I'm starting this post with absolutely nothing in mind to write. But I'm listening to really good music (more Sufjan Stevens) and usually that is the catalyst of great brainstorms for me.
Waiting...waiting...
Ok.
I'm sitting here, on a warm summer night in New York City, the fan blowing individual hairs into my face, tickling. Close my eyes and add the smell of chlorine and I'm sitting on my back porch in Georgia. Should I make a list of reasons that I love the South? No, I think I'll make it a narrative or a soliloquy. An ode to a Southern Summer.
But this calls for a change in music. Enter "Iron and Wine," Clemson, South Carolina natives.
I should throw out a disclaimer and say that there could be some dialect in these next few passages. It might be hard to read for the non-Southerner. Just pretend you're reading Huck Finn or something.
I feel a certain, undeniable comfort and pride when I hear words like "crickets," "honeysuckle," "Paw Paw," "pick-up truck," "Coca-Cola," "Sarah Jo," "porch swing," and "bulldogs." (All said in an almost slurred southern drawl. "Sweeet Teeea." "Hunnysuckul." "
Coca-
Cola.") Even words that generally have negative connotations like "Charlie Daniels," or "Jack Daniels," "swamp," "muddin'," "red clay," or "Alabama." I'm proud of 'em.
Driving on back roads, windows rolled down, I feel I have the right to listen to Merle Haggard or some Hank if I want to. Did you know that there's a lot of people that live in the city that listen to Kenny Chesney or Alan Jackson? Did you know that I know a Canadian that LOVES country music? Sounds kind of contradictory, right? Playing ice hockey and listening to country music just doesn't fit. But if I sang country (God help us.), I wouldn't have to fake a southern accent.
I could cry when I think about dogwoods, azaleas, and verbena.
The smell of chlorine will forever remind me of summer days in my grandparents' pool. Yep, Mama Jo and Paw Paw's. I once ate an entire watermelon after swimming for hours with my cousins. Another time, I ate a whole (big) box of honey-nut Cheerios. I remember the feel of my skin as it dried, the absorbed chlorine pulling the skin on my face. "Don't sit in the chair if you're still wet!" But I did anyway. If Paw Paw sat in it soaked from working in the fields, the chlorine would actually do it some good.
My cousin Lee and I fed cows through our neighbor's fence one summer night until it got dark. And that's late in the summer.
(Parker just called to tell me he was mad that I forgot that he was involved in the cow feeding. Sorry Parker.) We built forts out of hay bales in the old barn, got in trouble for playing in the "shop" (Paw Paw's workshop), and caught Catawba worms with the intent of going fishing. I learned how to ride a bike on Lee's old, beat-up blue Huffy by accidentally riding down the ramp of a flat-bed trailer.
When somebody gives you directions to their house, it invariably includes the phrase, "Turn off the black-top." As in, pavement ends.
Lemonade and mint juleps may be a thing of the past from Scarlet O'Hara days. But drinking sweet tea from a plastic cup while laying in a hammock under oak trees will live on forever, even if only in my mind.
Football. The substance of life in the fall. Not just on Saturdays. Everyday.
Fried okra.
At least an acknowledging nod at every passing stranger.
The gasoline smell of an old Chevy pick-up truck.
The smell of leather work gloves and freshly cut grass.
The sound of Daddy sneezing from the smell of freshly cut grass.
The metallic taste of water straight from the waterhose. And rainbows that arch from the spray.
This is becoming a list, which is not what I aimed for, and which could continue for days...
Goodnight.
