Me and Damn Yankees

I was born and raised in Texas. I am afraid of scary movies, do not read horror books and believe the only good to be found in celebrating Halloween is candy that I did not have to buy. Being such a scaredy cat was instilled in me when I was very young. I didn’t know what a Yankee was but I was always hearing family and neighbors talk about damning them. Damn was a serious word that little kids learned, very quickly, not to repeat.  I tried using it once, and I have to tell you, one little chaw on Lifebouy soap will burn your tongue and gums for a week and cause you to poot bubbles if you should eat red beans for dinner. In Texas we eat a lot of red beans.

I once heard an older cousin say that the scariest sight in Texas is a Yankee pulling a U-Haul trailer. I was almost thirty years old before I found out that Texas has a law forbidding this practice. Punishment is doled out to Yankee women by teasing their hair and spraying it with so much hair spray they cannot comb it out – they have to wait for it to fall out.  We punish Yankee men by taking away the black socks they wear with their sandals. To make sure they understand how serious we are about having Yankees in Texas, we force a lot of red beans on them and make them eat calf fries. We don’t tell what calf fries are until they are through eating. We also offer them home grown pickles, known more commonly around here as jalapenos. Don’t mess with Texas is more than just a catchy phrase; it’s a serious learning experience.

In my early working years I worked for a manufacturing plant. I started out in accounting and, by accident, ended up in the sales department as a customer service rep. My job was to keep the customer happy by making sure their parts delivered on time and by being a ‘buffer’ between them and the sales people. I always refused to work the East Coast; it was full of the damn Yankees I grew up fearing. I was given a choice one year of taking the East Coast or else. I, very reluctantly, took the East Coast. I was a nervous wreck waiting for that first call. "Wherethehellaremyparts whichhadbetterbeonmydockfirstthingtomorrowmorning,orelse!” I replied, “What? I think we have a bad connection,” and hung up. A person really can sweat bullets. How was I going to do my job if I could not even understand what a Yankee was saying? Damn. My only way out was to be perfectly honest with a Yankee caller. The next time the phone rang I answered and heard the same question, which I interrupted, slowly, with, “Whoa, I am sooo sorry, but I cannot listen this fast. Please slow down.”   There was silence on the other end of the line. It worked. It seems that Yankees have difficulty speaking slowly and listening slow is even harder. Spin some Texan on them and you can put one in a coma. ‘Ah reckon that.ya’ll’s parts were on that UPS truck that tumped over just this side of Macon. Or was it Altanta? Nooo, I am recollecting that it might have been Greensboro, buuuut, if you will kindly give me a few minutes to mosey over to our shipping department, which is waaay at the back of our building, to get the tracking number, I will sashay right back to let ya’ll know if the truck caught fire, too.’ Phone silence. I had unlocked the secret of talking to a Yankee!

Believe it or not, I became fast friends with most of my Yankee contacts. One of them was a no nonsense woman who wore high heels and mink to the office; she was well into her sixties. She invited me to visit New York and to go to the theater. I was not sure if I was ready for New York, yet, or ever. She asked me if I had a fur coat. I told her that I had a brown corduroy car coat with a squirrel collar and she never asked me to visit again. I loved her, though, and eventually did get to meet her when I finally did make it to New York. On my visit I was taken to a genuine NY deli for lunch by our sales rep and one of my favorite customers. They ordered for me. What arrived at the table was about two pounds of the most unappetizing mound of mess that I had ever laid eyes upon. To wash it down was celery soda. Celery soda actually tastes like celery with a fizz kick. I did not understand a reason for celery soda and I did not want to touch the two pound mound of what I was told was chicken liver pate. I honestly told them that I had scraped something off of my shoes before I got on the plane that looked more delectable. I ate a lot of bread and drank my celery soda. When I returned to my office, safely in Texas, my email was overloaded with hundreds of chicken liver pate recipes. Huh, Yankee humor.

I would not trade anything for my experience with real Yankees; it actually perfected my drawl. I never could figure out, though, why they could not pronounce the ‘R’ in the middle of my name, but instead added it at the end; they said Mawtar.

You may not mess with Texas, but the Yankees have a way of coming back and haunting you. It’s a fact…Ted Kennedy was on the news, again, just this morning.