WE HAVE A NEW HOME

Just North of South is now here

The Spring Thaw...

It has been a looooong cold winter and we have pretty much been hibernating the entire time, hence no updates since October. It is finally starting to warm up a bit. We got the garden going this weekend, and now it is time to thaw out the blog. Plenty of good stuff coming up, so come back and hang out a bit.

Like a time machine you can wear...

I have never really had many vices. Sweet tea is a big one, southern barbecue is another for sure, but my vice of late has been this: Things that take me back to my childhood. Enter HOMAGE tees....

Seeing this the other day, I was immediately transported back in time. The computer screen blurred before my eyes and I was suddenly standing in the living room of the apartment that I grew up in staring at the brown, white, green, and mustard yellow plaid sofa against the wall. About the time the Atlanta Falcons started ripping their opponents heads off with their Grits Blitz Defense I was becoming obsessed with football, as a lot of young boys do....but, I mean OBSESSED. My walls were covered with posters of great players like Roger Staubach, and pennants from different teams, and I went to bed every night having gridiron dreams, as secure and safe as I could be under these...

...but this was Atlanta, and at the heart of it all, the Falcons were my team...and I wanted to be Steve Bartkowski. That apartment we lived in had a big living room that connected to our dining room creating one long open space. I would move all of the furniture out of the way except the sofa ( the end zone) and set up the big corduroy TV pillow and my bean bag chair as my opponents. Satisfied with the playing field I would don my "not intended for actual use" plastic Falcons helmet and drop back, as I had seen Mr. Bartkowski do so many times, and throw the ball from the dining room with just enough loft to be able to beat it to the living room for a diving catch. I would do this over and over, crashing through the bean bag, diving over the pillow onto the sofa for spectacular, stadium erupting touchdowns until my mom yelled down at me to "stop doing whatever was making all the noise". Then, I would just sit there, sweat running down my little kid face under my plastic helmet, arms and knees ablaze with the stinging fire of so much fresh rug burn, trying to catch my breath, and with a grin stretching from ear to ear.

If you are in Columbus and can make it down to the HOMAGE store, do yourself a favor and go and snatch up your own bag o' memories. They are making some great tees and they have some really cool stuff to check out on the walls and in the cases and the staff is always super friendly. Oh, and they have Coke in the glass bottle....what on earth more do you need?

The Displaced Southerners Lament

Now, judging by the title of this post one may assume that I am deeply depressed about not residing in the South any longer, and had this post been written a few years ago that would be completely accurate. I was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. I went to college not too far up the road in Athens at UGA, and I bleed red and black. I met my wife, another born and raised Georgian, there. After college I moved back to Atlanta and for a long time thought I would never leave. I was a southerner and I would remain a southerner until the day I died...or at least until five years ago. Now, don't get me wrong, I AM a southerner and always will be, but the address had simply changed. It changed to a very cold place called Ohio. A place that I wanted to get in and get out of quickly and get back to where it was warm and people stretched words out into as many syllables as possible. That was exactly what we did, and the grass truly is always greener on the other side, or maybe in this case, covered with two feet of snow, but we started to realize that there were many things that we missed up here. Eventually we made our way back to Columbus, Ohio and this time we brought a new perspective with us. There is nothing like a fall Saturday in the SEC for a lot of reasons, but there is also nothing like a Midwestern fall Saturday for a whole other set of reasons. That is what Just North of South is all about, bringing the best of both worlds together.  I'll be heading home soon enough to get a much needed dose of goodness. In a way it will be like going to confession, but instead of a priest it's a southern mom, because everyone from the south knows there is no guilt like southern mom guilt. "Forgive me, for it has been six months since my last visit home." "It is okay my child, drink three sweet teas and eat two bowls of grits and it will be fine.....actually eat three bowls of grits, you look skinny...do they not have food in the Midwest? why are you not eating? are you sick? oh, dear God, please save my baby, he's dying up there from starvation....." You get my drift, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Just North of South is like sitting on a front porch in a rocking chair with friends, sometimes the conversation is riotous, others very contemplative. Hopefully you will visit often and sit a spell.