You can take the boy out of The South, but…

Wonderful cooler from my local Mom/Pop local grocery. This is a portrait of The American South. (click to enlarge, for further analysis).

An entire Section devoted only to Bologna. This too sums up The American South. (click/enlarge).

I’ve lived in my current home for three or more years, but only recently have I discovered this incredible neighborhood grocery, only five minutes from my house. When go walk through the automatic doors, it’s like that scene in Wizard of Oz, where it turns from Black and White to Color, (but in reverse). There you are, texting from your iPhone in the parking lot, and then you walk in the front doors, and it’s 1965 all over again. The cashiers always speak to you; the tile floors are waxed and shiny, (if a bit beat up); there’s no fancy Yuppie salads anywhere to be found; and in the back, the required Deli, serving Meat and Three every day. I have developed this weird hankering for the Hot Meat thing; every other day about 4:30pm, I have to go there and buy a hot Pork Chop, or a Cheeseburger that’s been sitting there all day, in the silver wrapper. I don’t know why; it just feels like HOME.

When I was a kid, I worked in my father’s grocery stores, in Bowling Green, Kentucky. From the time I was twelve years old, I was bagging groceries and stocking the canned goods on the shelves. So I got Grocery Store in my blood.

So now, at age fifty, I go in this grocery store, knowing full well I shouldn’t — that I’ll only leave there with Massive Carbs, but still, like an Addict, there I go, in total Denial, just because it feels good.

There’s this case in the back filled with Mystery Food. (See top photo, or click for larger one). This is The American South. Fifty Points for anyone that can identify the foods marked with Question Marks (???).

(Sidebar: I went to Cheekwood this past week, to some High Falutin’ Panel Discussion of five artists who were known, at one point in their life, as “Southern Artists”. It was a VERY SERIOUS AFFAIR. Lots of syllables. Lots of words like “dichotomy” and “contradiction” and “influence”; lots of references to Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor. The big question was: How come The South influences your work to such a degree? Now, I want to say, “Look at this picture of this southern food — THIS is why it affects you”.)

There is one whole section devoted entirely to Bologna — Thin Cut; Thick Cut; Beef; Turkey, etc. I wonder if any other parts of the country are so affected by the food that they grew up with?