Clash of cultures at Cracker Country – Why chaperones drink

Last week, I chaperoned my children’s fourth-grade class on a field trip to Cracker Country.

For those outside the Bible belt, and Godspeed, seriously, Cracker Country is a journey back in time to the late 1800s/early 1900s. School groups visit Cracker Country to learn about how people lived in rural Florida at the turn of the last century.

Minus all the lynchings and racial slurs.

As we walked through the general store, quaint schoolhouse, and dignified homes in this old-fashioned village, I met a dozen charming volunteers who played different characters – keepin’ it real. These actors were ancient and weathered, with accents and clothes cracked with age; they didn’t have to convince me they were from 1898. I believed them.

After a half-hour in one of those “gardens” I’ve heard so much about, I emptied my shoes of dirt and leaves for the second time, and felt a tad superior to most of them.

That was a mistake.

Note to self: Don’t let those toothless smiles fool you.

When we stepped into the school house, I picked up a copy of their sample Fourth-Grade Reader, circa 1902, and perused words like reticule, tallow, and peruse. Fourth grade? I know doctoral candidates who would have trouble defining the words those shoeless bumpkins used on a daily basis.

Then I read through their literature and civics books and couldn’t get through two pages without consulting a thesaurus. Oh yes, I could almost hear the ghosts of crackers long gone, laughing at me between sips of moonshine.

For several hours, we toured the tiny community, tasting homemade butter and playing with toys that entertained children before electricity and PS3s came along.

But it wasn’t all enlightenment and old-fashioned goodness. When you take kids from a Jewish day school circa 2010 to hang with a Cracker Country crew who fondly remember when they had to urinate outside, a non-violent clash of cultures is inevitable.

When we stepped into the candle-making shop, for example, all hell broke loose.

Beeswax candles attract bees. Jewish schools attract kids who are allergic to bees. You do the math.

We encountered some tough women in that shop. Weighing close to three hundred pounds each, they didn’t know what to make of seventy-pound boys who were dodging bees as if they were bullets from a gun.

“Boy,” one of them said while slowly stirring the wax, “them bees ain’t gonna hurt yewwww.”

A few brave souls made their way over, dipping sticks inside the barrels of hot, melted wax.

One of the kids, Sheldon, wasn’t having it.

“My entire family is allergic,” he shouted, ducking and weaving to get away from a few yellow-jackets.

“Them are friendly bees,” Erma said from her stoop. “They more afraid of yewww then yewww are of them.”

Sheldon, sweating and about to have a nervous breakdown, looked like me after an hour with my Republican relatives. Erma rolled her eyes and whispered something to her friend one barrel over.

“He ain’t right,” the lady replied.

None of that touchy-feely shit for Erma and her friends.

“Boy,” Erma said, louder this time, “I said they ain’t gonna hurt yewwww.”

Finally, Sheldon and a few others threw their sticks into the wax and fled the scene like it was a Klan rally. A few needed their inhalers after all the excitement.

Next we moved on to the laundry area. Oh. The. Horror.

“Now come gather ‘round,” Irene, the Laundry Matron said, all grins, and chins, and happiness. She looked like my Nana. “I’m a-gonna show you how they warshed clothes back when I was a little girl. Does anyone know what an agitator is?”

Oldest pointed at me until I threatened to drag him back to the candle area.

“An agitator removes the dirt and soil from somethin’ and makes it clean again,” she said.

“Yeah, it does,” I shouted. “Go agitators!”

Irene smiled lazily at her crowd of students and said,

“Now when your mama makes bacon, ever notice what’s in the pan when she gets done?”

Okay, here’s where she lost them. They looked around at each other, confused. Jewish moms? Bacon? Lard?

Well, in her defense, we were in Florida and not New York. But still, it is a Jewish day school and few, if any, of these kids had ever seen the inside of a pig. After Irene mistook the confusion for compliance, she explained the soap-making process in detail and none of the kids moved to touch the finished product.

Someone tried to explain to Irene the concept of “Kosher” and “unclean,” but she still didn’t understand. That’s when another volunteer hurried over and assured us it wasn’t real Lye soap in the bucket and no one was gonna get kicked out of shul for pretending to warsh a towel.

All in all, it was a good day.

Still, Irene and Erma looked a little more weathered than they had when we arrived.

Maybe our kids weren’t the only ones who learned something that day.

Tags: Cracker Country