"What part of Brooklyn you from?"
I was asked this question the other day in jest by a bartender. Apparently my accent is a source of great amusement here, a sincere amusement though. People here do not condescend outsiders, rather they try to understand them. New Yorkers inquire earnestly about the Southern heat and astonished of my stories about the lack of red lights in Cassville. They simply cannot grasp full service gas stations, maybe because I've seen a total of two during my entire stay here. You read that correctly.....2. Many of them have passed through Georgia at some point in their lives and have only nice things to say. It is refreshing to know that many people outside the South do not believe us to be ridgerunning Klansmen. There are some, however, that want us to be that way. It's not sexy to be sophisticated and Southern and I have thought about humoring them at times. I will don my best airbrushed Gatlinburg t-shirt, acid washed Jordaches, go barefoot to a bar and scream obscenities mixed in with remarks about the 2nd Amendment and Trent Lott. Then I'll order a Manhattan.
Strangely enough, I realized today that Cassville and New York City have more in common than one realizes. I grabbed the #1 train downtown this morning with about 20,000 other people, of which I know none. In a city of 9,000,000 people, I know exactly 10 people to whom I could say more than "hello." In fact, most people do not know the person standing next to them. In all the city hustle and bustle, there is a quiet undertone. In Cassville, it's simply the reverse....no hustle and bustle, but you know everybody. I thought about this as I surveyed my fellow passengers, all of them staring straight ahead or looking at their Ipods. They will likely dodge more cars in the next twenty minutes than a Cassvillian will dodge in half a year and they will likely not speak a word on this train ride. Such is life in New York City.
There is also another thing you have to dodge in New York. It's something that is infecting every metropolitan area in this country. An epidemic that is sweeping the nation, causing one town in New Jersey to ban it altogether. I call it "text walk." Essentially, metro citizens are glued to the screens of their phones for at least 17 hours per day. This does not just include standing in line at Starbucks, the train station or waiting in the bathroom line at the bar. People here walk and text, walk and send emails, walk and download ITunes, walk and Photoshop.....I cannot count how many people I have seen almost become a taxi hood ornament because they could NOT wait to send a "LOL, for real? Awesome, TTYL! #winning" before crossing 5th Avenue. Text walkers are easy to spot, as well. They are the ones weaving from side to side, speeding up, then slowing down, sometimes abruptly stopping because they are shocked by a text that informs them that Hollister is not opening until 11 AM. They look like that goldfish that you had when you were a kid and you let it die because you hadn't the first clue about how to care for a living thing. While on its last leg, its swimming patterns become erratic. It bumps the side of the aquarium. It floats to the top and then sinks, then suddenly becomes alive and swims straight to the bottom, slamming into the rocks. The difference is the goldfish is sick, people are just stupid. Oh, and the goldfish does not care about Hollister. OMG.
Text walking does not take place in Cassville. I mean, I've seen people walking from side to side, slowing down and speeding up inexplicably, but that explanation can be summed up by Atlanta's own Andre 3000 of Outkast......"engulfed in the OE." Cassville people haven't the need for texting to be honest. All you have to do is go to Cass Grocery and hang out for awhile. You will run into everyone you know within a couple of hours. Plus, it would be hard to text a Cassville conversation:
Randy (grumbles, how in the hell do you work this thing...): "Hey."
Leon: "Yeah"
Randy: "Where's Ted with that dam poly butter?"
Leon: "Poly butter? You smokin again?"
Randy: "I meant Polly Beauty lean. I aint smokin!" Dammit."
Leon: "Who the hell is Polly? Boy, Martha gonna have your ass if she finds out!"
Randy: "This phone keeps changing my words. There ain't no Polly."
Leon: "Yeah, boy. I done heard that one. You and Polly have fun at the Red Carpet."
Randy and Leon would likely meet up and fight about this later. Frankly, anything is better than those early 2000's Nextels that everybody had. I have ranted about these God-forsaken beacons of annoyance ad nauseum. Watching Randy and Leon annihilate a text conversation is better than hearing it loud and clear in the store at the busiest portion of the day, which is typically when these guys chose to have their discussion about sprinkler pipe at 35,000 decibels. Seriously, I distinctly recall a time where a construction worker had six people order an ice cream from me via Nextel. Imagine being stuck in a car in Georgia in August with no AC and the only radio you have is an FM station that is playing a Celine Dion marathon. That's the kind of hell I'm talking about.
