The Crab Chronicles

Remembering Aunt Hazel

My great grandfather Robert Edward Butler married Beulah Phillips in 1888, and they proceeded to have more than 12 children. My grandmother Wilma Butler Hasty [Memaw, to me and the other grandchildren] was somewhere in the middle of the pack. The 7 Butler sisters were a force to be reckoned with, as a group and individually.

Left, the wedding photo. Granny was about 5'8 and weighed over 180 lbs. when she married. She could drive a buggy as well as a man - which most women couldn't do.

Right, the sisters. I believe they are, standing from left: Miriam, Dot, Hazel, Jenny, Wilma. Seated is Marcelle and the little girl is Barbara.

They were all smart and funny, but I have grown up on funny stories my mother told me about my aunt Hazel.

Hazel and Wilma were mischievous little girls.

As a child Hazel was punished for some misdeed by being locked in the smokehouse, where there were a number of watermelons stored. She took a crowbar and smashed every single melon.

Another time, she complained about going to school and having to sit near a boy who smelled bad. For years, all the Butler children had been taught by governesses so regular school must have come as a rude shock. Hazel complained, but nothing was done. So one day she took an inkwell and poured it down the back of his shirt. The next day he had to wear a different shirt.

Hazel and Wilma decided, as little girls, they would drive around Marietta in a car. My great grandfather was a visionary and as soon as cars started being mass produced he opened several car dealerships in Cobb County. I'm sure it wasn't a big deal for him to bring home new cars all the time. Wilma learned to drive at the age of 11! She would sit on the seat and steer and Hazel would work the pedals. Of course, there was no legal driving age back then.

Hazel married Orlando Awtrey [known to all as "Gan"] when she was a young woman. Gan was a sweet man, and they had a long marriage but it started out with Hazel showing him who was boss. Shortly after they wed, one night she slept too hard and accidentally wet the bed. Hazel slipped out of bed quietly and cleaned herself up and put on a fresh nightgown. Then she poked Gan and said "Wake up! YOU wet the bed! We have to change the sheets!"

Hazel went to college and was a schoolteacher for a short while, then Gan bought a store and they ran the store together for years. Sometime in the 1950's Hazel went to work for Lacey's drugstore in downtown Acworth, and was there for many years. She knew everyone in Acworth and was essentially a manager, Mom recalls. When someone in town died she always heard about it immediately, and she would send over a case of icy cold Coca Colas for the family, probably figuring there would be enough things to eat but folks would appreciate a cold drink. Most homes then weren't air conditioned.

As an older lady, Hazel once had to go to downtown Atlanta for some reason and walked into a big office building. She had to tinkle and accidentally went into the first bathroom she saw without paying attention to the door. She sat down on the toilet and looked under the door and noticed a lot of men's shoes. She realized she was in the men's bathroom! Not knowing what to do, she started singing a hymn, loudly. Suddenly all the men's shoes were running for the door. She kept singing, finished up, washed her hands, and walked out, to be greeted by a crowd of men glaring at her.

When my mother was in college, Hazel and Gan still owned their store and Mom was on a very strict budget and had no extra money. Hazel and Gan would pack her boxes of food and send them to her in Athens, and she was always enormously grateful. My grandparents both worked but didn't really understand that meals weren't included in tuition, and Mom had to work to save up for her own tuition and books. Hazel and Gan had 1 child, a son, but they loved Mom like their daughter.

After Hazel retired from the drugstore her boss generously gave her a free trip to Hawaii. She chose Wilma as her traveling companion. The highlight of their trip was Don Ho singing to them. Both their husbands were dead and the two sisters had a blast.

I was a little girl when Hazel died. Mother loved all her aunts but she really mourned Hazel, her second mother.

We should all be so lucky to have a "Hazel" in our lives...

Below, Hazel is seated in front. Dot wears a flowered dress, Wilma the red dress, and Marcelle is standing in back.

Taking Issue With To Kill A Mockingbird

Last October, folks voted Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird as America's Best Loved Novel on the final show of PBS' The Great American Read. It is the all-time favorite book of many folks, famous and not so famous.

Demi Moore named her daughter Scout, after one of the main characters. [Hey, at least she wasn't named "Apple" or "Idaho" or "Valdosta." Celebrity child names always amuse me.]

To Kill A Mockingbird  is a novel set in the south, and the broad theme is tolerance. This NEA page gives a great summary and analysis of it. The main character, Scout, is 13 years old and living in a small southern town. Her mentally unstable neighbor Boo Radley is a main character, as is her father, a lawyer appointed to defend a black man falsely accused of rape.

I remember reading To Kill A Mockingbird when I was in high school, and disliking it immensely. My feelings were not popular. The book was revered by the late 1970's. My teacher was mightily annoyed with me for not worshiping the book.

I should state here for the record that although I love books and I have been an avid reader all my life, I do not think ANY book [not even the bible] should be worshiped. My view is that a book is only as good as the person who wrote it, and we are all flawed human beings. Books are flawed, as is any creative work by a human being. 

I recently started reading a book written by an acquaintance and I realized, much to my horror, that the book is riddled with examples of the author's disdain for and intolerance of southerners. That rankles. I could never look at the author the same way again. (Most authors do not realize how much they reveal themselves when they write a novel.)

I think Americans love To Kill A Mockingbird and revere it because it's about a good man, Atticus Finch, trying to correct the terrible racism of his time and place. There's nothing wrong with that. It's noble. It's praiseworthy. [Just FYI, I can never hear the words "Atticus Finch" without seeing the handsome and endearing Gregory Peck, my mother's favorite actor. We watched the movie when I was in high school.] 

The book was published in 1960, when America was on the cusp of social upheaval, and attitudes and prejudices were slowly being replaced with tolerance. Harper Lee's father was a small-town lawyer who had defended black clients and Lee had spent her childhood watching him argue cases. All authors tend to write what they know, and Lee knew the world she wrote about. 

