TIARAS IN LA LA LAND: HOW A SOUTHERN BELLE SURVIVES IN HOLLYWOOD

How did I get here?  I often (Daily) ask myself this question.  I am one of those people that never said, "I can't wait to get outta here," when I was growing up.  I always loved my home town of Tuscaloosa.  I saw myself maybe living in Birmingham...you know, going off to the big city...but never, ever saw myself, living in Los Angeles! GOOD HEAVENS!  That is just way too far from my Mother, and my Crimson Tide!  I never dreamed of Hollywood, or yearned for the bright lights of this big city. Yes, I wanted to be an actress, and a talk show host, but I figured I would be so rich there would be no question that I would always have a house in Tuscaloosa!    So how has it happened that I have lived here not once, but THREE times.  Imagine a push-me-pull-you..you know the mythical creature for Dr. Doolittle.  That creature is me and my Yankee husband. As all true Southerners know...a yankee is anyone not born and raised in the South. It doesn't matter where you are from, as long as it is not the South, you are a Yankee!   And it is a constant battle, that no matter where he takes me, I always want to go home to my Tuscaloosa.  Even if my town has changed a bit from the recent tornado, it is still the same at the heart of it...and all the things, and people I love about it are still right there.  That is my spot on Earth...and everyone who knows me knows about Tuscaloosa, for it stays on the tip of my tongue and at the front of my mind everyday.  So how can I survive living here without losing my mind?  I use my "southerness" and sweet-talk my way through it.  And of course all the beauty-pageant traing comes in handy!

I know y'all know how friendly the South is.  Why, we never met a stranger.  I am talkative anyway, but to a person from the huge city of LA, well I am almost a freak of nature!  I go in stores from Walgreens to Nordstrom, saying, "Hey Honey", and offering a big hug to anyone I know.  At first I heard some people thought I was on drugs.  Between my friendly chatter, and the way I drive, I am sure they were placing bets on that.  But one day at the ice rink several years ago, (my son has been a competitive Pairs  ice skater for over 10 years) I actually heard a woman explaining for me, "Oh no, she's not on drugs, she's from the South and they're just really friendly."  Then it was like, suddenly I was so popular, but kinda like a zoo animal...people wanted to come view me and ask me questions so they could hear my accent.  What accent?
Years ago, when I was auditioning all the time, I always remembered I was from the pageant world of the deep South.  I knew this was an advantage over practically everyone here, and I tried in vain to use it as such.  Sometimes it just didn't quite play out like I had hoped.  During my early days here in Hollywood, I got a bunch of "Under Fives"...thats when the role has less than five lines but you are very necessary to complete the scene.  It's a good place to start.  So I got a part on my very favorite soap..it was the whole reason I wanted to be on a soap...The Young and The Restless.  I was playing a college student!  My ego was psyched because I was in my late 20s.  I am, and have always been, a teeny bit...plump...ahem...and so, I bought a special girdle for the occasion. On the day of the shoot, I arrived at CBS with my "underwear" in my bag...I mean I couldn't wear it for long , you know, because I had to breathe and all.
I checked in and was assigned to my dressing room and given my call time.  Okay, time for the girdle.  I had been to make-up and hair, had waited till the last second to get into it so I wouldn't appear blue on camera.  I  began to push and prod myself into this magical transforming garment.  As I began to perspire, because, as you know, Southern Belles don't sweat, ....we glisten...I realized I had never put one of these  on by myself before.  I had my Yankee trained well to "help miss Scarlet with the corsett"  HELP!!!  How will I make my call time...my dress would not FIT without my pressure cooker of a foundation piece! I stood on the couch and tried for physics to help me...it did not.  I laid up-side-down on the couch and tried for gravity...nothing...OMG!  I am  about to be called to THE Young and The Restless set, and I am naked!  I pulled a chair over and pushed and pulled and prodded, holding one foot at a time, up on the wall, till all of me was in this garment that looked like it was made for a poodle.  My face needed dabbing off...okay, my make-up needed to be completely re-applied.  I had brought my caboodles kit!  A good Pageant-trained Southern Belle is never without her caboodles!  I was ready....not breathing well...but ready.  And vowing to join Jenny Craig when this was over!
I was called to the set, in my beautiful dress and high heels. I was given a couple of books to look like a student, and shown my mark.
ACTION.....I began to walk out on camera, rounding a corner of the hallway, just as I made my turn...my grand entrance, I felt my girdle SNAP...and my right boob flop to sweet freedom....the girdle just couldn't take the pressure.  It broke WHILE the camera was rolling!  I did what any well-trained Southtern beauty pageant girl would do, I slowly, gently, eased the text book up over my flopping boob and covered my girl right up!  And a big pageant girl smile certainly didn't hurt! No one ever knew.  Then the director yelled, "Again, from  the  top."...I kept the books in place, and that's the way it aired.  I knew why those books were being held so high that day!
When I got back to my dressing room, I realized at least I wasn't blue, my right lung had been set free. So it all worked out.  My Pageant training came in quite handy that day durning my wardrobe malfunction!
I use my Belle-ness all the time.  It helps me survive the traffic out here as well.  Twelve lanes of stopped traffic can drive a person to use some pretty fowl language...not me, I just stick my head out the window and actually say to the driver next to me,, in my thickest accent, "Hey would you be a Sweetie- Pie and let me over?"...How can they be mean and impersonal when I am so, well,... SOUTHERN?  And Sweet!  My Yankee and my son are always pushing me to do this, but for some reason, they scootch down in the car when I do...hmmmm.
I have seen that it is just good to be a Southerner, no matter where I am.   Good manners, a taste for good food, a friendly way, a discrete manner, a wonderful lullabye of an accent.  I am so proud of my Southern roots, and thank the good lord above for all my pageant training! 

