My friend Janet, who moved from Rochester, New York, to a small town in North Carolina shortly after the pandemic hit, continues to entertain me with stories of her trying to discern why Southerners do the things Southerners do. Our ways are not always easy to understand or explain, but Janet has the keen eye, and ear, of a writer. She doesn’t miss much.
I’ve noticed that her experiences fall into two categories — food and language.
She’s still surprised by how many strangers strike up conversations in ways that rarely happened in her 60-plus years of living and working in New York. One day after moving to North Carolina, Janet and her husband were in a second-hand store when a man approached Jim and said something like, “You drive that truck out there, don’t you?”
As Janet tells it, the stranger kept the conversation going for 30 minutes. (Honestly, that might be a stretch, but I think Janet is learning what a pleasure it is to dress up a story.)
A few days ago, Janet headed for a walk on her town’s hiking trail and she came upon two old guys, who were strangers to her, passing time on a bench.
“One of them said, ‘I always see you here with a dog, don’t I?’” Janet told me, describing how he pulled her into some storytelling.
“I said, ‘No. We lost our dog last spring. She was a great dog — lived ’til 17.’”
Of course, this did not stop the conversation. The man had more to say:
“I was just a boy when I lost my Spottie. Best dog I ever had. Got hit by a train. I saw it happen … We had another dog. My daddy said we didn’t need a dog anymore so he drove her off someplace, but she found her way home. Thirty miles or more. When she showed up again he didn’t say a thing but, ‘Boy, you got your dog back.’ That was that. Never said another thing.”
How does a woman go for a walk and come home with a decades-old, tender story about a boy and his dog outdoing a pitiless father?
It happens when strangers talk and strangers listen. And I guess it happens more in certain places where stories are told as naturally as a person draws breath.
Earlier this week I asked Janet if she and Jim planned to have black-eyed peas for New Year’s Day.
Tell me more, she said.
I’d forgotten that having black-eyed peas for good luck in the New Year is mostly a Southern ritual. We always have them with cornbread. Many of my friends have collard greens, too. I briefly explained the black-eyed pea custom to Janet. There are several thoughts on its origin, and many agree it dates back to the Civil War or earlier. Black-eyed peas and collards are country food, sometimes associated with a hardscrabble life. The dry beans have an earthy scent. They are my favorite.
Janet and Jim are excellent cooks and since moving to North Carolina they’ve been trying a few things that are unique to their new place. At Christmas they baked a country ham and made boiled custard from scratch. I was impressed. I love boiled custard but I’ve never made it myself. One of their sons who also moved to North Carolina is working to perfect cornbread. He started out with Sunflower Corn Meal Mix that I delivered from Hopkinsville Milling Co.
Sunday morning as I was finishing up this column, Janet sent me a text message wishing me a Happy New Year. She included a photo. Jim had a pot of black-eyed peas ready for the stove as she headed out to church.
Here’s hoping your New Year is full of interesting stories and plenty of good meals.
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. She spent 30 years as a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition.
