Janis Owens

I understand my blog has turned into a diary of Mama Visits, but the woman does compel attention. Whenever I visit her, I get some little crazy quote that really demands historic preservation. Yesterday, after we had eaten our way through one of her crazy, fifteen-course meals – okra and tomatoes, purple hull peas, onion and cucumber salad, chicken and rice, turnip greens, cornbread, and biscuits (leftovers from breakfast) we retired to the living room to recuperate. Mama sits on one couch and I sit on the love seat, lengthwise, so I can unbutton my pants if needed.

I was complaining about how much I’d eaten, and she said, “Oh, baby, I think everybody worries too much about weight these days. It’s a waste of time. Your Grannie stayed on a diet her whole life, and it never made a bit of difference. When she died, she filled that coffin up.”

Such blunt honesty is common, as Mama has an iron-clad aesthetic, and cannot speak of anyone without some kind of comment on their size and general beauty quotient. She has truly curious ideas of beauty (“got that square face,” or “got them black eyes,” and cares not at all for the angular and the striking, but has been known to comment of many a model-like beauty: “Ain’t one bit pretty.” She doesn’t say it in dire insult, but just a matter of fact summation, in a tone of mild regret.

She prefers thin when possible, but doesn’t let a case of runaway obesity cloud her critique; often says of truly gigantic personalities, “Well, they’re pretty in the face.” She says it kindly but I’ve always thought it passive-aggressive (pretty in the face, but ugly in the thighs.) And yes, there are a few truly ugly amongst us – usually sorry men who do women wrong, who Mama labels ugly purely in spite. She once dismissed the philandering husband of a friend as “thet old Andy-Gump-looking something.”

Andy Gump was before my time, but I get the feeling he wasn’t a head turner. I hate to disparage my beloved Grannie by putting her picture in this particular post, but I just found the one below, and I love it. Not only is she pretty in the face, but she is demonstrating her ability to “get the clothes on the line.” Literally. Viva the Big Boned.

Pretty in the Face.

In these dark days of publishing fiascos, oil spills and floods, my parents can always be relied upon to provide a bit of comic relief. I went to see them today to take Mama her Mother’s Day present (cold cash, her favorite.) Daddy limped into the living room, barefoot, and presented a red and swollen foot for my inspection. Seems he was moving around stuff on his desk and dislodged his big old twenty –pound Jimmy Swaggart gift Bible, which fell sideways and hit him square on the foot.

Just when you think there are no more metaphors of Southern life…

He also showed me a picture he’d snagged of me cooking in Texas, which he has scanned and enlarged to poster-size. Mama told me she is in the market for a suitable frame, and wants to hang it in the living room, marking a significant upward movement in my sibling favor. Usually only pictures of Jay make the living room; the rest of us end up on the back wall of the den above the TV. But old Jan is on the march.Another book or two and I might get a spot on the piano, where only sheet music and Hummels yet reside. I can only aspire.

I have put off blogging on the British Petroleum Disaster that is pumping toxic oil into the calm sea to the West known as the Gulf of Mexico, simply because nothing I have to say about it that is printable. Daddy really frowns on profanity in general, the use of the f-word and the Lord’s name in vain in particular, and whenever I think of the way our Gulf has been exploited and polluted by Big Oil and all their lackeys (and yes, Senator Landrieu – I’m speaking to you) I can either be coldly quiet, or disappoint my father.

I understand industry (my husband works for a corporation) and human error. What I don’t understand is why the rest of the world had safety measures that weren’t quite functional or required in the waters of the fragile Gulf. I also don’t understand why the feds didn’t say: “Hey! Idiots! Finish your backup before you drill that well!” Such lapses really do make me narrow my eyes, and wonder about all the backroom deals and three-martini lunches and political glad-handing that goes on in Big Oil, that leaves our sea turtles and shrimp and whole coastal culture floating belly-up, possibly so toxic that Lily and my future grandchildren won’t be able to swim in the waters of Panama City Beach, or catch a fish off the pier in Cedar Key, or eat a real, home-grown Louisiana poor boy, because the shrimp have to be flown in from China. 

