WELCOME SOUTH: POLLEN SEASON!

I’ve lived in the South for 40 years and love it, but I still list my pronouns as Midwestern.

I grew up in Omaha – a great place to be from – the source of my Midwestern affability.

And while America’s a whole bunch of different ‘countries’, the ‘Coastal Elites’ could better locate Whoville on a map, than Nebraska or Iowa. They dismiss the middle of the country as “the middle of the country” that should have one electoral vote, treat pigs more humanely, stop smothering everything in gravy, and tear down their William Jennings Bryan statues.

But they’re aggressively dismissive of the South, because their neighbors all want to “go to there”, our kids risked their lives by attending school during COVID, and we still have fried chicken, which has been outlawed by their ‘nanny states’, along with sponge baths and pleasure.

College football is our (un)official religion, with worship ‘sessions’ fall Saturdays. What better way to spend 20 per cent of the state budget? Give it to Ukraine?

But a move to the South is mildly jarring on several fronts: Southern accents, collard greens and pollen.

Many mistake the accent and the attendant y’all as lacking in sophistication and/or intelligence – I venture a lot of business folk have lost money due to that mis-estimation.

We really felt that “Look at those hicks!” treatment when the national media came for the Super Bowl; the best were the hushed features from the Waffle House: “This is where ‘they’ eat – those are grits, whatever them is – but shockingly there’s no possum on the menu”.

Things are getting better though: We’ve gone from unworthy to host an All-Star Game to hosting the Democratic convention.

Another adjustment is collard greens (mustard and turnip too). Collards were a thing before the Nuremburg Commission declared kale as edible, so they were ahead of the curve.

Properly prepared, they’re one of life’s supreme acquired tastes – best with ham chunks – ham being bacon’s first cousin, also “making everything better”.

Eating collards on New Years Day reputedly brings good luck, and good luck doubled if eating them when the “Collards Y’All Float” from the Rose parade is sighted.

But nothing prepares one for pollen: “a yellow powder produced by various plants, carried by the wind”.

After a recent morning rain, there were yellow puddles in the streets, leaving one to exclaim “Oh my God, already? How have we offended You?”

The pollen season is 2-3 months long, shifting blooming flower to flower. Each flower can affect differently, so one can have a miserable few weeks, a brief respite, and more misery. Only an exorcism – or rain -helps.

And because pretty much everyone is Baptist, suffering earns no Purgatory time reduction.  

At its peak, cars are shrouded in a yellow coating – we then blame everything on pollen, which means for a time climate change and white supremacy are off the hook.

While there’s a LOT of it, it isn’t good for much, but we try to work with it:

I smoked a quarter ounce at a party – I saw Jesus briefly, and could speak Mandarin;

Snow angel competitions at the Annual Pollen Festivals;

Car to table restaurants serving some great pollen juleps, puddings, and pollen wellington.

And while America is amazing for its regional diversity, each section has its pros and cons.

The South’s major con is everyone wants to “move to here”, which means the entire SE is under construction.

The South’s pros include: generally hospitable weather, generally friendly people, and local government that generally doesn’t pretend it knows what’s best for us.

Oh, and Saturday tailgating.

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TO ENHANCE YOUR ENJOYMENTOF THIS POST, PAIR IT WITH THE FOLLOWING SONGS:

Burt Bacharach departed us this week, so spend a portion of your Sunday listening to his amazing catalog. To suggest a few:

I Say a Little Prayer                           Walk on By 

I’ll Never fall in Love Again             What the World Needs Now

And check out his album with Elvis Costello “Painted from Memory”,  and the songs ‘She’s Given me Things’, ‘Don’t Look Now’, and ‘Photographs Can Lie’ from Elvis’s album “Look Now”