Today I saw living history. Not in a settler’s museum, where spectacled ladies with their hair pulled into prim buns show gawking tourists the lost arts of spinning and bread making. This was real history, living and breathing, wrapped around the bones of a quiet, southern man. I spied him at a local convenience store. I had stopped for gas and a tenderloin biscuit. He had dropped in for a pack of smokes. Dressed in the all-white uniform of a painter, he was, for the most part, unremarkable. It was his hair that caught my attention, hair the color of fire. As we stood in line to pay for our purchases, I studied him with a sideways glance. His arms were flecked in white paint and cinnamon freckles. His hands were work-hard; nails dirty from the toil of the day. But it wasn’t in his work-stained clothes that history shone. I found it in his face. He had a noble face, like the ancient Kings of Ireland.
In that moment, I crossed thousands of miles of ocean, crossed thousands of years past to glimpse the wild clans of Celts who herded cattle and fought passionate, bloody battles for control of the British Isles. It was those same people who came, a millennium later, to settle the Southeastern United States. Taking one look at our rolling hills, they saw a twin to the green land that they had left behind, so they put down fresh roots along the spine of the Appalachian Mountains.
They were a musical folk, bringing their fiddles and mandolins across the wide ocean to reel and jig their way into a new style of music. And it was there that they left their mark. We hear them to this day, in our music . . .in reeling bluegrass fiddles, in the grim and sorrowful ballads of Appalachian Mountain music. We can still see their bloodlines in the pale skin and firebrand hair of some of our southern children.
Today I saw living history. Not in a regiment of immaculately uniformed soldiers marching off to choreographed death and glory. This was real history residing beneath the skin of a busy southern woman. I saw her at a soul-food café. She was the owner, knocking out blue-plate specials during lunch rush. I sat at the counter, watching her work. Wielding her slotted spoon like a sorcerer’s wand, she served up heaping helpings of squash casserole and steaming collards. Oven doors flew open, filling the air with the down-home smell of cornbread and biscuits.
She stopped for a moment to rest, wiping the Martha White flour off her large, ebony hands. And although her kitchen’s mouthwatering charms spoke of a rich heritage of southern cooking, it didn’t hold a candle to the history that I saw in her broad, beautiful face. It was as dark as the rich, fertile soil that lay beneath a zebra-trod Savannah. Her delicate, almond shaped eyes spoke of an ancient land, of Africa, the cradle of human existence.
Again I crossed time and tides to glimpse foreign lands. I saw nations of proud people who sired the very first civilizations. They also came to our verdant, southern land, but they didn’t follow their own dreams. They came here to toil for others. And for generations, southeastern agriculture and industry prospered from their forced labor. Eventually, when the shameful system of slavery that forced them here came to an end, they stayed on and continued to contribute to the future of our region.
It was these and other races of people who came together to become the melting pot of the old south. They lived and died here, spilling blood and tears into our stubborn, red clay. Victory and defeat found them, hunger and plenty made them who they were. And together they became the people of the south. When, as a region, we look into our social mirror, we see that our culture has evolved from them.
Webster’s New World Dictionary defines history as “what has happened in the life or development of a people, country, or institution.” Looking backwards shows us that. But what about things to come? Lately new folks have made this place their home. We’ve welcomed new races, new creeds. North from Canada, south from Mexico, from the Far East and the Wild West they flock here, bringing their own broad dreams to our green land. What strengths do they contribute to our culture? What new traditions will they add to our southern way of life? And what will we give them in return?
Different winds brought us here. . . brought our ancestors here. Winds in sails, winds pushing behind wagons, winds under the wings of flying ships. We come from different bloodlines, different cultures, and hold different truths to be self-evident. But what we all have in common is our enduring love for this fertile place. And together we will make new history. . . the history of the New South.
Previously published in the Times-Georgian.
Mimi Gentry can be read every Thursday in the Times-Georgian.