I love being a Southerner in New York City. I don’t have an accent or close-minded conservative ideals - nothing that could be a social liability in this metropolitan blue state. People are always surprised when I reveal my Southern background.
“Really?! I thought you were from Connecticut.”
“Nope. I’m just white.”
“But you don’t seem Texan.”
“Well, not all of us eat tons of pork, go off-roading, and worship high school football.”
When some people find out I’m from Texas and don’t know anything else about me, they get really excited and coo at the idea of some cowgirl saying, “Howdy,” while baking cherry pie from scratch in a slinky tank top and shorts…or drinking beer while watching football, passing around a bowl of tortilla chips and salsa.
I am not that person, I’m afraid.
Sure, I used to pronounce “crayon” like the word “crown.” I thought all educators were required to have syrupy accents until third grade. I didn’t know “spankin’” was supposed to have a g at the end until I saw Secretary. I’ve eaten a prickly pear straight off a cactus. I know that you can cancel out any seemingly negative comment about someone by adding, “bless his/her heart” at the end of the sentence. Still…most of my Southern appeal comes from my parents. I’m not distinctly Southern, but I do have stories that entertain and showcase the best of the Lone Star State.
Here’s a new one:
My parents are extremely helpful and generous. Everyone who’s anybody with a self-serving motive - Girl Scouts, student spirit groups from five area high schools, stray cats - knows this. Go to my parents’ house. They will feed you, encourage you to continue grazing after perusing the pantry and refrigerator, AND buy a candy bar to support your marching band.
The most recent act of kindness falls into the roadkill category. My mom’s boss’s daughter, Leann, was offered extra credit in one of her college biology classes if she brought in either skeletons of wild animals or live wild animals.
I guess if she lived in New York, Leann could stake out a pigeon nest or find a rat or take a student from I.S. 666 for show-and-tell. Texas, though, is God’s country, a veritable land of opportunity.
As her boss explained the potential for extra credit, my mom asked, “It can be roadkill, right?
Why, of course. Those animals have nothing better to do. Scrape that chunky carcass up and help a sista out!
When my mom recounted this story to me a few days ago, I interrupted her, “Did you try Shane’s?”
My dad’s youngest brother Shane is a very interesting character. He makes the premise of My Name Is Earl look like a cerebral, non-caricatured celebration of sophisticated Southern intellectuals. Shane has six kids, thirty-five dogs, two vans, and a cage full of rats…bless his heart.
Shane couldn’t live and prosper amidst such constraints as local businesses, high speed internet, or modern civilization. A river runs through the thicket that is his backyard, wild raccoons and javelinas go through the garbage and nibble at the fungi growing on the picnic table, a rusted tricycle rests against the shrine for the one woman ever hanged in Texas, allegedly a witch.
Are you getting the picture? It’s Deliverance meets Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets The Blair Witch Project meets Honey, I Lost The Kids In The Woods Again Part III. Okay, I made the last one up.
So, yes, roadkill heaven.
My mom decided to help Leann up her biology grade and sent my dad out with trashbags, gloves, and some kind of carcass scraping and lifting tool. He drove back home with armadillo, opossum, and skunk specimens. Shane dropped by later that evening with some kind of rodent and offered a snapping turtle and rat snake on loan.
How can you not love these people? After gathering roadkill to improve someone else’s g.p.a., all my dad said was, “They weren’t too bad, but the skunk stinks. Some of its juices leaked into the bed of the truck.”
My family will give you the shirts off their backs…and the roadkill off their highways. I’m from good people in the friendly state, ya’ll. What more could I ask for?
Well, besides a prairie dog that didn’t make it across the road. Those things are really gooey.