SUMMER DAZE: THE DAY I DRANK PART OF THE WARRIOR RIVER! (And while lovely to look at, does not make for a tasty beverage)

I have to admit, in the aftermath of the tornado that ravaged one seventh of my home town, it has been difficult for me to think of what to write. I am not one to EVER be at a loss for something to say. EVER. And I wasn't.  I just did not want to write.  I had to grieve. I had blogs planned for the next several weeks until April 27th changed things.  I have grieved and raised money and talked about Tuscaloosa to my friends and family here in LA, but to most, I am sure, they don't get it.  I am part of Tuscaloosa in a way that is hard for them to relate, since I don't live there anymore.  Ahh, but see, that's where they are wrong.  I still live there.  My heart is there every minute.  I have looked at videos and pictures and talked daily to friends and family there.  I am there.  And I will be there physically, soon, to help in rebuilding and putting us back together. And as we have all suffered a terrible, seemingly insurmountable loss, life DOES go on.  And that in and of itself is why WE ARE TUSCALOOSA. We Know this.  We will rebuild and go on and count our miracles. And Summer is coming!

The heat, the bugs, the lakes and rivers, all still right where we left them before April 27th changed the landscape. And we do need to laugh.  It makes life bearable, after all.

Summers in the South, like everything else down here, are a little different.  The heat  is wet.  Like a prickly wool blanket just from a hot tub, it is thrown on top of you as you go out into it, from a nice cool air-conditioned room.  Or, it can feel like the inside of someone's mouth.  It is just purely uncomfortable.

And it would be unbearable if not for the lakes and of course the wonderful Warrior River.  On any given hot Summer day, the lakes and rivers are busy with folks cooling off from the intense Southern sun. And there's always the annual trips to the gulf. More on that in a future blog.

One Summer, years ago, when I was just a teenager, I was on my uncles boat on the Warrior River.  We were down near Greensboro where he lived.  It had been a wonderful day, cloudless sky and bright sunshine....and the endless river stretched out before us toward the horizon and kudzu.  It was so hot, my skin was stinging with sun drops within the first 20 minutes.    My uncle was very well-known in Greensboro.  We rode the river and everyone waved to him and called him out by name.  We had loaded the boat with lots of food and snacks.  I slathered myself in what was probably pure baby oil with a hint of delicious coconut scent, and took my perch along the very front of the boat, like I was a pageant winner in a parade.  I waved at everyone too, like I knew them, but didn't. 

