Tupelo Honey Ramblings
My wife was really interested to hear Scott Hahn, an American Catholic theologian, speak at a church in the urban jungle, so we drove up there one morning not long ago. There were a lot of others with the same idea but we were able to get some "good" seats for the lecture which was three hours long with a 20 minute break in the middle.
Mr. Hahn is a gifted speaker for sure but just not in a format that was easy for me to digest. His rapid fire bombardment to the audience, of points in his two lengthy speeches, was just hard for me to latch onto. I would have been better served reading the speeches at my leisure. My wife enjoyed it all though and I guess at the end of the day, that is what counts.
The seating however, was in your typical wooden pew style seating, only these particular pews had no contours to them. Just a flat wooden board to sit on and a slightly reclined flat board to rest your back against. By the end of the three hours, I was "stove up" as my family sometimes says. I'm not sure on the origins of that phrase other than we use it to mean that we are stiff and hurting.
After the lecture, we decided to hit up a new-to-us restaurant called "Tupelo Honey". I ended up ordering a fried chicken BLT and my wife got fried chicken with grits. The fried chicken was as expected, pretty tasty but my BLT was a bit over sauced and very messy eating. Half as much of the honey mustard sauce would have been just perfect. Somehow though, I made it through lunch without spilling a drop of sauce on me though I did turn my cloth napkin into a total wreck getting my hands clean.
We drove home in the pouring rain, a very welcome sight after the dryish year we had last year and the light winter we have had thus far. The timing of the lecture was good because the following day was a full blown blizzard on the back end of the rain, the first I've seen in a few years, though we only ended up with maybe an inch of snow out of it. We did have a full day of 50 mph winds with gusts up near the 70 mph range. I haven't yet been out and about yet but I expect there will be a number of trees and branches down around town. Looking out my windows, I haven't seen any destruction on our property.
I used to deliver produce to a "Tupelo Honey" locations (Johnson City), though I think that one might have closed? Was a good restaurant, well run, kitchen and cooler were CLEAN!
ReplyDeleteI always wonder about kitchen conditions after one of my favorite Chinese food places kept getting numerous citations for health code violations until they finally closed up for good. I would definitely go back to this place though I probably won't order the BLT again.
DeleteEd, I wonder if you're like me in that after having some processing time, you begin to identify useful bits of information from a lecture. Although I think I usually take notes on such occasions.
ReplyDeleteEven so, it sounds like a nice outing and I really happy to hear about your rain.
Perhaps. There was just so many points made at such a fast clip, that I walked out of there forgetting about all of them which doesn't serve me any good. I would rather have had a slower lecture where fewer points are made, or perhaps a bulleted outline of the speech to follow along as I listened.
DeleteMy dad often used the phrase "stove up". I decided to look it up and here is what I found:
ReplyDeleteEtymology
The term "stove up" comes from the past participle of the verb "stave up". The verb "stave" means "to break up (a cask) into staves".
Related terms
"Stave in" is a related term that means to be broken or crushed inward, or to break or crush something inward. For example, "The hull of the boat stove in when it hit the rocks".
I read that definition too but really didn't see how it applied to getting sore and stiff. If I walked out of the lecture with a broken rib or two, it might make more sense. I just assume that like many things, the meaning got washed out and diluted to mean something else besides it's original meaning.
DeleteIt might have been a good enough outing for you, but I couldn’t endure those pews. Lunch sounds tasty. Yum. We are having even more snow. Winter won’t stop. The tree out front is nicely coated, however,
ReplyDeleteI planted part of my vegetable garden yesterday! Had I been thinking, I might have brough the pad from my folding stadium chair with me to sit on. That would have made it much more enjoyable.
DeleteI have never heard of this restaurant, but when I googled I found there is one not too far from here. Tupelo Honey would be a great name for whiskey.
ReplyDeleteI had no idea it was a chain restaurant but judging from the decor and branded glasses, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It would be a great name for some whiskey.
DeleteI would never been able to sit on a pew for that long. You are a trooper. I always ask for questionable sauces on the side...but I am picky:)
ReplyDeleteI should have asked for it on the side, but I tend not to be overly demanding when in restaurants though I sometimes wish I would have been pickier.
DeleteI've never heard that expression but sitting that long on any chair would be painful for me. I don't know why restaurants need to be so excessive. I ordered a club sandwich once and it was so tall and messy that I had to de-construct the whole thing!
ReplyDeleteThis one wasn't terribly tall but I have had some that were exactly as you say. The sauce sort of overwhelmed the chicken which I could get past but the mess squirting out all over my fingers was a lot. Fortunately the cloth napkins were large but mine was horribly mustard stained when I was through eating.
DeleteThis sounds like a great outing, but that would be a loooooong time on a hard wooden bench!
ReplyDeleteYes! If I had to rank pew comfortability, these were about a 2 on a 10 point scale. The ones at our church have contours to both the seat and pack making them closer to a 7 or 8 in comfortability. The only ones I have seen better were ones with upholstered cushions on the seats.
DeleteI think my butt would have rebelled and died sitting for that long on a hard wood bench.
ReplyDeleteThe very definition of "stove up!"
DeleteThe original Tupelo Honey is in Asheville, NC. It is famous for its biscuits and typical Southern comfort food. Tupelo honey is a real "thing," i.e. honey coming from a tupelo tree which thrives in the wetlands of the southeast U.S. (thanks, Wikipedia). There is a Van Morrison song from 1971 that has this name, comparing his love to the honey's sweetness. I am fairly certain the original restaurant took its name from the song. Tupelo Honey is now franchised, and there is one just a few miles from me. Typically, by franchising it lost some of its charm (in my opinion). And Ed, I would have been equally stove up had I sat on that bench the length of time you did!
ReplyDeleteI had no idea it was a chain until seeing the comments for this post. To me, it was just a new restaurant that I had never eaten out that served southern comfort foods, certainly unique to my area.
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