God help me, I laughed out loud at the words "oven cleaner" and couldn't stop laughing. Poor goddamn cat. Hahahaha.
Also, the shag carpet thing makes me think of my grandfather's shag carpet, which is positively crusted with spit and spilled food, especially around the chair where he eats. Don't wanna put anything you find down there in your mouth. My uncle never cleans, you see. And the bathroom, well, let's just say you don't want to rest your head on anything in there. No soap, either. I usually wash my hands with Lysol when I'm done.
All of which is to say, wow. Vivid.
I know you guys think that picking up Alameida matters because she has ovaries, but I think the real story here is that you picked up a southerner. You don't much get stories like this from anybody but us.
This post is a thing of surpassing beauty, A. I mean, really: Lucky. As an aside, I went to high school with not one, but two guys named Skeeter. Also an Obie and a girl named (as god is my witness, I am not making this up) Happy Hussey.
This is great! No way can I touch it, but I do have to put in my two cents for down state Illinois in the 70's. For team names they had the Pekin "Chinks" and the Hoopeston "Corn Jerkers." In college I met a girl from Southern Illinois named "Muff." Yup. For real.
'r is right, I love the southern gothic (to borrow Alameida's phrase) turn that unfogged has taken. Who knew we were getting bastard out of carolina when Alameida joined.
Southern Illinois does feel alot like appalachia. BTW, I had some fine barbecue and cobbler down there a few weeks ago. Didn't get to a trailer park during my short visit, though.
"Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. " -Flannery O'Connor
Where on God's earth did you find this woman?!
TF: Flannery hit it spot-on. See, down here we don't put our crazy relatives in the attic, we bring 'em down to the sitting room where EVERYONE can see 'em.
Or we stick them in rocking chairs on the front porch so they can holler at pedestrians. Keeps 'em busy and away from the cleaning products.
Is it just me, or do descriptions of the South seem wierdly consonant with undergraduate depictions of ye olde Russia: a strangely beautiful, barbaric place that, despite its (slightly pathetic?) pretensions, isn't really part of the West, yet, for reasons unknown, seems to throw up monstrously talented individuals (Tolstoy, Dosteyevski, Landau, etc.; Faulkner, Dr. King, Clinton, etc.) at regular intervals.
ye olde Russia
One really, really big difference: we can't drive in snow.
It's not just you. See here , here , and here.
The writing class thing reminds me of junior high, when teachers would tell me they liked my stories, then ask if I wanted to see a counselor. Then there was the story about the kid considering suicide (an option he rejects), which they said they'd publish in the literary magazine, as long as I took out the parts about suicide.
Literary magazine? Wow, Ogged, if only you'd gone to the Iowa Writer's Workshop, you might've gotten somewhere.
Statesboro? No shit . . . my mother grew up near Brooklet, down a stretch of dirt road that bears our name off of 67.
I've got mostly bad memories associated with time spent down there -- my dog getting killed by a car, a very long year in a rural Georgia elementary school as a Yankee blockhead, etc. About the only thing I miss is Vandy's BBQ.
Alameida, let's have illegitimate fetal-tobacco-syndrome babies together. I'll discipline them with a nail-studded Mister Ouchie when they sass off and teach them what Jesus said about no dirt-roadin and all. You can get fat if you want.