How to Scare a Southerner (at Halloween and Otherwise)
Southerners are, let’s face it: a unique breed. We are not scared by your usual ghosts, goblins, spirits, and spooks. After all, most of our homes are built on old battlegrounds and/or are most certainly haunted, and so we have learned to live with such (I know I threaten to haunt my husband after my death on a daily basis, and it is met with either an eye roll or a laugh, but never even a smidge of fear, HMPH). With Halloween just around the corner, if you want to frighten someone of a Southern heritage, you’re going to have to think out of the box a bit, but rest assured, it can be done. Unconventional as they might be, there are plenty of things that scare the bejeezus out of us Southern folk.
The first way to strike ever-loving fear into the heart of any true Southerner is to serve us unsweet tea. The shock that comes from that non-elixir when it touches our taste buds (much less our soul) cannot be matched by crypt creature or night terror, I assure you. Down here, we assume all tea is sweet tea, pure and simple. Why would anyone drink anything else? To lift a glass—or better yet, mason jar—to one’s lips and discover otherwise is pure revulsion. It makes a Southerner’s skin crawl in a way that no amount of bloody, horror movie gore could possibly accomplish. Sweet tea is the table wine of the South. Unsweet tea is sent from the devil as a torment.
I have to assume the only reason you would make this without sugar is as a trick. Definitely not a treat.
While we are on the subject of our delicate and refined Southern palates, the way to our hearts down South (and likely to our most primal sense of fear) is no doubt through food. If you want to truly elicit screams of horror, not just at Halloween but any time, simply tell a Southerner that this much talked about supply chain crisis has affected our beloved Duke’s mayonnaise. Then cover your ears because the wailing and gnashing of teeth will be at decibels hard to tolerate, I guarantee it. We don’t just love this condiment, we revere it. I’ll never forget my friend Chele half whispering to me one day: “My mama does the weirdest thing. You are going to know we are crazy when I tell you this. She puts Duke’s mayonnaise on pears.”
“Oh yes! And then tops that with some shredded cheddar cheese?”
“Yes!” She squealed in shock, awe, and equal parts disgust and delight. “How on earth did you know that? Other people do that, too?”
“My mother has done that for years, and she calls the thing pear SALAD. Salad! It’s canned fruit with mayonnaise and cheese. Only in the South.” I told her.
Of course, we like a dollop of good, creamy mayonnaise on top of our congealed Jell-O salads, too. This is a holiday side dish served atop a frilly lettuce leaf on a crystal salad plate, and has been a staple at my family’s table as long as my memory goes back. And what would our casseroles be without Duke’s? All the potlucks would no doubt have to be cancelled. Leftover Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches, dry without our most valuable spread? How could one begin to devil an egg? It’s unthinkable, nightmare inducing, spine-tingling! A day without Duke’s is a dark day, indeed. I shiver at the thought.
Should you encounter the rare-but-occasional person who is immune to the charms of mayonnaise, there is another food scare that will stop any good ol’ boy or girl cold. If you really want to spook them beyond belief, hold a flashlight under your chin and whisper these three words: “Little Debbie shortage.” With Christmas Tree Cake season just around the corner, that one is absolutely hair-raising. An almost unfathomable horror. I’m going to give myself nightmares.
If you doubt our love for this brand of mayo, simply do a quick Google image search and peruse the artwork.
Another Achilles heel for most any Southerner you’d like to give a good scare? Tell them something’s happened to their truck. Stolen, missing, hurt, you name it. Then stand back, because it’s about to get real. You will be amazed, because the pickup truck you’re talking about is likely at least twenty years old, in bad need of a new paint job and some body work, and without many creature comforts such a power windows or any type of fancy accessories like air bags. What this truck does have is memories. It’s a reliable family member that has hauled everything from children to furniture to firewood, and most importantly, it hauls the dog. Dogs that fish and hunt, with names like Blue or Red, or Buster or Jake. That dog loves that truck, and that man loves that dog. In fact, you may get fear or you may get tears, so this one is tricky. Either way, it will get some adrenaline going, so proceed with caution.
What’s that boy? Something’s wrong with the truck? Eeek!
You want to truly terrify a Southern woman? Ask her if the humidity has made her hair fall flat. She may faint. We take great care to try and mitigate the dastardly effects of the humidity down here, but it is an ever-constant battle. We hot roll, we tease, we spray, sometimes we pray. There are times when even all those efforts fail us, and it is sinister. There is nothing more alarming than a gone-flat bouffant hairdo. Big hair is important to Southern women, and a piece of us dies when our hairdos up and die, too.
