Barb here -- posting from Mesa AZ. This is in today's USA Today and I
can't wait to get the book! These are my kind of women -- connosseurs
of Funeral Food! Yes-s-s-s! I asked one of the Bobs to post the link,
but I haven't seen it on Google yet so I don't know if he did.
-Two-Margarita-Barb, posting from Mesa AZ


Charming, right to the grave
By Craig Wilson, USA TODAY, published 3-14-05
GREENVILLE, Miss. - Gayden Metcalfe is giving a tour of her hometown.
There's the crusading Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper once edited by
Hodding Carter. There's the "li-bary, as we say in Greenville." And
there's Doe's Eat Place, the famous food shack where you enter through
the kitchen, sit at long plastic-covered tables and savor the hot
tamales.

Metcalfe then steers her black SUV onto South Main Street, pointing out
St. James' Episcopal Church on the left - "location, location,
location" - before turning right and through the gates of Greenville
Cemetery.

"The best address in town," she says.

Metcalfe and fellow Greenville native Charlotte Hays are adding one
more layer to this Mississippi Delta town's already legendary mystique:
The art of dying, Southern style.

Being Dead Is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting
the Perfect Funeral (Miramax, $19.95), just out, is sure to have
Southern hostesses nodding their perfectly coiffed heads in unison.
Think of it as a primer from your favorite, if somewhat eccentric,
aunt. Publishers Weekly calls it a "charming, entertaining book."

There are rules ("Death is the time for the best stationery you can
afford"), there are recipes ("Salt, sugar and fat are the three major
food groups here") and there are stories. Dozens of them.

Dowagers who want to be laid out on their dining-room tables. Ministers
who fall into graves. Even murder.

"What to tell and what not to tell, it all came naturally," Metcalfe
says.

Metcalfe and Hays, a freelance journalist who lives in Washington,
D.C., and calls herself a recovering gossip columnist, started
e-mailing stories back and forth a couple of years ago, laughing at
their good fortune of having such rich material. So rich, one New York
editor thought the stories were made up. None was.

"Funerals are a way of life down here," says Hays, who plans to return
just to get a decent funeral.

"They're social," Metcalfe adds. "I wouldn't see anyone if I didn't go
to funerals."

Names, not ages, etched in stone

As for the cemetery, some Greenville women, not yet dead, already have
their names etched in stone, just to assure their place.

Not their birth year, however. "My Aunt Willie once said a woman who
would tell her age would reveal anything," says Hays, who reluctantly
says she's 56. Metcalfe just turned 57.

Your location within Greenville Cemetery is important, too. One rather
snooty Greenville matron had boxwood planted around her grave to block
out the neighbors.

"She didn't want to be with the hoi polloi," Metcalfe says.

Nothing is left to chance. Everything is planned, right down to Aunt
Hebe's coconut cake, a properly "vague" obituary and a good turnout at
the church.

"They're very kind. They show up," Hays says of the St. James'
congregation. The book also suggests that for a truly good turnout,
dual membership at St. James' and Alcoholics Anonymous is the ticket.

"Their humor is so representative of Greenville," the Rev. Elizabeth
Goodyear Jones, St. James' rector, says of the two authors. "These
people celebrate life, and death is a part of life." (Services at St.
James', by the way, are at 8 and 10:30 a.m., "so we can get to the
country club before the Baptists," Jones says.)

What food shows up is also very important. "If you don't get at least
one caramel cake when you die, no one loves you," Metcalfe says.

A good portion of the book is recipes, from Metcalfe's grandmother's
Bing cherry salad with Coca-Cola to the tried-and-true tomato aspic.
Metcalfe says she has never been to a funeral luncheon where it hasn't
been served. "Think of it as a solid Bloody Mary without the vodka."

Mary Dayle McCormick, who runs McCormick Book Inn in town, says
Metcalfe has been studying her subject for decades.

"She's been doing her stand-up routine in the grocery store aisle for
years now," McCormick says. "I'm glad she finally put it on paper."
(The authors have a reading and book signing at the store Wednesday,
then head out on tour, spreading the word across the South.)