I think what bothers me about To Kill A Mockingbird is the notion that most people in small southern towns are racist, and therefore the entire south is a racist, nightmarish place. That was probably true long ago. I won't argue differently. The south that I have lived in all of my life is not that nightmarish, racist place, however. [I wrote about it a bit in Memories of Segregation in The Bitter Southerner.]

The south I know and love is filled with good people. I have known far more Atticus Finch type people in my life than the book would indicate exist. A few examples:

    My grandfather Thompson ran a small country store in the 1930's and extended credit to black families, same as white families.

    My father championed the first black bank manager at his bank in the 1970's. The man told me years later he owed his career to Dad. Dad also hired and promoted a black lady in his department, at a time when the bank where he worked was 99% white.

    My parents left the Democratic party in the late 1950's, angering their parents, because they felt only the Republican party was in touch with the future and was tolerant and fair. At that time, most southern Democrats were very racist and definitely not in favor of desegregation.

    We had a black maid named Daisy when I was small. Mom made it clear we would call her MISS Daisy and treat her with respect and kindness, and Mom led by example.

    When I was growing up, to utter the "N word" in my house was a spanking offense.

    My brother had a girl friend in high school who was black. At a family reunion, when an elderly relative (who was quite racist) asked if he had a girlfriend, Brother pulled out the school photo of his friend and showed it to her, just to see the look on her face.

 

I have dear friends and relative who are black, Hispanic, Asian, gay -- and guess what? I live in a small southern town [Tucker, Georgia] and I am not a racist nor a homophobe. My parents were not racist or homophobic.

I champion diversity. I am happy my children are color-blind. 

Prejudices persist, though. Not long ago an attorney I worked with was told before she moved to Atlanta that she could expect racism and possibly violence because her mother was Mexican. The man who told her that had never even been to Georgia -- he was a Californian. He made her fearful of living here. She moved here about 2007 and has never encountered ANY racism towards herself or her family. None.

I am not going to argue that the south is a perfect Utopia of racial harmony. Of course not. It's a very flawed place, just like any other area of America. We are not the hideously racist and intolerant place depicted in To Kill A Mockingbird, however. Much has changed since that book was published.  

Did you know much of the movie Black Panther was filmed in Georgia? 

Many television shows and movies are filmed in Georgia these days -- see here. There are state of the art film production studios here, and Tyler Perry is a dynamic force in Georgia.

So we are not perfect, but we are not Mockingbird land either. I am proud of my state, and proud to be a southerner. That will never change.

 

 

The Demise of English?

I have stopped counting the number of times I have seen ungrammatical memes on Facebook, or posts or Tweets that use improper English. Somehow, half of the world never learned the difference between "your" and "you're." Comma splices? No problemo. Sentence fragments?! Adorable!

Most people have no clue about The Horrors of Bad English. I see grammar mistakes and they leap off the page and slap me upside the head and make me want to scream. 

So how did I go from being the child who audibly groaned when asked to diagram a sentence in 6th grade to an adult who cannot tolerate bad grammar or the horror of a misplaced comma?

English was my bugaboo as a small child. I much preferred numbers. Numbers are straightforward and simple -- at least before you have to start learning Algebra. Arithmetic -- now that's where I could shine. In fourth grade a friend of mine taught me how to do math in my head, and I became a whiz at that. I see numbers in my head and it's much easier for me to calculate, say, 25% off, than it is for my son. 

I was reminded the other day of the endless, torturous hours learning to diagram sentences when I saw a funny meme about it. 

Here's a fun fact: I had the same English teacher all 4 years of middle school except for 7th grade. Sometime after I went on to high school she stopped teaching English, and for the last 30+ years she has only taught middle school social studies. I don't think I drove her away -- I think it was her disgust at how bad most of her students were at diagramming sentences.

I still remember the torture of sitting there in her classroom, diagramming sentences. I can still pick out the subject and verb in any sentence, and all dependent and independent clauses, though -- blindfolded and under heavy anesthesia just for fun. 

Seriously. 

I mean, I literally cringe when I see nouns and verbs disagreeing in a sentence. [I am a bit perturbed by the overuse of the word "literally" these days...]

English was not always uniform, or rigid. Spelling was fast and loose until the last hundred years or so.

If you look at the history of the English language you learn a lot about gumbo. Yep, English is like the gumbo of languages -- a whole lot of other folks threw in words that became part of English. Now it's a tasty stew, delightful to native English speakers, not always palatable to those trying to learn it. 

English is composed of a lot of appropriated words.

The Vikings gave us these: run, husband, egg, knife. 

The French gave us these: fruit, people, liberty. 

"Spanish also had an influence on American English (and subsequently British English), with words like canyon, ranch,stampede and vigilante being examples of Spanish words that entered English through the settlement of the American West."

I could write a book about all the words we took from other languages, but who would read it?!

Spelling is also a bugaboo for many people. It's easy for me. I rarely mess up spelling. 

All these are fun little facts about English but what I started to write about here was the fact that English is also like Rodney Dangerfield these days, not getting any respect. 

Kids are not being drilled in grammar and punctuation and usage the way we were, long long ago. Heck, the kids don't even have to write in cursive. They are being spared the torture. Is it because everything typed nowadays is on a computer and spell check and grammar check are taking the place of actually knowing that stuff?!? Horrors!

Let me tell you a scary thing, kids: those green lines under your sentences? They ain't always correct. The computer isn't always right. 

Plus, it's like I was telling my student the other day, he can use spell check and every other crutch under the sun right up until he's writing that crucial essay on a standardized test, and then... OOPS. You think college recruiters care about nouns and verbs agreeing?!? Um, YES. Yes, they do. They don't want graduates who cannot write a decent paragraph.

We tend to just look the other way when someone cannot write well, and the world is poorer for it.

