My Southern Influence

A Brief History

My Southern Influence has served me well. The South is a different country. If you haven't been to the South you owe it to yourself to pay a visit. If you can become accustomed to the language, heat, humidity, and friendliness of the people you might enjoy your visit.

Let's go to the South is what you hear but I've never heard let's go to the North. It's just understood that anything south of the Mason-Dixon is just plain out of The South. I left the South in 1976 and returned in 1996 having served and retired from the Air Force. I traveled all over but memories and family drew me back to the South.

Born and raised in the Deep South I never understood Jim Crow. I didn't understand what Jim Crow was, being a kid, but later in life, I understood. The conditions that black folk lived through shocked me. It's hard to fathom now because life is sacred and racism is a bad thing.

Black history abounds throughout the South. It is nowhere more clear than in the foods eaten, still today, and still recognized as a southern subsistence not only among blacks but also whites.

Soul Food is pig nose, pig feet, sowbelly, pigtails, collard greens, and a lot more. If you were a black person living in the South (not that long ago) you ate Soul Food because the conditions black folk lived through forced the diet upon them. These days it serves as a remembrance for what life was like for black people and I don't mean just under Jim Crow laws but throughout their lives before and after Jim Crow.

My Remembrances

Life in Como, Mississippi

Have you ever eaten grits? Try it you might like it. Everywhere I went in the Air Force they served grits in the mess hall. It was grits, scrambled eggs, and biscuits. Now that's a breakfast to live on.

I remember my favorite Sunday meal then and now. Baked beans, potato salad, and meatloaf. Friday nights were hamburger nights and through the week it was vegetables and chicken right out of our garden and chicken yard.

We had a rather large garden and an average-sized chicken yard (my oldest brother was the chicken executioner ). There were also grapes, figs, apples, and pecan trees. My mother and father grew up on farms and knew the value of being self-sufficient. My father had served in the Army during WWII and the Korean Conflict so he knew just how to raise 4 boys, and keep 'em busy. We worked in the garden and shelled peas, butter beans, and snap beans (green beans). Picked squash, tomatoes, grapes, figs, and other stuff.

Now I think back on my days as a boy and the fun times we had living in a small town where everybody knew each other. Sundays and Wednesday nights we were in church, weekdays were the school or summer, and evenings were riding our bikes around town and fixing flat tires at the old service station on the back street. It was football at school and in the front yard, there was the little league in the lot beside the sawmill (I can smell the fresh-cut wood today), and the taste of a stolen watermelon or cantaloupe.

Life was different back then and regardless of how hard an effort is being made these days to change things for the better not much has changed. Regardless of how far away I go I always return home to the South.

It's Cold Out There

DESTITUTE .. a person who is dead broke, without a cent.

VAGRANT .. a person without a settled home or regular work who wanders from place to place and lives by begging.

America ..... doesn't matter the time or place, whether 1 or 4 am - the night remains dark and cloudy with the wind blowing keeping the ground wet and frigid. One sentence describes the life of a destitute person. But why relate the worst of the nights' condition to being destitute?

Destitute, that's a curious word. What does it mean? Being dead broke - is the basic definition. I used to hear this. "If you don't improve, you could grow up without a penny to your name." If you are poor aren't you too destitute?

Stop that man he's a vagrant! If proven you are a vagrant, you might go to jail. That was once true. Now the laws look the other way. If the police arrested every homeless person, the streets might appear deserted.

A homeless person suffers under two definitions, destitution and vagrancy. And, definitions drive us. Throwing things out there without a legal definition might prevent law enforcement from describing what being both destitute and a vagrant is thus causing confusion.

But, these days, confusion seems relevant. Not only do homeless people suffer shame, a stigma points to them. They fall into a legal definition and that's bad because law enforcement might act. Remember, we are a nation of definitions. We must define a crime before we can act. What sensible law enforcement or governmental agency will arrest anybody without due cause? The public simply would not stand idly by and let that happen.

Homelessness defines both destitution and vagrancy. Don't you see? If you can be homeless, many possibilities present themselves! Gosh, if the definition fits wear it. Go ahead, get the benefits you deserve. Well, maybe 'deserve' is too greedy sounding. We'll say 'don't deserve'. The fault is yours, being homeless. Isn't it? Although many people become homeless by choice most fall into the role by force.

Today you have a well-paying job. But, in a month you're laid off. Unemployment starts but it's not enough to pay the bills. Over the next 6 months, you get further and further behind. In a year you're homeless, living on the streets. If you're lucky, you live in your automobile. No job, unemployment ran out. You're both a statistic and 'a' - wait on it - definition. Ha, now you're official and those governmental agencies are waiting with open arms. Your tax dollars at work.

to be continued .....