The Moving Spodder Rots ...
Saturday, October 13, 2007 at 09:55AM In 1991 my husband and I moved our family from the Midwest, near Chicago, to East Tennessee, near nowhere. For me, it was a jolt in many ways. Although my family roots have their origination well below the Mason-Dixon line, in seventeen years -- half my life -- I had not lived south of ZIP code 46375. I loved Chicago and would miss riding the South Shore Line into the city for lunch and shopping. I would especially miss the Midwest's lovely climate, which for much of the year rivaled Siberia for all-around comfort and livability.
My husband, an Ohioan, was not without a Southern connection of his own (besides me, that is). He had spent the first four years of the '70s as a inmate cadet at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, and there had learned all he never wanted to know about humidity. He also got savvy to what grits was were, and The Best Way To Eat Them, as in, yellowed with butter and seasoned with salt and pepper, or thinned with milk and sweetened with sugar. Having learned that he liked his grits best the milk-and-sugar way, he swiftly relocated back up north, where grits were was (and continue to be) a non-issue.
This is likely not news to you, but I must point out that the East Tennessee accent is nothing like the Midwest accent. As an educator, my husband found himself saying "Huh?" to a passel of grit-fed schoolchildren those first few months. One fine fall day he spied a cluster of students near a tree on the playground. He decided to amble over, bond with them, and perhaps catch the wave of a teachable moment ... meaning, with any luck he could add a few more words to his burgeoning East Tennessee vocabulary. The lesson began immediately. As my husband approached, an eager child pointed to the tree and blurted: "Look! A rotten spodder!" My husband looked where the child pointed but did not see anything that looked rotten, so he said as intelligently as he could: "Huh?" The children all began to point. "A Rotten Spodder!" They chorused.
He looked again and there it was: a large yellow-and-black spider busily working on its web. "I see the spider but what's rotten about it?" he asked. The children pointed. "He's rotten!" they exclaimed again. My husband looked again. The spider seemed to be doing something to the web ... it seemed to be making the letter "W" ... or "M" or "V" ... repeatedly. It was writing. It was a writing spider. In East Tennessee that's a rotten spodder, y'all.
Communication is often the first thing to suffer when people are transplanted. In the Midwest -- the part where we lived, at least -- it was not common for people to acknowledge one another as they passed on the street in their automobiles. Truth be known, it was unheard of! In East Tennessee we lived in a lovely small neighborhood that was accessed by a single long road. Since our house was at the very back of the neighborhood, we often traveled the length of that road. I began to notice that, when we passed a car, the other driver would almost always wave "hello." What friendly neighbors we had! Many weeks passed before I was swift enough on the uptake to begin waving back, but in time, waving at passing cars began to feel natural.
One day several months later I was tooling down that road, headed home, thinking about something or other. A car was coming towards me, so I absentmindedly "waved" with my index finger. (In East Tennessee, lifting the index finger of the hand resting on the steering wheel falls well within the parameters of a proper wave.) Imagine my surprise when the driver of the oncoming car returned my sentiment with a deliberate rude gesture! He ... he ... well, you know what he did! Apparently he thought I had made a rude gesture first! Something I would never do! He must have been from the Midwest! That cured me of waving, for good. Better to be thought rude for not waving than for waving the wrong way.
But I've enjoyed rotten about it.
Reader Comments (2)
So I love,love,love your blog for today. I laughed because I know how true it is! Well,I don't have problems understanding the E. TN accent anymore, but I remember hearing it for the first time when I was 8 years old...we were @ Wal-Mart, I'll never forget it.: ) And of course I love the Johnny Pic for today and the lovely pirate and his quote...he's just too, too much. Love ya.
Pirate Audrey! Love ya right back, luv! Thanks for stopping by.