Dog the Bounty Hunted

OK, with reference to my previous post, you will be aware that I am dog sitting for a fugitive from the Florida Branch of the Federal Vole Agency.

Before I go any further, I would like to assure you that I am not intending to turn this into a dog blog, although I do reserve the right to keep you posted on the progress of Eliza Dolittle Blanche from time to time. I am trying, for example, to post on topics ranging from Hawaii to cremation, and I will get there in time, but you will have to be patient.

Because it turns out that the neighbours, who have extended their spa vacation to incorporate the glamorous resorts of Northern Europe, were perfectly aware that Nigel had an extensive record as a political activist, and in fact, has been a key player in the Occupy Nashville movement.

It’s not like I’m not a big supporter or anything. In fact, as many of you will know, I have a not inconsiderable record of political activism in my past. But it might have been useful information for me to have available when I took him to the Reservation yesterday and left him to smell the chipmunks in my parents’ back yard.

The thing is, he slipped his brand new chew-proof lead, and spent a couple of hours tearing around the neighbourhood. The police had to be informed. The mailman really got into it. And I realised, as I cruised the surrounding streets, that he had a dastardly albeit brilliant plan. You see, the dogs on the reservation get to stay out all day in yards that are bordered by invisible electric fences. And Nigel ran through every yard, working up said dogs into a lather, and systematically electrocuted them all. Every. Single. One. The only way I eventually found him, to be honest, was to follow the rather disturbing yelping noise emanating from WAP dogs hitting the boundary of their electric fences. I reckon he got the whole of the one per cent in a single afternoon.

So, while I admit that I am somewhat in awe of this outlaw canine, I have decided that for his own protection, he needs to stay in disguise for the time being.

© Copyright 2012, Southern Dysfunction

Cupcake Queen

When I bought this house three years ago, there was a sign on the front of one of my neighbor’s homes that said

‘Bakery coming soon!’

I asked around and was told that although they hadn’t opened yet, if I knocked on the front door and asked for Mignon, she would be happy to sell me some cupcakes, and that they were good. And that’s how I met my remarkable friend, Mignon Francois.

Mignon and A.E. Francois had moved to Nashville from New Orleans a few years earlier, into a house that had been condemned. With six kids, the economy tanking, and no money coming in, things were pretty desperate for them. Mignon started trying to think of ways to make enough money to keep the children fed. One of her daughters, Brittany, was a pretty good little baker. And so Mignon, who claims to be a bad cook herself, figured that they could have a bake sale every day.

Along with other neighbors and people in the know, we started placing orders with her. It took awhile before she went public with the business, because she kept it debt free and saved the money from the baking she did with her daughters. Her husband used those savings to turn their living room into a bakery.

Within months of opening The Cupcake Collection, the place was packed, often with lines of people spilling out the door and along the sidewalk. Today she is employing something like twenty happy people, and operating out of two locations. Her mom, Linda, from whom she gets her smarts, drives up from Huntsville, Alabama and stays during the week to do the books.

 

 

It is an amazing story, and she does a good job explaining it herself. This is one you have to watch:

Last night I went with the family and friends to see their 18-year-old son, Dillon, be presented at the Children of the King L’Elegance Cotillion, sponsored by the Riverside Chapel Seventh Day Adventist Church.

It was a special night. Along with around thirty other young people, Dillon had worked all year, raising money for his college education, doing volunteer work, and suffering through classes in things like ‘dining etiquette.’ Phew! We all got up and cheered when Dillon won the Congeniality Award. It was a no-brainer, he’s the family charmer:

What a difference three years can make. Here’s the happy Francois family: A.E. and Mignon, with her mother Linda, their children Alex, Lauren, Jacques, Dillon, Brittany, and little Xavier, with assorted girlfriends and boyfriends.

Mignon Francois, I salute you. You have taught me, along with many other people: Yes we can!

© Copyright 2011, Southern Dysfunction

Long Hot Summer

It got up to 80 degrees yesterday, and the weatherwoman on TV described it as the ‘first springlike weather of the year’. Everyone was outdoors working in their gardens and enjoying the balmy temperature.

Except Junior.

