Meant to Be or Not Meant to Be....That is the Question

There's an old saying I have heard my entire life, "some things are meant to be." Obviously, this can cover millions of situations, good and bad. I often find it used to explain the inexplicable, to create an excuse for a bad result or hide disgust over something disagreeable. For example, in my life:

1) Georgia Tech winning a national championship in 1990. Although they had to share it, proving God is a Dawg at heart (even though we went 4-7 that year), it still irked me to see them succeed;

2) The closing of the Starbucks on Walnut Avenue in Dalton. It was the perfect location. Right off the exit. Steaming hot Venti Pike Place Roast on the way in to work and a hot tea on the way out at 6:00. Boom! The recession hits, the store was closed and replaced by a Chinese fast food restaurant.....the foulest foulness that ever fouled up the universe. Coffee > MSG infused cat meat. If I wanted to commit aggravated assault on my arteries, at least I would be organic about it;

3) The virtual disappearance of Pop Rocks. 1/10th of 1% of my childhood.....gone;

4) The Spin Doctors only made one album. Come on....you still sing "Two Princes" in the shower;

5) The popularity of the Kardashians. They have accomplished NOTHING in their lives except sex tapes and high profile marriages/relationships. Yet, they get TV shows and make millions. I know about 250 women in Bartow County, Georgia that fit that bill right now. Well, except for the high profile marriage thing....it would just be a high number of marriages;

6) White guys named Bernard and Maurice no longer exist. I am sorry, I just like those names. Now, white folks are naming kids after cities. "This is our son, Billings St. Paul Watkinsville Smith III." Seriously, come on, you know it is getting out of hand;

7) The toll on Georgia 400. The road is paid for. It's BEEN paid for. Where does that money go? Obviously not to any state department, considering the ridiculously bad service you receive. You don't believe me? Call one of them. An extremely disinterested, unhappy sounding female will answer the phone and forward you to somebody's voicemail quicker than William Hung's fall from fame. Let's take some of that money and reopen the Starbucks in Dalton.

8) Bjork. I have no idea what that is. I have even "wikipediaed" the subject and I still have nothing. And Wikipedia is never wrong.

9) America's Next Top Model. If any show in the universe characterizes the downfall of America, this is the one. Afflicted twenty-something girls doing their best imitation of spaghetti, dressed like aliens, fighting over the bathroom before their photo shoot with a liger under a palm tree. The entire show hinges on moments where a washed up Tyra Banks lines up the women and hands down Judgment by showing their photograph and says "Congratulations, you are on you're way to being America's Next Top Model." Then, all the spaghetti imitators hug and cry, probably break a collarbone while doing it and retreat to their bedrooms. OMG, they are so hot. This show has been on TV for NINE YEARS. Hey, Sri Lanka, if you want to invade us, now is the time;

10) Southerners taking "all white" beach photographs. C'mon, admit it, we have all done it. You donned your whitest Polo, bared your feet, went to Gulf Shores and showed those pearly whites about 67 times. You probably used it for a Christmas card too.  I'm going to buck the trend one day. My family and I are going to Newark, New Jersey and taking an "all magenta" photo under an oil refinery. Merry &$%$$# Christmas.

Some things are meant to be, I guess.

Now, there are situations that are "NOT meant to be." I was not meant to attend Georgia Tech. I was not meant to play poker well, enjoy video games or dip snuff. Believe me, I've tried all three and they only lead to vomit, sleep and right rear end cheek pain from sitting on my wallet too long. I was also not meant to abide mistreatment of helpless animals (why I joined the ASPCA) or the mistreatment of our civil rights (why I am an attorney). In New York City, the people are represented by two equally important groups, the district attorneys who.....just kidding (+1 for Law & Order reference).

I have found several situations here in New York City where I am "not meant to be." Times Square is beautiful, but only from afar. Bergdorf Goodman has great shirts and they are on sale, only $425 today. A night in The Plaza is $1000 and the mixed drinks are $20 a piece, even Budweiser is $12. I have tried to go to Brooklyn about three times and each time the subway has decided otherwise. I still haven't learned how to speak "subway" yet. New York subway drivers only speak when the train is moving and screeching on the tracks, so their speech sounds like a mix of Morse Code, rabbits dying and the Sand People from Star Wars. I assume the times I have been diverted from Brooklyn have been explained to me in this language, but I was too busy listening to "Heard It In a Love Song" on my Ipod to hear or understand.

On Friday night, however, I found the numero uno of "not meant to be" for me. Being the cultured individual that I am, I agreed to attend a ballet/opera interpretation of "Orpheus and Eurydice" at the Lincoln Center here in Manhattan. I should have known. It was obvious from the "get go," as we say down South. The only served Amstel Light and white wine. Cheese was the main course at the concession stand. As I watched and listened to the fellow operagoers enter the theater, my mind instantly went into overdrive. To put in in SAT words, this was a hodgepodge of exaggerated eccentricity and profound, preposterous posturing of predisposed pettiness. To put it in Cassville terms, these people were weird, y'all.  If this is who enjoyed opera, then it was going to be a long night. As it turns out, it was not long at all.

The first act comes out as I read the playbill, which is essentially lists the cast and characters along with a storyline. It's the Paris Ballet. The singers sing, the flutes are fluting, the oboes are oboeing and the cello is....celloing. The words are unintelligible, so I scramble through the playbill to find out that the entire opera is in German. There is no English interpretation. Great, I say to myself. Then a half naked man danced by himself for about thirty minutes around some women in nightgowns. Apparently, this was Orpheus. Eurydice had affixed herself in a giant chair in the corner and never  moved. A fallen tree laid in the middle of the stage. German verbiage covered the theater like kudzu covers north Georgia. This scene was called "Mourning." I began to mourn by manhood as I was auditorily emasculated minute by minute. The opera crowd exploded in applause and discussed the imagery, as I imagined a $5.00 plate of chicken fingers at Son's of Italy in Athens.

They took a break and moved to scene called "Birth." The half naked man danced around again. The women in nightgowns made a circle of tree branches in the middle of the stage and he danced in it for awhile. This signified a "womb," I guess. I thought of the times when we had thunderstorms in Cassville and we would lose branches off the oak trees. We would have to pile them up and burn them next to the pasture. Alas, these branches stayed flameless. Laura realized that this was not even a ballet at this point, but merely an interpretative dance. The half naked man flailed about like he was at an LMFAO concert. Perusing the playbill more, I realize that the lead singer is Japanese. I couldn't tell from the nosebleed section, or as I began to call it, the suicide contemplation section. So, now, we have a German opera sung by a Japanese person. The Axis Powers have reunited against me. The opera crowd explodes yet again.

Another break. More half naked men come out and more giant chairs are on the stage. Eurydice decides to join the fray in the scene called "Love." She and Orpheus play a game of tag while others run around and fall, getting back up and falling again. Somebody whispers in my section and is "shushed" by another patron. Yes, I thought, please be quiet. This scene is really touching and by touching, I mean like how Moloram rips the guy's heart out in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and lowers him into the fire. The language of the country that brought us Mueslix reverberates in my section. I lean forward and place my hands on my head. It's like when the pastor has talked past 12:00 and you are ready to get to Ryan's buffet immediately. Laura catches a heavy glance from me. There will be an intermission after this scene, before the scene called "Death." I think she read my mind and knew that intermission was my submission.

In full retreat, I left before "Death" started. The operagoers were talked semantics and idiosyncracies. I just wanted a good ol American hot dog. Ruralites like me....football loving, ESPN watching, let's meet at the bar and get some wings and beer kind of guys, don't do German/Japanese/French opera. It was boring, uninspiring, and I could not imagine how anyone could enjoy it. Kind of like Georgia Tech football. Yes, I was not "meant" to attend this opera. If I had been, I would have had some cherry Pop Rocks in my mouth and my Spin Doctors album blaring "Jimmy Olsen's Blues" while Orpheus twirled around the tree branches, afire.

Text Walking and Goldfish: Don't "Count Beer" Too Early, Y'all

"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?

