Simply Southern

Rearick is not someone whose eggs were loosely scrambled even though she has relatives who are diagonally parked in a parallel universe. She writes about some of the but-ugliest things in the world...things we love about the South.

If you have ever had a dog (she has a spoiled-rotten Cockapoo), a husband (she calls hers "Babe"), a mother (hers made fruitcake and talked in clichés) or grandchildren from hell, then you will understand the source of her stories.

Meet unforgettable characters like Gloryjean the Butterbean Queen and come to understand that if God wanted us to run around barefooted, we would have been born barefooted.

Not everything Rearick writes will tickle your funny bone. She can also be as serious as a brain transplant. Following an accident which nearly took her life, she wrote, "It's the top of the fifth. The bases are loaded. It's my turn at bat. My turn to hit a homer and to break records."

With Simply Southern, Rearick has hit her homer. I can hardly wait for her next book.

Don't forget to honk if you love peace and quiet.

Reviewed by
Award-winning journalist and author,
Sharon Smith Henderson

Dyed-in-the-cottonpatch Southerner, Cappy Hall Rearick cut her baby teeth in South Carolina and grew up to become a card-carrying flight attendant. Winging her way west to LA-LA Land (Southern California) she began her career as a columnist, penning Alive and Well in Hollywood. A couple of
husbands later she migrated back to rest on the Golden Shores of St. Simons Island.

Along the way she has honed a biting sense of humor which spares no sacred cow. Simply Southern, appearing in Weekend, a local weekly tab noted for its irreverent take on the world, provides Rearick with a platform from which to launch her barbed commentary. Wryly capitalizing on her blondness, Rearick attacks the perils of middle age, marriage, shopping, pet ownership, (where the pets are the owners)and relationships.

Now in book form, Simply Southern is a diverting treasure which will delight the reader today, tomorrow, and still pop up new and fresh when it surfaces during a
shelf-cleaning exercise five years down the road. Among those falling victim to her caustic wit: Easy-going husband, Babe, his dumber-than-a-box-of-hair Cockapoo, Tallulah Blankhead, family, friends and the stranger-than-fiction characters she meets every day.

Shifting from humor to nostalgia, in "Rocky Bottom" she describes her childhood swimming hole. "The cold, black Edisto River snakes through Orangeburg and the South Carolina Low Country where I was born and raised. Swimming pools were a luxury only movie stars could afford, so we swam at Lee's
Pond or in the Edisto River. Rocky Bottom was a shallow area floored with small rocks and stones, and it is there that I learned to swim.

"I went to sleep last night thinking about the Edisto River, the Pavilion and Rocky Bottom . . . how my friends and I would spread blankets on the hill near the water and remain there all day long soaking up sun. I remembered learning how to
dance at the Pavilion, then shagging the night away to the juke box sounds of Elvis, Fats Domino and Little Richard. We used to wash our hair with Prell Shampoo just beyond the safety rope underneath the bridge. The cold, black river water rinsed it
clear and made it squeaky clean."
No taste of Rearick's work would be complete without a visit to the doggy side of the household. "Tallulah Blankhead ran away from home yesterday. She's spoiled rotten and is obsessively attached to Babe. She has never left the back yard
by herself. Why? Because she's joined at the hip with her bed, food bowl, and her favorite toy -- a pale green stuffed rabbit named Mr. Bill.
"I walked outside thinking she might have wandered onto the golf course and got herself bonked in the head by an errant Titleist. When I stopped hollering her name and started listening I heard her incomparable Cockapoo bark.
"Two blocks away, I spied her, snarling at a fire hydrant that some clever Southern patriot had painted gray and white to resemble a corpulent Confederate soldier. By the time I got to her, Tallulah had barked herself into a war whoop. Then she tore into General Lee as if he were drenched in Eau de Alpo." (Maybe we need to poijnt out, this is Babe's pooch--and he's from Pennsylvania. Maybe Tallulah is Yankee spy?)
Speaking of Yankees, living in a beautiful resort area, one is deluged with uninvited northern visitors appearing with seasonal regularity. In "Well, Shut My Mouth!" Rearick narrates her role as the reluctant hostess to a pair described as Lucy and Ethel at their worst.
Joining her for lunch are Doris, Babe's Yankee cousin and her equally Yankee friend, Ginger, here on a mini-snowbird visit. "Well! If this isn't the cutest, most awesome little café!" exclaims Ginger. She bats her mascared eyes. Fighting like cats and dogs, the two of them have been trying to out-do and out-shout each other since they arrived.
Without regard to other people in the restaurant, Doris's voice breaks the sound barrier. "Oh, shut UP!" she yells good-naturedly. "No, YOU shut up!" Ginger replies. They high-five each other and shout, "Awesome," in unison.
Before their Yankeeness becomes a catalyst for Southern diners to remember Fort Sumter and take revenge, I grab Doris by the arm and threaten to pinch her till she's cyanotic. "Simmer down! You sound like a couple of sixty-five year old displaced Valley Girls."
"This is how we always talk. What's wrong with that?"
I must have been crazy to think I could take these two out in public. Ginger is pointing at the day's special: Pork chops, black-eyed peas, collard greens. Yum.
"You people don't actually eat this stuff, do you?"
"Oh, that's nothing,' shouts Doris. 'They even eat hog jowls and something called chitlins."
I push my chair back. "Y'all excuse me. I need to wash my hands." I turn the corner and stride right past the Ladies Room on my way out the back door. "I'll bet you a Cuban Cigar that Lucy and Ethel will never miss me."

But don't you miss the opportunity to laugh until you fall out of your chair, and perhaps shed a tear or two at the antics and reminiscences in what is sure to become a regional favorite. Simply Southern, published by ExLibris, is available at
The Book Mark in St. Simons, and online at Rearick's website,...,Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and Borders.com.
Past president of Southeastern Writers Association, Rearick is an award-winning writer of short stories. Her first novel, Seldom Seen, is presently under review for publication while she works on a second novel called Four O'Clock Curtain and a collection of Christmas stories slated for publication in book form.

-30-

What a wonderful writer this lady is! Immerse yourself in glorious mini-tales such as "Gloryjean the Butterbean Queen" and "By Virtue of a Vidalia." You can see, hear, and nearly touch the characters she brings to life so beautifully.

In our hectic world, "Simply Southern" is an oasis of pure pleasure. I highly recommend it!