I worked for an attorney once who was HORRIBLE at writing and I used to try and correct everything she wrote before it went out, to spare her embarrassment. I wasn't always successful -- she produced such a huge volume of work sometimes I wouldn't keep up. She paid so little attention to proper English that it never occurred to her that opposing attorneys were sneering at her lack of skills -- I guess if you're oblivious to your own bad English you don't understand why anyone would denigrate you for idiotic errors. Most attorneys are good or even great wordsmiths, however. 

I read stories all the time that were published on the internet [okay, some of them were clickbait, but entertaining anyway, so don't judge] and the English in those stories is appalling. Sentences are horribly awkward. 

I hope one day students will once again actually CARE about writing proper English, but I am not holding my breath. 

Folks like my mom, who have beautiful handwriting (in cursive!) and who value proper English and know how to actually use a paper dictionary are a dying breed, much to my sadness.

 

Time Travel

I have always been fascinated by the subject of time travel, ever since I saw the movie Time After Time -- yes, long before it was a song, that was a movie title. It was about HG Wells traveling into the future in a time machine he built. Great little movie. Came out in 1979, when I was just coming out of the fog of childhood and starting to ponder The Big Questions.

The movie also made me curious to research HG Wells, who was a fascinating guy.

I was telling one of the students I tutor about time travel the other day. “Magic is real,” I said.

He looked confused.

“What we take for granted would be considered magic if we lived 200 years ago.”

He still looked confused, but also interested.

“You know that cell phone in your pocket? Imagine if you traveled back in time a hundred years and could show everyone a working iPhone. They would think you were doing magic. Heck, if you had told me when I was a kid I would one day own a small computer I could carry around in my pocket that could also be used as a phone, camera, calculator, flashlight, etc.? I would have laughed.”

He is 11 years old. He has never lived in a world without personal computers, microwave ovens, and videogames. I never saw a microwave oven or touched a computer until I was in college.

We mostly talk about English and writing, of course, but every once in a while I like to throw in a little history.

I digressed.

Here’s what I want y’all to think about for a minute: Time travel is real.

I think about it sometimes when I talk to my mom.

My mom was hugged by her grandmother, Granny Butler, who was born in 1870. Now Mom hugs me. Mom is a living link to Granny. Michael calls my mom “Granny” because that’s what she wanted her grandchildren to call her, because she adored Granny Butler, her grandmother.

My mother was born into a world before television, before computers, before so much of the technology we take for granted today.

I have the DNA of my parents, who lived through World War II, and I have the DNA of my ancestors who lived through the Civil War. My DNA has traveled through time. My body is its living vehicle for time travel.

I am a living link to the past.  

YOU are a living link to the past. We all are links.

I know this may seem ridiculously obvious to most of you, but it fascinates me.

When I open the box that holds the silk handkerchief my granddaddy sent his mother in 1917 when he was in World War I, I feel like a time traveler. When I see myself in the mirror my grandmother used, I feel like a time traveler. When I eat at the table my great grandfather built – as I have eaten there so many times during my 56 years – I feel like a time traveler.

Even if I one day won the lottery and could buy a new house, all my antiques would come with me, and be placed where I could see and use them every day, as I do now. I don’t want a fashionably modern home, with shiny surfaces and furniture that was made 5 minutes ago by a machine. That would feel too sterile and impersonal.

I think one day, possibly in my lifetime, we will be able to travel in time. I really don’t think it’s that far-fetched.

To me, the past is a living thing. It’s all around us. I love the fact that I still use the oak dresser my great grandfather William Hasty made more than a hundred years ago.

I love the fact that I can get in the car and get to Oakland Cemetery in thirty minutes, and walk the paths that were walked by my ancestors more than 150 years ago.

I think if we want to teach kids about history and have them get excited about it, we need to talk about time travel. Not in the theoretical, scientific sense. We need to point out that we are vehicles of time travel – we carry the DNA of all those folks in old photos who lived long ago.

We need to take our children to places like Oakland Cemetery and show them the beautiful graves that look like gardens, and the beautiful sculptures everywhere, and the field where so many unmarked graves are. We need to share with them the stories of those folks buried there. Then we need to point out the city beyond, the huge bustling city with grand tall buildings that were not there even 50 years ago.

Imagine a hundred years from now, when our grandchildren walk through Oakland. Imagine how they will feel?

Time travel is fertile soil for the imagination, and only by planting in that soil will we grow children who love history, who revere the past, and who want to preserve it for future generations.

Oakland Cemeterythe oak dresser Grandpa Hasty built

Things That Last

I can remember as a teenager being obsessive about the fact that a lot of the girls in my high school had fashionable clothes and wore brands like Aigner and there I was, not fashionable, not wearing any big name brands, and feeling like a total outsider much of the time. It's hard for me to reflect on that because the older, wise me wants to grab teenage me and shake her and go "LIGHTEN UP! CLOTHES DON'T MATTER THAT MUCH!"

My father was a banker. He was super conservative about money. I remember a lecture he gave me about why we didn't live outside of our means. "Other people get a new car every year and take expensive vacations and buy expensive clothes, but WE DON'T because I don't want to carry that much debt. Debt is dangerous," he explained. "What if I got hurt and couldn't work, and we had all that debt?" (His father was an invalid who had emphysema the last ten years of his life so Dad knew a lot about that.)

At the time, I thought Dad was being mean. I really did. I didn't understand why he couldn't let me go to work and save MY money to pay for a trip to France with a group of students my French teacher was taking over there. His argument was that school was more important. 

All of this is to say that back then I was easily swayed by popular opinion and I had no idea what was really important. (When I am tempted to condemn teenagers today I admonish myself to go back and remember myself as a teen, and then I hush.)

What prompted me to think about this was that there is a big discussion in one of my Facebook groups about the best brand of pots and pans to buy. What brand of cookware really lasts a long time? There are a lot of names being thrown around of VERY expensive cookware -- Falk Culinair, Le Creuset, etc.

