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

We went to my hometown county fair last evening. This is the first time I’ve been to the county fair in over 20 years. (We’ve been to the state fair a few times over the past several years.) I remember the county fair of my younger days—going with family, going with friends, going with a date. The lights, the sounds, the smells, the shoddily-assembled rides, etc. were all there last night.

We went a bit before sundown and stayed a bit after sundown. My boys loved it. I had fun, and I think my wife and mom had fun, too, but it really wore us out. We had pizza slices and cheeseburgers for dinner, and I got a funnel cake for dessert. The first half of a funnel cake is great, but the second half gets to be a bit much. So I only ate about 9/10ths of it.

I slid down the Fun Slide with my 2 year old (the 6 year old didn’t like climbing the open and rickety stairs up so high). That slide was taller, faster, and more of a ride than I expected—was pretty cool.

The 6 year old drove a bumper car by himself for the first time. The 2 year old wanted to ride the bumper cars, too, and I was going to ride with him, but it was only one person per car, and the little guy was under the height limit. He cried in disappointment.

I took the boys into two fun houses. The first one was a maze of glass and mirrors. It’s actually pretty hard to find your way through that kind of thing. You have to choose direction by feeling the walls, because the disorienting effect of the mirrors and the invisibility of the glass defeats visual attempts to find the path. I’d love to go through a really big maze like that. The whole effect is really cool, and the boys laughed and shouted the whole way through.

The second fun house was a disappointment. The floor was supposed to be moving in places, but it was broken, apparently. At one point, there were rollers on the floor to make walking difficult, but the rollers were stuck, so they didn’t do anything. But the boys still laughed and shouted the whole way through.

I also took the boys into the petting zoo to feed the sheep, goats, donkey, and lama. The boys dropped most of the feed pellets on the ground when the animals tried to eat out of their hands, and then they’d run back to the vending box for more food.

The wife and I rode the Ferris wheel together. I was interested in seeing the fair from up high, and my wife was interested in waving to the boys down on the ground. We didn’t even think of making out while up there alone. The Ferris wheel used to be an excuse for alone time and kissing.

I also rode the sky drop thingy, alone. It has a circular seating arrangement, facing out, around a tower 120′ high. The circle seat rises slowly up the tower, with the riders’ feet hanging out over open air, and then it freefalls about 100′. That was more intense than I thought it would be. For one thing, there is no warning when you’re about to fall. I expected there to be brief stop or bump or click or something at the top just before the drop, but nope, you just suddenly plummet. Falling is a very unnatural feeling, and I had the natural panic emotion for split second. But the experience was very cool. I’d have loved to do it another time or two, but we didn’t have time for it (nor enough tickets).

This year’s fair was about half the size of the years when I was a kid. The rides and attractions were arranged on only half the fairground area; the other half was empty and open. Among the missing attractions were the freak show tents. (I’d never gone in one, myself, but some of my friends did, and they explained that they just had pictures of freaks, or statues “representing” the freaks.) Also missing were half the rides and some of the big eats places. There was still enough to thoroughly entertain the boys for two and a half hours, but it was a noticeably smaller fair to me.

Still, it was a fun experience for my boys. It completely exhausted all of us, especially us parents and grandparent. The smaller size was a good thing for us, I think, because it made it easier to get around. I’m wondering if the state fair would be too much this year, what with both boys walking.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

During the hour I was supposed to be writing this blog post last night, I instead sat on the couch and watched the new Sci-Fi channel series Doctor Who. I remember seeing the original series back in the early 80s; I probably saw it only a half dozen times. I remember only a few bits and pieces of the specifics, and I have only a vague understanding of the general concept. But, I remember the feeling of, “This is cool!”

If other remakes, TV and movie, of old shows were as close to the originals’ styles, I’d be interested in seeing them at least once, too.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com