More About Basil (Soul Survivor)

This is still a young blog, having made its appearance in December. Things really started to take off in February, though. Traffic has increased every month (even without Instalanches) as well as the number of other blogs that link to this one on their BlogRoll, or to posts on a regular or occasional basis.

Along and along, I'll make a comment and promise to follow up later on a topic that somehow wormed its way into something I was going on about. Well, tonight, I was going back over some of my old posts, looking for an instance where I promise "more about that later." Instead, I found myself reading a post about life in my home town when I was a child in mostly-segregated south Georgia.

Most of you reading this little blog have picked up bits and pieces about me. Well, here's a chance to learn a little about me 35-40 years ago. So, if you haven't been reading the archives and weren't reading this blog last December, here's a post from December 14, 2004 entitled:

Soul Survivor

At the Evil Corporation where I work, they have a dining facility run by another evil corporation.
At lunch Monday, two people standing in front of me in the line to
order were talking (people do that, you know). I wasn't eavesdropping,
just listening in on the conversation. And I heard one of them mention
"soul food." Now that's a phrase you don't hear every day. Well, maybe you hear it every day, but I don't.

I was odd, too, because the previous night, while the wife was
deciding that we were going to eat Mexican, she had kicked some other
possibilities around. In an attempt to thoroughly confuse the issue (I
do that, sometimes; even on purpose, sometimes), I named every type of
cuisine I could imagine or remember, including "soul food." Then I told
her part of the story about the soul food restaurant in the town in
which I grew up. I never finished the story, because somewhere along
the way, she decided we'd eat Mexican, so we did.

Then, lo and behold, the folks in front of me at lunch the next day
mentioned "soul food." Now's my chance to finish the story. But, first,
I need to start it.

I grew up in a small town in southeast Georgia. When I started
school, the schools were already integrated. Yes, Baptists and
Methodists sitting in the same classrooms. But, that's about as far as
it went. Blacks and whites? No way. At least not for a couple more
years. But, eventually, the 19th century arrived in 20th century
Georgia, and black and white children studied together, played
together, ate together. Still, many parts of the community were
segregated.

In the 1960s, a haircut for a young, white boy was a crew cut. I
knew of nothing else. And, my haircuts occurred at a barbershop on the
street that ran next to the railroad tracks, across from the train
depot, and right down from the Western Auto. There were other
barbershops in town, but they were all within walking distance of one
another. This particular barbershop was your typical southern redneck
barbershop. There were four chairs and two barbers, a father and son.
In addition, there was a Coca-Cola machine. It had the Cokes in the
6½-ounce bottles. The 24-bottle crates were stacked next to it. And
there was another stack of empty cases where you put the bottles when
you were done with your Co-cola, as they were commonly called. There
were wood-slat benches where folks sat while they waited their turn for
a haircut, or just waited for no particular reason. Like I said, a
typical southern redneck barbershop.

Now, in the late 60s/early 70s, the phrase "soul food" entered the
vocabulary. It may have been a well-know phrase prior to that, but not
to me. I first heard the phrase on TV, maybe on Laugh-In or Flip
Wilson, I'm not sure. I had no idea what it meant. Best I could
understand was food that was traditionally "Black," in the sense of
food that's traditionally considered Japanese, Italian, Mexican, or
whatever. Other than that, I had no clue. I never had Japanese,
Italian, Mexican or any other particular cuisine, just what Mama
cooked, and we called that "food." Then, one day, while we were riding
down the same street as that redneck barber shop, on the very same
block, we saw something called "The Soul Food Cafe." Think about that
for a minute: a redneck barbershop on the very same block as a Soul
Food restaurant. That's what it was like in south Georgia in the late
60s/early 70s.

Oh, and on the plate glass window of the Soul Food Cafe was a
painting of a black family sitting at a table with fried chicken, peas,
greens, cornbread, and the like. In other words, what we had for dinner
the previous Sunday. So, that was "soul food." Or, as we called it,
"food."

Maybe we were more integrated than any of us realized.