New Years in the New 'Old' South

New Years in the South is different than anywhere else. They do things differently than the rest of the country. Mainly it's in the way that they treat family, which if you know Suthunaz, their family is anyone they know. It's that 'extended family' thing that's goin' on. New years is as much a time for family (EXTENDED family) than anytime else. Oh sure, you can go out and get a nice dinner and then a show with just about any type of live entertainment you want. Country, Punk Rock, Classic Rock - Nashville even has its own Coyote Ugly! Now that's a way to celebrate!

Growing up, I remember watching Dick Clark on TV and drinking sparkling Grape Juice out of paper cups. When I got to be an adult, my celebration changed to a night out on the town and good champagne in glass flutes. When I got to Nashville, I attended one of these big New Years Extended Family Celebrations and when the big clock on the wall had struck 12 and hugs and kisses were passed out, there came a time for eating. It was here that I discovered something no one has written about in Suthun Celebrations.

A table was brought out, with steam tables and heat lamps keeping warm what we had to eat: Black Eyed Peas and Cornbread. I thought this was unusual, but everyone else dug in, so I had to ask. Seems this is a big tradition in the US South, so I happily complied.

Eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day is thought to bring prosperity in the coming year. The peas are typically cooked with a pork product for flavoring (such as bacon, ham bones, fatback, or hog jowl), diced onion, and served with a hot chili sauce or a pepper-flavored vinegar.

This traditional first meal of the new year can also feature collard, turnip, or mustard greens, and ham. The peas, since they swell when cooked, symbolize prosperity; the greens symbolize money; the pork, because pigs root forward when foraging, represents positive motion. Cornbread also often accompanies this meal.

These "good luck" traditions date back to the American Civil War better known in these parts as the War of Northern Aggression. Union troops, especially in areas targeted by General William Tecumseh Sherman, typically stripped the countryside of all stored food, crops, and livestock, and destroyed whatever they couldn't carry away. At that time, Northerners considered "field peas" and field corn suitable only for animal feed, and didn't steal or destroy these humble foods. It was these 'leftovers' that gave rise to the traditions we see today.

Every day I live here, I love the south more.

Happy New Year to you all (or it is Y'all...I can never tell) Oh and save me some Cornbread and Black Eyed Peas!

Christmas Decorations Suthun Style

Tis the season to be Jolly, tis the season to hang Holly, or, in the case of my Suthun friends, other more interesting decorations seem in order. Take, as a starter, this great Christmas Tree....made out of standard 55 Gallon drums.


Suthunas make do. They see the need and fill in. Can't afford a tree or maybe you want something a bit different this year? Then make do with what you have handy....like a 10 foot step ladder.


No outdoor decorations handy? Then fill in with something else red. Say a volkswagon Bug...

(One really has to marvel at the feat of engineering which put that VW Bug up on that wire. )

Suthunuz and Snow

When I first moved to the South, I had visions of Thanksgiving in sandals, outdoor barbecues on Christmas and basically spending all my time in short sleeved Hawaiian Shirts. I never knew it got so cold here! The first time I stepped out of the door and found a light dusting of snow, I thought I was having a flashback.

Yes, Nashville gets snow, COLD snow. When I left Colorado, I gave away my wool lined snow boots, my down filled parka and my heavy ski gloves and here I am now freezing my heiny off. (And I haven't got a lot of heiny to lose!) Yet another part of living in the south which I had to learn to love.

In Colorado when it snows you get this beautiful light powder. When it snows in the south, it gets ICY. The snow is wetter here and under that snow can be a sheet of solid ice that will knock you on your aforementioned heiny! (Again, not fun, very little heiny to land upon, and ouch!) The snowflakes are so heavy they don't glide softly down to the ground, they drop to the ground like soft hail, and can nearly knock you off your feet with the impact.

Now, if the weather is going to be bad, whether in Colorado or Nashville, you don't want to be on the roads, so it's a good idea to stock up on some comfort food before it hits, maybe some snacks, and of course, some movies. So, the wife and I head out to the store only to find that EVERYONE is at the store! But the only thing they are buying is Milk and Bread. That's it, just bread and milk. Seriously. Grocery Carts full of bread and milk. Really. Right after the announcement that the snow is coming the stores fill up, people buying 3 and 4 gallons of milk and matching bread. It's like some sort of apocalyptic (or is it apoplectic?) memo of which I was not privy.

Yet, it gets stranger. I turned on the TV that first fall and was watching the weather when I heard them say that the prediction for the next day was for snow. At the same time, they began listing those schools who would be closed. Did you catch that? They were closing the schools in anticipation of snow! When I was a kid in Colorado, snow would have had to pile up and cover the capital rotunda before they even CONSIDERED closing schools, and even then it was a coin toss. I was in awe of these suthunaz.

