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By Bill Altreuter

Missouri was a slave state, but not a member of the Confederacy-- in fact, after Southern states began trying to secede in 1861, the Missouri legislature called for the election of a special convention on secession which voted to remain in the Union. The state legislature subsiquently enacted a secession ordinance, but since the convention had been voted sole authority on the issue this was not recognized as being legitimate. As a practical matter the state mostly sat out the Civil War --there were some Confederate raids but the fighting in the state consisted chiefly of guerrilla warfare waged by assholes like Colonel William Quantrill, and Frank and Jesse James (the real one, not the Michelle Bombshell guy). Political scientists regard it as a "border state" rather than a southern state per se. They didn't have quite the class of West Virginia, but on balance you'd have to say (I'd have to say, I guess) that on the moral spectrum they were closer to W.Va than to South Carolina. I didn't see any Confederate flags on our trip through, which is more than I can say about a lot of parts of New York.

I'm wrestling with this because I do not like the South. Even though much of what is best about American culture-- literature, music and cuisine-- has its genesis below the Mason-Dixon Line that region is also responsible for what Faulkner termed America's Original Sin, and damned if they don't still celebrate it. In order to be comfortable with EGA's present choice of domicile I'm obliged to slice things pretty thin. Charlie Parker was from Missouri, I tell myself, and Calvin Trillen too. Now I see that the Southern Foodways Alliance doesn't reckon the Show Me State as falling within its jurisdiction. It's small things like this that help me rationalize, but I have to admit that notwithstanding my anathema for Dixie planning a roadtrip using the SFA's Trip Builder would be kind of fun. As long as I'm focused on the barbecue I don't have to worry about the pervasive religious nutism of the region as much, although by that standard Missouri is right in the heart of the Bible Belt. At some point shortly after we passed St. Louis we saw a minivan caked in mud, roof to wheelwells. On the back window someone had written "Jesus Loves You". "What the hell is that?" I asked A. "What kind of place is this when that's what you write on a dirty car, instead of 'Wash me'? Damn, it's like living in a Flannery O'Connor story out here."

Full post as published by Outside Counsel on April 10, 2010 (boomark / email).