I got tired, back here recently, of hearing people go on and on about how their lives revolve around Wordle or Spelling Bee or the various crosswords. Aren’t there any Southern games?
I don’t mean NASCAR—that’s more than a game. Or cornhole, which just sounds Southern.
I went searching online.
I found “Monster Truck Tire Bowling Ball…The Pins Are My Trucks” on YouTube. “Nothing but rolling tires down my hill and breaking everything I own!!!” Okay, I can see the fun in that. Watching the video. But I want a game that the average person can afford to play, more than once.
And I don’t mean strip bourré. Pronounced boo-ray. Good if you’re inclined to whoop and holler over getting competitively naked. A risqué version of an old Louisiana poker-derived card game. According to evil-pop-tart.blogspot.com, strip bourré is a thing. A less extreme thing than the truck-tire thing, to be sure. Yet strip bourré, even on that rowdy website, has drawn cautionary comments such as “I’ve always believed in LSU rules: if you’re down to your bra and panties, you fold,” and “Whatever happened to ‘Go Fish’?”
I’m looking for something you don’t have to be afraid of getting overly into. Something more cogitative, more literary.
I nominate Macon Fry.
Macon Fry, the person, is a friend of mine who lives on the batture—a strip of land between the levee and the Mississippi River—on the outskirts of New Orleans. He wrote a good book about his home and how he got there: They Called Us River Rats. When the river is sufficiently up, he will put out a line from his front porch that will most likely have a catfish on it when he pulls it in. Occasionally he’ll bag an extra canoe or kayak—last time I looked, he had a stack of them beside the house.
Fishing from your patio, loosely speaking, is an ideal Southern recreation, of course, if not in fact the American dream. But I can’t say it’s very sporting. The reason I bring up Macon in this context is his name.
Macon Fry, the name—for a band, or a fictional character, or an actual Southern person, or a game—is better, surely, than even any of these other combinations of a Georgia town and a cooking term:
Dalton Boyle, Cordele Simmer, Alpharetta Fricassee, Stu Brunswick, Blanche LaGrange, Lula Poach, Willacoochee Flambé, Braswell Braise, Ella J. Roast, Griffin Broyle, Lithonia Bordelaise, Tucker (and his sister Toccoa) Spatchcock, Enigma Baste, Hahira Scramble, Uvalda Overeasy, Vidalia-Sue Veade, Young Harris Frizzle, Sheet Pan Sparks, or Shirr Lovejoy.
And did I mention Alpharetta Fricassee?
Maybe you are thinking I have already pretty much used up towns in Georgia and ways of cooking. Nonsense. How about Ty Ty Casserole, alone?
Anyway, you could still call the game Macon Fry, for the primary inspiration, and take turns declaring what the terms are: say, towns in Florida and ways of talking (Kissimmee Staccato, Ocala Splutter, Gulf Breeze Drawl), or soul singers and Civil War generals (Sugar Pie Burnside, Beauregard Broonzy, Pickett Pickett).
How would we score Macon Fry? As a game sort of deriving from the batture, it wouldn’t necessarily rely too much on cut-and-dried mathematics, or even on getting anywhere. It could primarily involve sitting around chewing the fat and vying to come up with a better name, or a worse one, than the last one. Extra credit for adding biographical detail:
“Charlotte Frankly? I went to high school with her. And her brother, Raleigh. Their people were from North Carolina. And didn’t exactly have a wild imagination.”
Or here’s a whole different game: Southern Contractions.
Y’ALL’LL’VE. (You all will have—as in “By the time we get good awake, y’all’ll’ve all had lunch.”) Or WE’D’VE’A’. (“We’d’ve’a’ got here on time if we’da left a little earlier.”) Don’t know just where I am going with this—the rules will evolve, in discussion, or even in argument. Let’s just say you get four apostrophes, and you have to use at least two.
You could also build on other players’ bids: “I’ll see your IF’N’I and raise you a ’F’YOO’VE” sort of thing. Am I getting weird now? That’s why I’m staying away from strip bourré.