Home is Where the Rental Van Is.....I'm an Official New Yorker

Hey y'all, sorry I have been on a hiatus for a few days, this move to NYC takes up more time than the DMV. After all the phone calls, flights, applications, down payments, security deposits, rental cars, and the donation of a kidney....I am finally here. The journey up here was fun, I drove 932 miles in a 2011 Chrysler Town and Country, which I nicknamed "Cody" to remind me of home. Cody took us through such awesome metropolises as Chilhowie, Virginia ("Chilhowie" is a Cherokee word that means "land of many deer.") I envisioned a mass exodus of the male population of Cassville to Chilhowie in September. Imagine an army of my people, covered in fox urine dressed in their best Realtree, invading Virginia to annihilate the deer population for three months. The only advice I can give to Chilhowie store owners is the following: stock up on whole corn, Copenhagen, Natural Light, Fudge Rounds (for breakfast of course) and have snow shovel handy for all the bulls*** stories that you will hear in the afternoons. "Hell, I seen a twelve pointer, no...it was a fourteen pointer. Would've field dressed at 325! I let 'im walk though, I told 'im (spits Copenhagen)....."go git yer big brother." Chilhowie is also home to the other  "Nature Boy" Buddy Landell, the uber-successful Smoky Mountain/WWF/WCW Wrestling star. (notice I put Smoky Mountain first) Seriously, deer and wrestling....I almost stayed here.

No, I kept on going. Washington DC has some of the most confusing highways in the known universe, no wonder so many people live in that area....they can't get out. I paid $27.00 in tolls to the People's Republic of Maryland on the way through their state. Seriously, the state's motto should be "Tax Dat @$$" because I was out of greenbacks by the time we entered Delaware, which was a pivotal moment in my life. Why? Because it's Delaware. The first state and.....um, well...they have....a big bridge into Jersey? I navigated my way down the Jersey Turnpike pretty well. You can tell when you are in New Jersey because the GPS gets an attitude. "In three miles, keep left on I-95, you freakin' moron." More tolls were paid on this road, I did not see Snooki or Tony Soprano, and Bruce Springsteen has his own XM station. Needless to say, I was ready to get to New York.

You will notice that I said I drove 952 miles. If you Mapquest the route, the drive appears to be 895 miles. Yes, that mileage would be accurate if you plugged in the address correctly in the GPS. We did not put the word "West" in the street name, which was not a big deal, except we live on a numbered street. Every borough has numbered streets. Our GPS decided that we were going to Brooklyn. By the time we realized this, it was too late. Cody and I did a magnificent job cruising the streets and highways of Staten Island, Brooklyn, the Upper East Side, and Midtown in an effort to get home. It is a sick feeling to see the city skyline appear and then disappear as you FREAKING BYPASS it on the way to the wrong borough...not to mention I had to pee and there was a $12.00 toll that I paid to get on Staten Island. I was 1/7 of a mile from the correct exit when I turned off. To put it in perspective for Georgians, this is like going to Smyrna from Marietta, except you take I-285 East all the way around Atlanta. Driving in New York is like vehicular combat, it is dangerous, fast paced, aggressive and not for the faint of heart. Did I mention I had to pee? At least I got to see where Sandy Koufax was born. Cody and I were almost sideswiped, rearended, T-Boned and left for dead in the hour and a half detour through the most populated area of the city. We made it, however. When we returned Cody to Hertz Auto, I shed a small tear. I hope he is driving a small family on a two-lane road in Kentucky somewhere.

The Upper West Side is a special place, it is far more residential than most parts of Manhattan. You will not see tourists wandering aimlessly on the streets, taking pictures of manhole covers and bus graffitti. (no joke, saw some foreigners doing that down in Times Square.) Famous people live here to get away. Ralph Lauren and Jerry Seinfeld live near me. So does Regis Philbin. John Lennon lived about eight blocks away before he was killed. I guess they are like me, they wanted the small town feel and to be left alone. It's like Cassville amongst the skyscrapers, except there are 1.5 million people in this part of town. And taxis. And guys with yarmulkes. Let's face it, we ain't in Kansas anymore. Life is different here, but it is not a bad different. You know me, I like to compare and contrast everything. There are no Waffle Houses, but we have real Italian food with a wine selection that includes more than Franzia. I am not afraid to day drink on Montepulciano.....

                                                        Aviators and Rigatoni....winning

 College football is not big here but they have alumni bars all over the city that show the games for homesick Southerners. The UGA bar is called "The Village Pourhouse." I have not seen a Browning sticker yet. The only cowboy boots are worn by Hispanic men and rich Connecticut girls trying to rebel against Daddy and going to Dartmouth. School is out during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I have not heard anybody called Shane, Dwayne, Cody, Crystal, Misty, Tonya, Charity or Chastity (whom are neither charitable nor chaste).  I have a doorman. I have no car. I live near the Beacon Theater, where the Allman Brothers perform for thirty straight days every March. When I get directions to somewhere, it's not "take 75 to Peachtree" it's "take the 6 to Houston and cab it to Avenue A." Yep, life will be awash with new experiences. I will miss the South and Georgia very much. This harkens me back to a day in high school when a teacher told me, "to be successful in the world, you will have to lose that accent at some point." Frankly, I never considered that route and I personally took offense to it. Courteney Cox went to speech classes to eliminate her Alabama twang and I lost all respect for her. Interestingly enough, a New York attorney told me the other day, upon hearing my drawl, "don't ever change, that accent is classic!"

Don't worry, I won't. If you removed my skin, I swear you would find red clay under there. If I ever get homesick, I'll just re-rent Cody and drive to Chilhowie. Y'all have a good day!

Muddy Water Metaphors and Cassville Wisdom...plus some news

Many people have asked me, "Why do you call the blog Reflections in Muddy Water?" There are two explanations, one literal and one metaphorical. The literal explanation arises from Two Run Creek, which runs right behind our old property in Cassville. I used to play in this creek every day, trying to catch bream and filling Mason Jars with periwinkles to show my grandmother. She always worried about snakes. "Y'all watch out! Them water moccasins will chase you!" she would shout from her back porch. Luckily, we were spared from their death venom and warp speed for all those years. We knew what their nests looked like and we always had a rifle close by, just in case. Thanks to Mom and Dad for buying the rifle and showing us how to shoot it. Two inch fangs are no match for a Marlin .22 sighted in so perfectly that I could shoot the pollen off a bee's rearend from 200 yards out.

The metaphorical explanation comes from life itself, as a Southern boy with a 1940's mentality, living in the modern world. The world is "muddy water," so to speak. It is full of possibilities because you really don't know what is underneath the surface. It could be a nice bream (happiness, good health, wealth, etc.) or it could be the snakes that Neen warned us about (evil, greed, ill will, whatever makes us sad or angry). The rifle is your mind and body, molded by your decisions and upbringing, always loaded and ready for action. Use it wisely because you only have one and when you run out of ammunition, the snakes will come in full force. My Cassville roots taught me so many valuable lessons about the world, not just in our little dusty corner of the universe, but everywhere I go. I still love to play in the muddy creek water, I still get joy pulling a nice, fat bream up on the bank....but I'm always on the lookout for snakes and when they come along, the rifle is there and "hesitation" is not in our vocabulary in Cassville.

So, this past weekend, I was pulling weeds and cleaning up pine tree limbs with Dad. It was 4:00 PM and he remarked, "I'm afraid I've waited too long to plant those begonias, Daddy Kim always said don't plant in any months that don't have an "r" in them." Daddy Kim was my great-grandfather. A loveable, wonderful man who missed only one scheduled day of work in 32 years. The same man who married my great-grandmother at the age of 15. The same man who built their house with his own two hands. I love that old school wisdom. In this generation, where everybody "googles" and "wikipedias" everything from hair care to screwing in a light bulb, it's nice to hear something that was actually passed down by word of mouth. My generation just seems to know very little in the way of practical information. Seriously, there are people from my law school class that can pontificate about the Roe v. Wade decision until you want to sacrifice them like an Aztec virgin, yet if you hand them a ratchet and a new car battery, you would hear crickets for miles. I'm not saying they are stupid, but if I had my choice to know the intricacies of supplemental jurisdiction in federal court or how to replace a radiator in a 1989 Dodge Ram....hand me the toolbox, please. It's hard to convince a federal judge of anything if your car is smoking in the driveway and you don't know how to fix it and get to Court.

There were several more sayings that ran through my head as we pulled weeds. The South is always known for its colloquial nature and Cassville is no exception. I compiled a list of my favorites, mostly gleaned from the store and my family members. This list is brought to you by Husky tools (because I replaced a car battery last week...Take that, civil procedure!), calamine lotion (because I got poison oak pulling weeds), and my Aunt Brenda's creamed corn, the single greatest carb explosion since Rosie O'Donnell got off the Atkins Diet and invaded Baskin Robbins with a soup ladle.

