“A tale of life and death. A tale of an excellent journey. A tale of finding out where home really is: with beloved southern folk. The Old and Dusty Road to Alabama is sure to touch your inner redneck soul.”-Buck "Cletus" Woody
April 23rd
Maybelle
I feel like a banjo. Errybody up in these yankee parts have been pickin’ on me real fine lately.
‘Course, it’s probably because none of these nothern folk got a clue how southern gals act. Especially ‘round these Washington parts.
Names Maybelle. My old stompin’ grounds are back in Montgomery, Alabama. I moved up here with my best gal-pal, Pancake. We’d known each other since dirt was new, I tell you what. Though, I’d pick her over dirt any day. She can be a bit careless and bossy sometimes, but I wouldn’t want to be ‘round these parts with anyone else.
We moved up here for what you yankees might call, an education. Both our Pops wanted us up here for a fine education at the Wazzu. Ya know, the place with the burgundy kitty, or somethin’. Well, I’d about had enough of these yankees and these northern parts, I tell you what.
“Pancake, I got somethin’ real important to tell ya.” I says, as she pushes the door open to our red, stuffy dorm room that was a might too small.
“Oh? What’ll it be we’re chattin’ up?” She asks.
I says, “I don’t think we belong here. This ain’t home.”
She stops fiddilin’ with her Tim McGraw poster. “What makes y’all say that?”
“For one thing, there’s indoor plumbin’. That takes away from the home factor right away. It just ain’t right Pancake. I miss it. I miss the wide open spaces to roam, versus the muggy, cramped city slicker space. I miss the smell of the butcher house, just minutes away, versus the smell of Starbucks, or air pollution. I miss the dim witted folk that live so deep in the backwoods they think asphalt is a butt disease, versus the cold, and cynical folk that accept no southern folk unless they know their AB3’S and 12C’s. I don’t feel any good old fashioned southern welcome. I want Alabama, Pancake.”
Pancake gives me a stern, sorrowful look. “Just like that?”
“Just like that.” I says.
“I ain’t gonna let you and your horse Beverly ride alone.” Pancake said.
“I was hopin’ y’all and Rodriguez would come!” Rodriguez being her horse, she agreed to return to Alabama with me.
Being more excited than a wolf in a hen house, I says, “Well don’t just sit there like a knot on a log! Get to packin’!”
We were finally going back to the south. To Montgomery. To our home.
April 29th
Maybelle
The next few days, we were busier than a cat tryin’ to cover up the marble floor he soiled. We was tryin’ to figure out what we could and couldn’t take on our steeds. So many things we cared for, our Paula Deen cookbooks, Pancake’s Tim McGraw poster, and all our Billy Ray Cyrus tracks had to be left behind or sold.