The older I get, the more I realize that I am so fortunate to have been raised by people who know the real value of things.

My mother got several pots and pans for wedding gifts that we still use today, 61 years later. The brand? Revere Ware.My mother has always said "Buy Revere Ware. It will hold up!" We also have a number of Club Aluminum pots that have held up beautifully over the years. I still use Revere Ware and Club Aluminum, all the time, for cooking. Nobody in the Facebook group liked my post about using Revere Ware or Club -- but they have been used for 40-61 years, every piece! 

They aren't fashionable right now. You can go on e-bay and pick up pieces very inexpensively.

She is right. It holds up beautifully. I expect my grandchildren will still be cooking with it, if they have sense enough to keep it and not ditch it for something more fashionable. 

I have never given it much thought, but I grew up in a house full of antiques. Not fine antiques. Antiques that people really used, in real life. Below are some photos of some things we have had for years. All of these are useful things. The pewter pitcher was given to my grandparents for a wedding gift in 1923. The silvery pitchers were originally copper, and my grandfather decided they were dirty and set to scrubbing them, and scrubbed off all the copper! Mom, who had bought them, thought it was funny, fortunately. The pottery pitcher was bought by my brother in Texas 30+ years ago. I love the rolling pin and the pestle. I'm sure the rolling pin made a ton of fine biscuits back in the day, and the pestle would have been useful for grinding herbs and such. The green bottle likely had a stopper and probably held medicine or "strong spirits". 

I tried to iron with the little antique iron once, as a kid. You have to wrap a towel or oven mitt around it to hold it, after you put it near the fire to get hot. Then you have to pray it doesn't stick to whatever cloth you are ironing. Much like my one experiment in cooking on a wood stove, the experience left me very grateful to live in the late 20th / early 21st century. I also think if anyone tried to hurt me or my family I could hit them with that little iron and do some serious damage.

 

 

Maybe I am a bit too materialistic but I don't value things that have great monetary value all that much. I value things that were used by the generations before me. The red serving dish below was used by my mother's mother. I remember seeing it on the dinner table, as a child. The elegant goblet was used by my dad's mother. I think the two plates behind them are just ornamental, but that's okay. 

Have you ever noticed that on those HGTV shows you never see a china cabinet in the dining room? I guess they are unfashionable now. I love our china cabinet. One day soon I am going to get photos of everything and write down what Mom says about each piece, so one day my children and grandchildren will know where everything came from and who used it 50, 100, 200 years before, and how.

I do not want my grandchildren and other descendants to know the price of everything and the value of nothing, as a wise man once said. 

I don't go to estate sales or antique stores very often, but I appreciate that things made a hundred years ago have tended to hold up better than newer things. I don't feel materialistic about my love of these things. I also am practical. If we ever ran out of money and I had to move to a small apartment, I would keep a few things and put the rest in an estate sale. I would hope that anyone who bought the things would love them as much as I do. 

How Far We Have Come

I tend to remember terrible days with startling clarity, whereas happy memories become vague pretty quickly. I hate that.

I remember my grandfather's funeral vividly (age 9), but I don't remember my sweet 16 birthday party hardly at all. 

I wanted to bring that up because I have crystal clear memories of what I was doing almost exactly 17 years ago, on September 11, 2001. 

I think it was a Monday or a Tuesday. According to one source, Britannica, there were more than 3,000 people killed in New York and the plane crash in Pennsylvania, and that also includes more than 400 police and firefighters. More than 6,000 people were injured. 

I was alive when JFK was assassinated but I was a baby, so I have no memory of it. I remember the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and the attempt on Ronald Reagan's life, but none of those events were as meaningful or as life-altering as the 9/11 attacks.

I went in to work on that mild, sunny day in September 2001 and got there around 8:45. I was a paralegal in the legal department of a large hotel company here in Atlanta. I had heard on the radio that there had been a weird event in New York, a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center, but I just thought wow, what a freak accident. I went to my cubicle and put my things down, but there was a buzz all around the company -- you could feel it, in the air. TV's were on in conference rooms. I asked somebody what was going on and they said go in the small conference room. I walked in and saw the second plane crash into the World Trade Center, and watched in horror, for more than an hour. Nobody was working. Some people were crying. Some were frantically trying to call friends or relative in New York. Around noon, were told to just go home, and we would be notified about working the next day. I left and drove home.

I was walking Lola the other day and reflecting on the eerie silence of the drive home that day.

I was working just a short drive from Dobbins Air Force Base and a slightly longer drive from Hartsfield, one of the busiest airports in the world. There were no planes in the sky that day, though. I drove home feeling the weight of that silence.

I went by the bank and got out a couple of hundred dollars in cash, as my mom had instructed me, and then I stopped at a gas station and filled up my tank. Mom had lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis and she had very calmly but forcefully told me to get cash and gas before going home. I had plenty of food in the condo. 

I remember when I went inside and paid for my gas there was a box of American flag decals, and I bought one and put it on the back of my car. On my drive through a residential part of Dunwoody there were already many flags flying in front of the middle class homes I passed, although I didn't see a soul, and almost no cars.

I had decided to stay off the interstate going home because nobody knew if or where there would be more attacks..

I got to my condo and changed out of my work clothes and flipped on the TV. I watched the coverage, on and off, the rest of the day. I had just bought a new printer for my computer and I spent part of the afternoon setting it up. I remember having to just turn off the TV after a few hours because I didn't want to see any more people crying or bodies falling from buildings. It was too overwhelming. 

I talked to Mom and my brother several times that day.

The next day I had not heard anything to the contrary so I went to work. There were people who had stayed up literally all night watching CNN. There were attorneys running around, meeting here and there, coordinating the company's response, because one of our hotels was very close to ground zero and we were letting police and firefighters bunk there and trying to get them fed and taken care of. I was proud to be working for that company.

The memory of that is so clear, most of it, and yet two things stand out. 

