Amoir & The Snail Folk (or, Continuing Adventures on Facebook Marketplace)
“’The only place in the world that nothing has to be explained to me is the South.’ I don’t often open a piece of writing with a quote from Woodrow Wilson, but there it is: and the man was right (if his syntax was twisted). Those of us born of Southern mothers may well grow up in Pasadena, California and Athens, Greece, as in my own case, but drop us down into Slabtown, South Carolina or Blue Eye, Alabama, and, like Br’er Rabbit in the briar patch, we know ourselves to be at home. In the South, everything around us makes sense: as with Cinderella, the shoes fit, however many times we wish they didn’t.”—Elizabeth Boleman-Herring
Hapax Legomenon
By Elizabeth Boleman-Herring
“Tupperware is the Wedgewood of the South.”―Rick Bragg, from Where I Come From: Stories from the Deep South
“It’s impossible to explain to a Yankee what ‘tacky’ is. They simply have no word for it up north, but my God, do they ever need one.”―Pat Conroy, from The Lords of Discipline
“What is there to see in Europe? I’ll bet those foreigners can’t show us a thing we haven’t got right here in Georgia.”―Margaret Mitchell
“Whether or not I went crazy is impossible to say: a maniac could hide in my family as a leaf can hide in the forest.”―Florence King, from Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady
PENDLETON South Carolina—(Hubris)—March 2025—“The only place in the world that nothing has to be explained to me is the South.” I don’t often open a piece of writing with a quote from Woodrow Wilson, but there it is: and the man was right (if his syntax was twisted). Those of us born of Southern mothers may well grow up in Pasadena, California and Athens, Greece, as in my own case, but drop us down into Slabtown, South Carolina or Blue Eye, Alabama, and, like Br’er Rabbit in the briar patch, we know ourselves to be at home. In the South, everything around us makes sense: as with Cinderella, the shoes fit, however many times we wish they didn’t.
I’m a Southerner because my parents were Southerners. And while they may have done their darndest to escape the South; damned if I didn’t come right back, like a lovesick homing pigeon.
And no matter what all I did with the rest of my life (write books, teach college, edit journals), in old age all I really want to do is collect and sell pretty things for Southerners to set on their mantels. I did not intend to end my days as a somewhat elevated picker but, be that as it may, here I am at The Rock House Antiques in Greenville SC, selling jewelry, paintings, carpets, antique furniture, and whatnots such as girandoles and Staffordshire spaniels.
Oh, and foo dogs. I’m especially partial to foo dogs. Walk into the sitting room of any Southerner-of-a-certain-stratum in these parts, and you’re likely to encounter foo dogs, Staffordshire spaniels, and girandoles, though not necessarily all on the same mantel.
Ask said Southerner where she acquired her menagerie, and she’s like to say, The Rock House Antiques; that is if she did not inherit her play-pretties from her Aunt Willie Sue (better known to the nieces and nephews as “Aunt Bill”) as did I. But where, you might ask next, did the folks at The Rock House Antiques trouvèrent these objets? Which is where I come in . . . .
One of my sources, as well as the source of much of the mirth in my life, is Facebook Marketplace. OK, so Facebook/Meta and Twitter/X are admittedly twin circles of hell but, like Odysseus threading the needle between Scylla and Charybdis, a picker in search of a foo dog must suck it up.
Last month in this space, I gave you a taste of what I (and my booth-mate, Jeanne van den Hurk, a much more savvy and sophisticated picker than I, with decades of Old World knowledge under her Francophile belt) will endure to run down a valuable antique lurking in some unsuspecting person’s great aunt’s chiffonier, bombe chest, or Drexel Heritage dresser.
We. Are. Relentless. We are also, daily, stopped in our tracks momentarily by what our neighbors make us wade through to acquire our treasures. Because Facebook Marketplace (FB/MP) is no place for the timid, the easily offended, or the likely to be bamboozled. Listen, and learn.
And because categorization comes as naturally to a picker as picking, I’ve grouped the various universes of goods on offer at FB/MP into more manageable categories. I begin with things (apparently) worn by Southerners in these parts but things also (apparently, and with good reason) no longer required.
Haberdashery & Accoutrements
Teeth, one would think (see Image 1 above), would be too personal a possession to hawk online but, if you hail from Atlanta, think again, for someone over yonder in Georgia wants to part with his chompers, which he’s calling “jewelry” for some unknown reason, and which, he’d have you know, are “gold white gold rose gold,” to cover all bases.
Closer to home (alas) here in South Carolina, one gentleman feels that an image of him bare-chested and staring into the camera will help sell his hat; another man (farther north in Hendersonville NC) sprawls atop an ottoman, achieving a look (“fly”) that he reckons will encourage someone to buy his antiquated, J. C. Penney snow suit. For 55 bucks. Despite “pea size” ink marks, etc. (Hey, this is no longer the land of Ashley Wilkes, in the event you had any remaining illusions.)
Southern women, not to be undone, have also taken to Facebook Marketplace, modeling outfits they no longer need or want (and which most of the rest of us out here neither need nor want, either). I posit, for your consideration, a prom dress (with matching mask); pants (and I use the word loosely) and non-matching sweater (ditto); a wedding dress (modeled by the bride, presumably); and a dress that some co-ed (forgive the anachronism) at Clemson University bought (and wore, but is now discarding), in support of the Clemson Tigers. The information regarding sizing is noteworthy for what is left out, but if that tiger outfit’s a size 6-8, I’ll eat my Budweiser hat.
In local millinery news, an enterprising young woman over in Spartanburg will crochet for us hats (two pictured) in any color we’d like, for $20. If we want one. In any color at all.
