by Julia Fowler
“I’m gonna pray for her.”
If Granny had something ugly to say about someone, she was careful to frame it like this: “That woman hasn’t worn a napkin’s worth of clothes since her divorce. I’m gonna pray for her.” Or, “That man’s so negative he’d depress the devil. I’m gonna pray for him.” And there was nothing worse than when Granny hurled this particular phrase directly at you, “Julia Fowler, I heard you went out on a date with that hooligan Ronnie Haggarty! I’m gonna pray for you.”
Granny made it her business to protect my reputation as well as her own, because in the South everybody tends to know everybody, so gossip spreads faster than kudzu. But despite Granny’s best efforts, she once found herself in serious danger of being the topic of town gossip. Granny agreed to babysit her uncle Gene’s pet myna bird while Gene was out of town. Myna birds are talking birds, and they learn to talk by imitating the words and conversations they hear from their owners.
Granny brought the bird home one night and went to bed early because the next morning she was hosting Bible study at her home. As she cooked breakfast and prepared for her church guests, she began talking to the bird and was tickled she taught it to say things: “I’m making biscuits . . . I’m frying bacon . . . I’m hosting Bible study.” When her Sunday school class arrived, Granny bragged to the church ladies about how quickly the bird had learned to imitate her.
Just as she began to lead the Bible study, the phone rang. Granny decided to let it ring because she didn’t want to interrupt the lesson. And that’s when the bird started hollering, “Sheeyut the phone’s ringing! Answer the dayum phone! Somebody answer the dayum phone!” As you can imagine, Granny was totally embarrassed and the church ladies were horrified. Granny finally answered the phone so the bird would stop cussing and she attempted to resume the Bible study. But it wasn’t long before the phone rang again and the bird went nuts again, “Sheeyut, will somebody answer that dayum phone! Jesus!” Granny wisely took the phone off the hook and scrambled to explain that the bird was her uncle’s but realized this only verified that the bird was technically family, so unfortunately Granny was further humiliated.
Granny told me that after that incident she got several sideways glances around town and in church. She didn’t know for certain what the church ladies said about her, but she was keen enough to know that stories like that travel faster than lightning. Don’t worry, Granny. You keep resting in peace. Even if the church ladies did spread the gossip about your cussing bird . . . I bet they prayed for you.
That woman’s so
annoying she could raise
a stye on a pigs ass.
That man would
pull up a sign and argue
with the hole.
She should just skip
the pleasantries
and strap a mattress
to her back.
There she goes,
ass swinging like church bells
at Easter.
He’s so dumb it took him
three days to study for a
urine test.
She's so dumb she
sits on the TV
and watches the
couch.
He's so dumb
he could throw himself on the
ground and miss.
She’s dumber than
a box of hair.
She’s so fat when she
hauls ass she has to make
two trips.
She’s so skinny she’s gonna fall
through her butt and hang herself.
He’s so dumb he couldn’t pour piss out of a
boot with instructions on the heel.
She don't have all her
chairs in her parlor.
His cornbread’s
not done in the middle.
That man's only
got one oar in
the water.
She's
nuttier
than a
fruit cake.
She’s not even a hot mess . . .
she’s a lukewarm mess.
He's so lazy,
sweat won't run off
his head..
She’s so lazy, she wouldn’t
work in a pie factory
licking spoons.
Her nose is stuck up
so high in the air she could
drown in a rainstorm.
I'd like to buy that
man for what he's
worth and sell him
for what he thinks
he’s worth.
That woman’s
wound up tighter than an
eight-day clock.
That woman
wouldn’t warm up if
she was cremated.
He’s meaner
than a sack full of
rattlesnakes.
She's so ugly
if she wore a stamp nobody
would lick her.
He’s so ugly he’d scare a
buzzard off a gut pile.
His breath smells so
bad it could make
a funeral turn up a
side street.
That woman talks enough
for four sets of teeth.
That man could talk
the balls off a pool table.
Her face looks
like she was weaned
on a pickle.
I wouldn’t trust
that man if
his tongue came
notarized.
He’s so crooked
if he swallowed a nail he’d
spit up a corkscrew.
That woman’s
full of more
crap than a
constipated
elephant.
That man’s slicker than
pig snot on a radiator.
He’s as useless
as a milk bucket
under a bull.
She's as sorry
as a two-dollar watch.
She's so sorry
I wouldn't wave to her if
my arm was on fire.
She was so drunk
she was stumbling
around like a blind mule
in a pumpkin patch.
He was so high
he could sit on Wednesday
and see both Sundays.
That woman’s got
more issues than
Better Homes and
Gardens.
That man would complain
if you hung him with a new rope.
