"Southern Gothic"
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Southern Gothic The wild Southern countryside, its lush woods with so many pine trees, velvety green fields, golden meadows, red soil and flat shimmering silver highways, has a hold on me. Moss drips through old trees and if it's rained heavy, if you're not careful, you'll run your car right off the road through water, flying around a dangerous curve, into the ditch beside murky swamps. Dirty water will fill your car, rise up, horrifyingly, and ruin the car seats. Happened to me before. Another time a small group of Mexicans suddenly appeared, to help me out. So many deer leap across those back country roads--both of my sisters have hit them, one sister has hit two. She lamented over that, wondering why it had to happen to her and mess up her car (but you're supposed to say, well, why NOT me?). We've still got tobacco warehouses, though several have been demolished; one's bricks and stones were sent all the way to England. Some British company bought them. I thought that was odd. There are still way too many shabby old shacks where people still live, and gloomy looking old wood edifaces,too many holes in the road, dead frogs squashed flat on highways in the summertime, unrelenting sameness. We still have quaint old cemeteries and beautiful gardens and ponds, noble barrenness of winter and spring and summer's sudden opulence, when a feast of wild and pastel colors leap out at you. Living so close to nature, amid rural farmland and so many forests, everybody starts talking about their flowers and whose produce is coming up in their garden. And they share that bounty with you. I've seen the "rough South." Not genteel at all. Where they don't fall to pieces if their biscuits didn't turn out perfectly. People work hard and play hard. Daddy used to describe to us all the different ways people can die, while we were trying to eat. (I was glad when he discontinued ambulance service at the funeral home he ran with his father and brother.) One man suffered a fatal heart attack and was discovered after falling in his hog pen, half-eaten by his hogs. A lady carrying a baby down a country dirt road--hijacked by a furious former lover, or maybe just a random stranger, he cut off her head--"We had to use a scarf in her coffin, to cover the line." And Daddy had to scrape brains off the walls, on more than one service call. I recall the night a drunken man called us threatening to shoot himself, and Daddy and the preacher went to his house to dissuade him. Which required some fortitude and courage, I realize now. A young brother and sister were killed in their truck on a back country road, in a head-on collision--I shudder to recall--and teenage L. killed going 100 miles per hour, her car cut in half, trying to reach her boyfriend and keep him from hanging himself (he'd called her up and threatened)--which he went ahead and did, right about the time her car crashed into a tree. She was my neighbor and had sometimes stopped by to use the phone, to secretly call this suicidal boy. J., C., and A. drowned, Anthony stepped out in front of a car, W. was killed on his motorcycle, L. thrown from the car and died on prom night, C. in a car accident on the way back to college, M. found brutally murdered in a field--why was that never me? Why have I been spared, so far? We all have to go somehow. You wonder how you'll "go." Where I'm from, most people act strangely stoic at funerals...except at black funerals, you hear screaming and wailing. As in Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio," death and tragedy come as a big shock in small towns, but oddly familiar, half-expected ones...small towns feature altogether too frequent and too violent tragedies, in my experience. I felt strangely safer, somehow, in big cities, even while being hyper-alert for potential signs of mayhem. Those damn Southerners! Half-mad in a way, totally believing in an omnipotent supernatural invisible being that created everything and a confusing doctrine of its son sent down to somehow save mankind from their sins, many obsessed, too, with death and barbecue and fried chicken and sweet ice tea, guns and hunting, property, land and money, cars, the Civil War, the 1800s and earlier times in general, with family and family trees, with their dear departed, the crops, the weather, how to beat the awful heat waves... obsessed with physical ailments, the Bible, with sex (unless repressing that, through shame and guilt), with drinking, smoking, drugs, some of us. And with fishing and funerals. Canning watermelon pickles and vegetables. And as stated before, with God, Jesus, Heaven, Hell, sinning, hopes of being forgiven if baptized truly sorry for what they did. I get tired of it. Yet, I can't seem to stay away, somehow.--SUSY
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I fear that long essay is rather boring
if you're not from the South U.S.A. Usually, people from the South like to read about it. My maternal parent's maiden surname was "Lewis." I used to think the name Lewis is English, here lately have read something about its being Irish. Is "Lewis" English or Irish? (Or could be both somehow?) I'd almost rather it be Irish. The Irish aren't quite as barking mad as the English, are they? Got some Atkinson in me, too. That's English but originally came from Scandinavia 'cause of the "son" ending. Other side of my family is Southern European, French, Italian, Spanish so I'm not just white bread, thank goodness, not just Vanilla-- I love England, was an English Literature major. Am not above pokin' a bit of fun at the place, however -
Actually a very good read Susy, I enjoyed it. It almost reads like two different pieces. I like the beginning best, through the line 'And they share that bounty with you'... It's quite beautiful up to that point, then turns a bit morbid, but is still good and well written. it kept my interest which must be a good thing
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Thank you, Kapoo
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SusyLuvsPaul:
Thank you, Kapoo
You are ridiculously welcome!
