The Crab Chronicles

Fish on Good Friday

On this Good Friday/Passover I wanted to share a few general thoughts about Easter, and finding a church home.

I grew up looking forward to Friday because I knew chances were good we would either get to eat fish sticks for dinner, or macaroni and cheese. My parents raised us as High Church Episcopalian and (like the Roman Catholics) we were supposed to sacrifice and not eat meat on Fridays. We ate fish or mac & cheese instead. If we were really good we might get to go to the cafeteria and partake of both! Plus jello!

Let me explain something important. My parents were both raised Southern Baptist and they remained part of that denomination until shortly after they were married. About six months after the wedding Mom miscarried a baby at about 5 months along. She and Daddy were devastated. Dad's father was also very ill and would die a few months later. Shortly after Mom was discharged from the hospital the pastor of the church they had been attending dropped by the house and told Mom she should be happy because her baby was with Jesus. She was shocked and upset, and he couldn't even understand why. My father was livid when he heard about it.

Mom and Dad then decided to look for a church that felt more like a home. They went all over Augusta visiting mainstream Christian churches, for several years. No church felt quite right. They talked about this one night at a party with some of the neighbors and the neighbors strongly suggested they visit Church of the Good Shepherd, which was [and still is] an Episcopal church.

At last, Mom and Dad felt at home. My one set of living grandparents were horrified, but they got over it. [They took us to their church once and I tried to drink all the little glasses of grape juice in the tray so we didn't have to go back after that...]

I knew very little about other churches as a small child. I just knew about our church. I knew I had to wear a hat or big hair bow, and Mom had to do the same, because women were supposed to always have their heads covered when they entered the sanctuary. I loved seeing Mom sing in the choir because she looked like an angel, although she stopped doing choir after a while. I knew how to genuflect. I knew I was allowed to sit in church with my parents and skip nursery as long as I behaved myself. Mom always carried paper and crayons in her purse for us.

I loved how everyone spoke a lot of the service at the same time. I knew the Lord's Prayer before I started school. I loved hearing the hymns. I loved the vestments. I wanted to be an acolyte one day and light the candles.

It felt like a holy place, our church.

Easter was my favorite holiday. I loved coloring eggs. I adored getting a pretty new dress and a basket full of candy. I loved going to church and showing off my patent leather Mary Janes and white lacy anklets, and comparing notes with other kids as to who got the most candy in their Easter basket.

Eventually, though, Mom realized that our Friday "sacrifice" was not really a sacrifice at all. My brother and I loved meatless Fridays.

After we moved away from Augusta, when I was 8 years old, Mom quit doing meatless Fridays. We were disappointed but we didn't carry on too much because we didn't want her to feel bad.

We got Easter baskets and chocolate bunnies all the way through high school. However, I learned at a fairly young age that the Easter bunny was as fictitious as Santa Claus.

Somewhere around the fourth grade they felt I was old enough to learn the details of what happened to Jesus that caused us to celebrate Easter. I remember being horrified by the thought of the evil Romans nailing our Lord to a cross and leaving him to die in agony. Years later I couldn't watch the movie Spartacus because it had a very graphic sequence showing crucifixion. Ditto for The Passion of the Christ -- you could hear me sobbing all over the theater, embarrassing my date.

I think if we focus on agonizing death we miss the point, however.

I watched the Today show this morning and they had a story where they interviewed a rabbi and an Episcopal priest [both female, yay!] about Passover and Easter, and what we should be thinking about. They basically said the same thing as this, which I found on the Good Shepherd website: "We will offer our lives as active partners in God’s mission, remembering that we are people blessed with an amazing array of gifts and abilities to bless others."

What I think we all need to remember and think about this Easter is very simple: how to remember to be grateful for our many blessings, and bless others. I think that's the message for all of us, whether religious or not, the importance of gratitude, and the importance of healing ourselves and others.

Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice, willingly. So why can't we sacrifice some of our time and energies, as a way of honoring that? Food for thought.

 

Sneaky Southerners

I was born in Augusta Georgia and I have lived my entire life in Georgia or Tennessee. I never gave much thought to being southern until I was grown and I realized there is a distinct and ugly bias against southerners. To put it plainly: southerners are viewed by a lot of other folks [non-southerners, of course] as being either moronic or evil racists or both.

I used to take non-credit courses at Emory University and I was furious one day when I opened the course catalog and found a course titled How to Lose Your Southern Accent. The description said basically “Hey, if you have a distinct southern accent people will think you’re a moron.” I was very tempted to sign up for the course and sit there and argue with the teacher but I figured it would just anger me to the point of spiking my blood pressure unnecessarily and I didn’t need that. I felt personally insulted, however.

Southerners onscreen are often redneck racists, dim-witted southern belles, or steel magnolias who will happily cook up some fried chicken and then shoot you if you don’t use good manners. [I wouldn't shoot you for using bad manners but I might call your mama and ask why you weren't Raised Right...]

There are exceptions, though.

We southerners know the stereotypes, and sometimes we use it to our advantage. Think about Andy Griffith. A lot of the episodes of The Andy Griffith Show centered around people from out of town assuming Andy Taylor was a rube, an idiot. Andy always bested them. In his later series, Matlock, that was pretty much the premise of every show: Matlock appeared slow but totally upended the convention and beat his opponent, who had underestimated him. (My mother loved that show)

I think part of the enduring fascination with Scarlett O’Hara is that she is far from stupid, but she reinforces the scheming manipulative southern female trope. Yet despite all her bitchiness, we are rooting for her at the end. That was Margaret Mitchell’s genius.

BTW, concerning Gone With the Wind: yes, it described black people in a very racist way, undoubtedly. However, if you want to know what it was like to live through Reconstruction in the South, read it. Mitchell spent years researching and writing the book. She easily recalled listening to her elderly family members reminisce about that time in the south. She knew her subject.

Also, in her later years, Mitchell changed a lot of her racist opinions. She became close friends with actress Hattie McDaniel, who played Mammy in the GWTW movie. Mitchell quietly funded a number of scholarships for students to attend Atlanta’s Morehouse College and became friends with the head of the school, Dr. Benjamin Mays. (Source)

The Southern Villain

How many times have you watched a movie and the villain had either a British or a southern accent? There’s a reason for that. In American history the British started off being the enemy: we fought a revolution against them, and fought them again in the War of 1812. For a more pop culture explanation, the Brits themselves glory in their villainy, as this article articulates:

“And while not all Hollywood baddies are British, a disproportionately high percentage of them are. From Christopher Lee in Horror of Dracula to Alan Rickman in Die Hard and from Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate to Ian Holm in Alien, the majority of wrong ’uns speak with an English accent.”

The Brits may be cold and ruthless but Southern villains are of course racist, often moronic, and frequently show the cunning of a rattlesnake. Think about Robert DeNiro in Cape Fear or Buford T. Justice in Smokey and the Bandit.  A recent movie that I liked a lot, Live By Night, features a southern villain who is racist, stupid, and deserved to die in a hail of bullets, Virgil Beauregard.

 

I will never apologize for being southern, nor will I endorse the stereotypes that are so popular in Hollywood. The south I know, while obviously not perfect [what region is?] has a lot of nice people in it. Many African Americans have moved back to the South from up north because they feel welcomed here, and frankly the weather and cost of living are so much better here. A lot of people in the North move to the South when it’s time to retire. If we were all stupid, hateful, bigots I don’t think folks would flock to the South to live…

 

Below, my grandparents Algie and Cordelia Thompson when they were dating, around 1922. Grandaddy would go to town and play the rube and hustle pool until he made enough money to buy his kids' shoes and other things sometimes he couldn't afford during the Depression. I have always admired that.