One of the things Mendocino County taught me was the value of being a conscience-free liar when useful and/or profitable.
People have been coming to Mendotopia for years and decades, and a fair percentage of them reinvent their history and background as they cross the county line.
I never considered the strategy when I served my time as a Ukiahan, instead suffering the burden of being just another displaced Ohioan looking for work in a field not too far from journalism. And eventually I got a few jobs, mostly upside the head and between the eyes.
Nonetheless I soldiered on until my brain fog cleared (time elapsed: 40 years) and left Ukiah. Here in the Carolinas at long last I understand the wisdom of reinventing my past, my history, my entire existence so as to shed my Ohiofornia background.
If I’d arrived in the south back in the 1980s I would probably have bragged about (lied about) my surfboarding championships and the six hot tubs on my Malibu estate.
But not now in the south. Californians today are viewed as germ-bearing beasts in Hawaiian shirts, driving expensive imported SUVs, happy about the cheap gasoline, free real estate and insignificant taxes. Recent newcomers believe themselves surrounded by ignorant church-going locals who drink the kinds of wines Californians abandoned 50 years ago. Redneck rubes are Republicans; they can’t help being the way they are.
Arriving in the south deep into the 21st century make my Golden State years even more suspect, and having been born in Ohio doesn’t help. If there was a caste system I’d be an Untouchable.
So I’ve come up with a more agreeable history to make my acquaintance with neighbors in my new small town near Charlotte.
Allow me, please, to introduce myself as Colonel Beauregard Stonewall Kramer. I’ve affected a rather convincing limp which I explain by insisting I’d rather not talk about it. If pressed I confess to a minor crackup on the third turn on the final lap of the 1978 Daytona 500. (A NASCAR event, for bonus points.)
Good start, eh? Who would suspect their new Deep South neighbor is, in reality, a former unemployed hippie vegetarian drug dealing beach volleyball-playing welfare cheat who once partied with Paris Hilton?
I then change the subject to authentic southern food, of which I let it be known I having strong feelings. I feign horror at the notion of mingling baby back pork ribs with vinegar of any sort. Indecent, really, to even invite the two to the same barbecue pit.
My beef brisket is snuggled in a crumbled cornbread dry rub and served with (and this is a rule of mine) pecan-stuffed hush puppies. No corn on the cob, no coleslaw, no mac ’n’ cheese on the same platter with my barbecued brisket with pecan-stuffed hush puppies.
It was handed down, I sigh reverently, from ol’ Miz Sapphire, bless her li’l pea-pickin’ heart, with a promise recipe details would be shared with no one but blood kin, ever. I take that vow seriously, I lie.
Then I call for another Cheerwine Boilermaker with Rebel Yell Bourbon, chipped ice in a Tom Collins glass, darlin’. Chug-a-lug.
Folks down this way appreciate a man who’s a stickler on certain things, even if it makes him unpopular in some circles, such as the circles newcomers from California and New York roam in.
Now a fresh round of Rebel Yell and a story or two. In the pocket of my black silk sport coat I keep a card with potential subjects to entertain the newly acquainted, and bore the old familiars. Topics:
1) Ah keeps mah dawgs in Tennessee 2) Grow most of my tobacco in western Georgia 3) Never drink Mint Juleps at the Kentucky Derby, 4) Haven’t missed a Kentucky Derby since that time I had to get a bullet surgically removed from up near my left lung, deposited there in a duel by a scoundrel from Louzeeanna, 5) Acquired this here pearl-studded cane in a poker game aboard the Vicksburg Queen round about 1980, and on and on. NASCAR events, Billy Graham, Scriptures (careful!) Tarheel football, Crimson Tide football, football.
These ramblin’ yarns don’t serve much purpose other than filling up dead air during which suspicious folks might otherwise ask pesky questions, unearth questionable discrepancies in my resume and lead to uncomfortable follow-up queries.
All put together it could result in a hurried, lengthy return to Ukiah, where people already know so much about me it isn’t much worth trying to lie.
(Tom Hine does recall one time when he threatened to return to Mendoland as a credentialed Augur, and depending on whether or not I can find a suitable cape and wand, may follow through. TWK says Book Your Appointment now as sessions are limited.)
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