Southern Hospitality

The roads in Tennessee are like the spokes of a wheel. The hubs are Nashville, Clarksville, Chattanooga, and Memphis with roads radiating out from the hubs 360 degrees and crossroads running perpendicular linking the spokes. The closest visual description I can give is bullet holes in a car windshield. There are no straight roads, all roads wind around something. Google maps cannot locate most destinations. From the moment I drove away from the Nashville Airport until the day I returned, I had no idea where I was.

My wife, Cheryl, and I took a 13-day trip to Clarksville, Tennessee to visit my daughter and son-in-law and to attend Eagle Week at Fort Campbell. It was the 80th anniversary for the 101 and the week was to be filled with Army showmanship and competitions.

My son-in-law John is a Chaplain (Captain) for the Screaming Eagles. He was honored by his superiors by being asked to lead the Invocation Prayer for the General’s Division Inspection of the 27,000 soldiers on the final day of the event.

For our first evening upon landing in Nashville, we decided to stay in a local bed and breakfast before driving to Clarksville. Of course, Google maps did not recognize the address, so we did something I have not done in 30 years, we purchased a paper map.

After scouring every inch of it for the street name, we finally spotted an abbreviated version of the name and drove off in our rental car to find the house. It was now late afternoon. When we arrived, we found the house to be a 1970s rambler style design with a red brick facade siding. Parking in the driveway, Cheryl and I walked to the front door and knocked. The door opened and we were greeted by a woman wearing a flowery cotton dress and fuzzy slippers.

“Well, hello,” she said with a cheerful Tennessee accent.

“Hi. I’m Marty Mitchell and this is my wife, Cheryl. You have a nice home. I guess we are staying with you tonight.”

“Harold,” she yelled into the house. “It’s the Mitchells. They’re staying the night. Well, we’re having chicken and dinner is at 5:00. There is a spare room just down the hall.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Let me just get a bag out of the car.

On the way to the car, my phone buzzed.

“Hello?” I answered.

“Hello Mr. Mitchell. This is the Alderson B and B. I just wanted to confirm that you are staying with us tonight.”

I looked up at Cheryl walking through the front door into the living room. Rather embarrassed, I returned to the house and apologized to Harold and his wife for the mistake. After finishing my shower, we had chicken dinner with the nice family and left.

That is what you call Southern Hospitality.

You may know that the Cracker Barrel restaurants are big in the south and personally I enjoy eating at them. You may also recall that on the covered porches at Cracker Barrel you will see many different styles of wooden rocking chairs for sale. As you drive the hills and dales of Tennessee you will pass small family-owned food stores which also have 4 or 5 rockers on their porches which are the daily gathering spot for the locals. As you drive by, they all wave whether you’re a local or a stranger.

There is also a strong pride of their Confederate past, and many towns have memorials set up for the Confederate soldiers who were lost in battle. Sometimes, those visiting from the “North” are not well received.

My daughter and son-in-law, because they originated from Washington state, still have their vehicles registered in Washington. Because the Army moves its officers so often, it is allowed. Going for a ride with them one day in Tennessee, we stopped at one of the local family-owned stores out in the farm country. While some of us went into the store for soft drinks, my daughter stayed in the car. She could see two of the older gentlemen in rockers pointing at her car license plate. Finally, one got up and walked down the plank porch toward the car. He wore an old olive colored tee shirt which, when new, had the word Army in heat transfer vinyl lettering across the chest. The shirt now was old and stained, it had also lost the letter R. I don’t know if he realized it or not, but his shirt now said Amy. He walked slowly to the front of the car and bent down low to see the license plate. Seeing that it was from Washington he stood upright and nodded to his partner on the porch, then he looked in the front windshield and saw my daughter staring at him. He gave a little startled jump and waved at her with his fingers, then shuffled off into the store, moments later returning with a can of Double Cola.

