The Modern Southern Gentlemen

At the sink a black man soaps up his hands.  He wears a trucker’s cap that matches his blue button-up t-shirt.  It could be a mechanic’s shirt except for the keep of it—well starched, creased, and spotless.  He wears jeans as well, a light fade that’s out of style, but they fit well.  Again, they are well kept and spotless.  The man soaps up while staring at nothing, but his eyes suggest something hard, even in this moment where no thought crosses the mind.

Beside him and to his left is a hispanic man drying his hands.  He wears his hair slightly long and curly—not in a way that suggests styling, but more of an efficient cut that’s grown out over time.  His goatee and thin mustache, however, look like they’ve seen scissors or a trimmer in the past couple of weeks.  Other than the facial hair, he’s clean shaven.  He wears a multicolor, oversized polo shirt that is primarily yellow.  It advertises the colors that many of the freshly transitioned Hispanic population wear–greens, yellow, red, and white.  An eyesore to most, but quite popular to others.  This particular mix could even be considered tame.  The shirt looks well washed but vibrant and meticulously pressed, as do the dark blue jeans he wears to match.  These jeans are also well fitting–not too baggy, not too tight, easy to move in. While he dries his hands he stares off, but his eyes seem slightly more focused and lively.  Whatever he’s thinking about seems to have his attention, and perhaps even a bit of heart, but the eyes don’t touch the corners of his mouth, set in a stoic downward turn.

As these men wash and dry in the Golden Corral bathroom, they navigate the tight quarters in silence.  There’s a natural conveyor belt of activity that occurs in such a place, a dance of position that eventually leads to you walking out the door.  These two men—who may not even speak the same language—move around each other within the narrow corridor without a word expressed to each other.  Yet there’s clearly enough respect between them to do so without concern.  In other places men like these could easily bump shoulders and look up with a glare, which in and of itself could be enough to ignite a fight.  Yet these two move with an air of respect.

Thirty seconds from now, when they’ve walked out the door and gone back to their tables, they will have completely forgotten about the bathroom, letting themselves sink back into the flow of their lives.  And yet, as I finish the cycle they began, I have to wonder.

I walk out of the bathroom with eyes to the wide room, looking for either of these men.  The effort is wasted–Golden Corrals are massive and regularly full of people.  I can’t pinpoint either of the men.  As I walk back to my seat the whole scene begins to dim and my attention returns to my own life.  Still, something about the entire moment drones on in the back of my mind, like a picture being developed in a dark room.  It’s only hours later that I can see the details of the picture.

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The South has changed dramatically just in my lifetime.  I grew up in a tiny town buried in the forgotten south of a Southern state.  Southern towns tend to move through time slowly, and especially so when I was growing up.  Southern towns aren’t large, so there aren’t a bunch of people bumping into each other.  That lack of forced community means there’s less room for new ideas and less need for innovation.  There’s no major financial base to market to, so the latest items get sold in Southern towns right before they get sold overseas.  News travels slowly, with only the biggest stories making same day news—at least, that was before the internet.  Even then, why should anything but the big national stories matter?  It doesn’t trickle down to the Southern town.  The only people that could bring the freshness of the times to a Southern town are the children that leave and decide to come back, all educated and indoctrinated into big city life, but returning to home with all they have learned.  That almost never happens.

Time moves slowly in the South.  When I grew up the eighties were fighting with the fifties for real estate in downtown.  The few night clubs in town were a mix of metalheads playing pool in one bar while country boys danced with their girls to Waylon Jennings in another.  The furniture store on the corner–private, and the biggest in town–displayed flower print couches from the seventies in the window alongside a black and white stripe print chair considered to be tres chic.  Next door was a men’s clothing store—also locally owned—showcasing the finest in men’s suits, paired with hats and tie pins that men stopped wearing twenty years ago.

The families walking the streets were no different.  Kids were trying to break free from the stagnant small town life and futures working the jobs their parents worked.  The hair was tall, the clothes rebellious, the attitude strong.  The parents were infuriated at the style, so radical from their own, seeing no problem with the jobs they worked at the local factory or courthouse.  The work was steady, the benefits good, and their job security guaranteed for a lifetime.

And yet, no matter the discrepancies between generations, they stood together in the amber of small town life.  The types of jobs never changed.  The politics never changed.  The biggest race issues were between black and white, especially poor black and poor white, which was most of the town.  The threatened conflicts were explosive, but most involved fist fights, with an occasional knife or pool cue involved.  Guns made for a major town threat, broadcast in the local and regional paper—the primary news source, other than your aunt’s pinochle group.

One of the things that didn’t change between these generations was the ethos of the Southern Gentleman.  The concept had somewhat eroded with the onset of the sixties—damn hippies—but in towns like mine men still thought of themselves as gentlemen.  It wasn’t this goal that was set ahead of them, with heroes and milestones.  It was simply a way of life.  Men opened doors, took off their hats in houses, and treated each other with respect.  You could argue, but you didn’t let the women get involved.  You could fight, but you didn’t draw a weapon unless you were drawn on.  You did your job well and got paid well for it.  You came home to a home cooked meal more often than not, and you took care of your family.  In the eighties small towns like mine felt the friction of faster moving times, but the momentum of history carried it on regardless.  Somewhere along the way, things changed.

