When I met Deb sixteen years ago, she was a student in a night class I was teaching at Concordia. It was her first year of college, and she was just beginning to fulfill her dream of getting a college education and being a writer.
As we introduced ourselves that first night, Deb and I had an instant connection. She had grown up in Georgia and we had the same accent. It's rare that you meet a student from Georgia in Texas, but we both remember a series of coincidences that let us know we were kindred spirits in that first-year college class. (We used to say "freshmen" but that's changed--as only about half of first year students are men!)
For one thing, we wore similar jewelry and shoes and carried almost identical pocket books. Georgia women don't have "purses" and "handbags." Anything we carry with our stuff in it is called a pocket book.
Deb is 14 years younger than I am. Since we met, she has not only completed her bachelor's degree (another antiquated term for a four-year degree), but she has completed her Masters (But Mistress doesn't work!) and Doctorate and is now teaching at UTSA. Her rigorous graduate studies kept her busy the last few years and we'd not seen each other for way too long until she recently signed up for my newest writing group.
We had a wonderful day yesterday, browsing and eating in Gruene, on South Congress in Austin, and Blanco for the last five minutes of the Lavender Festival. Enoteca was closed for lemon panna cotta at three, so we missed that heavenly concoction. We had blackberry cobbler instead.
She looked at me on the first bite and said, "Don't call this cobbler! It has a cake batter poured over it and that's not how we do it in Georgia. We do it with pastry and it tastes sort of like dumplings."
Some of our Southernness is baked in too deep to change at this late date!
For those wishing to browse South Congress, we both recommend going on a weekday. Both Austin and Gruene are packed with traffic on the weekends.
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