 I was the only girl on the boat that day.  My brother, and my two uncles and me.  They decided it would be a great idea if we water-skied.  Uh...No....I am happy just sittin' here wavin' at folks, thank you very much.  The skiing might mess my hair all up, then I wouldn't look pretty while I waved.  No, thanks, I'll just stay here. 

 Men!  They didn't give up.  My brother decided to show me up.  Nothing new.  He volunteered to give it a try.  I think he was 12.  We had just moved back from living in Oklahoma, and at this age he thought he was macho, about to start middle school.  He knew he could get up on those skiis and he then could tease me the rest of the day, or the rest of my life.  It was a ploy.  A manipulation.   My uncle threw him the skis and after a couple of tries, he was up!  And I was getting agitated.

"Hey look at your brother," my uncle said.  "It was easy for him.  Come on you know you don't want him to be the only one."  Uugghhh.  Really!  Ok fine.  I was 14 and not to be out done here.  To say I am competitive is to put it rather, mildly.  I left my perch.

First of all I really didn't even want to get into the water.  It was dark and deep and I knew I wouldn't be able to touch the bottom.  Ok, I am not a great water baby like my brother.  He is now a trained and certified diver.  Whoopee.  So I slid, gingerly, off the back of the boat. The water was so warm.  Hot almost.  Like bath water.  My uncle dropped the skis into the water.  They SAID they explained to me what to do, but,I beg to differ.  So I leaned back in my life jacket, trying to figure out how in the world I would reach my feet to get those skis secure .  In leaning backwards I accidentally rolled over...backwards into the water. Like a water ballerina doing a turn.  I surfaced and tried again.  They were all laughing at me from the back of the boat.  "Where'd you go, Beth" My uncle said.  "Doin' a little dance for us?"  I did not find this amusing in the least!  I finally got the skis on and looked for the ropes.  This certainly did not feel very lady-like.  I was missing my perch.  

"OK, my uncle shouted, "you ready?"  I felt my heart stop and my stomach drop like I had been pushed out of an airplane.  "Here we go.  I'm gonna speed it up.  Just hold on and pull up." Oh Goody!

 Yeah, right.  Uh Huh.  Just push me out of the air plane now.  It would be easier.  In that moment, I was so filled with fear, and such anger at my brother, whom I could see at the back of the boat, standing there laughing at me.  

The boat sped up, the water rushed by and within seconds, my skis  were off.  And the boat kept going, faster and faster....and I WAS STILL HANGING ONTO THE ROPE FOR ALL OF DEAR LIFE AND LIMB!....like I would most certainly die if I let go.  My uncle who was trying to "coach" me , and I use that word very lightly, was screaming something to me but with the waves and rush of water washing over my ears and face and eyes I could not make out what he was screaming.  I was in my moment of death and had switched to survival mode.  I do remember seeing my brother doubled over. At the time I thought he was weeping hysterically for me to be saved.  I learned later he was hysterical....but not actually WEEPING.

The unbelievable thing, well beside the fact that I did not, in my moment of death, have sense  enough to LET GO OF THE ROPES, is the fact that my uncle KEPT DRIVING THE BOAT!!!  Faster and faster.  No one told him I was skimming, at lightening speed on my stomach, down the Warrior River!  I drank a lot of river that day.  And while I LOVE that river, it really does not make for a delicious beverage.  After what seemed like an eternity of body surfing, being dragged behind a boat holding onto ski ropes like death would be imminent if I let go, my uncle finally cut the engine.  I was alive.  Coughing and full of the river, but alive just the same.  My uncle, the "coach",  jumped into the river and swam over to me, shouting,"Good God, why didn't you just let go? What the hell?"  I could not answer at the moment.  I was coughing my head off and saying a prayer of thanks that I was actually alive.  My uncle finally got over to me and, after seeing I was OK,  said, "Beth, this might be proof that you have to be the stupidest person on earth!  he was still laughing as he swam. Why did yo not just LET GO?  I was yelling at you didn't you hear me tell you to let go?" I'M SORRY, I WAS BUSY DYING AND COULDN'T THINK!  I know he meant well as he dragged me through the Warrior River back to the boat.  They all had a fabulous laugh, and I returned to my perch, drenched with messy hair and, a very bruised ego.  

Needless to say, I am not a skier to this day!  

