Southern women, smiles and shaped brows

After a few days at Knotty Pine Farm, I found myself downplaying my "northern-ness" and emphasizing my tenuous connection to southern culture: "My mother's family was from Richmond....". And truth be told, I've always felt a special connection to Richmond with it's gentile architecture and less frenzied pace. Plus, two of my closest friends are from Alabama. And even though West Virginia is not southern, I'm half West Virginian and feel that gives me plenty of latitude as far as the whole gun thing goes. Plus, Maryland is on the Mason Dixon Line and the eastern shore is clearly southern in my mind.

After close observation of the women in Mobile, I determined that one secret is to smile. Not a fake smile, laced with sugar, barely covering strain and stress taut face muscles, but a full on flash bulb kind of smile. A smile that really did make me feel welcome and want to sit down with a glass of sweet tea and stay a while. I found myself wondering if they taught this in school.

So, I practiced this. I had been alerted to the whole smiling thing before by one of my southern friends, but that was in the context of flirting. This was different. This was equal opportunity smiling. I had some work to do. To help myself along with my attempt to pass, I also threw in some southern euphemisms, like "y'all", until Floyd called me out on it.

Lani tolerated this, but she is convincingly, assuredly, and confidently, northern. New England northern, in fact. I, on the other hand, want to ferret out all my possible parts, and I was hoping to find or create some southern in me. Or, maybe I'm just Mason Dixoned.

That weekend, Floyd and I went into town for dinner at the local saloon (the one that doesn't actually sell alcohol) to eat and hear some live music. Kim and Lani had gone on a two day trip for a meditation seminar and we were left holding down the fort. The restaurant was packed and I did my usual scan to see who was there taking note of outfits, makeup, hairstyles, and smiles. We had arrived to town on an ATV, which seemed pretty authentic, and I purposefully did not wear my urban eyewear, which surely would have outed me as a urbanite. The ladies in the restaurant were not decked out at all. I fit in.

Dinner seemed to go smoothly enough. I was facing the musician, who was quite good incidentally, and Floyd and I chatted about future plans for the farm while he waved and greeted nearly everyone in the room. So, I was quite amazed, and maybe just a tad humiliated, when the musician, who had not been talking much at all up until that point, looked at me and dedicated the next song to the northerner in the room. He said it was a song about how things are done down here in the south.

I was quite flummoxed. And Floyd seemed a bit unraveled as well. This was out and out finger pointing and it was done with a level of seriousness. He nailed me, but based on what? The song itself had a bunch of lyrics that celebrated southern hick-ness. I was a bit distracted, but I know there was a line about rifles, and definitely one instructing me to never order grits (because they always come as a side).

I scanned the room once more to see what physical characteristic might alert someone that I'm not "one of them". I decided it was the eyebrows. Southern women all have very shaped eyebrows.

Eyebrows and smiles. They go a long way.

PS. The extra beautiful images are compliments of Lani.