The Chair

I truly don't want to spend too much time disparaging the South here; it's just not my agenda. If anything, I'd rather tell stories that in some tiny way help the unfamiliar among you develop a less simplistic view of this region -- one not dominated by negative cliches and stereotypes.

But, you know, sometimes we need to bitch. And sometimes this place--no, its people--let me down.

This weekend on the way back to B'ham from Nashville, we stopped in Hartselle, Ala. to check out the antique stores there. Hartselle's one of those eensy towns with a picturesque Main Street that's remade itself in the last 10 years as an antique-hunter's destination.

Before I go gently into bitterness, I should point out that in the first store we wandered into, the proprietor was a genuinely friendly, helpful woman in her late 30s or early 40s. She gave me all sorts of advice on buying old chairs, told me where to find true deals, offered me her latest issue of Cottage Living, and just generally made us feel wanted. You know, the way you should feel when you're in a store, potentially about to spend your hard-earned cash.

We ducked in and out of about 10 stores after that, and the people working in them were also quite sociable--ready with the usual Southernisms, the "lemme know if thar's anything i kin help ye with."

But.

In one of the last places we tried, an old crow sat imperiously behind her raised counter, watching the goings-on. She looked like a lot of the other women we saw in our Hartselle hour: plump, pale, her face painstakingly painted, her hair a stiff white meringue that'd assuredly been set underneath one of those big, old-school beauty parlor hoods. These sort of women's faces seem to me the small Southern town's answer to kabuki theater. They exist firmly outside any natural flow of cultural change. I didn't even really give this woman a good look; she was nothing new to see. Besides, I was thinking about chairs.

We looked at one chair, then we stepped up into a brightly-lit section of the store that was a few feet elevated above the room we'd first entered. I looked at a chair there, too, and then I realized I was surrounded by a multitude of God and Jesus books and stuff, an excess of Christian tchotchkes and schlock. The whiteness, the light! The watercolor book covers! I took a step back.

Maybe that's where things went wrong; maybe she saw me look around, shudder, and retreat to the main room post haste--and she saw right there and then that I was Unsaved and Bound for Hell. I don't know. But as we crossed back by her throne, she greeted another group of shoppers (I can't rightly recall, but I'd put money on them being also a bit plump and somehow clearly identifiable to this lady as "one of us" in general physical appearance) and asked them if they wouldn't mind pushing a chair back in that these other people had left out.

I didn't even think about it at first. But she kept going on about the chair, loudly: when I pull out a chair I put it back in, and oh-ho-ho, that's just how I was always taught to do, and some people just weren't raised up right I reckon, it's all just in how you were raised, I was raised to push chairs back in, some people just weren't taught to do things right I guess---

---and on and on and onnnnnnn, to the point that finally, as I looked through a pile of picture frames, it occurred to me that she was talking about us. Her passive-aggressive message must have gone on for at least three minutes, full volume, before I caught on that the message was for me. I can't even figure out how she kept at it so long. I don't think the other customers--her shill audience--were even saying anything in response.

Todd and I realized what was happening at about the same time, I think. "Did we leave a chair pulled out?" he mumbled, reading my mind. (The thing is, I remember pushing the damn chair back beneath the table -- just, perhaps, not all the fucking way.)

I dropped the picture I was looking at, and strode out of the store--wanting to, like, spit on the floor as I pushed the door open. (Instead I just pushed aggressively.) And as I did, the lady sang out, "Come again!"

So this is the shit I hate about the South! Passive-aggressive bitches who talk a big game about propriety while simultaneously issuing their trademark brand of rudeness and exclusion. Come again, indeed. The gall! Like the Winona Ryder character in Reality Bites, this dame might not have been able to define irony, but she sure as hell knew what it meant.

I hesitate to tell this story here, because I don't want to enforce the idea that all Southern hospitality is at best an empty act, at worst ironic fakery. That's simply not true. I've encountered any number of warm, welcoming people here in the just the past four weeks, people who'd never pull such a stunt -- people who have manners enough not to. Manners are a tricky thing -- I'll be the first to say they're all too often a smoke screen behind which goes on all sorts of wretched behavior -- but when good people wield them well, I find it, well, comforting.

And then things like this happen, and the bile rises in the old throat, and I curse this place -- even though rude people reside everywhere. And even though I often much prefer the warm "act" of politesse, typical to the South, to the clipped, emotionless soical behavior we associate with the North. (And I don't know about you, but I think that stereotype contains a degree of truth, too.) Things like this happen and for a while, all I see here is...ugly.

Plus, you know, this lady struck low: in pulling out the "wasn't raised right" line, she was in effect dissing my mama, which, well, I do not take kindly to mama-disrespect.

In hindsight, I wish we'd done what Todd later suggested: played her game, and just walked right up to her and said, equally loudly, "Did we forget to put that chair back in? Oh. Well then. I sure am sorry about that." Oh, she would've squirmed. (Todd clearly has a better handle on dealing with these types than I.)

I was in a semi-foul mood for the next 24 hours. I got on a missing-Chicago kick. On Sunday it was warm enough to ride my beater bike around deserted downtown Birmingham wearing a tank top, so I did. (Post-tantrum.) Deserted downtown Birmingham only served to complement my gloom for a while--all the empty storefronts, the slow rot, the potential (cool old building stock!) that's been ignored for too too long while the suburbs bloat and bloat! the distance this city has to yet to go, and the effort it will take! and really, will it happen? and what am I doing here? can I be a part of something good? I don't know--but after a while I started taking pictures. And ended up feeling better. How about that.

I am still in search of. . .chairs.