Headed North

"Southerners have a genius for psychological alchemy...If something intolerable simply cannot be changed, driven away or shot they will not only tolerate it but take pride in it as well." -- Florence King




Well, it looks like I am moving again.


I can't lie - I am happy. I have lived in this little town of Franklin for over five years now and have to admit that I have never felt like I've belonged here. Not in the least. I will be glad to leave it behind. Sure, it has been the fodder for some pretty good stories...the "me against them" angle was pretty sadistically hilarious sometimes....but it has also provided me with the deepest and most continuous look into the dark side that is prejudice and exclusiveness that I have ever known. If I never see the sun blocked out by another SUV or hear another racist joke again, it will be too soon.

When I first moved here, I knew right away that there was an undercurrent that I chose not to get swept up in. My first house here was in a quiet cul de sac neighborhood full of families. The first Summer there I learned that the neighborhood had always had a yearly block party but that year they wouldn't be. At that point, the neighbor who I was talking to tossed her head towards one of the houses and explained, "We would have to invite them." The "them" that she was referring to was a Hispanic family who had moved in the month before. To be honest with you, the Hispanic family was the nicest family on the block. Once when Jerry and I were struggling to get a piece of furniture into the house, they were the only ones who stopped and offered to help.

But, I don't want to end my stay here on a negative note. After all, I will be working here for a while longer and I am sure there will plenty more time for negativity. I think perhaps that I would rather offer up some vignettes from my time as a resident here. Sometimes I have felt like I was living in a Fellini film. Okay...if Fellini happened to make a film about a little white washed town South of Nashville called "Franklin".


"The reason the South is the most interesting region in the country is that it's the only place where the psychic landscape is parceled out equally among Marx, Freud, and God. " - Diane McWhorter


Off of the top of my head, my collective memory offers up the following:


There was Mitchell the dehydrated, midget buck dancer and the enthusiastic, strangely lipped pyromaniac at the convenience store. There was the Christmas parade with the float full of diabetic kids throwing candy. There was the little kid walking down my street in the heat of summer wearing a Rocketeer Halloween costume like he had somewhere important to be. There are the heated meetings by councilmen to tear down both the Pizza Hut and the Domino's because they are on Civil War battlefield land. There is the bubble machine and the way that they have snow machines brought in every Winter filling the downtown sidewalks with fluffy white snow banks. There is the now badly redecorated Sideways House offering up its last gasp behind newly painted white front door and cutesy mailbox. There is that same Mexican family still living two doors down with their tortilla truck parked on the front lawn with big dead grass spot under and pitbull running free. There is the spot in front of my office where I watched Ashley Judd have her stalker arrested. There was the couple old enough to know better who loudly made fun of my shoes in the ice cream section at the Super WalMart. There is the dentist's office that offers massages while you have your teeth cleaned. There are the people who stand downtown in front of the Starbuck's on Saturdays with huge signs reminding all that the end of time is near (REPENT! ya'll).There is the Franklin Cinema where I got to see Gone With The Wind on the large screen with Chance munching on nachos happily beside me while Scarlett vowed with God as her witness to never go hungry again. There is the historic cemetery where I got locked in one late afternoon, having to scale the pointed iron fence with "zombies are going to eat me" fast-beating heart. There is that strange child who pulled me over on his bike with mimicked mouth siren because he said I was speeding in my car. There were the Civil War reenactors marching down Columbia and then eating lunch at Subway in full uniform before losing the war again........



I will add to that list a recent crop. In the past couple of weeks, I have seen:


A long funeral procession that ended at a steak house. Hearse and all. At a steak house.

A driver in an SUV in front of me on Franklin Road - flipping off every single BUSH/CHENEY sign. And believe you me, on Franklin Road the only thing that there are more of than churches happen to be BUSH/CHENEY signs. Every few seconds, his middle finger was out the window - and with a vengeance. (Now, I get the feeling that this guy was a visitor to Franklin but it was still a beautiful, beautiful sight. I'm sure that he was later run off the road by an unmarked van and taken for deprogramming but it was fun while it lasted. At this very moment, he is probably sitting on his front porch with a mint julep in hand, surrounded by a front lawn full of BUSH/CHENEY signs with a dazed look on his face. Though, don't most people with BUSH/CHENEY signs on their lawn have a dazed look on their faces?)


A high school homecoming parade with floats peppered with "RE-ELECT BUSH!" signs.
There were the floats full of jocks, cars full of screaming teenagers all pepped up on pep and the homecoming queen nominees dressed to the nines. Right there in the midst was a float to re-elect Bush. Creeped me out. If we can't have separation of church and state, can't we atleast have separation of education and idiocy?

The entire downtown shut completely down for the premiere of a movie starring Tim McGraw (yes. the country singer). All of the streets were blocked off. A plush red carpet was run all the way down Main Street. They even had search lights criss-crossing across the night sky. Throngs of people came from everywhere to watch Tim McGraw and Faith Hill walk the quarter of a block from a sports bar to a movie theater. They then stood outside and waited for them to watch the movie and then come out from the theater and walk to their cars. What makes this funny (besides the obvious) is that Tim McGraw lives here - in Franklin. We can see him anytime that we want. I mean...if we wanted to that is. It's a hypothetical situation really.

A team of men dressed in yellow latex suits scrubbing down the sidewalks of Franklin at three in the morning with buckets of sudsy bubbles like oompa loompas. I later wondered out loud if this had something to do with the Tim McGraw movie premiere since the premiere happened right after I saw the late night sidewalk cleansing. My brother's response beat any that I could have come up with: "Well, you can take solace in the fact that they might scrub the sidewalk twice as hard after he leaves."

Yes.. my time here has been interesting and certainly has given me lots of things to write home about (though my family stopped believing me a long time ago) but it's time for a new chapter in life. A chapter that begins in another drafty house between Paris and Dallas. A house with one view to the street and one view to the alley. Just like I like it. I'll let you know what I see. You can count on it.


"Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one."
--Flannery O'Connor