When a Southern Woman Rambles... by L. Avery Brown (nice books to read TXT) 📕

I grew up in Concord, North Carolina, which, when I was young, was a relatively small town where a vast majority of the population worked either directly at or, in some round about sort of way, for the local textile mill in neighboring Kannapolis. The mill was established back in 1888 by William Cannon and employed generations of families who worked their entire adult lives amid the massive machinery which produced every kind of textile product imaginable. 

The mill-folk made good honest money working there and the mill, which was at the heart of pretty much everything, ran practically 24 hours a day, 6 days a week...but never on Sundays. Because in my hometown where there were churches scattered all across the countryside, going to church was not just a reflection of one’s faith. It was also one of the only times during the week when the mill-folk could not only visit with the rest of the town’s population but where mill managers and floor workers could mingle amongst one another without having to deal with people gossiping over ‘who was talking to whom’.

Yes, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who was not either in church on Sunday, or for a handful of Sunday’s out of the year, making their way to the next closest religious venue...the Charlotte (even though it’s actually in Concord) Motor Speedway (now known as the Lowe’s Motor Speedway) to enjoy the thrill and excitement of NASCAR, the motor sport born in the South in the mid 1950s, which has only recently started to be viewed by people in other regions as a bona fide sport. Though where I’m from, it’s more than just a ‘sport’; the high octane fueled races are an all out passion.

Racing was such a huge part of my hometown that it seemed as if it had been woven into the fabric of the community just like a pattern is woven into one of the towels made at the mill. Why I remember being a little girl and not going to church on race day...only it wasn’t because we were headed to the track to see the races nor were we going to watch them on television. No. It was because other than the interstate, there were essentially only two roads that led to the speedway and my church was located on one of them.

Yes, my church, Poplar Tent Presbyterian—established 1754— was on a road that for about 350 days each year was lightly traveled—so lightly in fact that they didn’t put up any traffic lights until the late 1980s. But on race days and weekends, that narrow two lane road would become so congested with fans making their way to the track to see one of the Winston Cup series races that the state highway patrol had to come out and direct traffic which made getting to church services (on time) next impossible. So, many families like mine simply chose to forego the hassle of dealing with the Sunday morning, beer buzzed, wannabe NASCAR drivers who would speed down the various narrow back roads that led to my house of worship as they tossed their empties and flicked their Winston cigarette butts out of their car windows along the way like some sort of offering to the gods of racing figuring that God would spot us one or two freebies since we’d so faithfully attended services on 50 out of 52 Sundays during the year.

But other than Sundays (and the occasional Saturday when preliminary races were run) one could find a majority of the adult population busy at work in one of the giant buildings where fine linens were produced by the hundreds of thousands. And when the whistle would sound for their lunch breaks the employees would file out of the buildings in quick time to grab a bite to eat, chat with friends and inhale as many cigarettes as humanly possible during their 30 minute break. Thankfully there were several little eateries close by where one could do all three of those things at the same time and make it back to the mill in time to have a few hurried final drags on a cigarette before returning to work.

One such place was the ‘What-A-Burger’ (not to be confused with the Whataburger® fast food chain based in Texas) where you could place your order and in about five minutes, get a thick, fresh cooked cheeseburger topped with locally grown lettuce, tomatoes, and onions and finished off with 3 thin, tasty Mt. Olive dilled pickle chips. And no self-respecting person would dare eat such a tasty burger without a large helping of French fries or quite possibly some thick cut Vidalia onion rings deep fried in piping hot, seasoned beef tallow and sprinkled with enough salt to raise the blood pressure of a resident of the county morgue.

And what better way to wash it all down than with an ice cold Pepsi sweetened with real cane sugar or maybe a Cheerwine (a super bubbly cherry flavored soda pop that has been bottled in Salisbury, North Carolina, a town about 15 miles north of my hometown, since 1917)? Or if you felt like going all out, you could enjoy a real cherry-lemon Sun-Drop (another hometown favorite also bottled locally which you’d be hard pressed to find anywhere outside of the southeast unless you happen to be in the Minnesota region where it originally was and still is produced- odd, yes).

(Thankfully we’ve all learned a lot about how terribly bad those terrifically good tasting things were for us not to mention the negative health implications that are associated with smoking.)

I can still I remember how I could smell the aroma of beef sizzling on the grill as my parents would pull into the What-A-Burger parking lot. Of course, I also I remember how disillusioned I felt when I was about 10 years old after I figured out that its name was “What” “A” "Burger" and not Whudder-Burger (which sounded an awful lot like how water was pronounced where I was from). Yes, I honestly thought that the reason they were such juicy hamburgers was because they were made with some sort of magical beefy flavored water that formed a burger when poured on the grill much the way that a golden pancake forms when batter is poured onto a hot griddle. But even though they weren’t made with water that came from where cows would go skinny dipping, the burgers at What-A-Burger were, hands down, some of the best burgers I’d ever eaten even if I did have to enjoy them in a haze of cigarette and burger smoke.

I moved away from my hometown many years ago and in that time so much has happened to the place I used to call home. The mill eventually closed when all the work was outsourced to China and other countries where taxes are lower and workers are willing to labor for less than they are worth, displacing 1000s of workers who knew nothing but millwork.

But it’s not all that bad...the What-A-Burger is still there and is still serving hot juicy burgers and onion rings (even though the beef often comes from hormone enriched cows and the fried goods are now fried in 100% monounsaturated vegetable oil and the salt is added by patrons). One can also still find Cheerwine and Sundrop in grocery stores and on restaurant menus (even though they are now sweetened with high fructose corn syrup instead of cane sugar because it’s cheaper). And NASCAR is doing better than ever and has expanded to include a larger viewing demographic (and it’s done so without the backing of the cigarette corporations).

Yes, I am much older than 10 now and in the years since my beefy-epiphany my hometown has changed from a sleepy little mill town surrounded by pastoral farm land into a sprawling city with multilane highways, a myriad of fast food restaurants, and a high-tech research facility that is being built where the old mill stood for over one hundred years. Isn’t progress amazing?

A few years ago, I'd received an injection of cortisone beneath my right kneecap to help relieve pain in the knee where I'd had surgery about 20 years before.  Incidentally, I'm not a super-athlete or anything...I'm just a tad bit klutzy.  My father used to call it being a 'flibberty-jibbert' because I was always going, going, going.  Until one day, when I was in college, being somewhat athletic and riding my bike up a rather steep hill.  My gear slipped and the result was me pushing through the revolution so I could get off the bike safely, lest I fall into the road.  That one action totally blew out my knee which led to pain, swelling, and eventual surgery.  

Over the years, I've slowed down a little bit but it's quite difficult to give up one's flibberty-jibberting ways and so I've banged and broken my toes, closed the trunk of my own car on my head, and run up and down stairs...while wearing heels entirely too high.  It was a given that eventually all my twists, bruises, strains, and sprains would catch up to me.  And it did.  So, I went to an orthopedist who decided the best fix for me was cortisone.  He told me 'this will hurt a bit and you'll feel a bit stiff tomorrow.  But in a couple of days you'll feel much better'.

I learned very quickly that what he was really saying was, 'you're going to want to rip out my eyeballs as I'm giving you this shot and in about six hours, you're going to consider hiring a hitman to blow out my brains because your knee is going to feel so badly.  Oh, and you'll feel worse tomorrow.  But I'm not lying about feeling better in few days.'  

Rambling aside, after the shot and after I'd cursed and cried, I spend a day limping around like I was doing method research to play the role of Quasimodo in a low budget community theatre production. What’s more the after effects of the powerful steroid not only made me sick to my stomach but I found