You just leave this long haired country boy alone

Despite the new carpet and some well selected pendant lights from Lowe’s, the Five Points Restaurant is still the kind of place that I would choose to stop in to on the way to take Taylor’s boat down to the lake for the day (a day sure to involve more Sun Drop and Zingers than Cous Cous and Tabouleh.)  DB and I met up for breakfast there on Friday, and despite the waitresses temerity to ask if he wanted baked or country ham, we are likely to return on the kind of day that we feel inclined to discuss NASCAR and the Southeastern Conference.

I’m not terribly involved with or knowledgeble about either stock car racing or collegiate football and we did not really discuss them but the two feel like a shared birthright between myself, a native of Williamson County, and DB, a native of Pickens County.  There are some easy targets in the subjects above and there are some easy targets in the South in general.  I’m not terribly interested in defending the sweet tea and fried chicken that so many people castigate as symbolic of the ignorant gluttony of our region.  First of all, the sweet tea and fried chicken they got at some fast food outlet in a truck stop doesn’t count.  Second, I rarely drink tea at all, mostly chai when I do, and I’m a vegetarian.  But I can appreciate the beauty that is a well served glass of tea or a finely fried breast of chicken.

I can also appreciate someone who is willing to punch you in the mouth for running these things down.  There is an old story about Bonnie Raitt cold-clocking Elvis Costello for hurling racial epithets in the direction of Ray Charles.  It wasn’t really Bonnie Raitt, it was Bonnie Bramlett (of Bonnie and Delany, whoever the hell they were.)  In fact, it was Bramlett and all of Stephen Stills’ band who mopped up the floor with Costello and the Attractions in a Holiday Inn in Columbus, Ohio.  Good for them.  I’m not a fighting man, but when some jerk from England makes his fortune on the back of one of the most famous entertainers in the world and then insults the musical tradition that spawned that entertainer, he should be punched in the mouth.