“Here you go Ma’am. A can of Tennessee’s best.” he said, handing her the drink. He then shuffled back to his rocker.

Southern hospitality.

As a teenager, I can remember sitting in Herfy’s Drive-In (the local hamburger joint) on Friday nights. Though it wasn’t encouraged by the drive-in management, one hot car after another would drive slowly through the parking lot revving its engine. The driver, most likely from another town or high school, was looking for a race or showing off to the local girls. The cops always kept a close watch on these gatherings because fights often ensued.

In Tennessee something of a normal occurrence happens which I have never seen in Washington; while sitting in the local Kruger parking lot watching the local monster trucks and supercars filter through, I suddenly see a teenage Amish boy on a horse drawn buckboard wagon trot through. He is wearing a broad brim straw hat, a plain colored, non-patterned, short sleeved shirt, broad fall trousers with suspenders and work boots. Since the Amish don’t go to public schools and only are in their schools until the 8th grade, I wondered how the local boys from the football team would treat them. After watching the buck board pass several cars through town, I have no doubt that an Amish teen boy could give a public-school teen with a hot car a run for his money in a quarter mile race.

My daughter has favorite Mennonite fruit stands and bakeries she likes to frequent, but she gets her poultry products from the Amish and one of our excursions was to an Amish community.

The Amish farms are not visible from the main roads. You may see a road sign which reads, “Eggs, Produce, Jams, and Shoe Repair.” Upon turning down a gravel road, you will drive through hundreds of acres of crop lands and grazing fields before you see one of the farms on a knoll. Upon driving into the yard, you will notice that there are no power, phone, or cable lines coming onto the property. There are no tractors or powered machinery. In a field behind the barn are at least 20 Percheron and Belgian draft horses which pull all the field equipment.

The young daughters are out in the family garden weeding and picking peas. They were wearing plain, ankle-length skirts and bonnets. They smile and wave but don’t speak. The young sons wear the same outfit as the teen on the buckboard, including the straw hat. None of the family I have seen so far wears shoes and they walk on the gravel drive with no pain. The females never cut their hair. It is pinned up under their bonnets. The men don’t shave and have long, bushy beards. This choice for them is Biblically based. I notice that all the Amish youth are very handsome and have beautiful smiles with straight teeth.

As we wander from the car looking for an adult to sell us eggs, a woman, either the mother or an elder daughter, steps out onto the front porch.

“Can I help y’all?” she in a pleasant voice.

“I’d like 18 eggs and two chickens please,” my daughter tells her.

She turns and yells through the open screened window in a language that sounds like, my daughter says, but isn’t German. Grandpa emerges from the back porch door, rather surly from being awakened from his afternoon nap. He is the only one I’ve seen wearing rubber boots. This is possibly because he will be walking in the chicken pen.

“18 eggs and two chickens,” he mumbles. “Wait under the trees please.”

I assumed he would go to the cooler for our order, but he walks straight into the pen of 1000 chickens, grabs two, wrings their necks, chops off their heads, tosses the heads into the hog trough and begins plucking them. Apparently, that is the process a chicken goes through before being wrapped on a Styrofoam plate for the Fred Meyer cooler or ending up in a KFC bucket. I was relieved my daughter hadn’t also asked for a pound of hamburger.

“Please have a seat under the tree. We must let the chickens drain for a while. Can I bring y’all some fresh baked cookies and lemonade?” the bonneted woman asks.

Now that’s Southern Hospitality. Being offered refreshments while waiting for your chickens to drip dry.

The last thing I will mention is that everyone addressed me as Sir and my wife as Ma’am. This is possibly because I am a senior or because I look like a retired military man in the vicinity of Fort Campbell. I contrast this with our return to Washington and the high school youth group boys I work with each week.

Upon returning to the high school group the first thing I hear is, “Welcome home Baldy. Have a handful of Sour Patch Gummies.”

Yeah, southern hospitality and northern hospitality – they are about the same thing.

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