If you have been following my blog, you will know that we have moved back here from London (that’s London, England, in Yroop). Junior was raised in the East End of that fair city, and has no trace of American about him except for his passport, so that the officials at the border are forced to narrow their eyes at his subversive appearance and let him through against their better judgement. It was very brave of him to agree to move back to Nashville to help me look after Mother and Big Daddy, and in my opinion he would have skedaddled back to London a long time ago if it weren’t for the considerable charms of his girlfriend, Miss Pearl.

Now normally, he would have been with her, but she had to go up to Kentucky to fetch a hearse,  and so I asked him to help me out with some gardening.  After an hour of hedge trimming in the front, he came out back where I was weeding.

‘I can’t take this heat, mum’. And then he went inside, took a cold shower and had to lie down for awhile.

Uh oh.

At least the hedge looks good...

© Copyright 2011, Southern Dysfunction

Nashville Girls

I had a revelation today, and finally figured out why women in Nashville typically live to be one hundred and fifty years old. It’s the hairspray. Out at the nursing home there is a beauty parlor that is always packed with ladies in curlers sitting under the drier. Girlfriend, you’d better believe that you might be 98 and in a wheelchair with dementia and one whole side of your body paralyzed, but your hairdo is going to be permed and teased until the day you go to Glory. And yes, those nails are going to be manicured too! I’m telling you, in many cases, the hairspray is literally the only thing holding these women together. And it doesn’t end there; Miss Pearl tells me that you have to have an advanced hair styling qualification before you can even be considered for a place at the local School of Mortuary Science.

My friend and neighbor, Gretchen Peters, wrote a song about it with Matraca Berg. It’s called ‘Nashville Girls’, and the chorus goes like this:

Nashville girls, they got big hair for a reason.
Nashville girls, they don’t go out of style.
So tease them curls, jack ’em up to Jesus.
God love you, we need more of you Nashville girls.

The song’s been recorded by Terri Clark, with Reba McEntire, Sarah Evans and Martina McBride, but no one does it like Gretchen and Matraca. They performed it recently at a Planned Parenthood benefit here in town, and you can see them singing it here, at about 20.28 on the video. In fact, you can watch the whole show. I didn’t have time to get there because I was looking after Big Daddy, but I watched the show this afternoon and it was awesome. They both played new material and it is worth making some time to enjoy it. And if you do, please consider making a donation to Planned Parenthood.

God knows, we are all too busy around here looking after elderly women to have to worry about more children.

© Copyright 2011, Southern Dysfunction

 

The Reenactors

When I was growing up, it was considered impolite to discuss the Civil War. My grandmother gave me a talk about Yankees before I left for high school in Connecticut when I was thirteen, but that was about it. People tried to focus instead on earlier, less distasteful, periods of our history. Think Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone.

I can remember making a reconstruction of Fort Nashboro, the original pioneer settlement established on the west bank of the Cumberland River in 1780, out of popsicle sticks, and I can remember learning all about Native Americans in elementary school. Within the family, we were careful to venerate the ancestors who came to Tennessee at the end of the eighteenth century. But our history curriculum left a big hole where the Civil War should be.

This situation has changed considerably in the decades that I lived abroad. Although my parents’ generation isn’t particularly comfortable with it, there is an increasing popular interest in the War, and reenactment has become a popular hobby for amateur historians.

I am going to be perfectly honest with you. I have always found this to be a bit bizarre, and I assumed that these people were just trying to find an excuse to wrap themselves in the Confederate flag. Until, that is, I met my new friend Gary Burke this weekend.

Gary, along with other reenactors, was out at Fort Negley as part of an ongoing series of events to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the War. Besides being on the Board of the Battle of Nashville Preservation Society, he is a leading member of  the 13th United States Colored Troops Living History Association.

When Nashville was occupied by the Union Army in 1862, thousands of slaves fled to the city, where they were housed in contraband refugee camps and used as (largely unpaid) laborers during the construction of a series of fortifications, of which Fort Negley was the largest. At the same time, many, mostly free African American men volunteered to form regiments of the newly established United States Colored Troops division of the army.