Annoying Knuckledragger #1: "WHAT FLAVORS Y'ALL GOT???"
Me: "Chocolate, Vanilla, Stra..."
Annoying Knuckledragger #1: "HUH?? I CAN'T HEAR YOU, BUDDY!" (grrrr. buddy. I hate being called "buddy." I'm not a dog or a six-year old.)
Me: "CHOCOLATE, VANILLA, STRAWBERRY, BUTTER PECAN, BLACK WALNUT AND hydrochloric acid, you %%^^%#*(#"
Annoying Knuckedragger #1: "THAT LAST ONE SOUNDS GOOD! 10-4"
I guess 10-4 was the predecessor to TTYL. In any event, the conversation took about 45 minutes and I was on the verge of hari-kari via the ice cream scoop. I had to go "count the beer" for about 20 minutes after that one.
"Count the beer" was unique term for Cass Grocery employees only. Dad invented it in 1995 and it was genius, pure genius. Basically, if somebody needed to cool off, get out of sight or just get away from a customer....you would go into the walk-in cooler and "count the beer." It was cool there (literally and figuratively) and nobody was allowed to go to the back other than employees. It was created mainly due to female affection for myself and Russell. Many times, a less than desirable female would come to the store in search of us and they knew we were trapped. They would hang around for hours, talking to us, trying to get us to sell them beer or go out on a date. Luckily, Dad was working with me one day and one of these estrogen fueled, Glenn Close imposters descended upon me. Rather than be rude to her, he turned to me and said, "get your ass to the back and count the beer." Puzzled, I went to the cooler and started counting. I got to about 237 when Dad came in and said, "Partner, that's gonna be our little code from now on. She's gone. Whenever we need to get gone, we are counting beer." That little avenue to peace and serenity was used more times than crack at Whitney Houston's last birthday. Too soon? Oh well.
So, in short, I hope all my friends take a lesson and stop texting while walking, much less driving. Take a lesson from Cassville, meet up face to face and hash out your days and nights. Talk about PVC pipe, Hollister, the Braves, your grandmother's sweet potato casserole or how much beer you drank at the bowling alley last night. You may be OK 99.9% of the time, but all it takes is that one time to change a life forever. Eventually it will catch up to you and the Good Lord will have you "counting beer" long before you should. 10-4?
I was asked this question the other day in jest by a bartender. Apparently my accent is a source of great amusement here, a sincere amusement though. People here do not condescend outsiders, rather they try to understand them. New Yorkers inquire earnestly about the Southern heat and astonished of my stories about the lack of red lights in Cassville. They simply cannot grasp full service gas stations, maybe because I've seen a total of two during my entire stay here. You read that correctly.....2. Many of them have passed through Georgia at some point in their lives and have only nice things to say. It is refreshing to know that many people outside the South do not believe us to be ridgerunning Klansmen. There are some, however, that want us to be that way. It's not sexy to be sophisticated and Southern and I have thought about humoring them at times. I will don my best airbrushed Gatlinburg t-shirt, acid washed Jordaches, go barefoot to a bar and scream obscenities mixed in with remarks about the 2nd Amendment and Trent Lott. Then I'll order a Manhattan.
Strangely enough, I realized today that Cassville and New York City have more in common than one realizes. I grabbed the #1 train downtown this morning with about 20,000 other people, of which I know none. In a city of 9,000,000 people, I know exactly 10 people to whom I could say more than "hello." In fact, most people do not know the person standing next to them. In all the city hustle and bustle, there is a quiet undertone. In Cassville, it's simply the reverse....no hustle and bustle, but you know everybody. I thought about this as I surveyed my fellow passengers, all of them staring straight ahead or looking at their Ipods. They will likely dodge more cars in the next twenty minutes than a Cassvillian will dodge in half a year and they will likely not speak a word on this train ride. Such is life in New York City.
There is also another thing you have to dodge in New York. It's something that is infecting every metropolitan area in this country. An epidemic that is sweeping the nation, causing one town in New Jersey to ban it altogether. I call it "text walk." Essentially, metro citizens are glued to the screens of their phones for at least 17 hours per day. This does not just include standing in line at Starbucks, the train station or waiting in the bathroom line at the bar. People here walk and text, walk and send emails, walk and download ITunes, walk and Photoshop.....I cannot count how many people I have seen almost become a taxi hood ornament because they could NOT wait to send a "LOL, for real? Awesome, TTYL! #winning" before crossing 5th Avenue. Text walkers are easy to spot, as well. They are the ones weaving from side to side, speeding up, then slowing down, sometimes abruptly stopping because they are shocked by a text that informs them that Hollister is not opening until 11 AM. They look like that goldfish that you had when you were a kid and you let it die because you hadn't the first clue about how to care for a living thing. While on its last leg, its swimming patterns become erratic. It bumps the side of the aquarium. It floats to the top and then sinks, then suddenly becomes alive and swims straight to the bottom, slamming into the rocks. The difference is the goldfish is sick, people are just stupid. Oh, and the goldfish does not care about Hollister. OMG.
