usadeepsouth
Grits On My Overalls
by Jennifer Burgess
Somehow within the last few years I have decided eating breakfast at Cracker Barrel is the most auspicious way to begin any sort of road-based journey. So it came to pass that my partner Jeff and I stopped at a Cracker Barrel somewhere in western North Carolina on our way to the mountains for four days of fresh air and fun.
There's a certain kitsch to Cracker Barrel that I can't quite resist. I've never bought anything in their gift shop other than candy and a harmonica (and the harmonica was a gift), and I've certainly never shelled out a substantial amount of money for any of the items in their shop, but I still get a kick out of looking at the merchandise. I imagine Cracker Barrel is where Garrison Keillor does all his Christmas shopping, buying a chicken figurine for the guy who does sound effects on Prairie Home Companion and a GRITS (that's "Girls Raised In The South") t-shirt for his wife who was probably raised in Wisconsin or Michigan or wherever Lake Wobegon is. But still there's similarity between the quiet, moral hominess personified by Garrison Keillor and the nostalgic shopping experience inherent in Cracker Barrel Old Time Country Store.
While I was raised just south of the Mason Dixon line, I have always considered myself a Yankee, or maybe more of a Mid-Atlantician or perhaps best an Eastern Shore-ite. I certainly wouldn’t call myself a Southerner, despite my father's people being from West Virginia. I attribute my partiality to the US South to an early introduction to grits and the yearly visits to my paternal grandparents and the accompanying drives through the Blue Ridge Mountains. Plus I have this weird thing for kudzu and the alien landscape it creates out of normal roadside floriculture.
But my favorite part of all things US South has got to be breakfast. I believe there is little better in this world than a large plate covered with over-easy eggs, some kind of breakfast meat (pork tenderloin being a good choice, but I generally prefer turkey sausage just on principle), biscuits, gravy, and of course, grits. Hash browns are optional, but they come with the Old Timer's Breakfast at Cracker Barrel so I assume they are southern enough. Anyway, I was very happy as Jeff and I sat down in the restaurant, having passed relatively unscathed through the twee selection in the gift shop (although a book of Vapid Country Homilies to Help You Live Life Better and More Morally Upright and Priggishly did catch my eye, and I thought, if you think a book sold at Cracker Barrel is going to help make your life better, well, there's no damn help for you).
Shivering, for Cracker Barrel is always very cold, perhaps due an old-time country tradition of cranking the air conditioning down to 65 degrees in the summer, I ordered the Old Timer's Breakfast, with turkey sausage, and was pleased when Jeff ordered a side of fried okra. I had always heard the word "okra" in conjunction with the words "slimy," "gross," or "nasty" but had never tried any myself. Despite my occasional bouts of homesickness for the rudeness of Philadelphia, the skyline of New York City, or the general freakishness of most of my friends from Delaware, I like the South, and I want to fit in. Thus I eagerly speared a little nugget of fried okra and pushing aside all warnings of sliminess, popped it in my mouth.It was good! Deep fried okra kind of tastes like jalapeño poppers except it isn’t piquant and eating it is not as disgusting as eating deep fried cream cheese. But I suppose the same property that makes okra slimy also makes it kind of creamy, and I really liked it.
As I sat with my plate of southern grub in front of me, contentedly munching on fried okra, Jeff pointed his fork toward my chest and said:
"You have grits on your overalls."
And I thought:
"I'm acclimated!"
Or at least I am when it comes to food (except for chicken fried steak which I will never eat because it's deep fried steak with gravy and that's just so bad for you it's too bizarre to even exist). I've fully embraced the old-time genteelness of the Cracker Barrel South, and all its rocking chairs, manners, and simplistic formality. I'm still not quite there with a lot of other southern traditions, however, like calling shopping carts "buggies" or nearly canonizing men who drive cars really fast in circles.
That's going to require some more grits.
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BIO: Jennifer E. Burgess is a talented writer disguised as an apathetic bar waitress. She's lived on the west coast, in the wild West, up north, and currently calls North Carolina her home. She attended her first pig picking recently and has also had occasion to try pickled okra. "Not bad," she reports.Jennifer has been published in several small literary journals and an indie lit zine, and she contributes to www.peopletalktooloud.com. She's the former content editor of www.sweatylipfetish.com. She's also had several articles published in Pharmaceutical Representative Magazine. (Freelancers gotta eat, you know.) Write Jenny at Jenny@jennyb.org.
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