Life of a free-range Southerner
On numerous occasions General Robert E. Lee called the Army of Northern Virginia “his boys.” I’m not trying to glamorize the Confederacy or General Lee. However, a true Southerner understands why I refer to myself as a Southern Boy.
I guess “boy” to a Southerner is more of an affectionate term rather than trying to refer to a grown man as a boy. Like “Our boys shore played good today.” Referring to the Hogs, who stopped being boys in the ninth grade. So that’s why I’m calling myself a Southern Boy. It’s because I’m part of the South and can’t imagine living anywhere else.
I don’t want my grandchildren hunting Easter eggs in the snow. I saw that on CNN last week and just shook my head. We have just about perfect weather in the South, but it does get hot. I’d rather put up with those 60 days (well, more) of blistering heat than live in North Dakota where summer comes and goes over a weekend in August.
But outside of those hot days, we have some wonderful weather. We’re into a great spring weather pattern now, which makes walking out in your front yard through blooming azaleas a joy. Our Southern autumns are another reason why life in the South is sometimes breathtaking, and a drive through the Boston Mountains in early November will put an exclamation point on a Southern fall.
We do have winter, and sometimes we’ll get an inch or so of snow, but that’s just to give school kids a break because an inch of snow closes everything down. It’ll be gone by 1 p.m., and we’ve never had a nor ’easter down South, which is a good reason not to venture north until May.
Having four seasons keeps Southerners on our toes, because if you don’t like the sun and heat, hang around and the South will give you a dose of rain that may go on for days, and those rains will green up the landscape and hide a bit (or maybe more than a bit) of ugly. Thank God the South isn’t just row after row of tract homes and packed freeways.
The papers have recently featured stories about free-range kids. Utah has even passed a bill making free-range kids legal. Evidently, in some states
RICHARD MASON
unaccompanied young boys and girls have been picked up by police and turned over to juvenile authorities.
The Arkansas Legislature considered a similar bill, but it died in committee. Do we need a free-range bill? Heck no! We’ve had free-range kids in Arkansas as long as there has been a state. I just didn’t know that boys and girls who roam the woods and streets are called free-range. I thought that was just for chickens. But Southerners have always grown up free-range, and that is a wonderful part of being Southern.
We were free-range boys or girls from 8 years on. Unaccompanied train rides to El Dorado for movies, tramping the woods, swimming in everything that held water, and most of the year I was barefoot, and never had an adult around. I did get some cuts, snake bites (non-poisonous) and many times I stepped in a big bull-nettle patch and screamed bloody murder.
As I think back on my life of running through the woods clad in cutoffs, swimming in the creeks and oil pits and shooting with slingshots, I believe that helped to make me a resourceful person who many times depended upon wits, common sense, and some unusual skills.
When I was a sophomore in college, I went to southern California to visit my aunt and her daughter Patsy Lee. We went to a boardwalk carnival, and as I stood there and checked out a booth, I whispered to Patsy Lee, “Pick out a stuffed animal.” And I plopped down a dollar of my hard-earned money.
“All right, young man, let me show you how to shoot this slingshot …”
“That’s OK, I think I’ve figured it out.”
I stepped up and about as fast as I could shoot I cleared all 10 plates off the top row. Since the plates were less than 10 yards away, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. It was a little skill I learned from being a free-range kid. That freedom helps develop common sense. Like: Don’t hit a hornet’s nest with a stick to see how many hornets will come out, and then act shocked when you find out that a hornet can fly faster than a 12-year-old boy can run.
Southerners care about each other, and Southern hospitality is not just wishful thinking. Here’s an example: A group doing a social study set up a car in need of help, decorated like a University of Alabama load of folks heading for the annual Auburn vs. Alabama football game. The study organizers staged it right outside Auburn’s backyard where Auburn fans, heading for the game, would see stranded Alabama fans on the side of the road. Would the Auburn fans stop to help? You bet they would. For Southerners, that’s not a surprise.
Almost all Southerners have rural roots, and those roots draw us to lakes to fish and woods to hunt. Sometimes we just relish the solitude of a forest or lake. Being a Southern boy or girl means you’re not only a visitor to that mix of woods, lakes and meadows, you’re part of it. That makes the South a wonderful place to call home.
But we Southerners are diverse, and that mix can be thought of food-wise as putting pepper sauce on greens. Our eccentric characters, which are sprinkled in every Southern town, make the South sparkle. What would greens be without pepper sauce? They wouldn’t have the taste that sets them apart, and our towns are special because of a few weird folks.
I love the South because our intertwined history connects us all. We haven’t had a perfect history, but it sure ain’t been dull. When I run into a fellow Southerner halfway around the world, we connect, and it makes me smile and thank the good Lord I’m a Southerner.