He couldn't find
his ass with both hands
and a road map.
The only culture
that woman will ever have is a yeast infection.
Talk
Southern
to Me 'Bout
Life
Life
“Sometimes you gotta hang in there like a hair in a biscuit.”
I was in Philosophy 101 class at the University of South Carolina listening to my professor prattle on about the merits of famous philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates when it dawned on me that I had been raised by philosophers. Being taught “Southern philosophy” is a rite of passage in the South. Southerners have their own particular system of philosophical thought that’s not always rooted in formal education but rather in life experience. And that life experience is passed down from generation to generation. And although much of this philosophy doesn’t make a lick of sense to us in childhood, as we grow and begin to view life through the prism of adulthood, we come to appreciate the tremendous value of this homespun Southern wisdom.
My granddaddy, who I called “Papa Cooter,” was a cattle farmer, an auctioneer, and a war hero. Now, Papa Cooter wasn’t eat up with book smarts, but he was certainly eat up with life smarts. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease when I was young and lived with my family for many years, so I got a full dose of Papa Cooter’s phil
osophy. He used to say, “Never kick a cow turd on a hot day.” As a kid, I thought to myself, “Why on earth would ya kick a cow turd?” Later in life I understood the lesson he was teaching me—timing is everything. I also came to learn that this was a quote attributed to former President Harry Truman, who, like Papa Cooter, had a grounded sense of philosophy informed by years spent on a farm.
Lord knows I couldn’t have been farther away from a farm when I moved to New York City to pursue Broadway. I was young and naïve and had to navigate my way through that urban jungle and all of the dangers that lurked within it. I attribute my survival to the treasure chest of Southern philosophy accumulated from family folks like Papa Cooter. When I first landed in NYC I had a sublet apartment, but the term was only for a month, so time was a-tickin’. I knew I had to immediately hunt for a place to live and thought, “How hard can it be? My cousin Billy and Uncle Jimmy are first rate deer hunters—hunting’s in my blood. Hunting comes natural to Southerners.” It only took a skinny minute for me to learn that getting an apartment in New York City is more competitive than a Texas beauty pageant.
Now this was back before the Internet, so the apartment listings were in a weekly newspaper called The Village Voice. I would run to a newspaper kiosk at dawn to purchase the latest edition, encouraged by my Daddy’s motto, “Luck favors the backbone, not the wishbone.” I would immediately scour the classifieds and begin the grueling process of calling and setting up appointments with people looking for a roommate or with real estate brokers showing available apartments. Then I would haul my tail all over the city meeting weirdos I could never live with in spaces that were either uninhabitable or outrageously expensive and were usually taken by the time I got there anyway. And the real estate brokers were all slicker than snot on a doorknob. They were fast-talking Yankee sharks whose fees were 15 percent of the yearly rental rate, and that fee was required on top of two month’s rent and a security deposit.
The hunt had to be repeated each day, and there was no amount of deer corn that could help me attract an NYC apartment. Every morning began with such optimism and every evening ended in despair. How would I ever make it to Broadway if I couldn’t even find a place to live? I went to bed night after night crying crocodile tears but found strength in the philosophical words of my Granny Winnie, “Sometimes you gotta hang in there like a hair in a biscuit.”
Sure enough, Granny Winnie was right. Mere days before my sublet was up, I met a lady who had an enormous, sprawling, stunning apartment. She was a widow whose husband had recently died. She said she liked to spend most of her time at her house in the Hamptons, so she was looking to rent one of her bedrooms to someone who could house-sit, since she was hardly ever at her city apartment. Not only was my hunt a success, I had broken the Boone and Crockett Club record! Score! I quickly wrote her a check for nearly half the money I had saved teaching dance back home in South Carolina and skipped through the streets of Manhattan happier than a tick on a hound dog.
I moved into this gorgeous apartment and was so relieved I could finally focus all my energy on getting a job. Unfortunately, this lady focused all her energy on me. She never went to her Hamptons house. In fact, she barely left the apartment. She had everything delivered: groceries, dry cleaning, medicine. I caught her listening to my phone conversations. She rearranged my food in the cabinets and refrigerator. She plastered “No Smoking” signs on my bedroom and bathroom door. I reminded her I was not a smoker. But she insisted the signs were necessary, “In case I had a visitor.”
