From the Hattiesburg American, a look at The South of Robert St. John--

While channel-surfing on the idiot box the other day, I came across another one of those clichéd programs about the South. These supposed Southerners were talking about eating a possum.

As long as I have lived in the South, I have never eaten a possum. No one I know has ever eaten a possum. I have never been to anyone's house who served possum. I have never seen possum offered on a restaurant menu and I have never seen possum in the frozen meat section of a grocery store.

I have, however, seen possums running through the woods. And I have seen a few possums (who weren't good runners) in the middle of the road.

In the South, we might eat strange foods, but possum isn't one of them.

As far as Hollywood is concerned, the South is still one big hot and humid region full of stereotypes and clichés (they got the humidity part right). We are either Big-Daddy-sitting-on-the-front-porch-in-a-seersucker-suit, sweating and fanning while drinking mint juleps beside a scratching dog - or - the poor-barefooted-child-in-tattered-clothes, walking down a dusty-dirt road beside a scratching dog. There is no middle ground. Most of the time, we are either stupid or racist or both.

A year ago I wrote a column titled "My South." In light of yesterday's possum experience, I would like to add to the list of things that make up my South. The South of movies and TV, the Hollywood South, is not my South. [...]

Now, go read the list--it's a keeper.

(I will say, though, that there still are some folks who do eat possum. Some out of necessity (after all, it did put protein on the table for more than one Depression family), and then there are other daft individuals who just like the greasy gamey-ness of it. Eww.)

And then there's this from the Toledo (OH) Blade on a bunch of eggheads who study the stately and dignified possum walk as a clue to animal development--

By JENNI LAIDMAN
BLADE SCIENCE WRITER

ATHENS, Ohio - Somewhere in the hills of southeast Ohio, a trio of opossums ask themselves: "What in the world was that all about?"

One day, there was nothing more on their little brains than food, sex, and maybe the need to avoid becoming road pizza. The next thing they knew, some self-appointed personal trainer whisked them into a gym, set them on a treadmill, and took pictures of them running that left nothing to the imagination - they didn’t even have their skin on. The pictures were video X-rays.

"They run for raisins, but they usually just run for a little box they think is home,’’ said Dr. Stephen Reilly, the Ohio University professor who borrowed the critters from the wild for a few weeks.[...]

And as part of my upcoming political campaign, I intend to print buttons and bumper stickers reading "Will Run for Raisins!"

(Interesting too about the box deal--I do that every afternoon on the way home.)

This concludes this test of the Emergency Possumcast System.
posted by Terry at 12:14:00 PM