There was an unexpected knock at the front door yesterday late afternoon. My 6 year old looked out the window and said, “It’s a lady I don’t know.”

I opened the door, and sure enough, there was a middle-aged woman standing there. Her minivan was parked in our driveway; the side door was open, and I could see a young child in the seat.

The woman said she wasn’t sure she had the right house, but she was looking for the woman who gave music lessons. We bought this house over six years ago, and I know the woman of the family that lived here then taught piano out of this house. I explained that the woman who taught music no longer lived here, and hasn’t for six years.

“Do you know her name?” this woman asked.

I have a vague recollection of the name, but it’s four or five syllables. I said, “I think it’s something like,” and I tried to pronounce it two or three ways. I doubt any way was the actual, correct way. I apologized for mangling the name beyond usefulness.

The woman standing on my porch asked was I sure I didn’t know the name. I said I was sure. She asked if I knew where she lived. I said I didn’t know. She asked, “But she doesn’t live here?” I paused a moment, confused by the question. “Right,” I confirmed.

This woman then explained that the music teacher taught her older daughter, and she wanted the teacher to teach her next daughter. “Yes,” I said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t know how to get up with her.”

Then this woman asked if I had anything with the music teacher’s name or address on it. “No,” I said, “it’s been six years.”

“Wouldn’t her name be on the, . . .” she gestured with her hands, “contract, or whatever the papers are?”

At this point, I was about to laugh. This was absurd. This woman just seemed disbelieving that she had the right house, but was six years too late.

“Yeah,” I said, “her name is probably on the paperwork. But it’s filed away, and would take a while to get.”

“Would take a while to get,” she repeated.

She stood there a few moments as if hoping I’d go find the papers. After several seconds, she must have realized I wasn’t going to do it, so she just thanked me and walked off the porch. I watched her go back to her van, and then closed the door.

That was an interesting encounter.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

I stopped at the ATM in front of a Piggly Wiggly (a grocery store) in my hometown. I was amazed by the trash scattered around on the ground. Nearly all of the trash was just the paper receipts printed out by the ATM—a carpet of scattered white paper.

There’s a paper trash slot in the ATM for disposing of the receipts, plus, the machine directly asks the user if he or she wants a receipt to be printed. So the mess of discarded receipts is from pure laziness of the ATM users. Pathetic.

Out of curiosity, I picked up a couple of the receipts from the ATM counter and looked them over. I then grabbed up a handful more—there were about a dozen pieces on the counter, and probably another two dozen on the ground. Just pathetic.

But, the mess gives interesting information on the people who made it.

9/21/07 23:26 PM (11:26 at night)
Withdrawal: $40.00
Balance: $250.81

9/22/07 6:36 AM
Inquiry
Balance: $7.41

9/22/07 13:39 PM (1:39 in the afternoon)
Withdrawal: $60.00
Balance: $45.14- (that’s negative $45!)

9/22/07 14:47 PM (2:47 in the afternoon)
Withdrawal: $20:00
Looks like the receipt didn’t finish printing; no balance info

9/23/07 00:18 AM (12:18, after midnight)
Withdrawal: $120.00
Balance: $5.62

9/23/07 7:39 AM
Inquiry
Balance: $130.27

9/23/07 8:16 AM
Withdrawal: $500.00
Balance: $432.61

I find this kind of random information interesting. (Granted, I can find just about anything interesting.) Such data brings up all kinds of questions and fun imaginings.

How did the one person withdraw $45 more than he had in the account? I’d have loved to make that kind of withdrawal back when I was in college.

And what kind of night was the person withdrawing $500 hoping to have? And was it worth half his bank total?

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

While running an errand, for my mom, in my hometown, I stopped by a local restaurant for a carry out lunch. This restaurant is a town landmark, known by some throughout the state. It’s best known for barbeque, and in fact, claims to be recognized for its pork across the nation. I think the claim of wide recognition is a bit more sales pitch than true fact; I think the claim might be based on some truth of 20-30 years ago.

When I was a teenager, back in the early 80s, I worked as a waiter at the restaurant for about two years. A lot of former teenagers worked at that restaurant at one time or another. As a local icon, it was a first job, summer job, and/or after-school job for many hometown teens through the decades.