1) "You are better off rubbing sand in a lion's ass as to mess with me..."

This was a Billy special. This essentially meant that if you chose to mess with him, you would likely be physically injured in the near future. You would rather be mauled and eaten by a lion than, for example, hide his Taylor's Pride chewing tobacco from him. You normally would not take somebody seriously like this, but when they are packing heat, the lion's ass looks tempting.

2) "I hope they don't get in that cloud on the way over here..."

No, they don't mean that someone physically gets into a cloud. It means they hope the traveler, who is on their way to Cassville, is not intercepted by the storm that is currently coming out of Gadsden, Alabama and on its way toward us. Many unfortunate travelers have been hindered by roadblocks of the cumulonimbus nature over the years. I remember when it came up a cloud on many occasions at the beach and we would lament, "now we can't play putt-putt!" Mom and Dad would smile, knowing the cloud has averted another dreaded round of putt putt where Matt and I argued over who gets the red ball.

See also...."It's coming up a cloud" or "I bet they got in that cloud." (to explain the previously mentioned traveler's lateness) "I got in that cloud" is also an explanation for tardiness that is universally accepted throughout the South.

3) "He's got one foot in the grave and the other one on a banana peel..."

Somebody is on the brink of death, or looks like crap because they are a drug abuser. I remember hearing this when one certain man would come to the store and blow his disability check on lottery tickets every week, geeking on meth and scratching furiously. When he finally mowed down his income to about $15.00 (courtesy of Lucky 7's, $2 Jumbo Bucks and Fantasy 5) , he would buy a 12 pack of Natty Light and a pack of Marlboros instead of food. I guess the he ate the banana that he was eventually going to slip on, because he ended up in prison. Priorities and bananas....alive and well in the 30123.

4) "He could #$@# up an anvil with a banana peel...."

Here we go with banana peels again. This statement means that said person can find a way to screw up anything and everything they touch. It often applies to people on mobile phones, in their cellular funk, somehow find a way to block off the entire parking lot of the store with one car because they are not paying attention. Seriously, I had one woman in a Tahoe, yapping on her Nextel (aaaaah! I hated those things!) back out of the store's parking lot and hit a stop sign. The sign shattered her back glass and fell across the street, thereby blocking all south and northboud traffic. The shattered glass covered about 2,000 square feet, of course, so nobody could get to the gas pumps. The county sent about seven deputies and three DOT workers to the scene, she cried uncontrollably as her insurance guy showed up and said they weren't covering it. The DOT guys smoked about 76 cigarettes, the cops had to give about three "following too closely" tickets from rubberneckers rearending each other, while Dad and I just stood there swatting flies....watching the anvil breaking before out eyes.

5) "Our power goes off every time a damn truck backfires in Chattanooga!"
In the 1990's, our power went off every other day. Seriously, Bartow County residents will back me up on this. We had more blinking digital clocks and lukewarm milk than anywhere in the state! I remember the time that my neighbor got drunk and chainsawed an oak tree onto the power lines, car wrecks that seemed to always find a power pole, blown transformers, high wind, train whistle blew too loudly, "Rugged" Ronnie Garvin wins the TV title from Arn Anderson.....almost any event would trigger a power outage. I swear, our power bill was $6.53 one month in 1994. Neen would drive up to the store to get the latest news on the power outage to spread amongst the populace, we would scramble around and store all the ice cream, meat and milk into coolers and wait for the Georgia Power trucks to fly by. One of them would stop and tell us, "well, it come up a damn cloud down in Rockmart and....." See? Universal explanations....they are right above you at all times. I'm sure Johnnie Cochran would have found a way to use it if he were still alive.


These sayings are not copyrighted, so y'all may use them at your leisure. I plan on using them for the rest of my life. I just have one question though, I wonder if people will understand them in New York City? That's right, folks. Yours truly and Laura are moving to the Big Apple in June. This blog will continue and being in NYC will create a plethora of new stories and ideas for blog material. We are beyond excited about this opportunity. I promise to represent the South and more importantly, Cassville, to the best of my ability. As I said before, you never know what the muddy water will bring you. I guess I saw the reflection of the city skyline in the water and knew this periwinkle-gathering, bream fishing boy could make it anywhere. Although I will be navigating those asphalt streets  in the city that never sleeps, I know the creek bank is just a step away.

Taxes, Jenga Blocks and Fence Staples: More Stereotypical Cassville Behavior

I've been dealing with the fact that I will never know everything. No matter how many books I read, how many years of school I attend or how many learned people I speak with, there is no possible way to be all-knowing. The ultimate questions do not concern me, honestly. Why do we die? Where do we go when we die? Are we alone in the universe? Is Soylent Green really people? I have nothing for you there. Those questions will be answered in due time and like a Blockbuster movie, the due date is undetermined. So, I will continue to hang on to these questions, like I did a copy of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, until my time comes to know. I just hope my late fee is not too high....

No, I concern myself with other issues, usually dealing with entertainment or sports. Did Tony Soprano get whacked? How did Sophia get into the walker barn in the Walking Dead? Do UGA football players have weed magnets in their pockets during the offseason? Will Tiger ever recover from his PR nightmare? The answers to those questions are as follows:

1) I don't believe he did. A truce was called, dang it!
2) She watched The Fray sing the National Anthem and died of shame.
3) Yes. That is the only explanation, because "I didn't know it was weed" simply does not work anymore.
4) Will Georgia Tech ever be relevant? Did Florida have any fans prior to 1990? The answer is the same.

Another unanswered question that comes about this time of year, one that plagues us all.....where does my tax money actually go? I have only been paying taxes since I graduated (for the third time) in 2007, so I'm not quite as jaded as some. However, my cynicism and sarcasm make me sound like I've been paying since 1965. Oh well, I'll find someone to blame for it when I finally retire, I'm too busy working right now. Since I'm writing my check to the IRS this week, I have concocted five destinations for my hard earned money, listed in order of probability (1 being least likely, 5 being most likely):

1) A new EKG machine for a VA hospital and research grants for cancer physicians;
2) A raise for teachers, firefighters and police officers;
3) A new Ipad for an out of work, single mother of five illegitimate children;
4) A new Rascal (with a reverse beeper) for a "disabled" 350 pound man with type 2 diabetes, carpal tunnel syndrome, fibromyalgia and one of the 73 types of fake autism;
5) A new condo for Senator ____________ in the Gulf of Mexico and a down payment on his hurricane insurance premium.

I'm sorry if those last three seem harsh, but when you live amongst the stereotypical government check recipients and know young teachers who struggle to make their mortgage payment, you will develop a harsh attitude.

Anyhow, Cassville stereotypes do not yield such harshness. I find them to be endearing qualities of people that I come to appreciate more and more every single day. There were times, however, when I wanted to look at some people and say, "Really?!?" This list is brought to you by Krylon Spray Paint (saw graffiti today that said "Sweet Pea Luvs Jesus"), Exit 306 on I-75 and the "peach's" for sale there, and Red Ryder BB Guns (apparently, somebody has been naughty and shooting Cassville natives with a BB Gun this week.) News flash, fools....some of those people are carrying enough heat to reduce your Z-71 to an Isuzu PUP. I'd pick a new town.

The Guy Who Always Wants Lunch Meat Two Minutes Before Closing

When we closed the store at 8:00 PM, we always cleaned the place from front to back, side to side. Every single night, I would sweep and mop the floor with Pine Sol, wipe down the cooler doors, and of course, bleach the deli equipment. I'm not talking about a little spray and wipe, either. I declared war upon E.Coli and dropped Clorox bombs all over the meat slicer. Since the slicer was 273 years old, it was stainless steel, huge and had about 900 tiny crevices where nastiness could reside. Yours truly would clean every single bit of it. Undoubtedly, at 7:58 PM, right after I finished the last crevice, somebody would walk in and say, "Man, I hate to do this, but I need a 1/4 pound of roast beef."

