SLS: Even if I hadn’t lived in Kentucky and western North Carolina for the past 39 years and had my six children all born here, I’d still be Southern. The following story happened on my grandparent’s place in Washington State when I was young. One day Grandma marched down from the garden with a possum by the tail. She set the inert beast on the ground and said it was dead, that she had clubbed it while it dined at the compost pile. This sort of thing was not unusual with Grandma. I tapped it with my toe and its lips curled back. I said it wasn’t dead, only pretending. It was dead, she insisted. I told her I’d prove it was alive, that I was going to dispatch, cook, and eat it. She expressed lively revulsion. My grandfather Tim had by then come out on the porch and was watching the argument. Tim had Parkinson’s and hadn’t spoken a coherent sentence in weeks, but then he said out of a clear blue sky, “Why, possum is a great Southern delicacy, my dear.” I’ll spare the interesting details except to say, the possum proved me right.
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