R.S.V.P.

It has been a long time since I’ve Blogged, but I’ve been busy
finishing up my job, ensuring we got out of England with all of our belongings (when you’re married to someone who is always looking for an excuse to take your favorite 20-year old t-shirts and useless plastic objects to the charity shop, constant vigilance is always required). And, getting ready to send Josh off to summer camp (dropped him on Sunday) and head off with Wendy and Simon down to Atlanta.

I’ve also been focused on getting all the gadgets ready for the trip (and am happily typing this while on-line in my car thanks to Verizon wireless Internet). And, I’ve been working on the Web site (which still needs another week of work that I’ve planned for late July to get the photos and mapping working). But today, I’m not thinking about technology. I’m thinking about the South, town planning, strip-mallization, national brand dominance and where I’m going to have breakfast.

Driving down through Virginia yesterday and North Carolina today, I’m forcibly reminded of my love/hate relationship with the South. The thoughts started flowing this morning as I ran across the Brunswick country line, just past the small town of McKinney, VA. On the line was the following sign, highlighting the county’s great contribution to the southern culinary landscape – Brunswick Stew

Here’s the text from the historical marker in case you can’t read it from the picture:
According to local tradition, while Dr. Creed Haskins and several friends were on a hunting trip in Brunswick County in 1828, his camp cook, Jimmy Matthews, hunted squirrels for a stew. Matthews simmered the squirrels with butter, onions, stale bread, and seasoning, thus creating the dish known as Brunswick stew. Recipes for Brunswick stew have changed over time as chicken has replaced squirrel and vegetables have been added, but the stew remains thick and rich. Other states have made similar claims but Virginia’s is the first.

Now, back in 2001, when we decided to move down to Atlanta, I got a lot of funny looks and stories from my family, most of whom have never lived more than 20 miles outside of New York City. My uncle told me the following joke (which I’ve repeated often) – “You know when you’re down in Georgia and see R.S.V.P on a dinner invitation, do you know what it means? Roast Squirrel Very Possilble”

Now the Atlanta area is as cosmopolitan a city as any, and we were never offered squirrel while we lived down there, but still, when we’d head up north to some of the small Appalachian towns, I got the sense that my uncle’s joke wasn’t too far off the mark. And then, here in McKinney, out for my morning jog past the tobacco field and Baptist church, the sign was bringing it all back – These people eat squirrels, and like them, and write about it on historical markers.

We got back in the car and put on Mary Chapin Carpenter’s “I am a town.” It was now 7am and we were in a hurry to leave because Wendy was getting nervous about the domestic dispute that was going on several doors down at our hotel. I didn’t mention that we had stayed for the night at a cheap and non-descript roadside motel off of US 1 that probably wasn’t much in its day and whenever that day was, it certainly hasn’t been in the past 25 years.

So we got in the car and continued heading South, deciding we’d get breakfast once we crossed into North Carolina. We were driving down US 1, which parallels I-85 because Interstates are pretty boring and you can’t really see what you’re driving through. Of course, it became pretty clear that there wasn’t much to miss on the Interstate, but we decided to stay on US 1 anyway, getting stuck behind tractors but not passing any traffic lights. I tried explaining to Simon what tobacco is (we’d driven through several fields, and yesterday had gone by the Phillip Morris world HQ on I-95, which reminded me, both architecturally and morally of the Death Star from the original Star Wars movie). Simon thought tobacco was something used in sauce, and we had a very amusing conversation about the differences between Tobacco and Tabasco (“What’s the difference dad?” asked Simon. “An S,” I replied, “and one kills people through cigarettes while the other makes food taste better”)

Anyways, we were now approaching the NC line and getting ready for breakfast, but each town we drove through had nothing resembling a diner or other local restaurant. There were lots of gas stations and convenience stores, plenty of flea markets and churches and other stores, but no restaurants. We did pass a Burger King and a couple of hamburger stands, but nothing resembling a local restaurant. It’s amazing how many Cracker Barrel, Denny’s and Waffle Hut signs we had seen off I-95 the day before but we hadn’t even passed one of them (not that we would have stopped if we had).

Finally, however, we were redeemed: Driving into the town of Henderson, we came across the Sunrise Biscuit Company – it seemed like everything we were looking for: a locally made breakfast; not a national chain; some ‘Southern’ character, etc. I had the scrambled egg & cheese platter with a biscuit and a side of grits, Simon had the pancakes (which he proclaimed bigger than his head and larger than any he had ever seen before). The perky woman behind the counter had the best southern accent ever; straight out of central casting. We probably got nicer, more friendly service in 5 minutes than all of the times we’d had breakfast in the UK over the past 6 years. The eggs and grits were good and Simon said the pancakes were almost as good as Grandpa’s.

It’s amazing how often stereotypes can come true (especially if you’re looking for them), but that’s not always a bad thing. Chalk one more tally mark on the “love” side of my love/hate relationship with the South. Of course, it helped that they didn’t have squirrel on the menu and the coffee refills were free.