Many of you are thinking, "So what? It's a 1/4 pound and you're done." Wrong. Imagine you are in college again, playing Jenga on a random Tuesday. You and the other player are getting down to the very end, it's getting tense. The game has been going on for thirty minutes and a free pizza is riding on this game. Just as you are about to make a move to seal the deal, one of your fraternity brothers bumps the table, spills a Miller High Life in your lap and sneezes on you as the Jenga blocks crumble. That's what a 7:58 roast beef order is like. The entire process must be repeated, because roast beef has internal juice that pours out of every slice like Zima at Georgia Tech on Gameday. Further, you have the black/brown outer layer of the meat that smears itself all over the slicer like a 3rd grade finger painting. So, enjoy your $2.37 worth of roast beef. I'll still be cleaning when the Mayan calendar expires.

The Guy Who Wants Me to Check the Radiator on His Smoking Car

You can hear these guys coming down Cassville Road from miles away. You know the sound, Southern people. It's the sweet rumble of a Camaro without the muffler and/or blown head gasket, the scraping of the muffler pipe on the asphalt and the choking noise of an engine with five year old oil and a rod that's about to be "thowed." ("Throwing a rod" in a car is a death sentence for said vehicle. I saw a Cassville man make this diagnosis on a Mustang in the parking lot once. Everyone standing around the car agreed and muttered something like, "sheeeyat, junk this baby and get you a Chevy!" You might as well drop a piano on the car or light it on fire...it's over.)

Of course, there is smoke billowing from under the hood. It looks like somebody started a campfire under it. Without fail, they pull the car right next to the front door, so the wonderful smell of burned oil, grinding transmission and exhaust fill the entire building. He pops the hood and the powder keg of an engine is running more ragged than the University of Arkansas's Public Relations Department. I walk out the door and the driver yells out the window, "check 'at (that) radiator and see if I need water!" Yeah, I'll get right on that. Getting my face melted off by 375 degree water was high on my "to do" list today, so thanks for coming in. You look at the car and realize that "needing water" is about the 234th thing wrong with this car. The guys on the benches are waving their arms in disgust, the smoke detector is going off in the store now and two old people want to sample the butter pecan ice cream. Dad comes out the door, with a fury usually reserved for thieves, door-to-door salesmen and tricky price guns, and verbally assaults the driver until he leaves.

The Full Service Advantage Taker

It's true, we were a full service gas station. It's true, part of our job description was pumping gas for our customers any time we were able. It's true, I actually enjoyed pumping gas, checking oil and transmission fluid for people. There's a quiet enjoyment when you're under the hood of a 1987 Chevrolet S-10, I can't really explain it. (especially when the driver's grandmother is sitting in the bed, smoking a cigarette with her iron lung propper up next to her. True story.)

Then, you have the men who always come in when we are the busiest, with a one gallon gas can for their weedeater. They sit the can next to the pump, stand there with their arms crossed and stare into the store. We are running around like ants that just realized a jelly donut fell on top of our nest. People are everywhere. This guy needs 3 pounds of sixteen penny nails and 2 pounds of fence staples, for which you need gloves because they are THE sharpest things on the face of the Earth. This lady needs two bags of sweet feed. Another guy needs a key cut for a 1989 Chevrolet Silverado (two-sided, of course). Still, the man stands there with his one gallon can. In the time it takes for me to get out there, I could have:

1) Mobilized a Marine battalion, invaded Morocco and renamed it Cassville-East;
2) Taken the SAT again;
3) Cut his grass, weedeated his driveway, eaten a Moon Pie with an RC Cola and learned Mandarin Chinese.

So, when I finish pumping the $2.15 (this was the 90's....cheap gas, tightrolled jeans, and Saved By The Bell was still on, aaahhhhh) he just sheepishly says, "Man, y'all sure are busy. Do y'all need any part time help?"

My response: "Yeah, we got this meat slicer....."

Have a great weekend!

Things People Don't Say in Cassville

I love Internet epidemics. They have replaced the news as my information highway and window to the outside world.  Nothing helps me get through a stressful day like looking at "standing broom" pictures, Twitter controversies, and fake Youtube videos of Sasquatches, killer whales eating people off the beach and the latest "Pants on The Ground" song that people like for about 48 hours. Simon Cowell is having a snarky Twitter fight with Steven Tyler? There's a video of a dog drinking a dry martini? Sold. I need laughs and the American public never fails to amuse me.

One thing that did not amuse me this week was The Fray's rendition of the National Anthem during the Kentucky-Kansas game. I already disliked their music (as I do all modern "rock") but they have elevated themselves into the Kenny Chesney zone with me. Three acoustic guitars, a tamborine and three guys in sweater vests/baby Gap t-shirts massacring a wonderful song by making it sound like something from "Dawson's Creek." Seriously, it was like a talentless high school band playing "Brown Eyed Girl" in a Caribou Coffee somwhere in suburban Hell. I thought about three things as they wailed mercilessly and the Kentucky/Kansas faithful contemplated getting another beverage....

1) I wish one of those Marines would just cleave the lead singer's head off with his sword;
2) The parties responsible for choosing this horrendous abomination need to be busted down to mail room duty;
3) I actually miss Whitney Houston.

This one will become a Youtube sensation, I guarantee it. It was right up there with Roseanne and Carl Lewis.

Ok, back to funny stuff. One of the more recent epidemics that has appeared on Youtube is "S**t People Say/Don't Say in _________." That blank can be filled by anything. States, cities, and colleges are the usual culprits. Many of them also incorporate gender/race/social standing into their lists, which makes it completely hilarious. For example, "S**t White People Don't Say in Compton." See? You are hooked already. It's like watching old people back into a parking space, it's going to be awkward, very amusing and you just can't turn away. This actually happened to me yesterday while I was eating lunch outside. This elderly man in a Ford F-150 pulled into the crowded parking lot, surveyed the open spaces and decided to back into the space that was bordered by a large oak tree on the left and a Dodge Ram 3500 on the right. There were other spaces next to small cars. There were spaces with NO cars next to them. Of course, he picks THE MOST difficult space. I counted eight times that he pulled forward and backed up before he finally turned off the ignition. In the amount of time it took for him to finish, I could have 1) smashed all The Fray's guitars Belushi-style and gone to jail; 2) watched a season of the Sopranos; and 3) counted the number of people who swear they saw an Adam's Apple in Brittney Griner's throat this week.

Northwest Georgia culture, specifically Cassville, has some words, phases, ideas, values and expressions that are used every single day. For example:

"Man, I hope the Braves won last night."
"How's your momma 'n them?"
"Y'all ain't right!"
"That deer had 17 points, I swear!"
"Brad, I would have the money for that credit you gave me last week but Daddy's bond was $750 and we pawned my brother's Playstation and his bird gun but it wasn't enough, sorry."

You will hear that nearly every single day without fail. I got to wondering though, what would you NOT hear in Cassville? What phrases would not be uttered on the benches of Cass Grocery? What ideas are taboo from the Cedar Creek dumpsters to the New Macedonia Holiness Antioch Bread of Life Full Bible Church? I thought long and hard about this, remembering my days of listening to stories about bar fights, fishing at Lake Weiss, who got arrested at Edwards Trailer Park last night, who could pick up bags of horse feed with one hand (my uncle Mark) and what environmental illegality somebody just committed with a car muffler. It has been mulled over and perused more times than the Health Care Reform Act, except this will not cost you anything. This list is brought to you by RealTree Low Carb Energy Drinks (I'm more jittery than a meth addict at a roadblock, thanks), Purell Hand Sanitizer (somebody said, "the Wal-Mart brand is cheaper" and I replied that I'd rather rub molten lava on my hands), and the tire rut in the parking lot at my Dallas office. The Jetta can" get on it" too, what can I say?

Things You Will Not Hear in Cassville, Georgia (at any time, anywhere)

1) "We just don't need another Waffle House."

2) "I'm just so glad the carpenter bees come back every spring."

3) "Y'alls gas prices are low enough."

4) "You know, I always get the best service at Lowe's. Everybody there knows so much!"

5) "I hate working on cars. I get no joy out of installing lift kits, drive shafts, or rear axles."

6) "I never need plumbing supplies."

7) "Let's go to a Hawks game!"

8) "When I really think about it, Jeff Gordon is pretty good for the diversity of NASCAR. I like what he brings to the table. He is also heterosexual."

9) "No, no, no....it's soda pop."

10) "I really enjoyed La Boheme at the Fox last night."

11) "Let's not put out all these Christmas lights this year."