The men of the 13th were among the several African American regiments who fought in the Battle of Nashville in December 1864. The battle destroyed the Confederate Army of Tennessee, led by General John Bell Hood, who at the time was staying in my great-great grandparents’ house and using it as his headquarters. Most of the 387 Union fatalities in the Battle were African American; 229 of them, including five color bearers, were men of the 13th, who died on the 16th of December attacking my ancestral home. I don’t know whether any of those men were runaway slaves from the plantation, but Gary explained that one of his fellow reenactors is indeed descended from men and women enslaved by my forebears.

So you can imagine that we had an interesting conversation.

‘Gary, I am imagining that reenactors tend to dress up as the characters that they sympathize with the most. Doesn’t this lead to, well, some tense situations?’

‘Yes. President Lincoln, for example, really has to watch his back. He gets people all the time who won’t shake his hand because their great-great-great-grandaddy was killed fighting for the Confederacy.’

‘I am guessing that this can be kind of an uncomfortable hobby.’

‘Uh-huh. A lot of my friends think I’m crazy. I was a little nervous about it at first, but then I started to see bumper stickers on Confederate reenactors’ cars that said things like, “Not Hate but Heritage”, and I began to realise that people are just trying to find ways to preserve their family stories. The majority of people are fine about it.’

Gary invited me to attend the Civil War Roundtable that meets regularly out at the Visitors Center, and then introduced me to one of his friends.

Welcome to the New South, it’s not anything like what you thought it would be.

© Copyright 2011, Southern Dysfunction

Miracle on Jefferson Street

In the decades following Our Recent Unpleasantness, Jefferson Street in North Nashville was established as the heart of our African American community, and by the 1940s it was a great place to be, as the historical marker here tells us. This all ended in the 1960s though, because desegregation meant that the city, thankfully, had no more need for separate shops and movie theatres. More than a hundred local businesses shut down along the street, and what was left were basically the places that specifically serve African American consumers: hair and nail salons, barber shops, soul food, barbecue, hot chicken, religion, and Fisk University.

In spite of the efforts of our local neighborhood business association, it has been hard to bring prosperity back to the area. But Jefferson Street nonetheless has a character and personality that has vanished from most other more homogenous parts of town. Junior and I live in a gentrified neighborhood off the east end of Jefferson Street, and we love it here.

So, can you guess who’s moving in?

That’s right! It’s my new pals, Greg Sanford and Mario Hambrick from Free At Last Bail Bonding. The boys have begun to acquire property on the Street as part of their rapidly expanding business empire. They presented their plans to the community the other night and Greg invited us to come along, so I brought Junior and Miss Pearl.

I can’t tell you how glad I am that the revitalization of Jefferson Street is going to be in their hands, instead of Burger King or McDonald’s, because I know that Greg and Mario are going to help keep us really weird. So welcome to the neighborhood, guys! I’ll bring brownies to the ribbon cutting ceremony.

© Copyright 2011, Southern Dysfunction

The Cookie Jar

‘And there are three things you musn’t run out of or it will upset your father. First, you need to make sure that there is grapefruit in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator.’ Mother had a list of things I need to take responsibility for while she is in California this week.

‘Grapefruit. Right, got that. Second?’

‘Olives. His olive jar needs to be clearly visible in the center of the top shelf.’

‘Ok, I can handle that too. What’s the third thing?’

‘Do you see the ceramic jar next to the bread box? Keep it filled with Uncle Ben’s Chocolate Chip Cookies.’

‘Huh? I didn’t know that Uncle Ben made chocolate chip cookies, Mom.’

‘Yes he does, and it is absolutely essential that the jar is filled to the top.’

I looked in the jar, which was empty. ‘There’s a new box in the pantry,’ she told me. So I went to fetch them.

Oh dear.