One, I felt so sorry for my mother, because I could hear the anxiety in her voice when we talked. My father had died 5 years before, and Mom had done really well living alone in Augusta. The upkeep on that big house and pool were substantial, and yet Bruce and I felt like that was the right place for her, because there were so many friends and family members all around. The 911 attacks triggered terrible memories for her, though -- of not only the Cuban Missile Crisis, but I think, too, of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when she was a child. The big difference was on 9/11 she was living alone. She didn't have her father or my father to lean on. (She came through just fine, though, FYI.)

Part of the frustration of those types of events is you feel helpless. There was nothing I could do to help the families of those who died that day. There was very little I could do to help my mom.  

Another big emotion was fear. We were all afraid there would be more attacks. We were all wondering if we were safe, or if we should try to go somewhere. I live about 217 miles from the nuclear plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and just 150 miles from the Savannah River nuclear plant. I am also close to Dobbins Air Force Base and Fort Benning, Georgia, in Columbus. So if anyone was going to nuke one of those places I would be toast.

The next time I went to Augusta to see my mother, I remember my mom and brother and I had a lot of discussions about disaster preparedness. I was glad to know my brother was only about an hour from Mom and he could get to her pretty easily.

Although terrorist attacks became a daily concern, life went on. 

Later in September I co-hosted a Henderson Family get together, a picnic in Roswell. We all talked about how thankful we were to have family nearby. Lots of us Henderson descendants [my paternal grandmother was a Henderson] live here in the Atlanta area. In October, Mom and I went to Folly Beach for a long weekend. I was also writing screenplays at that point, hopeful to be able to get one produced.

If you had told me on 9/11/01 that within another 3 years I would change jobs, adopt a little girl, and buy a house a short time later, I would have been flabbergasted. (It's probably for the best that we cannot see into the future.) 

The past 17 years have been very busy for me personally, and for the country. So many changes, both good and bad. 

Terrorist attacks happen all the time, all over the world. They have been happening for a long time, now. Unfortunately I don't think that will change any time soon. 

Flying is far more aggravating now because of 9/11. I was reading just today that those plastic tubs you put things in at the airport, to go through the scanner, are crawling with bacteria and germs. Yuck. 

In general, the world feels like a much more scary place since that day 17 years ago. I am far more aware of the fact that in some places in the world Americans are hated and folks wish to harm us, simply for being American. I hate that. However, I think that there are far more people that like us than there are haters out there. 

When the 9/11 attacks happened, I had a cell phone, but it stayed in my car and I only plugged it into the cigarette lighter and used it on rare occasions. The minutes were quite expensive. Mom insisted after 9/11 that I get a phone I could keep in my purse, charged up, so she could call me. I did that not long afterwards. I would never have dreamed that now I carry a tiny computer in my pocket all the time and I routinely text friends, take photos with the phone, and more. 

I think it's important for us to teach our children the significance of 9/11, because it was a pivotal day in world history. I also think it's important, though, for us to explain that it taught us, as a nation, to be more vigilant. We have to be. We are still a strong country, though, and we weather our storms and keep going. No terrorist, from within or without, will ever destroy the American spirit. We are stronger for surviving -- that's the message we need to emphasize.

 left, Mom and Bruce in 2001

 

Observations About the South

My grandmother Memaw Hasty was from a wealthy family in Marietta, Georgia, but she loved pig's feet. That always seemed really bizarre to me. How could someone who never went out in public without wearing a corset and full makeup love to eat pig's feet?

She would correct improper English in a heartbeat but she liked to eat pigs feet.

I realized that her love of pig's feet makes her a unique person right about the time I realized that Southern stereotypes abound in books and movies, and if we are going to dispel them, we best get busy. Makes me want to pitch a fit, just thinking about it. Or I might need to have a tantrum. Or throw a hissy fit. Pick your favorite. [right, Memaw as a young girl in a tree]

The New York Times published an article yesterday entitled Is It Southern Food, or Soul Food? and it's a pretty provocative article, albeit one that makes a lot of observations without really delving very deeply into them. Take a minute to read it. 

I love this: "A lot of Southern cooking comes from just figuring out how to keep things from spoiling in the heat." So true. It's hotter in the summer here. Southern cooking, like everything else, evolves. Most buildings are air-conditioned now, thank God. So we can cook a pan of biscuits in the middle of the day without fainting.

"You had to know how to clean a fish or kill a squirrel" is another great quote from the article. So true. My dad used to talk about eating squirrel, or brains, or other things I wouldn't touch. My Thompson grandfather shepherded his family through the Depression really well, though, and his kids always had food [he owned a country store] and shoes for school [he would go into Augusta sometimes and hustle pool for money]. Southern life fifty or a hundred years ago wasn't just about dealing with hot weather, it was about survival, especially in the late 19th century after the devastation of Reconstruction. 

Food stereotypes are hard to dislodge, but there are other stereotypes equally as annoying to southerners.

So are southerners more lazy because of the heat? You normally don't see southerners out running in 90 degree heat in the middle of the day. I've known my whole life that in the summer it's best to stay indoors or at the pool or lake in the middle of a summer day. There is a stereotype, however, that we are lazy because we let the heat slow us down, but not everyone fits that. My father used to try and mow the lawn in the middle of the day and he got heat exhaustion several times, and came close to heat stroke. Common sense had nothing to do with it. 

I don't think we are lazy, just because we don't have to shovel snow all winter. Are all New Englanders thrifty and industrious, as movies would have us believe? I doubt it.  Is everyone in California a pot-smoking, aged hippie? I've never been there but I doubt it.

In my mind stereotypes are fun to joke about but they can also be harmful. I always wonder when I apply to work for a company outside the south if I am perceived as a dullard or a jerk.