And I still love the Warrior River.  Especially looking at it, writing about it, and watching it roll on by me, as the sun sets in all its misty, liquid, brilliance....while I am dry, and safe upon its shores.  

Don't forget, Tuscaloosa sill needs your help.  http://givetuscaloosa.com

Please give generously 

TUSCALOOSA: A STORY OF RESILIENCE AND GRACE AFTER ONE OF THE WORST TORNADOES IN HISTORY

My Grandmother's neighborhood last summer

It's the trees.  To the naked eye thats what we notice first.  In a city whose moniker is THE DRUID CITY, Druid meaning trees, thousands of trees missing changes our view that we loved forever. Trees hundreds of years old, snapped in half like matchsticks, now jutting up like spikes from the ground. It looks like a wasteland.  Hundred year old homes, small homes from the 40s and 50s, neighborhoods that are on the National Historic Registry, like my grandmother's in Glendale Gardens, wiped out like an atomic bomb went off.  Future generations will have a different Tuscaloosa to look at.  It will be a NEW normal.

My nephew Corey and me last summer

In the minutes following the F5 tornado that ravaged my precious special home town, the one who plays muse to all my writing, my literary inspiration, I called my nephews and heard horrific stories.  One of them went to check on a friend and found him dead under rubble.  He is only 20.  My other nephew described how he will never ever forget hearing the piercing silence, then the dead air filling with the screams.  A deadly deafening silence falling over the once bustling city of about 90,000, home to my Bama Crimson Tide, and for miles around, only the screaming could be heard.  That's what he said he will never be able to get out of his head. The broken bones, broken bodies, and broken hearts will mend over time.  But we will never be the same... the landscape has changed, and we are missing family members.  Neighborhoods shaded for hundreds of years in tree tunnels are gone. Lakes are drained as the search for bodies thrown intensifies. I am heartsick.  I cried for several days, weeping for my city and  called frantically and checked on my friends.  Thank God for FaceBook...it helped keep everyone in touch when the phones went down. Tuscaloosa is home to The famous University of Alabama, the Crimson Tide, and is filled with college students from all over the world.  Some of them still among the missing, though the campus itself was spared. Some of them beautiful smart young adults with graduation coming, and their lives stretching out in front of them reported among the dead. And some, calling Tuscaloosa home nine months out of the year have blessedly decided to stay and help rebuild.  They get it.  Tuscaloosa is special.  The youth and strong bodies, now so appreciated.  The students of The University help create the magic of this town. They are woven in the fabric.  The hospital was spared major damage, with windows blown out, but ran out of body bags the first night.  I have friends working all over town.  Just because I don't live there, doesn't mean Tuscaloosa doesn't live in me. It does.  Every minute of every day.  I have friends who are police officers, nurses, teachers all who worked round the clock in the immediate aftermath helping trapped victims and injured people.  I love these people.  They are the salt of the earth.  I heard accounts from them and some so horrific, it would be impossible to re-tell.  I think of them every minute now as they work tirelessly still trying to make sense of it all.  Why?  Someone told me not to ask why, just know we will get through it...together, like always, side by side, shoulder to shoulder, neighbor to neighbor and strangers to stranger.  No one is a stranger now. We are all each other's keeper.  My sister in law has worked and cooked and delivered and bagged snacks and not slept....in days.  She does what she does best, feed people. And heal people.