Gentlemen, there’s not really much I can say, except that I hope you can accept my apologies. And furthermore, in the spirit of truth and reconciliation, I do feel that we need a little factual information here. So, for Mother and anyone else who can’t tell the difference between their African American branding stereotypes…

Wally Amos (b.1936) became famous as the William Morris Agency’s first African American talent agent, representing among others, Diana Ross and Simon and Garfunkel. He rather charmingly used to send his homemade chocolate chip cookies to his clients and they were so popular that in 1975 he opened a cookie store out in LA with some seed money from Marvin Gaye and Helen Reddy. Wally doesn’t own the brand any more but he is still in the food business, is an important national advocate for adult and children’s literacy, has written a series of self-help books, and is a successful motivational speaker. He currently divides his time between homes in Long Island and Hawaii.

It is probably best to keep all this from Big Daddy, who has an irrational prejudice against people from California, and might decide to switch brands if he finds out that Famous Amos is some sort of ‘do-good hippie yankee deal’.

By contrast, Uncle Ben is undisputedly the most successful African American fictional character in the nation’s history. Rising from humble origins and hired to promote rice during the second world war, he was appointed chairman of the board of the Mars Food Corporation in 2007. Under his leadership, the company has expanded internationally into whole new areas of global racial stereotyping.

Uncle Ben’s office at the Mars Global Headquarters building makes Barack Obama’s Oval Office look like the waiting room of our local Greyhound Bus Station. Seriously, check it out, there is a virtual reconstruction of his actual office online. You can read his diary, examine his sentimental bow tie collection, read selections from his library and everything.

It is my new favourite place on the internet.

Be sure and go all the way around the room, don’t limit yourself to snooping around his desk. If you’re anything like me, the experience will literally move you to tears.

© Copyright 2011, Southern Dysfunction

 

 

 

 

 

The Reservation

My long suffering Mother has had to go away for a week to look after her poor sisters, Darlene and Ida, who are unfortunate because they have to live in California. Although at 84 she is the oldest by several years, having lived in the South she is in much better shape to travel. This is because she is a Steel Magnolia and knows how to put up with anything, but mainly with Big Daddy, with whom she has put up for more than fifty years. This means that I have had to move back onto the Reservation while she is gone because he can no longer be left on his own.

I had better explain, because people who are not from the South generally hold prejudiced notions about how we handle relations between our ethnic communities down here.

Plantation house on the site of the Reservation

The Reservation was established before the first world war as a safe haven for Nashville’s White Affluent Peoples (WAPs). Sensitively sited on land comprising a former plantation, the Reservation is still going from strength to strength a century later. Confinement on the Reservation allows the WAPs to preserve their traditional culture and way of life, which has changed remarkably little since Our Recent Unpleasantness. Indeed, although I want to stress that while living on the Reservation is strictly voluntary, there are many WAPs in Nashville who rarely leave its borders.

I grew up out here on the Reservation but like a large number of our young people of WAP descent, I was given the opportunity to move away for my college education. Significantly, although I am an example of a WAP who has been pretty much absorbed into modern American culture, there are many WAPs of my generation who have either made the decision to return to the Reservation to raise their families in the traditional environment of their ancestors, or who have never left the Reservation at all.

According to the most recent official data, there are 3,518 people living on the Reservation, of whom 97.1% or 3,297 are WAPs. My understanding is that 1.2% or 42 are African American, of whom 41 are here in disguise as domestic workers but who are actually anthropologists who live in garage apartments provided with money from the federal government, and are here to observe the WAPs in their native environment as part of a long-term academic study (the remaining 1 African American is, I believe, a professional football player, but he might have moved away). Improbably, .2% or 7 residents list themselves as Native American. Subsequent analysis of the data, however, has revealed that this was because there were 7 residents who thought that ‘Native American’ meant that your ancestors arrived on the Mayflower.

 

Nashville's Federal WAP Administration Headquarters (FWAPA, or in WAP dialect, 'the Club')

I am not going to try to deny that there are some social problems and controversies on the Reservation. In common with similar tribal areas in other parts of North America, alcoholism has tragically affected many local families, although this is being dealt with primarily through local churches and the dedicated team of local FWAPA employees.

Nashville has largely welcomed President Obama’s rumored decision that the Reservation will become the United State’s 59th National Park in 2014. This news is expected to help regenerate the local economy, providing many much-needed jobs in an area that has long been blighted by unemployment. This should help the significant minority of WAPs living on the Reservation who have never experienced paid work. But of equal importance, by boosting tourism to the area, it will encourage a broader public understanding of the customs and way of life of this largely neglected community.

