One morning, I made pancakes for breakfast, and the kids and I ate them. That night, I made biscuits for dinner, and as I was rolling them out, I picked out a tiny, crescent-shaped bit from the dough…and then another one, and another one… and threw the dough away.  All except for a sample, that I took to our doctor.

"It's weevils," he said.  "Y'all don't know a weevil when you see one?"

I was horrified.  "We ate weevils for breakfast?"

"Were they cooked?" he asked.  "Well then, you're okay.  You Yankees get upset about every little thing." And, he thought we were sissies. When my husband took our oldest child in to clean a wound made by a having a dart stuck in his leg, I got a call from him.

"Don't evah send him in here again," he said. "Your husband fainted, and we had to spend 15 minutes bringin' him around."

Dr. Lescroix said Yankees also got upset when their kids got pin worms, impetigo, and infections caused by the fungus, slugs, lizards, and toads that lived among us.  And the fire ants that left nasty pimples on my babies' tiny legs that I got used to, but which appalled my mother when I brought my leper-like children home to visit.

Mosquitoes were as big as butterflies and far more prevalent.  It was a hostile climate for Yankees. Dogs, unless they were already bald, got mange.

Dr. L was also un-phased by the horror of living with cockroaches (more correctly Palmetto bugs) that were as large and ugly as armadillos.

The only ailment Yankees were not allowed to get was the one I most wanted to have: the vapors. Of course they didn't still call it that, and it covered more territory than the vapors, which mainly referred to alcohol-related malaise, or genuine mental illness.

"Mama has taken to the bed," said nine-year-old Whit when I called my best friend Mazie. (Whitfield was named for his great-grandfather on his mother's side, who had been governor of Mississippi a while back — 100 years back, but time flies).

"Well, tell her I need to talk to her."

"She is in the bed," he repeated, clearly upholding some inviolable standard.

"Is she sick?"

"No," he said forlornly, at a loss as to how to make me understand this most basic concept.

I tried this on my children several times, with no luck. They were unmoved. You have to be born to it.

She Was Not Herself

Everything in Mississippi was a new experience. There were so many delicious incongruities, so many reversals of everything I had ever learned, so many exotic experiences, but they weren't like the scenes I remembered from "The Long Hot Summer," or "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." If it takes place in a plantation mansion, in color, it's glamorous; on my street in the land of tract houses, the same drama in black and white was merely unpleasant.

The South was, and maybe still is, the last un-homogenized culture, except for the survivalists in Wyoming, and the old men who start cults so they can rape children in the name of religion.

I was rushed to the hospital during a hurricane, in a friend's pickup truck complete with gun rack, and in awful pain. No medication would be given until they were able to diagnose it.

"Blanche" was in the next bed — and she was having a "spell." She spent the night swatting away snakes and other manifestations of the DT's and begging her assembled family members (who are these people?) to keep this from Fred.

"Don't tell Fred, don't tell Fred," she sputtered periodically. It went on and on and on, all through the very long night.

The next morning, the curtain between us was pulled back, revealing a large woman of about 50, with hair teased up to resemble yellow cotton candy, only flat as a board in back, where it had been pressed flat against the pillow. The remnants of three pounds of make-up were smeared across her face, and her mascara had made vampire circles around her eyes.

She was "herself" again; imperial and in control, but still the southern belle. She waved a hand with blood red, dagger-like nails in my direction.

"Hon," she said, "Hon, would you make a few calls for me?" she said, gesturing at the phone between us.

"I am a patient. A sick person. You need to call a nurse."

Undeterred, she asked if I would get the nurse for her, and also take away "this nasty bed pan." Fred is coming and she needs to freshen up.

I eased out of bed, holding my IV bag, and went to her bedside.

"If you don't leave me alone, when Fred gets here, I am going to tell him all about your DTs last night. Everything."

Momentary pause, while she reconnoiters.

"Well then darlin'," she drawled, "could you at least hand me my make-up case?"