Excerpt
Common Is as Common Does
there was a time in the South when being common meant something, and it
wasn’t good. For generations of Southerners — my parents’ and
grandparents’ generations in particular — to be common, to exhibit
the behaviors that were part and parcel of commonness, was to find oneself
seated on the lowest rung of the social ladder, toes planted in the muddy gumbo
underneath. God may have been no respecter of persons, but where commonness was
involved, we Southerners certainly were.
In those simpler times, mommas of any refinement at all strived to rear up their
sons and daughters to “know better” than to do common things,
understanding that commonness was not only the behavior itself but the
accompanying cluelessness about the error of that behavior. Commonness, it was
thought, was so deeply ingrained in common folk that they hardly knew they were
behaving commonly.
(There were exceptions to that perception, of course. I mean the kind of brazen
commonness that clung to immodest, slatternly women: those demimondaines who
dared peroxide their hair or wear ankle bracelets, who wore ... read full excerpt from: Carryin' on ebook
