Y'all, have I got a good story for you.
The first thing I remember learning how to cook was cornbread. Hundreds of times my Granny poured ingredients into the plastic bowl as I stirred. Eventually, I began pouring in ingredients, a little at a time, until she said, "That's good." If you know anything about cooking in the South, you know we Southerners do not really use recipes. We cook by intuition. It took me YEARS to perfect my cornbread, and I even managed to give my Granny a secret: add an egg. It won't hurt anything and, for some reason, it always makes things taste better.
Now, I'm not too keen on sweet cornbread, even though I do like it from time to time (even, dare I say, crave it). For me, sweet cornbread, like beer and wine, is an acquired taste. I do not, under any circumstances, like peppers in my cornbread. Blasphemy, I tell you! Dressing is even an acquired taste for me. I used to think it was a waste of good cornbread.
When I was in eighth grade, we were taught that Maryland, even though it's located up North, is a Southern state. I don't quite get what's so Southern about Maryland because I used to know a girl from Maryland and she wasn't that Southern. Also in eighth grade, I went to Washington, D.C. I was forewarned that biscuits would not be served at breakfast in the mornings. When I was in ninth grade, I had a "boyfriend" who was from somewhere "up North" and he told me it was true that grits were not available for purchase at the grocery store up "there". So, everything about the differences between the North and the South, I learned in junior high. In college, I had a friend from Ohio who refused to even try pound cake (but his family did enjoy my pound cake that one Christmas).
Being a Political Scientist, by major, and a Historian, by minor, I was really excited to go to Boston in 2005. We were going in the summer, so I was even more excited to escape the misery that is summer in the South. But, knowing about how Northerners are about cornbread and grits, two things I could not ever live without, I braced myself.
Well, my dreams of a cool August were smashed when I found out it was not cooler up in Boston during the summer. As soon as I stepped foot outside the airport upon arrival, I was hit with a wall of humidity. Just like home.
Mom and I embarked on the scariest cab ride ever from the airport to the Hilton Back Bay. When we arrived, shaken and stirred from the terrifying cab ride, topped off with the cabbie scraping another car just before slamming on his brakes to drop us off at the hotel (yes, true story), our room wasn't quite ready. The hotel let us drop off our luggage and we decided it was time to get some food (after all, we had been up since the rooster cock-a-doodle-doo'd and we had been on two flights, back to back, that only served pretzels and drinks, AND all that combined with the wacky cab ride, we were staaaaaahving, y'all). So, we ask the person at the hotel where to eat and they sent us up the street to this place.
This is where it gets good, y'all. Not that wild cab rides and pretzels and ginger ale mid-flight aren't good, but this is where it gets really good. Mom and I were seated in this AIR CONDITIONED place (not quite to the really good part, but AC is a very good thing) and when they took our drink orders, they put, in front of us, a basket of, brace yourselves, y'all: CORNBREAD. Can you believe it? It is possible to be up North and still be Southern.
And, even though the drivers were wacky, let me tell you, y'all, the people were pretty nice up there. All the time we were asked where we were from, and never once did someone say something ugly about Southerners. They loved our accents (may mine RIP, which is a whole 'nother post for some other day), and one person even marveled over the roller coaster at VisonLand.
Now, I did have one te-niny problem up there: the tea. See, I'm a bit un-Southern when it comes to my tea. I like it unsweet. (Although, like my cornbread, I do like it a little sweet from time to time.) So, you can imagine my excitement about going up North and not having to send back my tea a million times at a restaurant because the server failed to listen to my request for UNsweet tea. Well, y'all, while eating at a restaurant on Newbury Street one day, I was dying for some tea. Just to be sure, since so far my trip had been a dream for a Southerner, I asked the waitress if it was indeed true that the tea was "just plain old, normal" tea. She confirmed. I ordered my tea and when Mom and Brother looked at me expectantly as I prepared to take my first sip of UNsweet tea in days, I just had to ask them if it was, by some cruel twist of events, sweetened. They answered in the negative, so I took a swig. Y'all, don't ever take a swig of tea up North as if you're expecting Heaven to flow through your mouth. Mom couldn't contain her laughter anymore. I finally understood why the Bostonians threw all that tea in the harbor: Nestea, y'all, is nas-tea.
I propose, y'all, that we Southerners adopt Boston as a Southern location. It can't be too hard to fix the tea situation. And I believe any place that serves cornbread upon arrival would be open to grits, so that shouldn't be too complicated to correct. We can just call it polenta, like the Italians do, and they'll totally go for it. Don't you think so?
