Mullets and Livermush
(Scholastic Regional Honorable Mention 2014)
“Lemme get the Wednesday beer special, and make it quick,” says the man in the car in front of me.
I realize that such a statement should appall me, considering that I’m sitting at a drive-thru window, but it doesn’t. Even if selling cold beer here were legal (which I’m pretty sure it isn’t), we can generally formulate the idea that indirectly encouraging drunk driving should be frowned upon. Alas, as I sit in my car waiting to move up to the dingy window to place my usual order of a two-dollar peach slushie, I am not the least bit surprised. It’s the bluntness of it all that authenticates the stereotypes—the fact that gleaming neon signs reading “COLD BEER” and “20+ Flavors of Chips” adorn a small brick building in the middle of a pasture. Or maybe it’s that when you take a second look, you realize that you weren’t actually losing your mind when you thought there was a baby pig scurrying past the banners for all thirty brands of beer. And as if this weren’t enough, not only can you drive away with a chilled alcoholic beverage in one hand and a bag of pork rinds nestled in the passenger seat like your own precious child but also you have an invaluable wealth of over-the-counter medicine right at your fingertips--and all for under five dollars. Here, your DUI is almost encouraged, so you might as well mix in some cough syrup and NyQuil, because what’s the fun in plain beer, anyway? When you swerve down the road (open container in hand and Tylenol on your lap), you think that maybe you should have bought some barbecue chips to go with the strange plethora of drugs and snacks in your car. Chips, beer, slushies, and medicine. That’s it. That’s all they sell here. The locals love their one-stop suicide shop, and I’ve learned not to be surprised by this either.
When the man in front of me is finally satisfied with the tall-boy Bud Light in his hand and I roll up to the window, I am equally as indifferent when I see that the woman who is serving today’s beers and slushies and Advil has a mullet. An actual mullet. Her hair swoops up her forehead and down the back of her neck like a big, gray mushroom cloud, and I can smell the twelve packs of Marlboros she has undoubtedly smoked today as soon as she slides the window open.
When I finally have my slushie in hand and Mullet Lady turns around to close the window, I see that she also has a portion of her hair tied in multiple places with rubber-bands to create the perfect redneck rattail. Wow. I drive away chuckling, but I am not astonished. After living in this town for seventeen years, almost nothing can generate that emotion anymore. Not even the gas station across the street with the blinking-arrow sign that reads “Tan Here” fazes me. I tell myself it’s just where I am, and that these things will always be, so I might as well enjoy them.
Where else in the world can you pay to eat lunch in a barn, spend your Friday nights at the dirt track screaming for dinky little cars that do not exceed twenty miles per hour, and your Saturdays riding four-wheelers and dove hunting? I wouldn’t know, seeing as how I’ve never done any of these things, but I imagine that they’re thrilling. Where else do you see more tractors than cars and automatically take the long way home the week of the county fair to avoid the unfathomable traffic? Where else are there weekly goat shows and “hog happenings” and fried chicken and fish bait sold at the same store? Probably way too many places, but you get the point. And if you somehow woke up one day with a severe case of amnesia and you weren’t already sure that you were in the Deep South, the fact that livermush would be the first breakfast item offered to you might attune your inner GPS.
Whenever I hear someone from a different region of the nation (albeit a basically different planet) talk about the outrageous tales of country bumpkins in the South and cow-tipping and drag racing and shopping for new rifles, my inner Yankee screams, “It’s not true! None of it is true!” And then I realize that it is. All of it. Every last thing.
But maybe it’s those extra five minutes to avoid the fair traffic or the sweet, carbonated happiness of a peach slushie that really put things into perspective. Everything I see everyday elicits its own eye-roll and head-shake, but perhaps there’s a sense of home behind all that exasperation. Maybe I should go to a dirt-track race and try to ignore that the cars travel at the speed of rusted old dune-buggies with missing wheels. Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll order livermush after church next Sunday instead of scrambled eggs and pancakes. Maybe I’ll go relax in the gas station tanning bed to de-stress after a long day. And maybe next time I go to the slushie-and-beer-and-chips-and-medicine shack, I might even talk to Mullet Lady. Maybe we’ll be friends. Who knows? I sure don’t, and that’s exactly what keeps me coming back for more.
