10. My apartment in Birmingham on Highland Avenue
My year spent living and working in Birmingham was not the greatest, but this apartment was. The building dated to the 1920s with hardwood floors and big windows that looked down onto Highland Park. I especially liked being able to sit and watch people play basketball. Also, there was an Indian restaurant within walking distance.
9. Belhaven in Jackson
I’ve been lucky enough to live in some beautiful Southern neighborhoods. The Highlands in Birmingham and Belhaven in Jackson. I love the architectural mish-mash that is Belhaven. There are some beautiful houses in Madison, but they don’t compare to the little bungalows tucked all over Belhaven. And the gardens. Southerners are very serious about their gardens.
8. Meat and three lunch
Why have other parts of the country not caught on to the beauty of the meat plus three lunch? There was Frank’s and Two Sisters in Jackson. Niki’s in Birmingham. There is nothing more satisfying than a lunch with country fried something, mashed potatoes, fried okra and greens. And of course, a biscuit.
7. The coldest beer in town
I haven’t had a Miller Lite in probably 10 years. That beer will never taste as good as it did at the Cherokee Drive-In in Jackson. It tastes even better with an order of red beans and rice or, on Thursdays, the roast beef plate lunch. I miss the unique atmosphere of bars in the South. They are unpretentious-looking on the whole; many people might call them dives. But I think this is because their priorities lie soundly with food and beer, which is as it should be.
6. That certain type of Southerner.
You know what I’m talking about. The Character. They stepped straight out of a Faulkner novel or one of Eudora Welty’s short stories. They are often bartenders who want to be writers. They are named after Civil War heroes. They have frail, shut-in sisters and drinking problems. They take pictures of ruined plantations in the Delta. You may not believe they are real, but they are. I’ve seen them. They exist.
5. The air.
I cannot say it better than Tom Robbins: “Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air–moist, sultry, secretive, and far from fresh–felt as if it were being exhaled into one’s face. Sometimes it even sounded like heavy breathing. Honeysuckle, swamp flowers, magnolia, and the mystery smell of the river scented the atmosphere, amplifying the intrusion of organic sleaze.” Or even better, “The minute you land in New Orleans, something wet and dark leaps on you and starts humping you like a swamp dog in heat, and the only way to get that aspect of New Orleans off you is to eat it off.”
4. The music.
Do I need to explain? If I do, I’m not sure you’re the kind of person worth explaining things to.
3. Kiefer’s
I don’t care that it isn’t strictly Southern food. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with a longing for feta dressing so painful, I think I might die.
2. People who are not white
Black folks in Mississippi make up 37.4% of the population. Unlike in places like Indiana, they are not all in the cities. Black folks live everywhere in Mississippi, including small towns. So if Madison, where I live, were in Mississippi, there would be over 5,000 black people in town, give or take. In the Delta, there would be some Chinese people, too. In Birmingham, there’s a large Lebanese community. The South is full of people who are not white. Everywhere. It would take a whole other post to explain how this changes things, but you definitely would not have #8, #6 or #4 without so many people who are not white.
1. Jennie Pritchard
strandedinselma 