A Berkeley Boy Visits the South – Alabama, USA

A cardiac surgeon’s worst nightmare?

I have been out of town. I went to Alabama for five days. Flew into Nashville, rented a car (rejected the agency’s choice of an American car and got the Nissan Altima instead for $8.00 more a day) and then purposely took the slow way south to my destination.

The old state highway parallels the 70mph Interstate highway, but at 45 or so. Very pretty, rolling hills, a solid wall of green. Where they don’t mow, there is a solid mass of vegetation. It is warm, very warm and very humid. Sticky humid, and everything is growing and alive. The sounds of the forest are noticed, not because they exist, but because the chirping and clacking is so loud. Crickets, cicadas, frogs, strange unseen bird-like things that I didn’t want to identify.

And the food. Let me not describe it to you other than to say that the entire state is a vegetarian and cardiac surgeons’ worst nightmare. Is there anything that is not deep fried? Maybe in California, but not in Alabama. I had hickory-smoked pork every day. I already miss it.

People are polite. There is an enforced civility that is not apparent where I am from. They must teach courtesy and manners when still in-vitro.

I was staying with friends of course, so I got an insiders look at the place. Since I was “OK”, I had three generations of a family looking after me, feeding me, feeding me again. When I was done eating (or eatin’, as they would say) they would tell me to get another plate. I kept thinking about the film “The Meaning of Life” and the phrase “better get a bucket”.

The accents were very hard for me to understand, even though I am from the same country, I think. At times, I found myself understanding a rapidly diminishing percentage of what was said. Sometimes I was comprehending as little as 50%, but nobody seemed to mind that much.

I nodded a lot.

I returned home with regional foods; white cornbread mix, barbecue sauces of various shades, raspberry jam made with cane syrup by Mennonites, white gravy mix, Rye whiskey.

Though I was born and raised in Berkeley, I am actually quite ignorant and provincial. I knew basically nothing about the south other that what was taught in school, none of which was complimentary. I know differently now. I had the time of my life.

And I can’t wait to go back.