Well one afternoon I did have a visitor. A friend of mine worked on a cruise ship and it was docked in Manhattan for the day, so we went to dinner, and then he came over to see my new place. When he left, this lady had a meltdown and said I was never again allowed to have a guest in the apartment because they might “steal something” and that “strangers made her uncomfortable.” My childhood friend Leslie had a sassy Southern Mama named MurMur, who used to preach to us, “To argue with a fool makes two.” So instead of telling this fool she was overreacting, I quietly retired to my room. And that’s when I noticed that the clothes in my closet had been rearranged. My heart sank. I knew I had to immediately find a new place to live ’cause my Granny Fowler had taught me, “there’s never enough makeup to hide crazy.”
“There’s never enough makeup to hide crazy.”
I left early the next morning for an audition and when I got home in the afternoon, two policemen were waiting to inform me the owner was evicting me. I explained that I had paid for three months rent. They explained that my name was not on the lease so I had no legal rights. My jaw dropped . . . I was homeless. The police forced me to pack on the spot and haul my things down to the lobby. I sat on the stoop of that building, incredulous that I was back at square one and not sure what to do. But eventually, I wiped my tears and accepted reality. As Papa Cooter used to say, “Sometimes you gotta lick that calf all over again.”
Thankfully, I had a friend from Tennessee, Tabb, who was a dancer in NYC. Being a true Southern gentleman, he rescued me and allowed me to stay in his crowded apartment until I could figure something out. I was determined to find my own place—no more lunatic roommates. I searched for another few weeks, then one day I made an appointment with a real estate broker handling a vacant studio apartment on the Upper West Side. I put on my nicest dress and heels, did full hair and makeup, and took the subway from Tabb’s apartment in Queens to Manhattan. New Yorkers were melting from the oppressive summer heat, but being a Southern woman weaned on humidity, I was unfazed and simply applied more pressed powder. I was on a mission.
When I walked into the office, the real estate agent gruffly shooed me towards a chair then yelled and cursed on the phone while I waited. And waited. And waited. As time passed, my red-headed temper began to boil, but I remembered my Mama’s philosophical mantra: “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.” When he finally spoke to me, I proceeded to unload every bit of Southern charm inscribed in my DNA. The ruder he was, the nicer I was. Mama always taught me to “Kill ’em with kindness.” The more he tried to dismiss me from his office, the more questions I asked him about his life and family. Charm disarms, and I eventually got him under the Southern spell. Despite the fact that he had a huge stack of applications for that apartment and I was the least financially qualified candidate, he became exhausted by my cheerfulness and said, “Fine! If you’ll leave so I can get back to work, I’ll help you get this apartment.”
I had to bust through a lot of red tape, beg my friend’s husband who worked on Wall Street to cosign the lease, and make oodles of pleading phone calls to my Daddy, who reluctantly helped me with money, but I got that apartment. It was so small, when you sat on the toilet you had to put one foot in the bathtub, but I was proud as punch of my palace. Despite an army of roaches, I slept like a baby my first night there, feeling as if I had conquered New York. Little did I know I was about to face a mountain of new obstacles trying to make it to Broadway. But a blind mule ain’t afraid of the darkness. So I chased my dream with gusto. And when I made it to Broadway, I got that real estate broker tickets.
Don’t let your alligator mouth
override your hummingbird ass.
The sun don’t shine
on the same dog’s tail all
the time.
Don’t go up
a hog’s butt to see
how much
lard is in a pound.
Don’t bolt your door with a carrot.
Sweep your own
back porch before sweeping
somebody else's.
Sometimes the juice
just ain’t
worth the squeeze.
The grass is always greener
over the septic tank.
No need to fear the wind
if your hay’s tied down.
Anyone can eat
an elephant
one bite at a time.
Don't worry about
the m
ule going blind.. Just
load the wagon.
Turnip tops
don’t tell you the size
of the turnips.
Worrying is like a rocking chair:
gives you something to do
but gets you nowhere.
Don't stir up crap
unless you're willing to
lick the spoon.
No matter how slick
you are, you can’t
slide on barbed wire.
You plant a butter bean,
you get a butter bean.
Live like a peacock: don’t ruffle your
feathers unless you’re prepared to fight.
Don’t bring a knife
to a gunfight.
Even a blind hog
finds an acorn now
and then.
Many good flowers
get chopped up by associating
with weeds.
Let sleeping dogs lie.
You can put boots in
the oven, but that don’t
make 'em biscuits.
Tend to your
own knitting.
Don’t air
your dirty linen
in public.
Some folks are
all hat and no cattle.
When getting your ducks in a row,
remember that some may not be
your ducks.
If you ain’t the lead dog
then don’t expect the view to be
a-changing.
The guilty dog
barks the loudest.
Everybody walks
up fool’s hill.
An ounce of
pretension
is worth a pound
of manure.
Some folks
think cow horns
won’t hook.
Never wrestle with a pig;
you’ll both get dirty, and the pig likes it.
Life is full of folks