Years ago, I worked with a woman who had what we call Daughters of the Confederacy hair (if you know, you know). I have big hair, but this woman’s coif was a cotton candy, mini-beehive work of aersol hairspray art. She was quite proud of what she had accomplished with this look of hers, we could all tell, and one day it was too much for me to resist. “Sandy,” I said to this huge-haired women (whose name I have obviously changed to protect to the guilty) “I just love your hair.”
She managed to say thank you, although I know in my heart she wanted to say, “of course you do.”
“They do such a good job on it at your salon, Curl Up and Dye (again, not the real name). What are you going to do next month with them going out of business? I heard they were closing and thought about you!”
Y’all. Her hair salon was just fine and they were not closing. I just said that to be mean. She, as we are fond of saying, liked to have died. It took her almost a full day to recover and she never did like me much after that. I’m pretty sure when I get to heaven, Jesus is going to pull me aside before I get the keys to my mansion and give me a talking to about how that joke was too mean. Anything to do with a Southern woman’s hair will downright petrify her; you don’t even have to try very hard.
Amen, sister!
So while you might not get a big reaction with any of your other scare tactics this spooky season, I’m pretty sure the ones I’ve outlined will do the trick any old time you want to get a Southern heart racing. If you need to rack our nerves, curdle our blood, or keep us up at night, you need only to tell us terrifying tales about changing the way we do things around here. We like our tea sweet, our hair big, and we’re pretty loyal when it comes to our vehicles and our mayonnaise. You know, all the things that make being Southern scary good.
Spooky Season
As you can tell, I’ve loved Halloween from an early age.
It’s never too early to learn how to bewitch, after all.
I walked the dog yesterday morning and took a moment to admire the sights around me: crisp, fall leaves on the sidewalk, pumpkins on porches, and ghosts, skeletons, and graveyards that have cropped up in yards along our route. The stores are stocked with huge (albeit expensive!) bags of Halloween candy, and who can tell if the cobwebs are real or decorative? It’s spooky season, and I am here for every second of it. Give me a fistful of candy corn and a scary movie (Halloween Kills comes out October 15 and I know my calendar is marked), and let’s do this.
A friend sent me this meme, but I had to respond emphatically, “YES! We still need Halloween!”
We live in a pretty fabulous neighborhood for Halloween; not one of those giant places where you are inundated with hoards of trick-or-treaters, but just enough of a crowd to make it festive and fun, with a good costume show and plenty of adults getting in on the spirit of the occasion as well. I’m still pondering our family’s costumes (Clint and the dog are less than enthused but know they are doomed to participate), but we will be ready when the evening arrives. I’m hoping to come up with something low maintenance enough to keep the guys from being totally miserable but still keep it fun, so if you have the perfect group costume for two adults and a fluffy white dog, do let me know.
Our yard, of course, is ready for All Hallows Eve as well. In years past, we have used a skeleton theme but this year we thought it was time to change it up a bit and we went with a witch motif instead. I hope you find it brewtiful. (See what I did there? I really do love this time of year).
Here she is in the daytime, stirring up her cauldron with her flock of black birds. I feel like I can hear her cackling!
And at night, our witch really stirs up some toil and trouble (thanks to the magic of LED lights).
A few light-up witches’ hats above the front door and then plenty of pumpkins to finish off the porch.
Raise your hand if you already knew I was going to buy a new wreath for the front door. Just creepin’ it real.
I found some cute witch hat floral picks, tied a big Halloween mesh bow,
and added a sign to the mailbox: “Come in for a spell.”
One of my neighbors lamented that he’s having a hard time getting into the Halloween spirit now that he is an empty nester. I pointed out that there are still lots of neighborhood children to appreciate the decorations he usually puts out all over his front yard, and with more than two weeks left until Halloween, there’s plenty of time to get it all out and enjoy it. “I know,” he said, “but my wife thinks it’s tacky.”
“Oh, it is!” I assured him. “That’s what makes it so fun!”
With the world we live in these days, I need less real life scary and more make-believe spooky. I’ll take fewer every day problems and more boos and scares and chills and thrills. Let me trade my adult size worries for fun size candy bars, and my big girl pants for a costume and some face paint. Do we even need Halloween anymore? Witch, please.