 

Traditional WAP monogrammed hand towels, ca.1956

© Copyright 2011, Southern Dysfunction

Turkey Shoot

I hope that y’all can accept my apologies for going quiet for a few days, but it has been a busy weekend here in Nashville. Each year, the National Wild Turkey Federation holds its convention at the Opryland Hotel and Convention Center. It goes on for four days and there is a lot to absorb.

I knew I had to take Junior there. Being raised in Europe, he never learned to handle a gun and this is a big black hole in his education that I feel guilty about. Like most people, I learned to shoot a rifle at summer camp when I was eight years old. But we just did not have those opportunities in inner London when he was growing up.

Besides, as my friend Steve told me, ‘Hon, pay attention. You are single. Every straight man in the southeast is going to be there. Pull yourself together. We are all so worried about you.’

And he was so right! I am definitely going to take up hunting:

Can I have your phone number?

Junior thought they were gay dads, but I explained to him that there was no such thing in Tennessee

Not sure about the hat, but according to the box I will never have chigger bites again!

True, there were some guys I wasn’t so sure about:

I am SO OVER the Dukes of Hazzard

Can't quite put my finger on it, but the chemistry is just not there

Junior thought the whole thing was surprisingly cool. For example, did you know that you can attach an iphone directly to a gun, so that you can make a film of your hunt? Seriously!

Not everything was as easy to understand, however. Neither of us could figure out the basis for judging in the taxidermy competition. First prize this year for ‘most artistic entry’ was awarded to a religiously themed display. I mean, the bird is good-looking, but the scripture doesn’t even make sense in this particular context.

What? Is the turkey going to talk? Do magic tricks?

Both of us agreed that first prize should have been awarded to this instead:

Ok, for my overseas readers, I had better explain. It is an American college ‘football’ themed display, pitting two turkeys against one another, the orange one representing the University of Tennessee, the Crimson one, the University of Alabama. Is that clear? No? Well, basically you have a monument to the brilliant combination of hunting and competitive sports, in the medium of taxidermy.  Still not getting it? Think Turner Prize crossed with Deliverance. Better? No? No? OK, let’s just forget it.

© Copyright 2011, Southern Dysfunction

 

 

Forget the Superbowl

‘Be sure to get in the shower when you get home, hon, because I’m worried about the bedbugs.’

‘Bedbugs?’

‘I’m telling you, this place has a lot of potential. Elvis used to stay in the penthouse. If they reopened the bar, I would hang out there all the time. You’re going to love it.’

When Steve isn’t trying to turn country ham into prosciutto, he is a criminal defense attorney, and he needs to drum up some business.  January is a slow month because his regulars have blown all their money on drugs and liquor for the holiday period, have gotten arrested and have had to post bail. He says that things generally don’t pick up until the tax refunds get sent out later on in February. So he is considering whether to sponsor the weekend wrestling promotion at the Stadium Inn. ATL is already sponsored by Advance Financial and a tattoo parlor, so it’s a natural fit.

‘Wouldn’t it be easier just to get a website?’

He rolled his eyes. ‘These are not really internet people, hon. Most of them aren’t very good at reading.’ And indeed, that would explain the sign outside.

I’m not saying that Steve is a liar, but if Elvis ever stayed here, he must have been off his face. I’m not ruling it out, but it wasn’t one of his finer moments.

You may not know this, but Nashville is an international hub of professional wrestling. While many people prefer the glitz and glamour of the big promotions, real connoisseurs of the sport prefer the smaller and more intimate atmosphere of the minor leagues.

This is the only way in which hardcore wrestling fans are comparable to wine snobs.

 

I suspect that I didn’t really fit in. When  Nick Iggy came out and made his triumphal march around the circumference of the ring to greet his fans, he stopped when he got to me in momentary astonishment, and then actually kissed my hand. I felt like the Queen.

There was plenty of action, and I can see why Steve has become a regular:

But for me, it was all about the fans.

ATL Wrestling: it’s family entertainment, for some families.

© Copyright 2011, Southern Dysfunction