Mama tried

She really did.  She did her dead-level best to teach us manners.  With every breath.  It's a Southern thing.

There were hard-and-fast rules.  Never sing at the dinner table. Never talk with your mouth full of food (who wants to see that, for goodness' sake?).  Everyone knows you keep your mouth closed when chewing.  And you better keep one hand in your lap when eating.  By the way, slow down--are you going to a fire?

There were five kids and only a certain amount of energy to corral us into something presentable.  But my mother valiantly tried.  She never stopped giving it her best shot, long after we were adults who should know better.

Some rules related to dress.  No, you are absolutely not going to town in those shorts.  Just scandalous.  You will wear something that covers you appropriately.  No, you will not wear white shoes until Easter.  And surely, you're not wearing THAT in public?  My mother--a beautiful seamstress--knew quality clothing when she saw it.  And she better see it on us.

But the most important rules related to relational behavior.

We knew to say "yes ma'am" and "no sir" under penalty of corporal punishment.  We knew not to "talk back."  Heaven help one of us who interrupted a speaking adult.  Children should listen first and talk when asked.  And then it better be something worth hearing.

We were taught to respect our teachers, our elders, and ourselves.  We knew the difference in being "polite" and "showing off"--behavior that earned us "the look."  Because we were taught the proper way to act.  We were expected to be "well-behaved" representatives of our family.  Sometimes we even succeeded.

When I listen to the casually insulting conversations around me today or the bombastic, self-parodying, self-absorbed incivility of television commentary, I can only reach one conclusion.

Their mamas must have failed miserably.

Re-Purposed

There's something about giving new life to the dead and dying.  Our town is rich in imagination and possibilities for the would-be forgotten structures of another era. 

In another life, the Ritz (above) was one of two movie theaters in this small Mississippi community.  We could, literally, walk from our home on Main Street, pay our 25-cent admission, buy a box of Milk Duds at the counter, and halfway through "The Blob" find a moist chocolate puddle in our hands, squeezed to a sticky pulp during the scary parts of a movie that now seems silly.

Today the former theater is a beautifully restored facility that has new life as a conference center.  A new generation is discovering it as a location for wedding receptions, proms, and civic meetings.  The adjacent Ritz Cafe in an earlier time was the F.W. Woolworth, the place my brother once spent an entire $5 for Christmas gifts for the whole family.  We all received a box of Luden's cherry cough drops, and he bought himself an airplane model.  Who's seen an F.W. Woolworth in decades?  Wedge salads and tomato basil soup have replaced it here.

Farther down the street a flower/gift shop is in the home of a former drugstore, a longtime institution in a once-thriving downtown community.  The orignal  owner's name is still carved in marble over the entrance, but today the space dispenses calla lilies and tablescapes.  The police department has reclaimed a former television station; an appliance store houses the spirit of a long-forgotten department store; and a bank anchors the corner where fashionable ladies once bought fine clothing.  On another corner, the Methodists have reinvented a former hotel as retirement apartments for the elderly.

I love seeing the morphing of places I knew in childhood into something vital and imaginative.  I live in the same house I did as a child, but the town around me is completely new.

It makes me wonder if we can do the same with our "old" selves.