12) "I don't secretly like to cut my grass because I just bought a $4,000 Ex Mark."

13) "My wife and I really enjoy fishing trips to Allatoona together."

14) "My husband was right."

15) "Cherokee, North Carolina is a place I cannot see myself going."

16) "Killing a deer just does nothing for me."

17) "Put out that cigarette, you know it causes low birth weight!"

18) "You don't like Moon Pies? Cool. Me neither."

19) "Do y'all happen to carry Sweetwater 420 or Terrapin here?"

20) "That song is on my Ipod!"

21) "I don't get into fights at my kid's baseball games. My kid is also not that good, I'm just glad he enjoys the game."

22) "Do you have unsweet tea?"

23) "Bumper Stickers are just car graffiti."

24) "I'm not going to buy a 4-Wheeler with my bonus check."

25) "That Prius I just bought really has done wonders for my gas mileage. I don't miss that Mustang one bit."

26) "I don't always drink beer, but when I do, I prefer little known craft beers made in Europe."

27) "Dale Earnhardt was such a jerk on the track."

28) "I'm happy with the current administration. They seem to operate in an efficient manner and care about the little man. I hope they come by my house to campaign during the next election."

29) "Technically, moonshiners did break the law."

30) "I have never gotten angry for any reason and moved churches. I have also only been saved once."

31) "Hmmm, I'll have a Pepsi."

Those are just a few examples (one for every year of my life) of what you will not hear in the 30123. At least from a native, that is. If somebody asks for Hunt's Ketchup, discusses the speed of their internet, their relative happiness with their pay structure at work or attends sporting events not involving a ball, a car, an animal or punching someone in the face.....they are not from Cassville.

As for The Fray, well, they better not show up in Cassville. Not after what they did. You know why?

32) "We ain't armed, don't worry about it."

Profiles in Cassville: How To Tell Bad Things Are Going To Happen

Considering all the negativity in the world right now, it is a wonder we all get along as well as we do. The entire nation is focused on Florida and the racial strife that has resulted from the death of Trayvon Martin. I always wonder a couple of things about these nationwide issues:

1) Who is really affected and truly at a loss?
2) Who is just trying to get on TV and have their fifteen minutes of fame?

I am no judge or jury and I know nothing of the incident other than what the news "reports." I just hope it is resolved in a just manner, those in the wrong are punished, those in the right are vindicated and NOBODY gets rich off the story. Profiting from death is reserved for governments and oil companies! (joking, of course. Or not.)

The incident has risen new questions about profiling. Does it happen in America frequently? Oh I don't know, maybe every nanosecond??? Human beings are not capable of viewing each other with impartiality, of this I am certain. I'm not just talking about race. I'm talking about socioeconomics in their entirety....appearance, financial condition, and behavior. Nobody can admit that they do not take this into account when meeting someone out in the world. Anyone who says that is a liar, blind and deaf or has attended way too many Grateful Dead concerts.

Then there are actions that cause one to lump another into a certain group of people. At Cass Grocery, I always profiled people's actions. You had to profile like that or you wouldn't survive up there. Profiling helped me catch thieves, stop scams, save my family money and keep our doors open all those years. So when it comes to that kind of profiling, I am totally in favor. I could always tell when something bad was about to happen. I could always point out the person who was going to try to distract me while their buddy stole cigarettes. Or who would reset the gas pump over and over, getting $2.00 each time, then come in claiming they only got $2.00 when they got $10.00. Quick change artists. Bad check passers. People who wanted credit that had no intention of paying us back. They were all the same.

Bad things do happen in Cassville from time to time, as with any small town in northwest Georgia. Drama is not reserved for petty Housewives, the Jersey Shore, or whatever Kardashian is inexplicably appearing on television today. I'm not talking about murder or terrorism here either, it's just that you can sense when some form of illegal activity is about to take place or when something unfortunate is about to befall someone. I guess those of us who worked at Cass Grocery had the ability to detect these shenanigans quicker than most because we knew everybody and their tendencies. I cannot count the times I've watched a customer leave the parking lot and Billy would say, "I'm glad I ain't in that house today." So, I compiled a list from my experiences to educate y'all on how to know when something bad has happened or will happen in the 30123. This list is brought to you by the potholes on Cass-White Road, Old Milwaukee Light, Orange County Choppers, Bacarri Rambo's brownies, and the criminal trial calendar of the Superior Courts of Bartow, Floyd, Gordon, Polk and Cherokee Counties.

How to Know Something Bad is Going To Happen in Cassville

1) When a man speeds into the parking lot of Cass Grocery, slams on the brakes and walks quickly inside. The left side of his face is swollen and red. His t-shirt collar is stretched beyond repair. He says nothing when he walks in and buys a 22 ounce Budweiser and a box of .38 shells. He lays drag as he leaves the store.

Possibilities:

He is going to shoot somebody, likely his wife's boyfriend.

He is going to shoot property, likely a car or something valuable to himself or another person.

Dale Junior lost Daytona on the last lap, he slammed his head against the wall, tore at his shirt, decided to keep drinking and possibly shoot something in his agony.

2) Somebody other than a DOT employee is carrying a piece of Re-Bar longer than 3 feet in their hand.

Possibilities:

Busted Glass
Busted Face
Car Immobilization
Human Immobilization

3) Anytime somebody says, "There's going to be a fight in Acworth tonight" coupled with references to "my old lady."

Possibilities:

He is going to fight his wife's boyfriend in a trailer park on Glade Road in the near future. There are no other possibilities. Cassville people don't make empty threats.

4) When somebody walks to the store and makes a call on the payphone. They do not face the store and they talk longer than five minutes, nervously twisting the phone line in their hand. A random, unknown car arrives and the person hangs up and gets in. You don't see them for at least a week or ever again.

Possibilities:

Drugs
Prostitution
Black Market Sale
Senate Subcommittee meeting about the tax implications of the Health Care Reform Act.

5) When a man or woman come in the store and do not instantly shop or they walk aimlessly around the candy rack. They stand around nervously and wait for all other customers to leave. They approach the counter, inquire about the progress of your day so far, and start off with "Hey, uh, man, uh....I hate to do this....."

Possibilities:

They want to buy beer on credit and recite the ever popular "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today" speech

They tell me that I will receive a phone call from the police in the future and if I would gladly confirm that they were at store with me from 3:00-7:00 the day before, they would appreciate it.

They want to sell me a rarely used Glock 9 mm for $75.

How to Tell That Something has Happened in Cassville

1) Take the same scenario from #5 above. It goes both ways.

Possibilities:

They have decided to run from the law for various reasons and they wanted to pay me for the cigarettes they got on credit yesterday before they take off to Alabama (Cassville people always run to Alabama. I don't know why. It's the proverbial Twilight Zone of legal liability, apparently.)

They just got dropped off by a strange, unknown car after being picked up at the payphone. They need to borrow $20, some Formula 409, some 2 Cycle oil and three gallons of bleach.

2) The guy who talked about the "fight in Acworth" and his "old lady" appears with a black eye in the latest Busted paper, smiling, with "Aggravated Assault, Battery and Terroristic Threats" under his name.

Possibilities:

He followed through. Cassvillians don't play. They quit first grade on account of recess.

3) A 90's model, two door SUV is driving 50 miles per hour in the wrong direction down a one-way cemetery road. Five people are crammed in the vehicle, there's a "Bobby's Title Pawn" tag on the back and a Rebel flag bandanna dangling from the rearview. (Happened to me yesterday)

Possibilities:

A massive amount of methamphetamine was just unloaded in the woods in the back of the cemetery.

A chicken fight was just raided and they booked it into the cemetery to duck the cops.

They were late to their SAT prep class and took a shortcut through the cemetery.

4) You are on your way to Gulf Shores, Alabama on I-65 below Montgomery and a car pulls beside you, honking the horn and waving. It's somebody from back home. You yell out the door, "what are you doin??" They reply, "Runnin!" and speed off into oblivion (or Bolivian, if you are Mike Tyson). (True story, too)

Possibilities:

Use your imagination. I told you, Alabama is legal purgatory for northwest Georgians.

5) A man comes in the store, with mud covering his feet, legs and all the way up to his waist. There is mud in his hair. He stops at the front, knocks some of the mud off his boots, walks in and says, "Boy, you ain't gonna believe this..."