See what I mean about the profanity?

I am especially irritated and annoyed and generally enraged by British Petroleum’s new PR campaign, wherein the matchless Churchill is quoted in a cunning attempt to curry favor and sound heroic. Well, two can play at that game, and let me say here, in public, that the Cracker Nation vows:

To fight British Petroleum on the beaches,

On the landing grounds,

In the fields and in the streets,

in the hills;

And shall not surrender

Till the money-sucking oilmen and their glad-handing political suck-ups clean our sea and go back to Dover and drill their own white cliffs.

And they can take Exxon with them.

I’ve never been what you might call a traveling Cracker, but have had a few opportunities to visit the great city of Nashville, Tennessee in the last year – once to do a signing at the wonderful Davis-Kidd Bookstore, and in October, for the Southern Festival of Books, which is held downtown at the War Memorial. I am small town born and bred and any city is a big city to me, but I always feel at home in Nashville, which is old South with a mountain twang. They look (and sound) like Tarheels who intermarried with Texans, and take great pride in everything they do, from custom cowboy boots to distilling bourbon to harmony in a church choir. They are big on quality and short on pretention and though the word Cracker was a curiosity to them (they call themselves hillbillies) they were quickly on board when I spoke, with that I-will-fight-to-the-death-for-my-barbecue passion you often come across in the Middle South.

They are also big on hospitality, and the same guy who picked me up at the airport took me back three days later. He was a native and clearly savored his job as guide, and both ways, coming and going, gave a travelogue of downtown Nashville that I doubt will ever be equaled in the annals of airport-shuttle history. I was staying at the little boutique Hilton across from the library, which had a side entrance and a maze like lobby. Though my shuttle guy gave me many directions, I managed to get lost from sidewalk to front desk. I wandered around a while, pulling my luggage, fearing I might be joining the homeless folk out in the park, when I turned a corner and caught sight of a front desk. I let out a cry of country relief, and asked the clerk, a young black man: “Is this the front desk?”

He smiled and said, “Yes,” then, without missing a beat, “but we’re closed,” then roared with laughter at my expression, proving once and for all that though they call themselves hillbillies, they really are Crackers, up there on the banks of the old Cumberland River.

I saw the Cumberland from a distance in October, and if you haven’t already heard, it unexpectedly hit a 500 year flood stage this week, breeching its banks and laying waste to much of the downtown. I understand all of it, even Opryland, is under water - which is a bizarre notion to any Cracker; like hearing the Statue of Liberty fell over. I hated to hear it; I really did, and hate to think what has become of the Hilton lobby and the wisecracking clerk and everyone else I met up there. I am confident that they will rise to the occasion, and take on this flood with the same courage and humor they take on everything else. Some cities sink under the weight of catastrophe, but I expect this particular breed of Tennessean to emerge from their baptism like a hound after a good bath. The Yanks couldn’t keep ‘em down and neither did Prohibition, and they have even evolved enough to embrace ice hockey.

I call that a resilient breed of Cracker and I bless them, and wish them well. We haven’t (yet) been swallowed up by our oil slick here in North Florida, and if we have anything you need, my friends, just give us a call, or call Mama. You know it’s yours for the asking. And whoever that man was on the news, who was saving his horses: sir, if I ever meet you in person, I would be honored to shake your hand. I don’t know who you are, but I know what you are, and that is a Good Man.    

Danny and Suzy Holder, my Cracker friends out Trenton-way, introduced me to the new great rage in modern Cracker sport: Cracker Polo. It is played with horse, beach ball and broom. I expect the gentlemanly rules of regular polo otherwise apply, though you’re allowed to shout: shee-et if you get hit in the face with a broom. Cowboy hats are requested but not required.

All I can say is: move over, NASCAR.