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The South is a coal mine.   The South is a tobacco field.  The South provides, giving its best for use all over, decade after decade.  And, eventually, the South wore out.   The mine ran dry.  The field became dust.

The South was a 34 Ford pickup.  In its time it was both utilitarian and a hot rod.  Then it became obsolete.  By the time the millennium turned, it was a rusting wreck the family forgot about.

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As a late twenty I made my requisite pilgrimage to the old homestead, as is required of young Southern men.  When you’re in college it’s acceptable for the family to come to you-after all, if you’re at a good school on the Southern standard, the parents can score good football or basketball tickets.  But when you’re settled and working, you go to the parents.  I would drive to mine and spend time at home, talking and helping out with household chores.  When the lulls eventually hit in conversation and the work was done, the family would pile up in whatever family sized vehicle available and head into town.

There’s nothing like the shock of returning to your roots and seeing them rotted.  My home town, when I returned to it, hadn’t changed—it had grown hollow.  The people walking the streets were the same people, but older and more feeble.  The cars were smaller, older, and in poorer repair.  Many of the most prosperous local businesses were closed down, their buildings left vacant, or sold out to tiny businesses struggling to make it.  The old shops were replaced by big chain stores, usually with the lowest end products.   The old houses owned by the richest were still intact, with big American luxury cars in their driveways, but no signs of the smaller cars that would signify children.

In the place of those children were new people.  Migrants moved into town.  In place of the old restaurants were new Chinese and Mexican restaurants.  When I got my burger at the drive through, a Latino woman of some thirty years gave it to me instead of a greasy faced teenager.  Many of the businesses formerly run by locals had been given up to people from other countries.  It wasn’t just a matter of the type of work, as the media says.   For every black, Latin, or Asian gas station attendant, there was a local.  Same for mechanics, gardeners, and construction workers.  There was also the fact that there weren’t as many people around to work the jobs.  Someone had to.

Crime was up.  Drugs were flowing through town–like many, it sat on the crossroads of a couple of highways, making it a perfect stop for traffickers.  Local police weren’t equipped to handle it, operating on the tax base of a smaller town.  Murders were more common.  Neighborhoods that were once luxury neighborhoods of town were run down, old, and had a very different set of people living in them.

Change has never been welcome in the South.  It’s hard to say why, really, and the lack of reason opens the door for a lot of critique.  Some say it’s because Southerners are traditionalists by nature, working traditional jobs and living conservative lives.  Some say it’s an inherent laziness to Southern people.  Needless to say, the most popular rationale is that Southern people are stupid.  All you have to do is look at any popular joke that involves Southerners and see the joke in motion.

As a Southerner who has lived in the South for the majority of his life, I can give you a different reason—change, for the South, hasn’t been positive.  The South was, for a long time, the breadbasket of America.  The profits made on the backs of slaves made the South rich.  After the Civil War the South not only had its labor force stripped away, debts to pay, cities to rebuild, and a generation to replace.

Just when the South seemed to regain its groove, war hit again.  Since the South has historically supplied more soldiers than any other place in the country, it was left with another generation to replace.  After that, desegregation hit.  Then modern farming techniques eliminated the need for most farmers.  Then cheaper labor took away the factories.

No, change in the South isn’t good.

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I’ve caught up with many of my friends from home on Facebook.  Many live in the same urban area I do, some in cities across the state.  Some of the best and brightest have moved to New York, Atlanta, San Francisco, and other, more expensive zip codes.  Most of us talk about home and the memories of high school, and then drop out of touch.  Most of us rarely, if ever, go back.  We visit parents if they’re still there, we go home for Easter or Christmas, and we return to our own homes.

I still make the pilgrimage because I can.  I was raised more traditionally than most, so I go home like a good son.  My mother, stepdad, and I go to Golden Corral for Sunday dinners when Mom doesn’t feel like cooking—which, to her credit, isn’t often.  I ride into town with them, talking about high school days, and look around at the rusted wreck.

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The image of the men in that bathroom kept coming into my mind, day after day.  Something about the look in the eye, the fall of the clothes, the way they carried themselves kept repeating on me.  Something was familiar.  And just like a picture pulled out of the development bath, the full power of the image struck me.  These were the modern Southern gentlemen.  Somewhere, somehow, the new people that had moved into the South picked up more than the jobs.  These men carried themselves with dignity and respect.  They didn’t have the money from pensioned jobs, nor did they have the stark suits sold in the old store front.  But they took care of what they had and wore it with class.  They worked their jobs with quality, and carried themselves like it.  Their eyes were the eyes of the responsible ones.  Dinner at Golden Corral was Sunday dinner for them, too.  They would go home to different kinds of families, but the roots of me recognized them as my own.  Somewhere along the way someone went out to the rusted wreck and started patching her up.

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