The other stereotype I encounter all the time is that Southerners are portrayed in movies as usually evil or stupid. I was watching the movie Kingsmen: The Golden Circle recently, and enjoying it, and the character of the US president, played by Bruce Greenwood, was as southern as fried chicken [based on his awful accent] and an utter jerk. The character played by Channing Tatum wasn't much better, although he was more idiotic than evil.

It's gotten to where when I am watching a movie and the bad guy character is introduced I am waiting to hear if he has a British accent or a redneck one. The British accent usually happens in the higher-budget movies, just FYI. 

One of my favorite movies is Forrest Gump, but the chief annoyance there is that so many of the Southern characters are either stupid or mean. The nicest character, in the long run, is Captain Dan, because he takes care of Forrest financially for the rest of his life, and of course Captain Dan was not southern.

I remember trying to watch the movie Cape Fear, years ago, and I found the southern bad guy so annoying I turned the movie off because the bad guy was both stupid AND evil.

The final stereotype I want to address is that all southerners are racist. The south is a very culturally diverse place and if we are all racists, why are so many African Americans moving back to the south? Why are there so many Hispanic people here, and Asians? Turn on any TV station in the South and you will see a lot of brown faces. 

Tyler Perry is a southern guy and a brilliant writer/filmmaker and he chose to build his new state of the art studio in suburban Atlanta.

I am always amazed when non-southerners come here for a visit, or even live here for a few years, and presume to know everything there is to know about us. If I did the same thing with any other region and tried to hold myself out as an expert after only a short time there, it would be laughable.

The longest I've ever lived outside the south was the 3+ weeks I spent in Kazakhstan adopting my son. Does that make me an expert on Kazakh culture?

Lord no.

How do we combat the insane notions that outsiders have about us?

I keep plugging away, writing novels, that hopefully one day will be turned into movies, and maybe in some small way I can dispel the ridiculous stereotypes about the south. We are all different races. We are good folks and bad folks. We are rednecks and we are high falutin' folks. We like NASCAR and we like museums. We eat fried chicken and sushi.

Most of our teenagers don't even sound Southern any more, because of TV and movies and the influx of folks from other places. 

I am not alone in my quest to end the stereotypes. Others have paved the way for me.

National publications like Bloomberg have noticed others are moving here all the time, as evidenced by New Yorkers Flock to Booming Sunbelt as Trek South Resumes. If we were all all evil redneck idiots I doubt anyone would want to move here.

My friend Chuck Reece over at The Bitter Southerner is destroying stereotypes right and left. He was featured recently in Meet the 31 People Who Are Changing the South, in Time magazine.

This guy below, Andy Griffith, is my hero. He built a career on actually using the southerners-are-idiots stereotype to his advantage. Every time a city slicker went to Mayberry and tried to best Andy he showed them he wasn't an idiot. Ditto for Matlock. He looked like a stupid country redneck lawyer but he always won because non-southerners underestimated him.

So what can be done? I don't know the full answer to that. I plan to keep writing about the South, and embracing the wonderful things about this place I love, and I will try not to vent too much about how we're portrayed in the media -- just enough to stay sane, not sound too bitter.

Y'all be sweet, and stay in the air conditioning.

Living History

There is an African proverb that goes, "When an old person dies, a library burns to the ground." I was thinking about that because my mom has several friends who will turn 90 this fall, and they are still lucid and active, and filled with wisdom and insights. If I live to be 90 that's how I want to be -- still vital and engaged in life, despite slowing down physically. 

My 84 year old mom knows a lot of things I don't know. I know things millennials don't know. I watched a funny video of a bunch of young teenagers trying to figure out how to use a rotary dial phone. They had never used one before. 

To be fair, if you handed me the type of phone used in the 1930's I wouldn't know how to use it. My mother has laughed recalling the old "party line" days where several people shared a phone line and you had to wait your turn to make a call. Phone numbers were things like "Madison 3467." You talked to an operator, a live human being, to get your call through. I know that much just from watching old movies. Calling was much more of a big deal then, actually. My grandparents had a little table/chair combination thing that looked somewhat like a school desk, where you could sit while you talked on the one telephone in the house.

 

My son calls his friends multiple times a day, on a phone he carries in his pocket. He sends them photos. He doesn't worry about the expense of a long distance call. 

I mention all this simply to illustrate how much making a phone call has changed. Also, I want to show how different generations understand different things. 

above, my grandmother and some of her sisters, on a picnic, 1950's

 

To me, hearing about history is always a lot more interesting when a live human being is telling me about their experiences. I have microcassette tapes I made years ago of my mother recalling what it was like to live through World War II, and The Cuban Missile Crisis. Mom has also written a lot about her life experiences on her blog. If you read about The Cuban Missile Crisis by doing a Google search you will turn up a lot of facts about what happened. However, if you talk to my mother about it, you will hear a very human story, about a young family with an infant (me) and a toddler (my brother) living just a few miles from a nuclear power plant (The Savannah River Plant) and terrified about getting out of town and trying to survive a nuclear war. Mom had only a limited supply of milk for me, and didn't know where she would be able to find enough formula, if they left town, as so many were doing.

The closest memory I have to that is my memory of 911. I was sent home from work around lunchtime and called my mother before leaving. She told me -- in very forceful tones -- to go to the bank and withdraw as much cash as I could, then to get a full tank of gas, and then hightail it back to my condo. We were wondering if the US was about to be invaded. She was very nervous and upset -- much more so than I was, but then I had not lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis, or World War II.

Most people think of history as dry and boring but to me it's fascinating. 

I used to be a voracious reader. (I still read, just don't have as much time, since I am taking care of Mother, a big house, and a dog.) I loved to read novels set during interesting periods of history. My aunt recommended a novel called The Nightingale -- wonderful book, about how French civilians coped during the World War II German occupation. I highly recommend the book. 