Possibilities:

Every water line in his house busted and he needs 173 PVC 90 degree elbows, ten cans of pipe glue and two twelve packs of Budweiser to get through it.

They were riding at the power lines after a rain and every single all terrain vehicle is now stuck in the mud. He needs thirty feet of chain, three giant hooks and two twelve packs of Budweiser to get through it.

All of these scenarios were witnessed by me or someone at the store at some point. You get used to it after awhile. That's where the "profiling" comes in. So, when you see somebody acting nervous and talking about Alabama, you know they are heading for the Switzerland of Southern Justice. You will understand what to expect when you see a shirtless, tattooed man walking with a six foot piece of Re-Bar toward his ex-wife's car. You will not wonder what's going on when you see somebody on a payphone at 3 AM get into a random Camaro with out of state plates....

They are going to a State Senate hearing about the intricacies of high interest ARM loans before their tee time at East Lake Golf Club. Get a clue.

A Few Stereotypes...or Don't Pay for that Beer with Unrolled Pennies

You never know when a laugh will randomly come over you. Yesterday, I went to Calhoun, Georgia for work, as I normally do. I pulled into the public lot east of the downtown area and walked to the office. We share the same block with several businesses, one of which is a DUI school/probation. FYI, if you don't think DUI School and Probation are businesses, try getting arrested or live in the legal world every day. They have more money than Davy Crockett (+1 for Forrest Gump reference). Seriously, I'm in the wrong business. Anyhow, I analyzed the vehicles parked in front of the respective businesses. The restaurant, the women's clothing boutique and the insurance agency had Chevy Tahoes, Silverados, a Honda Accord and a Lexus sitting out front. The law firm next door had a late model X-Terra. In front of the DUI School were the following:

1) A Yellow IROC-Z Camaro with dice on the mirror
2) A white, step side Ford Ranger with 13 inch mismatched rims, a Misfits sticker and a black bumper
3) A convertible PT Cruiser with duct tape on the ragtop, and Cadillac rims

This scene leads me to believe 2 things:

1) Stereotypes come from somewhere; and
2) Always judge a man by his car.

I laughed out loud all the way into my office. I plopped down in my chair, removed my Aviators, checked Facebook, texted Laura, and then turned on my Ipod. I stopped laughing because I realized.... I am a walking stereotype too. My generation is technologically dependent (we prefer to say "savvy"), fashion obsessed, and self centered to the point where we seek attention by posting open ended lamentations on social media sites so people will ask us.....what's wrong, sweetheart? (Huge pet peeve of mine) So, I got to thinking about stereotypes. How do they come about and why are people so up-in-arms about them all the time? The news media does not help one iota in the fight against stereotyping, scapegoating, typecasting, generalizing and all the other bad "-ings" that exist when it comes to the analysis of human behavior. You know me, I don't watch the news. Ever. I like to observe on my own and make my own decisions. I accidentally watched FoxNews once and had to get on Klonopin to get over my depression.

Since I observed Cassvillians in all their glory for so many years, I picked up on more stereotypes than I can count. What's funny about Cassville is that most people are proud to be the way they are. If somebody accuses them of being "country" or God help us, a "redneck," they seem to relish in this assumption. You are likely to hear the following:

"You damn right!"
"Mmmm hmmmm, you ain't lyin!"
"Yup. Wanna go ridin' at the par (power) lines?" (Non-Southerners, people in the South often ride 4-wheelers in the valleys created by large power lines)

Cassville people are fine with being accused of most things. Well, except the following:

1) Being a Jeff Gordon fan
2) Owning a Japanese vehicle (ATV's excluded)
3) Drinking non-alcoholic beer or any drink where one may raise their pinky as they indulge
4) Wearing ear plugs at the monster truck rally
5) Agreeing with any gun control

Here are some stereotypes from Cass Grocery that I observed every single day. These may or may not apply to your small town, as we are a unique bunch up here in the middle of Bartow County. The stereotypical action will be listed in bold and the reaction will be listed below. This list is brought to you by Dry Idea Powder Fresh deodorant (it's humid today), Tracy Lawrence's mullet, my Tim Hardaway poster, and A Tribe Called Quest's rapping skills. "I'm like Jordan with the mike, so let's gamble." Awesome.

People Who Have Bible Verses or Animal Pictures on their Checks....

The check is bad. No, really. 90% of the bank-created paper airplanes that flew back to us over the years had one of those two characteristics. Then we would be "jerks" for wanting our money. Oh, you have check #101 with a picture of a basket of kittens and Obadiah 1:1 quoted in the left hand corner? Excuse me while I get my tennis racket and smack that uselessness all the way to Kennesaw. (FYI, Obadiah only has one chapter. I remember that from 5th grade Sunday School class. Thanks, Mr. Anderson.) Why is these two particular items? I don't know. It was pure statistics for me. When I order checks from Wells Fargo, they always ask if I want graphics on my checks and I say, "Hell no!" I guarantee somebody that I do business with feels the same way I do.

People Who Still Drive late 90's Ford Explorers (two-door) and Write Checks for Over the Amount of Purchase.....

They are broke and probably doing drugs, hence the need for the extra cash. Those checks are probably coming back too. If there is a "Hello Kitty" picture and Psalm 23 on there, forgetaboutit. Light that check on fire.

Adults Who Ride a Bike to the Store....

I'm not talking about a $2,000 road bike. I'm talking about a 12 year old's Dyno dirt bike. These adults are ex-felons, too drunk to drive, or have a warrant out for their arrest somewhere. They will probably buy a twelve pack of the cheapest beer (Schaefer, Old Milwaukee, Milwaukee's Best), put it in a bag, hang it from one handlebar and you get to watch them try to steer the off-kilter bicycle as they talk on a cell phone all the way back to the trailer park.

Exception: Fu-Fu.  No man in the universe could annihilate Olde English 800 like him and still be coherent (the record was 9 in one day on July 4, 1994). He'd come in the store and I'd say, "Fu, what's happenin?!?" Fu would reply, "Makin it!" He rode a bike because he was a pimp. Wore a tie every day too. RIP Fu-Fu. (Imagine Deebo from Friday, except really skinny, much blacker, and wouldn't hurt a fly.)

Old People Who Have a Stupid Grin on Their Face, a T-shirt Tucked into Elastic Shorts and Wear Sandals (with or without socks)....

They are out of towners and want to buy ice cream. They will also ask goofy questions about the store, laugh too much about stuff that is not funny and make a joke about the price of the ice cream. They will undoubtedly wonder what at least three flavors are, want to sample the butter pecan and ask for an off-the-wall flavor like Rum Raisin. This is a guarantee. Even Neen could see it. You know why?

#1: Because she never wore a stupid grin, wore sandals (much less with socks) and did not own a t-shirt. Southern women like her would not be caught dead in any of the aforementioned ensembles, my Meemaw is the same way.

#2 She only ate ice cream that she made herself. Neen's homemade ice cream was a food group unto itself.  Neen was Cassville through and through.

People Who Talk About The Weather and Don't Sit on the Benches...

They are stealing from us. They are just trying to draw attention away from the batteries, the single pack of Goody's, the Kit-Kat or the 3/8 lag bolt that they just stuffed in their pocket. Karma always caught up to them. Once, a 12 year old kid mentioned something about the "dewpoint" to me and I knew he was a thieving little bastard. I told him to empty his pockets and lo and behold, a pack of Doral Light 100's appeared. I locked him in the ice machine and called his father at home, who drove up to the store and promptly "whupped" him on the spot. Cassville justice....always coming through in the clutch.

People Who Pay in Change Every Day.....

They will always wear pants that are too tight, so they have to struggle to remove the change, which falls in the floor and scatters all over the floor like a pile of roaches when a light turns on. They usually wait to come in when we are the busiest, buy a single Coors Light or a 40 ounce Bud Light, and pay for it with 76 pennies, three dimes and two nickels. This transaction will take a minimum of 15 minutes. When they drop the change, the other customers will help them pick it up and they all look like a herd of cattle grazing on a linoleum pasture. Dad would take a deep breath and get impatient, which would make me nervous and I would grab the Windex to clean the cooler doors before he exploded. If it had been Mom, she would helped them pick it up and then talk to them for 30 minutes about their kids. LOL. (oops, there's text speak, sorry. It's this generation.) Never a dull moment in the 30123.