"We just thought it was a warm, witty look at a slice of American life
- or death, in this case," Miramax editorial director JillEllyn Riley
says.

"It's kind of a Jane Austen look at this little world ... that world
where you can't be dead without homemade mayonnaise. We were
entranced."

Silver, and images, polished

During the day-long "funeral" tour, the authors offered up a funeral
lunch at Metcalfe's elegant home. Many a wedding reception has paled in
comparison.

It's one of three times a Southerner gets out all the good china and
silver, Metcalfe says. (The others are christenings and weddings.)
Polishing silver is the Southern lady's version of grief therapy.

Some of the names in the book have been changed to protect both the
innocent and the guilty, although Metcalfe and Hays agree it would take
townsfolk "about two seconds" to figure out who's who.

"If you make a beautiful coconut cake, we used your name," Metcalfe
says. "But if you hacked your mother to death with garden scissors, we
changed the name."

Yes, that happened.

"Bubba" Boone, for instance, the local undertaker, is none other than
Billy Boone, who Metcalfe says "could make you look better than a
plastic surgeon, though, unfortunately, you do have to be dead to avail
yourself of his ministrations."

He did such a good job on Sue Dell Potter, a waitress over at Jim's
Cafe on Washington Avenue, Metcalfe couldn't believe it when she went
to call. "Never in a million years would I have thought it was her,
bless her heart."

Most still go to Boone's, although Billy died in 1998.

"There's another, but it's not quite as refined, in my humble opinion,"
says Mark King, who now runs the business. The funeral home includes
its own chapel, complete with a side room for the bereaved to view the
service from behind a window.

King says the trend now is graveside services, although the old guard
in Greenville isn't buying it. "I suppose if there's a reason, but ..."
Hays says.

There's still nothing like an old-fashioned home viewing.

McClain "Clainy" Bowman's late mother, "Miz" Bowman, wanted to lie in
state at her plantation just outside of town, for instance.

"Mama didn't want to be laid out in the front hall, either," says
Clainy, who now lives there. "She wanted to be on the dining-room
table."

Miz Bowman's dream didn't come true - her daughter, Ireys, couldn't
bear the idea of a dead body in the house - but Metcalfe runs her
hands along the highly polished table and sighs as if it did.

Where you get laid out is important, but when you eat at a Southern
funeral is equally crucial.

"Are we going to have the fried chicken before Mama goes in the ground,
or is late in the afternoon better?" Metcalfe asks. "Lunch, burial, and
then get back in time for your restorative cocktails?"

The food (and drink) is divided up by religion. Methodists are known
for their casseroles with the cook's name taped to the bottom of the
Pyrex dish. "Nothing whispers sympathy quite like a frozen-pea
casserole," Metcalfe says.

The Baptists "have tiny marshmallows in their salads," she says. "It's
nice every now and then."

And the Episcopalians? "We spend our lives making cheese straws,"
Metcalfe says.

Sometimes there's dancing

The day ended at Hebe Smythe's home over in Leland, who offered more
"restorative" cocktails. Smythe's claim to fame is her intricate
artichoke relish.

"You will not believe any woman alive does this. I wouldn't do it, but
I'm just glad I have a friend who does," Metcalfe says. (The recipe on
page 95 comes with a warning: "Your house will smell like a hot-dog
stand for two days.")

"We gossip, we tell stories, we indulge, we have a toddy or two."

"And we've been known to dance, too," says Metcalfe's cousin Charlotte
"Chargee" Carpenter, who made her way from the funeral luncheon in
Greenville to the funeral cocktails 10 miles away. "We did when my
daddy died."

She also is in the book, but under another name, which she says is a
very good thing. "I shudder to think what they said I said."

Hint: Look for an Anne Dudley.

OB Food: Sizzling Fajita Salad at On The Border restaurant for an
early supper; healthful bean burrito for lunch in Tortilla Flats with a
bit of Prickly Pear ice cream for dessert.

Weather's beautiful, BTW. Will see Sister Irene on Wednesday and then
see Firstborn in Tucson on Thursday; will lunch on Friday with a friend
from another group on Friday in a Greek place in Tucson.