Big Mike: Looahvill Ain’t Changed Me A Bit

September 17th, 2009

Last night The Loved One and I slept soundly in our comfortable ranch house in the little village of Murray Hills. The little village had been swallowed up — administratively — by the colossus that is Louisville Metro back in 2003, four full years before we arrived here. Still, where we live can not in any way be described as big city. We’re surrounded by deep woods. We share territory with peregrine falcons, red tailed hawks, turkey vultures, foxes, skunks, and the odd coyote or two. In the middle of the night, every night, we hear the lonesome, sad horn of the freight train chugging through Jeffersontown, some ten miles away. It’s home.

Only it’s not our home anymore.

Yesterday morning, we met with a mortgage banker, our real estate agent, a Notary Public and a nice young couple who tried very hard to conceal their nervousness and excitement. With a few strokes of the pen, we transferred legal ownership of the joint to the couple. So, last night, we slept in their home.

Saturday, we load up the truck and move to Bloomington. Gulp.

To mark this passage, we decided to treat ourselves to a late, late breakfast at Barbara Ann’s diner down on Brownsboro Road. We’d eaten there on our second day in town in March 2007, newly arrived from Chicago and curious about these fresh digs. We figured it’d be a perfect bookend for our stay in the River City.

Despite it being March, the temperature hit the 80s that day two and a half years ago. March in Chicago may be spring by the calendar but it’s winter to the skin. We’d been bundled up only two days before; now we were wearing shorts and sandals as we sat in the cramped booth at Barbara Ann’s

Me: “Man, it’s really hot today, isn’t it?”

The waitress: “Yeah, now that y’mention it, it is a little warm.”

The waitress spoke in what was then to us the exotic accent of Kentucky. We grinned and told her what a nice place she had here and how nice Louisville was and, by the way, the weather is so nice today. Everything was nice to us those first few weeks and we felt compelled to let everyone know it. We also felt compelled to confess to everybody that we were fresh emigrés.

I’d go in to the gas station convenience store for the newspaper and coffee and to pay for my fillup. I’d be surprised that the counter was staffed by a bored kid wearing dreadlocks and tattoos — as if the species had been exclusive to Chicago.

Me: “Hi! Nice town you have here! What do we do, pay for gas first?”

The kid would roll his eyes as if he expected me to ask if he accepted US currency.

Even though half the population of Louisville speaks without a trace of an accent (to my ears), I promised myself I wouldn’t fall into a southern drawl here. So I exaggerated my normal speech to the point that I’m sure I sounded like a cross between Oscar Wilde and Leo Gorcey of the Bowery Boys. At the closing for our home in June, 2007, the sellers’ real estate agent, a proper southern doyenne wearing a flowered, billowing dress and a wide-brimmed Kentucky Derby hat, leaned close to me and confided, “Yew ha-ave an ack-say-ent!”

“Y’know what?” I responded. “So do you!” And the two of us laughed like lifelong friends.

Wednesday at Barbara Ann’s, the waitress was studying a Domino’s Pizza menu she’d gotten in the mail as we squeezed into our booth.

The waitress (to the woman working the grill): “Look at this — they got a pasta bowl here.”

The grill woman: “Yeah, so what? It’s a Eye-talian pizza place — ‘course they got a pasta bowl!”

The waitress: “No, no, no. I mean they got a bowl made outta pizza dough, filled with pasta. Y’eat the whole thay-ing.”

The grill woman: “Pshish!”

The waitress: “Y’must not care much fer your family if y’feed ‘em that much starch in a sittin’.” She turned to us. “Oh, Ah’m sorry. Lucky Grammaw ain’t here; she’da yelled at me fer makin’ y’wait.”

The grill woman: “Oh yeah? If Grammaw’s football game was on she’da made ‘em wait till the commercial b’fore she took care of ‘em.”

A man got up to pay his bill. The grill woman rang him up while the waitress took our order.

The grill woman: “How wuz it t’day?”

The man: “Good.”

The grill woman: “Better’n that Sausage McGriddle over at Mack Donald’s?”

The man: “Gooder.”

The grill woman: “‘Gooder!’ Wheredjew go ta hah school?”

The man: “I went ta hah school raht here in Ken-tucky!”

The grill woman: “Ah thought so!” And the two laughed like lifelong friends.

The waitress finished taking our order. “Anything else? she asked.

“Oh yeah,” I said, “we gotta have some o’that bisquits and gravy fer the table!”