Those are just a few stereotypes of customer activity. It was not a review of Cassville culture. It was not an indictment of anyone's way of life. It was observations made from years of dealing with the same kinds of people every single day. I'm not judging anyone and quite frankly, it made for a lot of laughs over the years. Sarcasm and cynicism aside, the stereotypical Cassville person was a good person with a good heart, who cared about us and the store, and when I see them now, they are always gracious and tell me how much they miss us. I miss them too.

Unsolved Mysteries in the 30123....Yoda is Gone and hey...there's a Ford Tempo hubcap!

There is an old Marshall Tucker Band song called "Stay in the Country," where Toy and Tommy Caldwell espouse the virtues of being from the South in the simplest way they can. The chorus says it all:

"I'll stay in the country,
that's where I was born,
live my life out in Carolina,
that's where I belong."

It reminds me of Cassville. It's weird for us small town Southerners, we can be anywhere and be reminded of home. It could be a song, a sound, a sight, a smell or some event that just takes you back to when you wore torn up jeans, it was OK to get dirty and if your hands smelled like catfish bait, nobody cared. I was in Atlanta the other night walking back to my car and I saw a lonely lightnin' bug (firefly, if you will. It's a lightnin' bug to me) flying by the parking deck. She lit up two or three times, flying slowly off into the night, looking for a place to go. It was one of those moments I was talking about. Instantly, Matt and I were running behind a million of them back home with a Mason jar, trying to catch enough to make a lantern out of it. They would blanket the pasture, there would literally be thousands of them. Those were nights where it was still 80 degrees at 8:00 and there was a constant layer of sweat on you, but you didn't mind. I couldn't help but smile. I could hear Neen yelling halfheartedly, "don't bring them things in this house!!" as she handed us a milkshake.

I've never known how lightnin' bugs light up. Quite frankly, it doesn't matter. I just hope that my future children have the opportunity to catch them one day. I guess it's just one of the Southern "mysteries" that will go on unsolved for yours truly. We are a mysterious bunch, we Southerners. As I've stated numerous times, the South has its own way of life. We are proud of things that others might not be. We put emphasis on things that other cultures ignore. Think about it. Where would you find people who stand around a country store lamenting the disappearance of the carburetor in the modern American vehicle? (Non Southerners, your car probably does not have a carburetor. Don't go around Cassville men and discuss your carburetor, trying to fit in.)  Where would you be able to trade a Rockwaller (Rottweiler) puppy for a drive shaft for a 1987 Dodge Ram? Where would you find people who think that drug dealers should get life in prison, but moonshiners deserved to be left alone? Cassville. That's where.

Cass Grocery spawned many mysteries over the years for me. When you people watch for as long as I did, you often wondered why people do the things they do. You also heard stories and tall tales that were never really proven, but not refuted either. Unanswered questions, oil puddles and cigarette butts, three things that covered the parking lot of Cass Grocery like sand covers the desert. Here are some simple mysteries for you:

#1: Why do people insist on smoking cigarettes while pumping gas? Especially when pumping it into a milk jug, where you have to bend down, thus making the flame even closer to the fumes and CERTAIN DEATH or at least, missing eyebrows. This happened daily. I would watch the heated ashes fall with baited breath, just waiting on a fireball to kill us all. Strangely, it never happened. Not even a small fire.

#2: When playing online lottery (Cash 3, Fantasy 5, Mega Millions, etc.), why do people ask what the numbers were in the last drawing before picking the new numbers? No, really. I've heard people say, "well they drew 53 yesterday, so I'm going with 17 on the power ball this time." What?!? So many people believe there is a science to random drawings. Yeah, as much of a science as trying to figure out Georgia Tech's probability of ever being a good football team. None. They have no chance.

#3: Why did people ever buy Clorox bleach when the generic bleach was $3.00 cheaper? Seriously, I would even encourage them with the lower price and get this: "Nah, I gotta have the Clorox. She'll kill me if I bring anything else home." Bleach is bleach. I'm sure of it. As sure as I am about several other things: a) skating rinks in the South cultivate future fathers of illegitimate children; b) I'm going to lose the pair of sunglasses on my head in the next three days (third pair this year so far) and c) The Outlaws are the second most underrated Southern rock band behind the Marshall Tucker Band.

See, those were simple things that happened every day. There are literally thousands of these mysteries. There were more pervasive mysteries, such as:

#1: Why do all disabled people (the fake kind, not the truly disabled) only drink Dr. Pepper or Mountain Dew? I guess sitting around all day, doing nothing, makes you tired and you need a pick-me-up with enough sugar to send yourself into a diabetic coma? Bring it on, the Coke and Pepsi salesmen thank you for your patronage and blatant disregard for your health. They need to include "drinking Dr. Pepper and Mountain Dew with reckless abandon" in the symptom list for fibromyalgia, COPD, carpal tunnel syndrome and the 73 new kinds of fake autism that exist now.

#2: Why do men who drive diesel trucks insist on backing into their parking spot? Never gotten a straight answer here. They also like to park near one another as well, like pretty maids all in a row (except they have oversized tires, a "CAT" tag on the front and dual gas tanks). I don't have a problem with this, I just have yet to understand it.

#3: Why didn't somebody from Cassville step up and do something drastic to stop the remake of The Dukes of Hazzard or Talladega Nights? These movies are horrific, inaccurate, and unworthy of a single Southern eye transfixing itself upon them. I walked out of the Dukes of Hazzard before it ended. I turned off Talladega Nights about 45 minutes in. Every Cassville native and true Southerner must band together and eliminate these travesties of modern film-making immediately.

Sorry, I had to go on some tangents there. I hate those movies, seriously. Just like I hate Kenny Chesney's music after 2001, the disappearance of Cadbury Creme Eggs after April and any beer made by Coors. Other mysteries spawned from Cassville-specific events that have yet to be properly addressed:

#1: What happened to Yoda? Nobody knows. She just disappeared one day. Dad and I came up some theories: a) She died and was reincarnated as an eternal lit cigarette laying in the store's parking lot; b) the alien race that killed the dinosaurs realized they left her behind; c) she transformed into the younger, Italian version of herself and you now know her as "Snooki." Seriously, when Snooki is hungover, you can see the resemblance. If she asks for a "dip of niller" on the boardwalk of the Jersey Shore, then you will know.

#2: How long did Dad drive his truck before he realized we had affixed a Toyota Camry hubcap to his front passenger rim? For some reason, the store was a magnet for wayward hubcaps. Every morning, we would open up and a stray plastic/fiberglass beauty would be laying in the parking lot. We often would attach a sign to it with "$5.00 or best offer" and leave it on the bench. It would promptly be stolen by somebody from the trailer park. (free frisbee/TV tray for them youngins) The aforementioned Toyota Camry hubcap was laying by the payphones one morning, I think around 1994-1995. Dad had a truck we called "Ol Blue." It was a long bed Chevrolet 1500 with a 400 cu. inch engine. Needless to say, that truck, with its weightless bed and unnecessarily huge engine, could "get on it" something fierce. Since it was a work truck, nobody ever rode shotgun much, that hubcap went unnoticed for at least two weeks. He never said a word about it. (Dad, if you read this and you found the hubcap, sorry...it was me.)

#3: Why were all those really nervous, scratchy people buying Sudafed, copper brushes and Drano from 2001-2006? LOL. Riiiiiiggghhht.

Those are just a few mysteries that I have yet to clear up. I could list hundreds of these and I'll probably do another installment from time to time. Right now, I'm still trying to figure out a couple of outside-of-Cassville mysteries:

#1: I watch the Walking Dead because it takes place in Georgia. I'm dying to know this...what did Dr. Jenner whisper to Rick Grimes in the CDC before it exploded?? My best guesses:

"Everyone is already infected."

"I'm what Willis was talking about."

"I think LL Cool J is one of the most underrated rappers of all time. Jingling Baby may be his best song, but Who Do You Love???? That's a classic."

See for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LkHAmnKvcM

#2: Why do people at Starbucks use up ALL of the 1/2 and 1/2 and just leave the empty bottle? By God, at Cass Grocery, that wouldn't happen. My customers would just walk to the cabinet and get a new container out themselves, then say "hey, I get a discount for all this heavy liftin', right?" I miss those people. Even Yoda.