If you want to interest a child in history, don't recite a bunch of facts to them. Tell them stories of real people and how they fared during the crisis. Do what my dad did and take them to civil war battlefields, and explain what happened. Take them to visit aircraft carriers and let them run around and experience the size of those things, and see the living conditions of the sailors. Show them the sword that was carried by great great granddaddy a hundred years ago in the war. Show them the butter churn Granny used. Let them touch history. I treasure a handkerchief my Thompson grandfather sent to his mother when he was in France during World War I. 

Visit places like The Atlanta History Center, and show the kids what history looks and sounds like.

Likewise, value older people who understand and appreciate history. Talk to them about their experiences. Audio or video record them. Don't let their libraries of memories die with them.

I love the story of Rishi Sharma, a California teenager who has made it his mission to interview and record as many World War II veterans as possible (link). He understands the importance of capturing those memories for future generations to appreciate. What an incredible young man.

We need to encourage kids to video their grandparents and great grandparents. We need to record stories from long before we were born. We live in an age when recording devices are literally in our pockets and we record everything, all the time, so why not record memories?

Dad's family picnic/reunion, mid 1950's

What It Means to Be Southern

I read a publication called The Bitter Southerner, started by my friend Chuck Reece, and I have thought a lot about the influence of that publication on my inner life. Two of my essays have been published by them Memories of Segregation and A Recovering Food Snob. Both reflect some of my feelings about being southern, but they really only scratch the surface. 

What likely distinguishes me from some Bitter Southerner readers and writing contributors is that I am not actually bitter. 

The only thing that makes me bitter is the idea that I should be ashamed to be southern. I am not ashamed. I am actually proud to be from the south. 

I am also proud to be a Thompson.

Does that mean I condone or agree with everything said or done by any southerner or by members of my Thompson family? No. Not at all. 

There seems to be a movement afoot, though, to be ruthlessly politically correct these days, and I am horrified by that. If anyone not southern expects me to apologize for my region, my family, my southern accent, my southern ancestors, the southern food I like to fix -- well, let's just say it will be a cold day in hell before I'll do that.

I have a friend in England who was asked to remove his flag from his front yard because some people found it offensive. God help anyone who asked me to remove an American flag from my yard. You're offended by patriotism? Too bad. I am offended that you would take offense.

Where is it written that anyone who finds something offensive is to be treated with kid gloves? What is wrong with being offended? I am offended all the time, countless times a day. I watch TV and I get offended. I read books that contain offensive things. Every time I go out in public and see some boy with his pants falling off or a girl showing her boobs I get offended. Conversely, most major religions offend me in some way. My friends and neighbors offend me on a regular basis. So what?

I can sit around and dwell on being offended or I can GET OVER IT AND MOVE ON. People who are constantly offended are inviting negativity and drama into their life and I don't have any interest in that. I choose to live in peace.

I choose to move on. 

I don't fear offending anyone but I don't go out of my way to do it, either.

For example, I know people who actually make money from blogging. That's fine. Good for them. I don't. You know why? If I accepted ads it would imply I approve of the products. If I let an advertiser or sponsor give me money I would have to dance to their tune -- and it would undoubtedly include worrying about offending people. I won't do that. 

I write exactly what I want to write and if you find it offensive, go read something else. It won't bother me a bit. 

Most bloggers I was reading years ago have stopped blogging. I think it has to do with offending people, in part. If you live your whole life worrying about offending someone, you are essentially in a prison of your own making. 

One of the integral parts of the American identity is the idea that we can be who we are without reservation, as long as we don't physically harm someone else. Some want to expand that definition and say we cannot offend anyone else. I don't agree with that. 

Now, I feel compelled to mention a couple of things I consider exceptions. When offensiveness becomes emotionally harmful then it must not be tolerated.

One, confederate monuments. I have never paid much attention to them. Ditto for confederate flags. However, if a black person (or a person of any race, really) finds them offensive, they need to be relegated to history museums. If there were a giant Nazi flag flying in a public space and Jewish people found it offensive would anyone argue about taking it down? Of course not.

Two, sexual harassment. Is it okay for men to sexually harass women? Nope. Never. It's not only offensive it's harmful. Is it okay for women to sexually harass men? Nope again. No human being should ever be made to feel like an object.

 

Now, having explained the exceptions, I want to circle back to my original premise, being southern. If someone is offended by the very fact that I am southern, or they expect me to apologize for it, forget it. I bear no responsibility for what my ancestors did, or what they believed. I won't apologize for their actions. Do I condone racism or slavery? Of course not.

I cherish my southern identity. There are so many good things about living in the south.

I cherish the fact that I was raised to have good manners. Countless times in my life I have been thankful that my parents taught me to be gracious and to have good manners, because manners are, quite simply, kindness.

I cherish the idea that family is important. I can trace my family members back hundreds of years. In college, I was friends with a girl from Michigan who didn't even know the names of her own grandparents. I was appalled.  I can tell you the names of most of my second, third, and fourth cousins.

I cherish the fact that we talk slower, and generally are not in such a hurry. I remember the first time I ever went to New York City, feeling stress just from being in the city, where there were almost no birds or trees, and there were huge crowds of people. It didn't feel like a friendly, welcoming place to me. Ditto for Chicago and Philadelphia. Drop me into Macon Georgia or Raleigh North Carolina, though, and I will feel right at home. I will not feel stressed out. 

I love visiting big cities, but I don't want to live there. [Just fyi I live in Tucker, not downtown Atlanta. My life is far more rural than you might imagine.]

I embrace the diversity of my home. I have friends of all races and religions. Sometimes outsiders think everyone in the south is just an inbred redneck. That's laughable. In Tucker Georgia you can get a great Indian meal, a wonderful Thai meal, Mexican food, Peruvian food, etc. 

I have a dear friend who is black, whose wife is white. He grew up in New Jersey. I asked him recently why he preferred to live in the rural south. He said "Because there is less racism down here." Amen, brother.

Thanks for reading. Don't get offended easily. Don't be bitter, y'all. It's a waste of energy.

