pass the sooppeans n' cornbread, please!

To set the stage correctly there are a few background items to cover before I can begin sharing my first ron-ism.  The first being that people [at least the ones I've come across so far] in northeast Tennessee are SERIOUS about their food.  I learned very quickly that saying "no, thank you" to a meal of any size, any time of day that is being offered [regardless of your current state of hunger or DIET plans] is highly offensive.  We're talking like a "you may as well have just killed my dog" look that follows the no. Growing up a picky eater in a take it or leave it type home, this came as a strange surprise to me.  Secondly, Ron [of the Ron-isms] LOVES food.  And I do mean love.  Want to know how to cook something [ANYTHING]?  Ask Ron.  Want to know anything about good'ole country home-cookin'?  Ron knows it.  Just ask.  Or don't - he'll make it anyway and offer you some. [and you damned well better try it.]  It's just his giving/sharing nature and of most of the other people in the surrounding area I've come across thus far.  That phrase you heard about "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach" has never been more true with Ron (Ronnie B.)  I would guarantee that. 

It was within the first few weeks of the new year (2011) at the new job.  I had, like most other hopeful Americans, just set a resolution to lose the 10-15 lbs of spare-tire-waist that Thanksgiving and Christmas likes to pile on.  I realllllly  wanted to make it to my goal this time.  Bad.  Little did I know then, what I know now:  this resolution was more than just a typical uphill battle (considering my new place of employment.)  It would be more like a fight to stay at my current weight and hope to God I didn't add too much to what I already had done over the holidays.  When I first started this job I brought my lunch to work with me because I traveled 30 minutes to get there as well as it being cheaper and easier to eat healthy that way.  I was determined to follow through on the resolution this time; so it was salads, fruit and the like.  I would sit and eat with some co-workers to get to know some of the people I would be working with and more often than not be offered random tasty-looking goodness. This is where I first started learning of the deep love of food and offensive nature of word no, whenever it pertained to said food.  And also where my resolution of weight loss started going down the drain.  So that brings us to the first Ron-ism that I encountered at my new job.  Ron, the gracious host of all eating-related things at the RCAM (<-- where I work) dropped by my desk to let me know they had made a dish in the break room and was offering me some of it.  This is where I learned that I was going to have to start tweaking my listening skills because what I currently had wasn't cutting it.  It went a little something like this [and I'll try to get this spelling as close as I can to the way it sounded]:  "you wan' some sooppeans n' cornbread?"  Caught slightly off-guard and needing more time to process, I asked him to repeat himself.  This time, it was phrased as "you like sooppeans n' cornbread?"  I paused, thought realllllly hard about how to break down the phrase and decipher what in the world it could be that he was talking about.  I knew I understood the word cornbread, and yes - it's one of my favorite things, but what in the world was this 'sooppeans' thing he was referring to???   Considering how picky I already am about my food I decided it was safer to say "no, thank you" and risk the "HOW DARE YOU?!?!?" look from him than to get back to the break room only to realize I had accepted an invitation to only God knows what.  I went about my business and waited just a little longer to go eat lunch that day so I wouldn't be put in an even more awkward situation. 
A few more winter weeks go by and guess what's on the menu again?  Yep, the undecipherable sooppeans n' cornbread.  Again I was asked if I'd like to partake and again, I hesitated and declined due to not knowing what in the heck a sooppean was.  Let me pause here where I should remind you of the culture shock that is still going on in my world.  I am working in a facility with machines [that I have NO idea what they are for] with terminology I've never heard of before.  Everything was new (and foreign) and I was trying to take it all in.  Ever heard of the phrase "this new job is like drinking out of a fire hose?"  It means SO MUCH information is being thrown at you all at once that you can only take in what your brain can process at one time.  Well, all of this is going on in my world on a weekly, make that a daily basis and the thought of having to ask one.more.question. [much less a question about food] was just un-thinkable at the time.  So I let it go and moved on.  The sooppeans offers keep coming for a few more winter months before I finally decide it's time.  I HAVE to ask what in the world he is talking about.  "What exactly are you making back there, Ron?  I get that you are saying the word cornbread, and yes- I do like that, but I have no idea what you're putting with it.  And to be honest, I have turned it down every time you've offered it to me because I cannot decipher what it is you're saying."  And then, he finally shared with me [a little slower and a little less thickly accented this time] what the people in this region refer to as "soup beans."  I will not go into a detailed explanation as to what these are - because I am not a bean connoisseur.  I've heard of lima, navy, Bush's baked, yadda yadda.... but soup beans was a new one for me.  This is one I had no interest in and would not be adding to my repertoire.

where it all started:  the infamous soup beans!

The secret was out and a bond was formed between 2 southerners; one with a thick accent (and a love of soup beans) from the hills of east TN... and one from the tourist trap of SC -where in the thousands of restaurants in her home town, not a one served up this delicious dish.

And thus, the ron-isms were born. 

