Hooters, mashed potatoes, and peas

One of the reasons that we came to Allatoona Lake and Cooper Furnace to volunteer, is that my ‘Best Man’, Doug Heaton, lives in Marietta, just southeast of here. I want to clearly specify “one of the reasons”, because he has a big enough head about being the ‘best man’ already, I don’t want to make it worse.

We got together one night to have a drink and maybe watch a little of the NIT basketball tournament and the OSU Buckeyes who were playing that night. There are lots of choices here but we choose Hooters, mostly because Kat said, “why don’t you try Hooters” because she knew I had never been. I didn’t know what to expect, but, I can’t say that I was really surprised to find what we found. We got a table to watch the game and I was checking ‘things’ out (BG). There were the waitresses who were easy to look at, and the customers who appeared in every way to be from Georgia, mostly younger ‘good ole boys’ with a few ‘red necks’ thrown in for balance. Pretty much just your regular ‘mashed potatoes and peas’ crowd. So, I fit right in; my kind of crowd. I know that you have to serve ‘mashed potatoes and peas’ together, or how else you gonna’ corner those peas and get them on the fork? There may have been a few ‘peas on the knife’ people, but this is a more sophisticated part of Georgia. Anyway I ordered a beer and Doug ordered a white wine. Now here it gets a little humorous. Remember, this is Georgia. It’s relatively close to Atlanta and the metropolitan airs of the big city are encroaching, but then this was Hooters too. There’s probably not much wine served here yet. So the waitress comes back with an apology. She knows they have another wine glass somewhere “because we have two and only one of them is in use. I’ll go look again, but if I can’t find one, is a regular glass OK?” Now I maintained my composure and took it for what its worth, inside and out. Doug handled it mostly OK on the outside but on the inside it’s just another reason for him to bemoan living in the south and it showed through a little. But “hey’, I guess it’s not for everyone. I know there are lots of folks (strike that, here I should use the word people. OK, so) people, who have, at times, considerable disdain for the south. Doug has some of that! I don’t! I use the words like ‘folks’, I like grits, love Southern sweet tea, watch NASCAR, and when I’ve been here a while I begin to say ‘ya’ll’. Maybe it’s just a different exposure or maybe it’s because I know a lady, who is a relative, named Phyllis? Anyway, Doug took it a little different than I. We both had a good laugh, heck, were both still laughing. But for Doug it’s another reason to move back to Columbus or Las Vegas or anywhere out of the south. I guess I’d rather remember the phrase, “When in Rome,……” But then before I criticize too much I have to remember that I’m the one who asks for a beer at a wine tasting event while all the while bemoaning those %^@&#* wine snobs!


Oh, and Doug did get his white wine but it was in a water glass. Ahhh the South! Gimme’ a Bud! On second thought, make it a Newcastle Brown ale! Oops! Well; we all have our little prejudices don’t we?