Southern Living

Morgan Murphy Southern Journal for Southern Living on New York 2001

Southern Journal

Humor, Southern Living /

I grew to love it, though. City time is like dog years: A year in New York equals 7 in Alabama. So when I moved home last April, I had some reentry problems after spending 42 years as a New Yorker. All my black New York clothing had to be discarded. Driving home from the Empire State, I pulled in a rest stop in South Carolina and overheard an old lady ask her friend, “Since when do the Amish drive Cadillacs?” Driving is a big change. Manhattanites use their horns like breathing—it is a natural and constant function, vital to sustaining life. In Birmingham, a horn is a device used as a sort of automotive wave, often blown to get a friend out of his house. My city friends are amazed that in rural areas, one is supposed to raise a two-fingered salute to all passing cars and people. Anything less is rude.

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Tips on Tipping

Southern Living, Travel /

The best tip on tipping doesn’t involve money. Your server is not your servant.  Look up from the menu when they come to the table.  Don’t begin sentences with “Give me the . . .” or “I’ll have the  . . .”  Try, “May I please have the prime rib?” or “I see you’re busy, but could I have some more water when you have a chance?”   Waiters are some of the hardest working people in business—give them the respect, as well as the tip, they deserve.

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Oh Christmas Tree

Humor, Southern Living /

Not for amateurs, this business of picking the perfect Christmas tree. A real tree just makes Christmas—pine in the air, sap on the furniture, needles in the carpet, the whole bit. You can’t fake that. No petroleum-based, mold-formed, insert-figure-A-into-stalk-B imitation can take the place of a real tree. That pine-scented spray you’ve got isn’t fooling anybody. Your house smells like a cab.

Let’s begin with the size of the tree. Don’t give me some sad shrub, some Charlie Brown Christmas weed, barely able to hold up the 4-round dough ornament Aunt Helen baked and shellacked in 1978. No, give me a towering Fraser fir or Scotch pine. “I want big, son, big,” I tell the cadet. Every year I buy a tree that far exceeds the house. What caused that gougé down the center of the living room ceiling? The 15-footer of 1998. Those scratches on the side of the front door? That was one fat Fraser.

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Putting on the Squeeze

Humor, Southern Living /

Sure, there are some rules. (As a former youth counselor advised, keeping the Holy Spirit between hugging and dancing young folk is probably a good idea although there seems to be some debate over the Spirit’s waistline.) Yet when it comes time to greet an old friend, to welcome a soldier or sailor home, to squeeze out sadness, to convey sheer joy, to comfort a hurt child or simply to say, “I love you,” nothing beats the humble Southern hug.

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Virginia’s Best Ice Cream

Southern Living /

For 65 years, this tiny operation has been producing some of the highest quality milk in Virginia. Three generations of Bergeys continue an enterprise almost unheard of in the dairy industry: They actually milk their cows, process their own milk, and deliver it straight to the customer. That’s why a single scoop of their ice cream on a sugar cone tastes so good.

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