Hostess Eliza prepared sections for us to read from a treatise on southern cuisine, and two of us were moved to tears reading aloud from our sections. She saved the black-eyed pea chili paragraph for me, and Papa John was overwhelmingly present.
Typical to my San Franciscan experience, there are people I love and adore but manage to see only at gatherings such as this one, and it was wonderful to reconnect with my Nashville kin. Including childhood friends such as Genny and E'dog, and "adult" friends Eli and Rosana.
Eli has been working on a book about the Civil War, and was invited to give a talk on the war and the modern southern experience.
Although not once did he refer to the Civil War with that lovely euphemism I had heard invoked by some of my grandmother's generation: the recent unpleasantness. Although some days I am partial to the war of northern aggression, despite my being a somewhat strict federalist. His talk too made me misty eyed, and again I felt my southern historian father very much within me.
It was educational and emotional but wonderfully funny too. When Eli got to the part of the depiction of southern life in the movies, especially recent ones such as The Help, he spoke that while others remark of it, "Isn't that quaint." we are all too familiar with it and remark, "That was my childhood." Or as I added, "That was my Thursday."
When Eliza and Nina spoke, Eliza honored the architect of the ranch, who was present— and when his father in Alabama heard he was attending a southerner's supper sent him a pair of overalls—and noted that as a southerner he understood when she asked that the house feature a long, long front porch for gathering and sitting.
There is nothing about this home that is not both striking in a natural beauty, and also entirely welcoming to the heart and soul. Not unlike the Brown girls themselves (although I am sure they would hate being referred to as "girls." The southerner in me means nothing but affection and no diminution.).
We were asked to pick a name tag with our southern state on it and mark where we were from not only on a tag, but also on the map. The non-southern spouses made do.
I took a few liberties with the map, adding an arrow to the northerners indicating "carpetbaggers," and warning that everywhere west of the Mississippi, "Here there be dragons."
Mother Brown, Betty, passed away last year as did my father, and both from the same somewhat rare form of Parkinson's. Betty was an avid gardener (and a fellow Titan of Nashville) and I believe Eliza has honored her legacy with the beautiful gardens surrounding the home, and the natural walkway which winds through a lavender grove and other indigenous plants on your way up to the house.
Also impressive were the zipline and zipline stand in the front yard, and the treehouse, complete with drawplank, designed for the extended family of kids.
It was the little details that amused me most. I arrived in a white linen suit just this side of Col. Sanders. Genny dressed her youngest in a Nashville Guitars t-shirt and his favorite toddler cowboy boots.
And on the satellite feed in the small tv room, The Andy Griffith Show.
As a final clever bit of hosting, Eliza and Nina invited us to bring something southern to share instead of hostess gifts. If you brought something to the gift table, you got to take something. I brought up an unworn t-shirt from the now gone Davis-Kidd Booksellers, which was greatly appreciated by the Memphis contingent as well as the Nashvillians, and a half a dozen bars of Big'Mo's, which I still think is funny. Other's contributions included such treasures as commemorative cups from the Kentucky Derby and biscuit mix from The Loveless Motel.
All the war around, an incredibly sweet afternoon in the country. Both kinds of country, and both kinds of sweet. Southerners know how to cook.
Coconut cake, caramel cake, and pecan pie.
Amen.