At the time my brother (Bubba) had just started teaching high school in Denver, so I had to call him and tell him all about it. He thought I was joking. It became a yearly tradition for me to call him the first time this happened each year. Every year he laughed. (He laughs at me a lot, but I'm sure it's just because he's so jolly...maybe.)

I have learned over the years that Nashville had a very bad ICE storm the winter before I arrived in Nashville. The storm came across so quickly and so heavily during the day that students ended up stranded in the schools overnight because the buses couldn't drive on the ice shrouded roads. The school district took it on the chin and made the decision to close the schools when the weather report looked bad. Can't blame them. (My kids had nightmares of school during the day. Can you imagine being told that they had to SLEEP there overnight?)

The only problem now is that Bubba has retired from teaching and when I call him about the schools being closed, he really doesn't care. He still laughs though. Go figure.

Suthun Ingenuity

One of the things which makes being a Suthunah so exciting is that Suthunahs are untouched by the idea of what an item is used for. They can look at anything and find yet another use for it.

Take for example, the above picture. Out at the park, wanting a hot meal, and no grate on the grill. No problem. Look around and there in the far corner, some homeless guy has left a shopping cart. Shopping carts are made of....Bingo.

What I also love about this is that they didn't take the time to cut the shopping cart apart. (And we all know they had a truck full of tools with which to do it.) They left the shopping cart intact, perhaps knowing that once they completed their rural meal, they'd release the shopping cart back into the wild to allow it to continue it's life of duty to the homeless.

I just hope they washed it real good beforehand.

The Brush Pile

Though I've lived in a lot of places throughout the west (Denver, Reno, Los Angeles, Nebraska) I'd never experienced the phenomenon known as 'The Brush Pile' until I got to The South.

In front of my house, on one corner of the lot, I pile sticks and branches which have fallen out of the trees in the wind. I also put the big branches I cut off to shape my erstwhile forest. I even put Big Stumpy out there once I had beaten him into submission. There is a pile of wood like this in front of most every house in my neighborhood. It's almost like a holiday decoration which sticks around for most of the year.

Two to three times a year, usually spring and fall, city workers come by and, with a big claw, pick up the branches et al, toss them in a big truck and carry them away. It's a great service and one, as I say, which I've only seen in the South.

The Brush Pile can get pretty big too, depending on how much you cut during the year. The object is to get your branches trimmed, trees cut and overgrown brush cut down on a regular basis and into the brush pile BEFORE the city comes. Leaving the cutting to too late in the year and you end up with a brush pile which sits most of the summer or winter. I've had a couple of summers now where I've not done my cutting early enough and ended up having to mow around the pile all summer long. This leads to a rather ugly looking monster of a pile with shaggy edges and who knows what living beneath it.

One year I had a run in with a neighbor over the brush pile. She thought that the pile was hers and would throw my branches out onto the center of my lawn when I was at work. I'd come home and calmly put them back. One day I caught her dragging a big branch off the pile so I asked her what the freaking heck she thought she was doing. (I did not, however, use those exact words, as I'm sure you can imagine.)

"It's my yard!" she yelled. I pointed out that it was my property and also calmly indicated that HER property ended at the edge of her driveway. Being as we were standing right there at the edge of her driveway the visual was a hard argument. To this she responded "Well I MOW it!" (Apparently she would mow one pass along the edge of the driveway between her property and mine and for some reason she thought this granted ownership. I'm not making this up!) I was almost at a loss for words. How do you argue against that kind of logic? I said simply, "Oh, ok then, let me get my mower out and I'll do your entire yard and then I will own YOUR whole lot." Too much logic. She huffed off. Thank goodness she ended up moving not to long after that, and my new neighbor and I now share the brush pile without problems.

I'm pretty sure that it's the growth of the trees and such which causes the need for the Brush Pile. I really don't know why the city comes around like they do, but I'm sure glad they do it, otherwise I'd have one heck of a brush pile in no time flat and I have absolutely no idea what to do with it or how to get rid of it. Rats...thinking on this reminds me I've got some things to cut down.

Where's my chain saw?

A Bubba By Any Other Name

One of my favorite TV shows of days gone by is Nash Bridges. A good cop show with Don Johnson and Cheech Marin. Good writing, good characterizations blah blah blah, but why mention it here, you ask? Good question...(Thanks for keeping me on track.)