Misconceptions about the South....Non-Political Version

As the area of the United States that is the most often discussed, written about, romanticized, demonized, idolized, and analyzed, we are sadly also generalized. Now, I'm not going to discuss all the serious issues that are factually airtight, according to the national media: the racism that just runs rampant in all Southern towns, our destitute education system, our failed dental hygiene, our requited love for our cousins, and our children's permanent Kool-Aid mustaches. They portray us in a light that suits them. They want to interview the fat lady in the mumu and hair curlers after a tornado. They want a Klan rally to occur in downtown Hoot n' Holler, Arkansas (population: 37) so they can say, "See? They are no different!" Just wait for a slow news day, the AP will run a story about the South that is less than flattering every time. Thank God for political disasters, the Occupy people, melting ozone, hurricanes, the Mayan calendar, Snooki and American Idol. If they did not exist, we'd be the topic of the national news every minute.

No, I'm not discussing serious stuff here. Why? I'm not that serious of a person. I happen to believe that God, in His infinite wisdom, made it feel good to laugh for a reason. I've never felt good after a rousing debate about gas prices, school board policy or whether Iraq has 28 WMD's stored under a used camel lot in downtown Basrah. Undoubtedly, I just end up more mad and even further divided from the people I was arguing with. I have my opinions, but I've never seen them directly affect anyone but me. However, I have seen a group of people laugh at something I've said, or get an email from somebody who tells me that I made their day with a Cassville story.....and that's what it's all about. It's the reason I never watch the news, but I watch every Comedy Central Roast. I don't catch the newest presidential debate, but if there's a Three Stooges marathon, I'm in. I'd rather have met Lewis Grizzard than John F. Kennedy. (unless he wanted to talk about Marilyn)

So, I'm here to clear up a few misconceptions about the South right here and now. These will be relevant to the modern day South, not the "Gone With the Wind" South. I've never stood in a pasture and screamed "As God as my witness, I'll never go hungry again!!" Sorry. We are just not that dramatic these days. I did scream it in the Waffle House parking lot on Cass-White Road once, but a triple order of hash browns (scattered, smothered, covered, and chunked) took care of that. Now the Waffle House has a "topped" option for hash browns...which means they cover all that goodness with a blanket of sausage gravy. For me, that's akin to walking through the Pearly Gates and my Granddads are both standing there bragging about a bass they just caught. It doesn't get better, really.

Misconceptions

#1 We All Think That Larry The Cable Guy is Funny

Nope. He's not, unless you like an hour of toilet humor mixed with a fake Southern accent. He's like the Kenny Chesney of comedy and people down here just go crazy for him. Call up "Larry Whitney" on Youtube and see for yourself. "Git-R-Done" needs to get the hell on. I watch the crowd when he says that tagline and they all let out a big "woooooooo" when he does this. Let it be known right now: only Ric Flair is allowed this response, not some fraudulent hick that put on some flannel, picked 3-4 stereotypes to play with, developed an accent and latched on to Jeff Foxworthy like a chigger on my leg after walking through our old pasture.

#2 Garth Brooks is the Best and Most Popular Country Singer Here

Garth had a ton of hits, of this there is no doubt. The man made millions of dollars singing of Low Places, Bar Associations, Rivers, Fires, and Calling the Old Man Out. However, I can say that he is not held in the same regard as Alan Jackson, George Strait or any of the old school singers. Why? He had a sissy factor. Yep, I said it. We were discussing it at the store once and one man said, "you know, I'd like to have a beer with George Jones. I mean, come on, it's George Jones. But Garth? Man, I don't know. He'd probably start talking about his feelings or how much starch he used in his shirt." Then, he pulled the Chris Gaines debacle that sealed his fate with true Southerners forever. Could you even imagine George Strait doing this? I could see his producers now...

(nervously kicking the dirt at his feet) "George, hey, look...um, we need you to connect with a new audience. This generation doesn't want Amarillo By Morning. They want songs about unrequited teenage love coupled with pill addictions, reality TV references, guitar distortion and at least one cameo by Kanye West in a music video. You are gonna need to highlight your hair and lose the hat. I think we will call you Tommy "44" Magnum. Deal?"

"Naw." George then spits Skoal on producer's Gucci loafer, choke slams an Angus Bull just to prove a point and drives off in his pickup, exuding masculinity and discounting any notions of tomfoolery in his countenance. (sorry, had to do the SAT word thing. It's that bad education down here, I'm tellin' you)

#3 Every Lawyer Down Here Wears Seersucker Suits

Speaking from personal experience, I look like a clown in seersucker and a bow tie. I might as well have a hand buzzer and a flower that squirts water pinned to my lapel. It works for some people, like old men with goatees, short guys, plaintiff's attorneys, or Bobby Lee Cook, who can wear whatever he wants. Every time I see somebody other than the aforementioned people in a seersucker suit, I want to say, "Hey, Captain Tryingtoohard, what's up?" Plus, seersucker is not exactly comfortable when its 90 degrees outside with 85% humidity. It's hard to convince a jury of anything with your shirt soaked and hair matted down like Norman Reedus on The Walking Dead.

#4 We Always Want to Hear "Freebird" in Bars or Any Live Music Situation

Undoubtedly, when somebody is playing live music in a bar, "Freebird!" is screamed to the top of somebody's Miller Lite soaked lungs when there is a quiet moment. If the singer asks if anybody has a request, "Freeeeeebiiiiird!!!" is without a doubt going to rattle the rafters. What people tend to forget is that the damn song is about 12 minutes long with no words for about six straight minutes. I know I'm not in the minority when I say that people lose interest in the song after about three or four minutes anyway. Don't get me wrong, I like Freebird, but it's not even close to being my favorite Southern rock song. In fact, it's not even the best song on the album it was recorded for. (Tuesday's Gone...much better if you ask me). So many people believe that Freebird is the quintessential Southern song simply because of the shouting phenomenon. They are wrong. That's like saying people in Cassville like Natural Light better than Budweiser because they buy it twice(d) as much. Nope. If a big bonus check comes in, they will walk out with two cases of Bud Heavy quicker than you can say "Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses is my life story."

Just once, I want somebody to shout "Green Grass and High Tides," "Mindbender," or "Blue Jeans Blues." One night, in a smoky bar somewhere in northwest Georgia, I want a guy to pull out his lighter, start swaying and scream "Highwaaaaaay Saaaaawwwwwwwngggg!!!! (Highway Song by Blackfoot. Download it, Southern people. Immediately.) Shoot, somebody let me bum a lighter, a Marlboro, a Camaro, and pending assault charge....and I'll have the band play the entire "Mullets Rock" compilation, beginning to end. Just ask the patrons of Wild Wing Cafe in Athens, Georgia, ca. August 2005. I had a live band from Savannah playing Allman Brothers, Marshall Tucker Band and Atlanta Rhythm Section all night long and I was wearing a tux. Imagine the damage I could do with an airbrushed "wolf howling over a canyon" t-shirt and a Schlitz 16 oz can.

#5 We Mispronounce the Word "Pen."

Nope. The rest of you are wrong. Get over it.

You are also wrong about other words too (these are two that I've been questioned/chastized about the most):

"Coke" or "Co-Cola" is acceptable for any soft drink. The whole country calls all tissues "Kleenexes" and all adhesive bandages "BandAids." We lay claim to soft drinks. Get over it.

"Fixing to" is an acceptable verb. We are basically informing you that we are arranging our schedules accordingly to effectuate the completion of  the pending activity that you are inquiring about. See? That's a mouthful. We are just being efficient. Get over it.

Conclusion: We Ain't Perfect

There are so many more misconceptions about the South out there. It doesn't make us mad, quite frankly, we relish the difference and wallow in it, like a pig in slop. We know we are not perfect. We also misconceive things ourselves. For example, why are there so many girls down here named "Charity" and "Chastity," who are neither charitable nor chaste. Why do we insist on the continuation of the Huddle House? It's not an alternative, it's sacrilege. How do we look in the mirror at ourselves when we let Kenny Chesney continue to make music? And what's with the Panama City obsession? I love my people, but dang, if I wanted to hang around thousands of idiots, wait in line to for a club that will be shut down by the cops in the next hour and get overcharged for second hand food...I'd go to a Larry the Cable Guy show.

Have a great weekend. (lighter's up, swaying ensues, ".38 Special!!!" and the crowd at Starbucks goes out the door, thinking I have a gun.)