My sister-in-law Joyce

A disaster like this could wipe some cities off the map. Not my city.  When I say Tuscaloosa is like no place else on earth, I'm not joking.  Remember, I have lived nearly every place else and it's Tuscaloosa that pulses through my veins.  Why?  Most of my family is long gone from there now. Could it be the meandering Warrior River and it's misty liquid  sunsets?  The historical BAMA campus and their National Champion Football Team? The lyrical downtown, with it's fabled old movie palaces are the stars twinkling in this bright magical city.  But it's none of these things that keep me falling in love and now weeping for my town. Though all of these are stars in it's crown, what keeps me so mesmerized is the people here.  Filled with different races, different political beliefs and different religions, hell it's even got a few Auburn fans... its a diverse small town.  You don't find that very often unless its a world renowned college town like Tuscaloosa.  And as different as everyone is, the very fabric, the nature of Tuscaloosa is to exhibit great togetherness.  We help each other no matter what.  So they will not be down for long here.  No, Tuscaloosa is resilient to put it mildly.  And filled with grace under fire. A quiet Southern grace.   They have set up, organized and neighbors are helping neighbors.  Church volunteers riding through the ravaged neighborhoods and handing out power bars and water bottles to people who were total strangers last week...that's my Tuscaloosa.  Tuscaloosa is not just any city. The people who call it home and those who have left and still call it home, like yours truly, know this.  I find it hard to describe to outsiders.  It's the fact that generations of families have all lived here for a hundred years and so what for me is a thing of pure myticism, we have all become FAMILY.  And what do families do when one is in need or hurting, we all hurt together, and then we pull together like nobody else on earth.  So I know we will not be down for long.  It is not the way of Tuscaloosa to accept defeat on any level, not just on the football field. It will take time...and hundreds of millions of dollars...but the people that call Tuscaloosa home..ALL of us, will do anything in our power, to put us back together...as best we can. Because we understand the speacialness of this place.  The businesses will rebuild, probably in the same spots.  The homes lost will be rebuilt, new subdivisions will form.  AND FOOTBALL SEASON will come like a beacon in a darkened sky to give us all something to cheer for,  to smile about, something to help us feel normal again. Never before will football season be looked forward to like it will  be this year!   I saw Coach Saban visiting fans in the hospital in some pictures the other day.  They needed that more than he knows.
The helplessness one feels when so far away is painful beyond description.  I wanted to run home immediately and volunteer. Flights out were the most expensive I have seen.  I decided to raise as much money as I can and I will come home soon and be part of the re-building. I have to.  I am running home to hug and soothe and be soothed and help.  My job of raising my son is changing as he heads to college in August and when I kiss him goodbye, I will drive the 2300 miles to my sweet home Alabama and help Tuscaloosa.  Because I love this place like no place else on Earth.

The Alabama Crimson Tide "A" hangs is window of a destroyed car near campus

Please help Tuscaloosa rebuild.  Here are some places to send donations http://www.givetuscaloosa.com and another http://www.helptuscaloosaschools.com
Please give generously.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

SOUTHERN FOOD: OR, WHY I'M SORTA FAT

To the naked eye it might look like Southern food and I just don't get along.  My ample rear end and extra pounds look like I am in a battle with food. Well, nothing could be further from the truth.  The extra lumps and bumps I possess are like trophies I display to the fantastic Southern food I grew up on and treasure like a fine delicacy to this day.  The food in the South is part of the rich heritage and the slow simmered way of life there. We aren't slower there, we just like to savor the moments.  Its a rich sweet part of the life I loved and still love when I am home to visit, which isn't nearly often enough.  Food in the South is part of the character there, like an actor in a well loved play.  Not a supporting actor, but more often than not it's the star attraction for every kind of event imaginable.  Food takes center stage for everything from tailgating to summer BBQs to weddings, birthdays, Labor Day, Fourth of July, Christmas, and Lordy, don't even get me started on funerals.  Funerals are a big deal in the South anyway, but in my entire life, I have never ever seen the food arrive by the car loads, for weeks and weeks, like it does when someone has passed.  It is a continuous parade of cars filled with potato salads, deviled eggs, homemade corn bread, peach cobblers, carrot salads, casseroles, hams, and the trusty staple of all funeral foods; the Pound Cake.  And BBQ, well that is a synonym for pork, both pulled pork and pork ribs. To a true southerner of the DEEP SOUTH, nothing else qualifies as BBQ! Sauces, well that is up to the individual, and the region they come from.  For me, I just love the spicy sauce of Dream Land, the world famous BBQ place in my hometown of Tuscaloosa!  I order it by the case, sent to my home here in LA.  My pantry isn't complete without it my jars of Dream Land Sauce!

All the women I grew up around could cook, except my mother, bless her heart. She loved to sew, not cook, so I grew up with a lot of KFC, and beautiful original pageant gowns!  My grandmothers, great grandmothers, my soon to be sister-in-law all cooked delicious Southern food though, so I stocked up pretty often. They all cooked differently, but it was just the Southern way.  The women are handed down recipes and cast iron skillets in wills left by generations before them.  Yes, those skillets have been seasoned with years of cooking and they are like gold in the South.  Family feuds have broken out over who gets Grandma's skillet after she has passed!  