Don Johnson's character, Nash Bridges, called everyone BUBBA...ok, mostly just the perps and goons but it was one of the reasons I really liked his character. Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that in real life. I tried calling a couple of people 'Bubba' here in the Mid South (within earshot of the "Nashville Bridges" I might add) and got the strangest looks. One guy even went so far as to squint me up and down and say "Who you callin' Bubba?"

Though the word 'Bubba' conjures up visions of men in camouflage and all night beer fests, Bubba is not a word to be bandied about lightly. (Especially, it would seem, by some suthun upstart such as yours truly.) Apparently, there are rules, though unwritten. Bubba is a term of endearment, a term of personal involvement, a nickname. But more than that, the USER of the endearment and/or nickname has to be ENTITLED to use it. Ergo, the connection between user and receiver must exist long before the user even considers using "bubba" to someone. Another example, I call my brother Bubba (he lives out west) and he just laughs. I expect this means that the user and receiver also must both be from or at least IN the south for the 'Bubba' to work properly. (It could also be that my brother just likes to laugh at me. I'm not ruling anything out where he's concerned.)

Bubba is a shortened version of the term Brother. Now, unlike the 70's term "Bro" or the Hawaiian version "Brah" either of which can take the place of any name to anyone (sort of like "Bud" - but not the beer...is this getting confusing?) Bubba must have that personal connection. You have to be related to a Bubba, or have known this particular Bubba for sometime to be authorized or deemed worthy of using the affectation. This may seem a bit protracted and drawn out, but I swear, suthunas seem to know this stuff from birth! The one glaring exception to this rule is that if someone is introduced to you as Bubba, or in some way tells you that they are "known as" Bubba, or even "you can call me BUBBA" you are free to use that as their name or nickname even if you have just met. Yes, it is that complicated.

No one ever bristled at Nash Bridges, looking him up and down and squinting with a "Who you callin' Bubba?" Cheech never laughed when he used it either. Perhaps that's why I liked the show. Perhaps I'm just trying too hard to blend in with the locals. Perhaps I'll phone my brother and call him Bubba one more time just to hear him laugh.

Suthun Thinking - Not All It's Cracked Up To Be.

I just heard from a local retail worker that our Suthun Giant retailer WALMART (yeah, that's right, I'm naming names) has told its employees that they should no longer refer to Friday after Thanksgiving as Black Friday, but rather refer to it as the 'Event.' Their reasoning: It is more PC and less racist to use "Event".

Let's contemplate this a moment. Some director of internal idiocy at Walmart has determined - through many hours of study (read: woke from a long nap) to decide that the word BLACK in "Black Friday" refers, in some twisted way, to race. And further has somehow convinced others at Walmart's Suthun headquarters to agree with him. (Well, he is the director of idiocy, now isn't he?)

Back in the 80's, I worked retail. The phrase Black Friday always made us shudder in thoughts of hundreds of shoppers descending on our cash registers waving their checkbooks and semi-precious metal charge cards in an effort to buy those special gifts for the holiday season. I never NEVER...repeat NEVER EVER heard this phrase used as a reference to race. Not having worked retail for some time, I made a quick phone call to some friends who own retail stores, work retail and are seemingly on the cutting edge of retail (if that's possible) and they all agreed: No racial tones ever meant, construed, or implied. Not to be one to rest on a single fact, I then went to a couple of co-workers who are of African Descent. When I told them of the reference, they both stared at me like they were waiting for the punchline. Then they both said at almost the same time. "That's stupid..." 'Nuff said.

Black Friday carries two connotations in its name. First is a reference to Black Monday, October 29, 1929 when the US Stock Market crashed and there was a run on the banks. A similar effect can be seen in people rushing into stores on that fateful Friday (after Thanksgiving) causing the new moniker to be invoked. Second is a nod to the fact that the day after Thanksgiving supposedly the average retail business begins working in positive numbers, hence "in the Black" and not "in the Red". (I would suppose that this means that the Wednesday before Thanksgiving should be referred to as Red Wednesday...but I doubt that moniker will ever catch on as it might also be deemed too racist.) I'm not sure how any retail business could work nearly 11 months in the red, but let's not dwell on that. Let's dwell on the idiocy from Wally-World.

Black Friday has nothing to do with RACE, the song "Black Friday" by Steely Dan or the film "Black Friday" starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff (1940). I'll get up on my Suthun Soap Box for just a moment and state that a) Black Friday will ALWAYS be known as Black Friday regardless of what some dipwad paranoid peon at WalMart may think and b) it's obvious that the Director of Idiocy at Walmart is not originally from the South.

A guy like that gives 'being suthun' a bad name.
He probably drinks one of them flavored designer light beers, too.