Since I left my hometown almost 20 years ago, I’ve only visited the place a couple of times. I ate lunch inside a few weeks ago, for the first time in some 15-18 years. It looks 90% exactly as it did when I worked there. I was pleasantly surprised to find my old boss still working there, now days at the register.

Back in the early 80s, while I worked there, the restaurant introduced a company mascot: Chitlin the Space Pig. I kid you not. A full costume pig with a cape and a space-style flight hood. A pig named after a food made of his own cooked intestines. That’s disturbing. This mascot showed up at the restaurant occasionally, sometimes visited the local minor league baseball park, and paraded around at local festivals and such.

I don’t know if Chitlin is still active in town or in the restaurant, but when I stopped in the other day to pick up a plate of barbeque, yams, string beans, and hushpuppies, I found his likeness patterned in tile on the floor of the carry out room. He’s arm-and-arm with “Wilbur” the symbolic barbeque cook of the restaurant (named after the actual former owner). Above their heads, are the words, “WE ‘PRECIATE YA TRADIN’ WID US!”

That slogan was created during my time at the restaurant. The owner, the aforementioned Wilbur, hired a marketing group to come up with the words, and their original version said, “WE ‘PRECIATE YA TRADIN’ WIF US!” The image of Chitlin the Space Pig and Wilbur the Cook, with the slogan, was posted up for all the employees to see and appreciate. (Or ‘preciate.) I, in my trademark pedantic way, pointed out that “wif” (for “with”) does not sound Southern. It sounds like we had a speech impediment. The proper Southern accent is “wid.”

“You wanna go wid us?” (You want to go with us?)
“Take this widja.” (Take this with you.)
“What would I do widdout my dictionary?” (I can’t find “wid” in this dagblame book!)

I figure my complaint (which I restated every time I saw the slogan) made it to the owner, and on to the marketing folks, because a few weeks later, the slogan was edited to say “WID.” So, if you’ve seen that slogan, know that I, then just 16 years old, had a hand in editing out the stupid speech impediment that could have been an embarrassment for all folks proud of their Southern accent.

Maybe that should be on my résumé.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

I grew up, from six months old to 21 years old, in a town of less than 25,000 people. Twenty-five thousand doesn’t sound real small, but compared to my current home, with almost 100,000 thousand people, and around 1,000,000 people in the greater metropolitan area, it’s small. And then, comparing my current town to something like New York, with a population of over 8,000,000 people, I still live in a podunk.

The median household income in my hometown is around $26,000. The median household income in my current town is around $77,000. Interestingly, the median household income in New York is only around $43,000. (And the cost of living is lower in my Southland area!)

I currently live only two hours away from my hometown, so I’m able to visit fairly often. My family still lives there, so we have always tried to visit at least every couple months. Sometimes several months pass without a visit, and sometimes we go a couple times in one month. Recent circumstances have brought me to the hometown often over the past few weeks. (See my mid-August posts for the reason.)

Visits to the hometown are usually fun and interesting, and I find the days and events full of blogging potential. Heck, I could post a week about the just two and a half hours we spent at the county fair. I see so many interesting (to me) things to mention, explain, and talk about.

Daily life in my current town can be so routine and mundane. Many nights, I have to think really hard for something to post about from my day, because a normal, routine day can just flash by. Funnily, a non-normal day tends to be the most stressful. As the old Chinese curse says, “May you live in interesting times.” “Interesting” things happening in my otherwise normal day tend to be . . . difficult.

A weekend in my hometown, on the other hand, almost always has an interesting situation or occurrence. It’s the fact that time in my hometown is not my normal routine that makes almost every hour something interesting.

Because I’ve been spending more time in my hometown lately, and I find so many interesting things while there, I’ll be posting more observations from Smalltown, Southernstate. These observations won’t be all my posts, but they will be more common than they have been.

And in case some of my observations come across as negative, I want it known that I love my old hometown. But I do see a vast difference between where I’ve been since I grew up there, where I am now, and what the old, small, poor hometown was and is. It’s that contrast that strikes me as so interesting.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com