Southern hospitality

On my plane ride to move to Mississippi in June, I sat next to a native southerner. He told me of the one time he was in Boston for a conference, the great food, the beautiful Common. The one part he said he didn’t like was the rude drivers. “They cut you off, flip you off……no one would ever do that in the South,” he told me. “‘Cause everyone’s armed and dangerous, never know when someone’ll pull out a gun.” “Well, there’s one way to look at southern hospitality,” I replied.

Although I did enjoy the man’s interesting point, I have found an impressive amount of truly heartfelt southern hospitality. My first job when I got down here was building office space at Hope Haven. The founder of Hope Haven and his wife invited us all to their home for lunch and a little pool party one weekend. Just last weekend, Karen, who works at Hope Haven, had us over to her house for dinner. Evelina, the woman who runs the local newspaper, took us out to dinner the other night and keeps us up-to-date on town events.

Then there are Ron and Rosie who live down the street from us. We happened to meet Ron by chance a few weeks ago and since then they have taken us in. A couple Tuesdays ago they invited us to their home for a home-cooked fried shrimp dinner – I’d never tried shrimp and to my surprise I actually like it! The next week, though only Jen and I were around, they took us out to dinner and showed us their new house which is close to being finished. When Ron found out Jen likes to play golf, he even offered to try to find her a sponsor so she could play on his team in an upcoming golf tournament which benefits the Fire Department and offered to share his clubs.

While the free food is much appreciated amid Salvation Army frozen dinners and Katrina Kitchen meals, the hospitality and connection to where we’re living is what I really love. Getting to know these people, knowing we’re welcomed into the community and really starting to feel a part of it, instead of just people who are just staying there, is awesome. I can’t thank them enough for all they’ve done for us!

While we were painting the pharmacy the other day, a woman pulled her car over from the busy street and asked us if she could buy us cokes or anything as a thank you for our work. She didn’t work at the pharmacy; she may not even use this pharmacy. But the overflow of hospitality is inspiring. There’s a lot of negative stuff that has and maybe still is going on down here – people not receiving the help they need. But seeing how positive and genuinely warm-hearted so many people are is just incredible.

Terry, Ann, Karen and Rosie aren’t actually from the South. So either southern hospitality has rubbed off on them, or people are just nice wherever you are. But one way or another, whatever people’s motivations, I’m pretty sure none of it is out of fear as the man on the plane had joked.