And handbags also crop up on Facebook. If you’re wondering what we do down here with our armadillos, wonder no more, though the purveyor of the armadillo bag pictured below cannot for the life of her decide if she has one made here in the US or down in Mexico. In the event, she’s having it both ways. The bag-selling woman in Spartanburg seems to have conflated “hard” with “hide,” which gives away her Southern roots, well, delightfully, bless her heart. Repeat after me: “Tulip Lee! Ah’m gonna tan yo hahd you don come in here raht this minut!” Thus, her bag has “hair” on its “hahd.”
My booth-mate at The Rock House Antiques forwarded me the next item, and I can’t improve one iota on the text accompanying the jacket, so have at it. As God is my witness, I haven’t changed a syllable. Bet you didn’t know Elvis wore blue “swade” shoes! Or “talase.” Nor did I.
From top to bottom, the women of Upstate South Carolina will have you covered. Shoes? They’ve got shoes, though perhaps orange translucent combat boots or black mukluks might not complete your particular outfit. Still, who among us does not identify with: “I brought them and they was too small.”
The following three items parting ways with their owners may surprise even further those who thought they knew a thing or two about the South. In Simpsonville, sick and tired of cosplay, someone’s now hawking her monster horns, and someone else, his seahorse costume; while up in Rutherfordton, someone rather stout is willing to shed her (used/like new) wings (for a price). You just put the horn “under your hair,” apparently, wear the seahorse tail in front, and we can only imagine the “clients” of Ms. Angelwings. It’s enough to give one the vapors! (PS How did she use her wings, we want to know!)
This category closes out (mercifully) with a simple, if fairly ancient, belt buckle. The mud attached comes at no extra cost.
And that closes out the wearable section of my gleanings. We have next items wondrous if inscrutable.
Cases & Cases of Mistaken Identity
What the dickens is this? Its owner thinks he may know, but does he? Me thinks not. And while I could help him out, I think I’ll just leave his minor prose masterpiece of a description alone.
While the Classics and History scholars over in Georgia at the university are recoiling in horror at the “classical coin or medallion,” here come folks from Alabama, Tennessee, and North Carolina with mangled descriptors to match.
When you recover from chip and dale and rod iron (who sound like triplets), there is (are?) yet more.
Well, the South’s educational system has obviously failed, utterly! My Great Aunt Alice would be beside herself. Me, I’m just ROFL. So, rolling right along, Brookhaven GA and Easley SC are here to claim they are not to be outdone in the Ignorance Sweepstakes, holding that one’s man’s “fleur de lee” is another’s “Virginia Mary.”
Inscrutability extends to Westminster and Piedmont SC, and Dallas GA, where folks are selling “old stuff that looks good,” an octagonal mirror that, clearly, isn’t, a camel birthing stool, and a thing identified only as an “antique.” We are mysterious, we Southerners, even when we’re not trying to be, mysterious and, on occasion, as dumb as dirt. But, hey, we’re still trying to sell you a stool upon which to birth your camel!
This section comes to a blessed end with a giant “amoir,” and I will forgive, forthwith, all of the ignoramuses above for encountering the prose of this woman from Alpharetta trying to offload her beast of a clothes closet. It’s not often I encounter a sentence as unforgettable as this one: “My family is descendants of snail folk so we can’t help move this, it’s heavy af.”
Anything following the “amoir” and its “snail folk” will be of necessity anticlimactic, but I feel obliged to include a few items from the perennial Southern Facebook Marketplace category of “Plumbing.”
Plumbing, for Lack of A Better Term
I have to hand it to the fellow in Anderson SC who’s trying to get $75 out of some poor idiot for his verrrry used 1960s-era “Celadon” sink. OK, so Southerners know from “Celadon,” which is impressive, but, $75 for this piece of junk?! Guy has that more typically northern commodity known as chutzpah in spades! (Aunt Alice would subtract points from him on the grounds of subject verb disagreement, among much else.)
Two more items jumped out at me and Jeanne, respectively, as we combed through the chaff for treasure (and/or foo dogs). I myself have no idea what a “table shower” is, so enlighten me if you know. And the fellow advertising the chamber pot (genuine; no reproduction) should team up with Mr. Celadon of Anderson.
As much as I hate to abandon readers in medias res, there‘s just so much of Southern Facebook Marketplace one can consume at a sitting without having a conniption. So, tune in here next month for another installment. In April, I’ll be covering the categories of Arts & Crafts, Collectibles, Better Homes & Gardens, Nature’s Bounty and, in closing, items I’ve filed under “Words Fail Me.”
To be continued . . . .
To order Elizabeth Boleman-Herring’s memoir and/or her erotic novel, click on the book covers below:
Elizabeth Boleman-Herring
Elizabeth Boleman-Herring, Publishing-Editor of “Hubris,” considers herself an Outsider Artist (of Ink). The most recent of her 15-odd books is The Visitors’ Book (or Silva Rerum): An Erotic Fable, now available in a third edition on Kindle. Her memoir, Greek Unorthodox: Bande à Part & A Farewell To Ikaros, is available through www.GreeceInPrint.com.). Thirty years an academic, she has also worked steadily as a founding-editor of journals, magazines, and newspapers in her two homelands, Greece, and America. Three other hats Boleman-Herring has at times worn are those of a Traditional Usui Reiki Master, an Iyengar-Style Yoga teacher, a HuffPost columnist and, as “Bebe Herring,” a jazz lyricist for the likes of Thelonious Monk, Kenny Dorham, and Bill Evans. Boleman-Herring makes her home with the Rev. Robin White; jazz trumpeter Dean Pratt (leader of the eponymous Dean Pratt Big Band); and Scout . . . in her beloved Up-Country South Carolina, the state James Louis Petigru opined was “too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum.” (Author Photos by Robin White. Author Head Shot Augment: René Laanen.)