Sunday dinners are a thing of pure legend in the South.  The amount of food there nearly rivals a funeral.  My grandma's Sunday dinner, (the meal at NOON in the deep South) would always include at least two kinds of meat, a ham, and some beef or fried chicken, and so many home grown garden vegetables...well I just know I got more vegetables in me growing up than my yankee husband.  Ok, well, they were fried or soaking in fat back, but hey, they were real home grown vegetables that I helped pick and freeze myself!  And I ate lots of them too, so that has to count for something!  My country grandma  put a spoonful of lard and a spoonful of sugar in nearly all of her cooking.  And it was mouthwatering, to die for, delicious. Fried Okra, black eyed peas, cornbread, and my all time favorite Southern special, fried green tomatoes!  I can ashamedly eat those by the platter-fulls,  all by myself. 

A good Southern breakfast is good enough to last all the way till lunch, (dinner) and then we get to start again.  And GRITS, Oh my goodness, what a delicacy of the South!  For those who have never had grits, first, I'm sorry, second, my description of this fine fare could never do it justice. Grits are the tiny white center of corn after it's ground up. You can buy grits ready to make in a package like you buy rice. We don't have to ground them up ourselves anymore. That went out the door about the same time we got indoor plumbing!  Grits can be served with cheese, a favorite of many a Southerner, but my favorite is with loads of butter and salt, for the health conscious, real butter, no chemicals that way, and sea salt works just fine.  Put that with some eggs, sausage and bacon, buttermilk biscuits with sausage gravy and you've got a Southern breakfast feast!  

And then there's the drinks!  We always say, "Want a Coke Cola?", Even when we aren't offering coke. A cold drink is a "Coke" to a Southerner.  Like "Soda" or "Pop" is to someone from somewhere else.  Whenever we went to my Nanny's house, (Mother's mother) she barely let a second go by without offering us a coke, a real coke, from the back porch fridge, along with other treats and snacks from the snack corner of her kitchen.  We had lemonade and of course sweet tea...The house wine of the South.  No Southern home was ever to be without Sweet Tea, or fresh lemonade in the hot humid Southern summers.  It is against the Law!  And then there's the well-stocked Southern bar, filled with the men we all revere down South: Jim (Beam) Jack (Daniels) Mark, (Makers Mark) And throw in a little Mr. Bailey for our rich Irish heritage, and a bit of Wild Turkey, and the bar is open, am I right?  We love our Southern men!

Eating in the South is as important as the kitchens we sit in to eat.  My Nanny had an eat in yellow table in the center of her coffee scented nook and it was the busiest room of the house.  Something always on the stove or in the oven, I cannot remember a single day ever of arriving through the back door into the warm kitchen and something not cooking on the stove or in the oven.  In the South the kitchen table is the center of life. My favorite memories of growing up are centered around that table.  This included so much laughter that I actually did spit takes as a kid, usually all over my poor uncle or aunt which I insisted on sitting in between at all times. I remember bursting into loud giggles with coke cola spewing out through my nostrils, and my uncle shaking his head, wiping off his face with a handy dish towel.  In times of sadness, of hilarity, holidays and deaths, we were always sitting around that table.  Life....was at that table. I now have it and feel I have a masterpiece.  The kitchen tables of the South are where we eat, yes, but it is also where we share and bond and love and listen, listen to the stories of our families.  Southerners are unique in telling stories.  We are all natural born story-tellers, and we have an entirely unique way of handing down these stories to generation upon generation of wide eyed children in the family.  And the stories are always told around food.  Gathered around an old aunt or grandfather, biting into crisp, dripping, watermelon, always with a salt shaker nearby.  Or sitting around the kitchen table over warm peach cobbler with a side of homemade vanilla ice cream, we listened to the the stories from the hilarious to the scary, for every good Southern tale has a ghost or two. 

So I wear these extra lumps and dimples with pride.  I was fed well, both with the food and the love that came with it.

