our noisy St. Louis
suburb to a small backwoods town in edge of the world know as the South.
Needless to say, the experience for me has not been a pleasant one, and
I’ve now devoted my time to getting a college degree that would take me as far
away from the South as possible. However,
after being forced to read Faulkner’s As I lay Dying yesterday afternoon, I
began to grow in my appreciation of the South and the things that they struggle
with. Now, don’t get me wrong,
I’m not about to go whistling Dixie while running through the honeysuckle,
mainly because I’m allergic to honeysuckle and would blow up like a balloon.
But, I have grown to appreciate more what some country folk here in the
South do. Like, for example, I never knew that people
actually raised chickens anymore. I
mean, I know they did back in the olden days, but I figured there was simply no
need anymore to raise the egg-laying creatures when Wal-Mart could, not only
manufacture the eggs, but place them into neat little cardboard crates.
But that all changed when one day I was driving down the road and came
upon a house with about a million mini teepees in their front yard.
I was thinking to myself that it was a strange way to decorate your yard
until my mother pointed out that they were chicken coops.
Oookay. Then, came the
realization that my eggs, the same eggs that I cook in a skillet and eat, one
day plopped out of a real, live, clucking chicken.
And then there are cows. I
always knew that meat came from cows, but it never bothered me until I moved
next door to a herd of them and made the mistake one day of looking in their
eyes. Have you ever looked in the eyes of a cow?
If you haven’t, don’t, or you will become a vegetarian before you
even knew you made the decision. My
mother used to tell me about their short experience with trying to raise a cow
in order to slaughter their own meat, which, like skinning deer, is one aspect
of the South that I prefer to pretend doesn’t exist.
She said they raised the cow from the time that it was a little baby moo,
but when they slaughtered it, they couldn’t stand to eat any of the meat
because they had become so attached to the cow, and every time they looked at
their yummy hamburger, all they could see were her mourning eyes.
I much prefer to let someone else raise the cow so I can pretend that
meat is made in neat little Styrofoam trays.
And then, not long again, I discovered that many people eat squirrel.
Eat squirrel?! They actually hunt the little, furry tailed thing, and then
eat it. And on top of that, they
say it’s good?! Oh come on, it
tastes like chicken. Well, if it
tastes like chicken, I’ll just go to Kentucky Fried Chicken and eat the real
thing, thank you. Oh yea, I forgot.
This is supposed to be why I respect the South more.
Okay, let me get back on track. One
thing I can say about the South is that if they electricity in the world ever
goes out, most of us city people are going to come begging the country folk for
help. For example, as I started to
point out before, they can raise everything they eat.
Me, I can’t even cook anything that doesn’t come in a box.
But here, many people raise their own animals and the majority of them
raise a garden where they spend months planting and cultivating it to have yummy
vegetables and fruit. Me, I can’t
even keep an aloe plant alive in my room. Many
of them have, and know how to make due without electricity. I’ve had the unfortunate experience of having my
electricity go out due to hurricanes and one snowstorm that shocked the trees so
bad, they just fell down, mostly on power lines.
Let me just say, it was not a pleasant experience.
Do you know how difficult it is to go to the bathroom by candlelight?
I had always seen pictures from the late 1800s of men composing letters
by candlelight and thought that would be the greatest thing in the world until I
actually tried to do it. They must
have had bigger candles than mine because I couldn’t see anything but a tiny
little glow right around the candle. My
mother tells stories of having to fill garbage cans full of water from the creek
in order to flush the toilet. Did
you know that water doesn’t magically appear in the toilet?
It’s for the same reason that fans don’t work if the electricity goes
out. I don’t know why, but I
cannot grasp the whole fan powered by electricity concept.
© EXCEL
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