Catching Up On Things. ... I promise all of the posts won't be this long!

This is crazy.  If you would have told me in high school/college that I would EVER voluntarily sit down and write just for the sake of writing/sharing thoughts, I would have looked you dead in the eye and called you a liar.  And I would have meant every syllable of the word.  Alas, many things have changed since those "good ol' days" where I was a procrastinating paper-writer and here I am, voluntarily starting to do just that.  [Still today, just thinking about ALL of those papers I'd refused to start writing until 10pm the night before they were due... makes me shutter!  EEK!]

I wanted to start sharing my experiences 1) because who doesn't  have a blog these days? obvioulsy it's trendy and I'd like to think I'm just fashionably late to the virtual party and 2) I have some genuinely funny thoughts and experiences I think other people might enjoy wasting their time reading! :)  I guess we can let you be the judge of that since nobody is forcing you to read this anyway.

I'll try to catch you up to speed on how I got where I currently am today as best I can, but let's just agree that this story starts the day I said "I do" to my best friend.  We'll lovingly refer to him in this blog as Mr. W, since I currently have no idea how to set the privacy on this thing, or if that is even possible.  Mr. W and I were hitched in October of 2010 [and in my humble, yet very biased opinion, it was the single best day of ALL TIME.]  It was a USC Gamecock by-week in Columbia [the only way we were getting married in the fall]and may have been the nicest [weather] day that town has ever seen.  It was a 72 degree fall day [what?? that NEVER happens in Columbia ] and if I think hard enough about it I can still feel the sun on my face while we were taking pictures in front of the church before the ceremony.  **sigh**

me and my sweet dad

making it official with Mr. W!

Mr. W and I met in and were living in Columbia, SC until right before the wedding when Mr. W got a promotion and then we headed off to east TN where he could continue climbing the ladder.   But a little background on me before we get into that is that I was raised on the sandy shores of Myrtle Beach.  And while many in the surrounding area would refer to that dot on the map as the "Redneck Riviera", "Dyrtle Myrtle", so on and so forth, you get the point - most of the "red" stuff is the tourism industry that floods the beach every summer.  I would spend as much of my summer as possible working on that golden tan and enjoying the sound of the waves crashing as I napped under the sun.  And whenever it got too hot, dipping into a nearby hotel pool to cool off to pretend I was on vacation too, was the perfect solution.  To be cliche'; I never knew how good I had it until I didn't have it anymore.  College, and other life circumstances eventually moved me away from the Atlantic coast inland a few hours to Columbia.  Yet even in Columbia, a day-long beach trip was not out of the question if we were feeling the need to have the sand between our toes. 

a typical day in the life of my younger self

 Mr. W has a great job and a great career going for him and his promotion fell right in line with his long-term goals.  His company [we'll refer to it as the Big E], is headquarted in northeast TN so we packed up and moved even farther away from the beaches into the mountains of TN.  

obviously this is taken looking forward, not looking back

We got to TN and let's just say "culture shock" would be the understatement of my lifetime.  Here I am a beach worshipping, sand-between-my-toes FANATIC, looking around and thinking what in the world have I gotten myself into???  Upon first arrival we rented the newest/nicest apartment in the biggest town of the tri-city area.  While the apartment complex itself was very nice, it was situated next to a cow pasture with rolling hills and hay bales - a daily reminder that "we weren't in Kansas anymore, Toto."  [Kansas obviously being my beloved SC.]  Soon after Mr. W and I returned from an AMAZING honeymoon in Mexico (I still dream of being back there and wish that week could have lasted all year) it would turn to fall, and my plans of soaking up rays by the pool would soon be exchanged for thank-you-note writing [from the wedding gifts] and job hunting. 

The first of the year rolled around and I had finally found a place to work at an area community college.  It's a training facility for people that want to learn manufacturing trades (and if you're anything like me, you still don't know what all that entails.)  Quick tutorial: welding, electrical stuff, and a bunch of other fancy-looking machinery that I don't DARE mess with for fear of losing limbs.  

Now, I know what you are thinking.  What in the world are you [the girlie girl who likes stilettos and make-up] doing in a job like that?  A lot of days I ask myself the same thing, but the short story of it is that I work up front coordinating lab schedules and running summer camps [<-- again, are we sure that's a good fit??] amoungst various other things.  There are about 10 full time faculty members where I work and all but one of them is from a closely surrounding area, making me somewhat of a stand-out when it comes to understanding the lingo.  That brings me to within the last year, somewhat anyway, and why I chose to write this blog.  In working with these 'folk', one in particular, I have laughed more times than I can count at how very DIFFERENT accents and little sayings can be: all depending on where you came from.

My plan is to capture and share as many of these "Ron-ism" phrases and stories as possible and to be clear it is NOT meant to be taken as poking fun or laughing at the co-workers expense.  It is just my way of sharing the story of a beach girl 'finding her way' [if you will] in the mountains of NE TN. 

Thanks for reading!