Albright Writes: Albright Writes: MINT JULIP ANYONE? AND THE OUTHO...

Albright Writes: Albright Writes: MINT JULIP ANYONE? AND THE OUTHO...: "Albright Writes: MINT JULIP ANYONE? AND THE OUTHOUSE IS OPEN! MY ... : 'For me, growing up down South had a very unusual feel. See, there..."

Albright Writes: MINT JULIP ANYONE? AND THE OUTHOUSE IS OPEN! MY ...

Albright Writes: MINT JULIP ANYONE? AND THE OUTHOUSE IS OPEN! MY ...: "For me, growing up down South had a very unusual feel. See, there are two kinds of South...the city version, and the country version. I wa..."

MINT JULEP ANYONE? AND THE OUTHOUSE IS OPEN! MY VERSION OF GROWING UP DOWN SOUTH

For me, growing up down South had a very unusual feel.  See, there are two kinds of South...the city version, and the country version.  I was lucky enough to experience both.  My Dad's mother was my country Grandma, and my mom's mother was my city Nanny, as I called her.  Visiting them each had its own feel and it was nothing at all alike!  For those of you not lucky enough to be from the South, the two flavors are distinctly unique. Each having the flair of the wonderful South but a taste all it's own.
My country Grandma was one of a kind anyway, loud, opinionated, and loved to work in her garden.  My city Nanny had a large house in a well appointed neighborhood and was married to a lawyer who had practiced in front of the Supreme court on the Rights to Privacy. Frank Bruce was my grandfather and he was also the Play-by-play announcer for the Alabama Crimson Tide in the 1950s.  His picture, to this day, hangs in the Bear Bryant Museum on campus!
 My country Grandma loved to have all the grandkids over in the summer to work in the garden.  I usually really hated this.  It was hot, and damp with humidity, sweat just dripping from my face, as I picked and pruned.  I was beet red at days end both from over heating and a stinging sunburn.  I hated picking the okra the most.  The tiny little prickly parts that would stick in my hands for days, made it the worst of all the vegetables to pick.  So I paid my brother to do it!  Her garden was big and filled with everything, from tall corn stalks to the smaller bean, and field pea patches. And the home grown tomatoes and watermelons were the best I ever had!  She canned and made preserves out of figs and strawberries, and blackberries, and had a huge freezer she kept everything in for the winter. Cucumber, cantaloupes, it was all there.  She could have owned a good roadside stand with all her plantings.  She was efficient and hard working.  We would sit for hours in the hot afternoon sun, sometimes on her porch swing, shelling peas and shucking corn. We had the picking and shucking and peeling all timed around her "stories"...her soap operas. "Y'all I ain't a gonna miss my stories now." That's where the idea that I needed to become an actress on a soap opera was born.  I wanted her to be able to watch me one day, cause I sure KNEW I wasn't gonna work in a garden for a living!  The very first time I was ever on a soap was when I did a bit part on her favorite show THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS.  She was so proud of that.  And that was the best part for me.  My Grandma would be able to see me on her "story"!
She had a window unit air conditioner so the "cool" was only in one room. When you left that room and walked into another, the HOT would hit you like a wet warm blanket.  It sometimes made you feel like you'd pass out from the abrupt extreme change.   We had to take turns standing in front of the window unit to cool off.  When we all spent the night in the Summertime, we'd have to pile in the same bed, a pull out couch in the living room so we could sleep by the air conditioner.  There's no sleeping in the deep South in the summertime without cool air...but to be honest, it was hard to sleep four or five of us in one bed too.  When we'd fight, which my brother and I did constantly, she'd say, "Go out and cut me a hickory", which for those who never had a "Hickory" is literally going out in the yard and getting a limb off a tree or one fallen to the ground and taking it to her so she could slap your legs with it!  And it STINGS!....we knew then we had stepped over the Grandma line.  I would always go get the tiniest little new limb growing, flimsy and green, so it had no "STING" when she switched the backs of my legs with it.  My acting skills began about then as I screamed in agony so I would not have to get another limb for her which would be stiffer and cause much more REAL pain.  No the flimsy..."HURT" just enough! And I would fake cry until she thought I could not take anymore.  I am sure now she knew I was "Acting." That's why she was laughing at me.
