The moist, suffocating heat is the most obvious but hardly the largest adjustment in returning to our South Georgia island after two weeks in the Northeast.
I'm not saying one place is better than the other, both have their strengths and weaknesses. But some things simply jar my Yankee sensibilities (a phrase accepted locally as an oxymoron). In just the last three days I've noticed the following things that I need to believe would not occur in Western New York:
- an editorial in the local paper about how it is never appropriate to use your car horn on the island. (Apparently the woman who sat at the greenlight talking on her cellphone and doing her make-up yesterday as five cars waited was simply exercising her God-given rights. And by the way, everyone exercises here and most have a direct line to God).
- the only bumper stickers are for Bush (and more and more of them identify the driver as a member of his prayer team).
- battered and fried pickles.
- vicious, marauding gnats.
And finally, a well dressed man sitting in the gentlemen's chair as his wife attacked the sale at Talbot's yesterday. This could have occured anywhere, but this particular gentleman was holding the woman's full-grown, kitten-sized dog -- combing the animal's hair and tying little bows.
I can't see a Buffalo guy doing such a thing... at least not one with living relatives.



Copyright 2004 Judi Griggs