Text walking does not take place in Cassville. I mean, I've seen people walking from side to side, slowing down and speeding up inexplicably, but that explanation can be summed up by Atlanta's own Andre 3000 of Outkast......"engulfed in the OE." Cassville people haven't the need for texting to be honest. All you have to do is go to Cass Grocery and hang out for awhile. You will run into everyone you know within a couple of hours. Plus, it would be hard to text a Cassville conversation:
Randy (grumbles, how in the hell do you work this thing...): "Hey."
Leon: "Yeah"
Randy: "Where's Ted with that dam poly butter?"
Leon: "Poly butter? You smokin again?"
Randy: "I meant Polly Beauty lean. I aint smokin!" Dammit."
Leon: "Who the hell is Polly? Boy, Martha gonna have your ass if she finds out!"
Randy: "This phone keeps changing my words. There ain't no Polly."
Leon: "Yeah, boy. I done heard that one. You and Polly have fun at the Red Carpet."
Randy and Leon would likely meet up and fight about this later. Frankly, anything is better than those early 2000's Nextels that everybody had. I have ranted about these God-forsaken beacons of annoyance ad nauseum. Watching Randy and Leon annihilate a text conversation is better than hearing it loud and clear in the store at the busiest portion of the day, which is typically when these guys chose to have their discussion about sprinkler pipe at 35,000 decibels. Seriously, I distinctly recall a time where a construction worker had six people order an ice cream from me via Nextel. Imagine being stuck in a car in Georgia in August with no AC and the only radio you have is an FM station that is playing a Celine Dion marathon. That's the kind of hell I'm talking about.
Annoying Knuckledragger #1: "WHAT FLAVORS Y'ALL GOT???"
Me: "Chocolate, Vanilla, Stra..."
Annoying Knuckledragger #1: "HUH?? I CAN'T HEAR YOU, BUDDY!" (grrrr. buddy. I hate being called "buddy." I'm not a dog or a six-year old.)
Me: "CHOCOLATE, VANILLA, STRAWBERRY, BUTTER PECAN, BLACK WALNUT AND hydrochloric acid, you %%^^%#*(#"
Annoying Knuckedragger #1: "THAT LAST ONE SOUNDS GOOD! 10-4"
I guess 10-4 was the predecessor to TTYL. In any event, the conversation took about 45 minutes and I was on the verge of hari-kari via the ice cream scoop. I had to go "count the beer" for about 20 minutes after that one.
"Count the beer" was unique term for Cass Grocery employees only. Dad invented it in 1995 and it was genius, pure genius. Basically, if somebody needed to cool off, get out of sight or just get away from a customer....you would go into the walk-in cooler and "count the beer." It was cool there (literally and figuratively) and nobody was allowed to go to the back other than employees. It was created mainly due to female affection for myself and Russell. Many times, a less than desirable female would come to the store in search of us and they knew we were trapped. They would hang around for hours, talking to us, trying to get us to sell them beer or go out on a date. Luckily, Dad was working with me one day and one of these estrogen fueled, Glenn Close imposters descended upon me. Rather than be rude to her, he turned to me and said, "get your ass to the back and count the beer." Puzzled, I went to the cooler and started counting. I got to about 237 when Dad came in and said, "Partner, that's gonna be our little code from now on. She's gone. Whenever we need to get gone, we are counting beer." That little avenue to peace and serenity was used more times than crack at Whitney Houston's last birthday. Too soon? Oh well.
So, in short, I hope all my friends take a lesson and stop texting while walking, much less driving. Take a lesson from Cassville, meet up face to face and hash out your days and nights. Talk about PVC pipe, Hollister, the Braves, your grandmother's sweet potato casserole or how much beer you drank at the bowling alley last night. You may be OK 99.9% of the time, but all it takes is that one time to change a life forever. Eventually it will catch up to you and the Good Lord will have you "counting beer" long before you should. 10-4?