Directions....and so Much More.

I hear a rumble approaching from the East. It sounds like the Furies coming to signal the beginning of Gotterdammerung! This vibration will surely release the wolf Fenrir upon the world to devour humans and plunge us all into darkness. Is it the beginning of the end?

Then there is a backfire and the rumbling levels off to a quieter, less intrusive, background noise. “That’s ol’ Earnest,” my dad informs me. “He’s been meanin’ to get that tailpipe fixed for a month of Sundays now.”

Over the course of my sojourn here in the Southern part of the United States, I have come to understand certain infallible eccentricities that exist in Southern culture that I find lacking in other parts of the nation. One of these oddities is the way most people in small Southern communities associate and identify each other. The most common way that I have found that people around here in Paris, TN identify each is by drawing a parallel from the person to the type of vehicle that they drive. This might astound, or even confuse some of the readers, so allow me to paint a scenario for you so that you might better understand.

I am sitting with my father in the middle of Henry Tennessee (a community outside of Paris) and we are discussing general subjects like what he is going to plant in his garden this year and guesstimating how much black tar it will take to patch his roof. He begins to explain the plights of one of the town members. Here is the conversation.

Dad: “Bobby Farmer is gonna have to go into the hospital soon for some tests. Sounds like it might be his liver.”
Me: “That’s never good.”
Dad: “You remember Bobby Farmer?”
Me: “The name rings a bell, but….” (this is one of my courtesy responses when he asks me about people I don’t know)
Dad: “Yeah, you know him. He drives that Dodge. The white one.”
Me: “Oh, okay. Yeah.” (I, in fact, have no idea who he is talking about, but I have been through this routine before and know my way around these conversational quagmires)
Dad (reassuringly): “Yeah, you know him. His dad’s Mr. Farmer. He always drove around that old green ’46 Ford pickup.”
Me: “Mr. Farmer or Bobby Farmer?”
Dad: “Mr. Farmer.”
Me: “Yeah, faded green with the dented fender?”
Dad: “That was him. His son’s having tests for his liver.”
Me: “Okay.”

I winged the bit about the dented fender. I have found that if you name enough ailments (like a dented fender, or a busted bumper, or a missing mirror), along with a vague color of paint, that you can usually cut a potentially long description down considerably. This is important to remember, because most Southerners in small communities can describe a neighbor’s vehicle down to the smallest cosmetic details. I once spent twenty minutes trying to convince my father that I didn’t know someone based on the fact that they had a red Chevy pickup truck with bumper stickers all over it and no tailgate. My dad just could not accept the fact that I did not have the eye that it took to pick out a person based on what vehicle they currently were traveling in. (I did know the person, but dad failed to mention the guy’s name and the fact that he graduated high school a year ahead of me. This would have helped since I had not seen the guy in five years or so)

My friend John, originally being from the North, was one of the first people to bring this phenomenon to my attention. My father, being the fountain of local knowledge that he is, was trying to get John a job. He proceeded to tell John who to talk to, Mr. Winsett, about getting a job. When John (who had just moved to the thriving metropolis that is Paris, TN) reminded my father that he didn’t know anyone in town, dad went on to explain the make, model, and color of Mr. Winsett’s truck as if this description would suddenly allow John to instantly recognized, and know the life history of, a person he had never met before. This is just the way of Southern folks.

After going to college and associating people that were brought up in a conversation with what their majors were or where they worked, it was an odd transition returning to the type of community that recognizes people by what they drive. But…patterns are easy to follow, and I found myself just the other day describing a person by what kind car they were driving. When in Rome…

So if you are out of town and visiting in the South, make sure you are prepared when asking directions for a history lesson of every landmark, and a general description of a least five to seven vehicles. It’s just the way it is done down here.