 

 

In the Spotlight

I enjoyed reading Frank Bruni's piece in the New York Times about Jenna and Barbara Bush, the twin daughters of former President Bush. They have written a joint memoir which was published last fall, Sisters First: Stories from our Wild and Wonderful Life. (Since there are two of them, shouldn't the title be "Wonderful LIVES"? -- my inner grammar nerd cannot be silenced).

I have not read the book, but it looks like a loving tribute to their parents, and as the Amazon page reports:

"In SISTERS FIRST, Jenna and Barbara take readers on a revealing, thoughtful, and deeply personal tour behind the scenes of their lives, as they share stories about their family, their unexpected adventures, their loves and losses, and the sisterly bond that means everything to them."

I would like to read the book one day but I will get it at the library.

One thing that intrigues me about the book is that these two are famous only because of their family, not because of their own accomplishments. I see Jenna all the time on the Today Show but she doesn't seem to me to have any outstanding journalistic talent. Why did she get that job instead of somebody else? Hmmm.... her NAME, probably. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Jenna. I usually enjoy her stories, and she seems like a genuine, nice person. I just wonder about her qualifications to ascend the journalistic ladder so quickly. 

Then again, I probably shouldn't point fingers. I got my first paralegal job because Dad was friends with the attorneys and his bank gave the firm business. However, before my first day at the firm he sat me down and said sternly, "I got you the job, but it's up to you to keep it. I expect you to work hard, be nice, and do what you're told. Never say that's not my job - if they are paying you, it's your job. Remember your manners. Don't embarrass me. Oh, and I told your boss if you don't do a good job to FIRE YOU -- I wouldn't hold it against him." I remember thinking WOW, thanks a lot. I worked my butt off in that job, and stayed three years, and although there were certainly some negatives, the experience made it possible for me to get other paralegal jobs. 

I do remember feeling great relief when I moved here to Atlanta because nobody in the legal community even knew my father, much less owed him any favors.

I kind of understand and sympathize with the Bush sisters.

I imagine the Bush twins wrote the book to try to present their family as human, not godlike creatures or privileged elitists. The tributes and outpourings of fondness which have recently marked the passing of their grandmother Barbara might make up for, in some small way, the negative things about living in the public eye. Or not. 

When you are the child and grandchild of presidents you learn to be careful about what you say and do, and the sisters have been schooled well, obviously. Bruni criticizes them for being circumspect about political opinions but I admire their poise. They aren't running for office. They don't have to explain themselves when he fires questions at them.

My dad was a little bit famous in his own way. 

Most everyone in the business communities in Knoxville -- particularly lawyers and bankers -- knew Dad, or had heard of him, in the 1970's thru the 1990's. He had bucketloads of charisma and charm. People who met him typically either liked him (98%) or loathed him (2%). Most liked him. (There were over 300 people in the church at his memorial service.)

I remember walking down the street with him countless times and he would always spot someone he knew and greet them, or be greeted by them -- whether it was downtown Knoxville, downtown Augusta, the mall, the gas station -- and it was tiresome, sometimes. Everyone was a friend of his, or so they thought. 

I once met a man in Knoxville, a local politician, who was on the board of some organization with Dad and he made it clear he despised Dad. I told him after he said that, that I was the daughter of Tony Thompson and he laughed with embarrassment. I couldn't wait to get back to the office and tell Dad, who laughed. "He doesn't like me because I always vote against him in meetings. He likes to spend too much money." Dad was never afraid to take an unpopular stand because he always valued doing the right thing over doing the most expedient thing.

I have never had to hear a lot of unfair criticism leveled at my dad, like the Bush girls have, obviously. That one incident rankled a lot, though. Take that and magnify it a million times and that's a bit of what those girls have had to deal with almost their whole lives. 

My grandfather Bob Hasty was a major league baseball player for five years and then played minor league ball for years afterwards, and was well-known around Atlanta. Mom remembers being so annoyed when they would be in public and people would bug him for an autograph, or just want to chat. Mom resented them pulling him away from her, and rightly so. [In the above photo, he is on the middle row, third player from the left.]

He never courted fame, but he didn't shy away from it either.

My grandfather would be horrified by the behavior of today's sports stars, who routinely get arrested, use drugs, get women pregnant and don't marry them, gamble, and on and on. Papa felt like sports stars should always be gentlemen, and always behave themselves. They are role models for kids. Obviously that's an old-fashioned view. I sure wish it was still followed, though.

Fame is never easy to deal with, whether it's yours or you're caught in the fame-light of someone you love. I can remember meeting people in the business community and feeling really self-conscious because Dad was so handsome and I'm... not. I always winced at the unspoken comparisons. It wasn't always easy to be his child. 

It hasn't always been easy to be the grandchild of a sports star, either. I've had to defend him against some unfair accusations over the years. Also, I have a deformed shoulder and I can't throw a baseball to save my life. I'm not tall and movie-star attractive, either. To make it a bit more uncomfortable, I am the daughter of a drop-dead gorgeous mother, and I don't look much like her.

It isn't easy to be the child of two really attractive people, and deal with scrutiny and sometimes pity. 

I have watched members of the Bush family in interviews on television the past few days and I have to extend kudos to them, for how they have handled the attention surrounding Barbara Bush's death. Poise and grace don't begin to cover it. 

I should mention that I am not a Republican and no huge Bush fan. I certainly didn't agree with all of the political views of either of the Bush presidents, but then again I never agree 100% with ANY politician, from either party.

I guess in summary I'd like to just say, living in a spotlight is far more difficult than most people realize. You have to not let all the negative things, the comparisons, the potshots taken, etc. get to you. You also have to carve out your own niche in life, and be happy in your own skin -- which is not always easy to do. I have a tiny bit of an inkling of what it's like to be part of a family members' fame.

Anyone in the public eye deserves the same basic respect as the rest of us -- including not having their families pounced on unfairly. 

Just some observations..