My Nanny never asked me for a switch or a hickory...but I did see her chase my uncle down the hall with a frying pan one day...all 115 pounds of her, her pearls just flying. She was tiny and sold make-up at Lewis Weasels down town, then Gayfers at the mall.  She was prissy and loved perfume and nail polish.  I remember her dressing table was a place of pure fascination for me when I was little girl.  It was a place of magical transformations.  And I cannot recall her house to this day without the fragrances she wore drifting in my head. Sometimes when I am missing her I spritz her last bottle quickly into the air.  I keep that precious fragrance on my own dressing table now.  She was not a country cook either.  My grandfather was from NY and she learned to cook for him.  Corned beef and cabbage, Salisbury steak, were the main fare when I was at her house.  She was from Mississippi but a debutante type of lady.  She did the make-up for the Miss Alabama contestants from Tuscaloosa when I was growing up.  I loved it when the girls would come over for make-up lessons.  I was really young but I sat in on the lessons and was in a heaven I cannot describe. Perfumes floating through the house, custom mixed powders, lipsticks in every shade and blush, and fluffy make-up brushes, it was just a little girls paradise. She always included me in the lessons too, saying, "Now Beth, remember whatever you do to your face do to your neck line. Blending is the secret."  And my Nanny was funny too, hard working as my grandfather had taken ill in his later years and it was my tiny Nanny that ran the house and made the money, selling make-up.  She was my teacher for skin care which I employ all of her lessons daily. She had wonderful parties and served lots of fascinating hors d'oeuvres , like bourbon balls and rum fudge! She also taught me the double use of a strand of pearls... beauty of course, and just in case you need to wring someone's neck you just remove and use!!
Sometimes when I visited my country side of the family there would actually be a mule in the yard, ready for plowing.  I loved to ride the mule too.  Couldn't do that at my city Nanny's house!  But at Nanny's, I loved all the prissy evenings I spent with her painting my nails, and playing at her make-up table. There was such an extreme difference between the houses!
When I was really little my country grandma still had an outhouse!  Oh Lordy, I hated that thing!  Had to walk clear out to the far back yard, with a flashlight!  Just to go to the bathroom at night! If you have never had privy to an outhouse, allow me clue you in.  It is a big hole in the ground with a wooden seat built over it.  The seat is inside a little wooden closet that sits alone outside.  You open the closet door and there you are.  Kind of like a wooden port-a-potty...but this potty was not going anywhere!  And the hole filled up with...uh huh...just what you're thinking!  That smell was straight out of hell.  I was terrified to go in it, especially at night!  And the splinters in you rear end...well that was just a given. You had to remember to put down the newspaper down if you didn't want splinters. Newsprint on your rear was better than splinters in it.  The most horrific part was the paralyzing fear of falling in.  My mother had a story from when she was a child that her aunt had slipped while helping her to the potty and dropped her in!  My Nanny said when she got there to answer  the screaming, all she could see were hands and tiny feet sticking out.  That awful vision was burned into my poor little head as I trekked outside with my flashlight.  I was rejoicing the Lord above when she finally got rid of that awful smelly thing!
Her cooking was maybe the very best I ever had, with a little chunk of fat back or lard, and a spoonful of sugar in  nearly every single thing she made.  Her Sunday after church dinners were the concoctions of legend. That's the kind of Southern food I love! Ham and butter beans and potatoes and onions, and corn bread and fried green tomatoes, fried okra and pecan pie!  Oh I am dying here just thinking of it!
  I had such an extreme dichotomy of Southern life growing up this way.  And I wouldn't trade it for anything!
Both of my grandmothers were quintessential Steel Magnolias.  Both were the breadwinners when I was growing up, both were hard working and they were great friends to each other. I watched them closely and modeled myself after both of them...in different ways.  I hope I am doing them proud as they are both my angels now. Yes, I am truly, a little bit redneck, and a little bit debutante, and that's a true Southern Belle, wearing our pearls, but we can kick your booty if we need to. Especially if you are hurting our babies! You never saw a Belle go redneck faster than to mess with our babies!!  I can just pull my pearls off and strangle somebody!  Aren't all Steel Magnolias this way?