I realize that such a statement should appall me, considering that I’m sitting at a drive-thru window, but it doesn’t. Even if selling cold beer here were legal (which I’m pretty sure it isn’t), we can generally formulate the idea that indirectly encouraging drunk driving should be frowned upon. Alas, as I sit in my car waiting to move up to the dingy window to place my usual order of a two-dollar peach slushie, I am not the least bit surprised. It’s the bluntness of it all that authenticates the stereotypes—the fact that gleaming neon signs reading “COLD BEER” and “20+ Flavors of Chips” adorn a small brick building in the middle of a pasture. Or maybe it’s that when you take a second look, you realize that you weren’t actually losing your mind when you thought there was a baby pig scurrying past the banners for all thirty brands of beer. And as if this weren’t enough, not only can you drive away with a chilled alcoholic beverage in one hand and a bag of pork rinds nestled in the passenger seat like your own precious child but also you have an invaluable wealth of over-the-counter medicine right at your fingertips--and all for under five dollars. Here, your DUI is almost encouraged, so you might as well mix in some cough syrup and NyQuil, because what’s the fun in plain beer, anyway? When you swerve down the road (open container in hand and Tylenol on your lap), you think that maybe you should have bought some barbecue chips to go with the strange plethora of drugs and snacks in your car. Chips, beer, slushies, and medicine. That’s it. That’s all they sell here. The locals love their one-stop suicide shop, and I’ve learned not to be surprised by this either.
When the man in front of me is finally satisfied with the tall-boy Bud Light in his hand and I roll up to the window, I am equally as indifferent when I see that the woman who is serving today’s beers and slushies and Advil has a mullet. An actual mullet. Her hair swoops up her forehead and down the back of her neck like a big, gray mushroom cloud, and I can smell the twelve packs of Marlboros she has undoubtedly smoked today as soon as she slides the window open.
When I finally have my slushie in hand and Mullet Lady turns around to close the window, I see that she also has a portion of her hair tied in multiple places with rubber-bands to create the perfect redneck rattail. Wow. I drive away chuckling, but I am not astonished. After living in this town for seventeen years, almost nothing can generate that emotion anymore. Not even the gas station across the street with the blinking-arrow sign that reads “Tan Here” fazes me. I tell myself it’s just where I am, and that these things will always be, so I might as well enjoy them.
Where else in the world can you pay to eat lunch in a barn, spend your Friday nights at the dirt track screaming for dinky little cars that do not exceed twenty miles per hour, and your Saturdays riding four-wheelers and dove hunting? I wouldn’t know, seeing as how I’ve never done any of these things, but I imagine that they’re thrilling. Where else do you see more tractors than cars and automatically take the long way home the week of the county fair to avoid the unfathomable traffic? Where else are there weekly goat shows and “hog happenings” and fried chicken and fish bait sold at the same store? Probably way too many places, but you get the point. And if you somehow woke up one day with a severe case of amnesia and you weren’t already sure that you were in the Deep South, the fact that livermush would be the first breakfast item offered to you might attune your inner GPS.
Whenever I hear someone from a different region of the nation (albeit a basically different planet) talk about the outrageous tales of country bumpkins in the South and cow-tipping and drag racing and shopping for new rifles, my inner Yankee screams, “It’s not true! None of it is true!” And then I realize that it is. All of it. Every last thing.
But maybe it’s those extra five minutes to avoid the fair traffic or the sweet, carbonated happiness of a peach slushie that really put things into perspective. Everything I see everyday elicits its own eye-roll and head-shake, but perhaps there’s a sense of home behind all that exasperation. Maybe I should go to a dirt-track race and try to ignore that the cars travel at the speed of rusted old dune-buggies with missing wheels. Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll order livermush after church next Sunday instead of scrambled eggs and pancakes. Maybe I’ll go relax in the gas station tanning bed to de-stress after a long day. And maybe next time I go to the slushie-and-beer-and-chips-and-medicine shack, I might even talk to Mullet Lady. Maybe we’ll be friends. Who knows? I sure don’t, and that’s exactly what keeps me coming back for more.