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Simply Southern: the humor, insight and fun of a southern good old gal

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Simply Southern
by Cappy Hall Rearick

Reviewed by
Award-winning journalist and author,
Sharon Smith Henderson

Dyed-in-the-cottonpatch Southerner, Cappy Hall Rearick cut her baby teeth in South Carolina and grew up to become a card-carrying flight attendant. Winging her way west to LA-LA Land (Southern California) she began her career as a columnist, penning Alive and Well in Hollywood. A couple of
husbands later she migrated back to rest on the Golden Shores of St. Simons Island.

Along the way she has honed a biting sense of humor which spares no sacred cow. Simply Southern, appearing in Weekend, a local weekly tab noted for its irreverent take on the world, provides Rearick with a platform from which to launch her barbed commentary. Wryly capitalizing on her blondness, Rearick attacks the perils of middle age, marriage, shopping, pet ownership, (where the pets are the owners)and relationships.

Now in book form, Simply Southern is a diverting treasure which will delight the reader today, tomorrow, and still pop up new and fresh when it surfaces during a
shelf-cleaning exercise five years down the road. Among those falling victim to her caustic wit: Easy-going husband, Babe, his dumber-than-a-box-of-hair Cockapoo, Tallulah Blankhead, family, friends and the stranger-than-fiction characters she meets every day.

Shifting from humor to nostalgia, in "Rocky Bottom" she describes her childhood swimming hole. "The cold, black Edisto River snakes through Orangeburg and the South Carolina Low Country where I was born and raised. Swimming pools were a luxury only movie stars could afford, so we swam at Lee's
Pond or in the Edisto River. Rocky Bottom was a shallow area floored with small rocks and stones, and it is there that I learned to swim.

"I went to sleep last night thinking about the Edisto River, the Pavilion and Rocky Bottom . . . how my friends and I would spread blankets on the hill near the water and remain there all day long soaking up sun. I remembered learning how to
dance at the Pavilion, then shagging the night away to the juke box sounds of Elvis, Fats Domino and Little Richard. We used to wash our hair with Prell Shampoo just beyond the safety rope underneath the bridge. The cold, black river water rinsed it
clear and made it squeaky clean."
No taste of Rearick's work would be complete without a visit to the doggy side of the household. "Tallulah Blankhead ran away from home yesterday. She's spoiled rotten and is obsessively attached to Babe. She has never left the back yard
by herself. Why? Because she's joined at the hip with her bed, food bowl, and her favorite toy -- a pale green stuffed rabbit named Mr. Bill.
"I walked outside thinking she might have wandered onto the golf course and got herself bonked in the head by an errant Titleist. When I stopped hollering her name and started listening I heard her incomparable Cockapoo bark.
"Two blocks away, I spied her, snarling at a fire hydrant that some clever Southern patriot had painted gray and white to resemble a corpulent Confederate soldier. By the time I got to her, Tallulah had barked herself into a war whoop. Then she tore into General Lee as if he were drenched in Eau de Alpo." (Maybe we need to poijnt out, this is Babe's pooch--and he's from Pennsylvania. Maybe Tallulah is Yankee spy?)
Speaking of Yankees, living in a beautiful resort area, one is deluged with uninvited northern visitors appearing with seasonal regularity. In "Well, Shut My Mouth!" Rearick narrates her role as the reluctant hostess to a pair described as Lucy and Ethel at their worst.
Joining her for lunch are Doris, Babe's Yankee cousin and her equally Yankee friend, Ginger, here on a mini-snowbird visit. "Well! If this isn't the cutest, most awesome little café!" exclaims Ginger. She bats her mascared eyes. Fighting like cats and dogs, the two of them have been trying to out-do and out-shout each other since they arrived.
Without regard to other people in the restaurant, Doris's voice breaks the sound barrier. "Oh, shut UP!" she yells good-naturedly. "No, YOU shut up!" Ginger replies. They high-five each other and shout, "Awesome," in unison.
Before their Yankeeness becomes a catalyst for Southern diners to remember Fort Sumter and take revenge, I grab Doris by the arm and threaten to pinch her till she's cyanotic. "Simmer down! You sound like a couple of sixty-five year old displaced Valley Girls."
"This is how we always talk. What's wrong with that?"
I must have been crazy to think I could take these two out in public. Ginger is pointing at the day's special: Pork chops, black-eyed peas, collard greens. Yum.
"You people don't actually eat this stuff, do you?"
"Oh, that's nothing,' shouts Doris. 'They even eat hog jowls and something called chitlins."
I push my chair back. "Y'all excuse me. I need to wash my hands." I turn the corner and stride right past the Ladies Room on my way out the back door. "I'll bet you a Cuban Cigar that Lucy and Ethel will never miss me."

But don't you miss the opportunity to laugh until you fall out of your chair, and perhaps shed a tear or two at the antics and reminiscences in what is sure to become a regional favorite. Simply Southern, published by ExLibris, is available at
The Book Mark in St. Simons, and online at Rearick's website,...,Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and Borders.com.
Past president of Southeastern Writers Association, Rearick is an award-winning writer of short stories. Her first novel, Seldom Seen, is presently under review for publication while she works on a second novel called Four O'Clock Curtain and a collection of Christmas stories slated for publication in book form.

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Simply Southern is a great read by a refreshing new author. Cappy Hall Rearick's style is reminicent of Erma Bombeck yet unique to the South and it's colorful charactors. No subject is tabu, including "the grandchildren from hell, the spoiled rotten cockapoo, and husband Babe." you will feel like you have had a long visit with an old friend. A great holiday gift idea.

I have read Cappy Hall Rearick's writing in newspaper columns for years and have always found them very humorous. I was happy to see that she has put some of the funniest in a collection in a book. She is a worthy sucessor to Erma Bombeck and Paula Wall as a writer of American humor. I really enjoy her writing and I usually do not read anything that is pure humor. I have told a lot of my friends to read it.

Move over "...Ya Ya", "Steel Magnolias," and "Fried Green Tomatoes." Cappy Hall Rearick's "Simply Southern" captures the Southern woman's humor and the unique quirks of the South.

A great read. Couldn't put it down.

After finishing this book, the reader will want to relocate to the region and invite Hall Rearick to come on over for a mint julip and regale you with more stories of her friends and beloved South.

Hall Rearick's characters come alive and the reader is swept along on their journey.

This new author is gem. Her sentences crackle with "smart talk."

Her sense of humor and honest observations are priceless.

This is the kind of book that I look forward to reading again and again. Great for trips on planes, trains, buses, beaches, rainy days, cold nights, and lazy days.

It's a must read for anyone who enjoys sharp, witty writing.

This book is so impressive that I plan to check out her articles and columns wherever they're published.

I'm looking forward to Hall Rearick's next book.

Congrats to Hall Rearick!

I'm a long-time friend of Cappy Hall Rearick, but I CAN be objective about her writing! Her collection of essays and short stories in Simply Southern have the distinct flavor of the low-country South, and the characters ring very true, from the hilarious to the serious. Among my personal favorites are "A Loaf of Bread and Thou" and "A World of Looking Down." Babe, the grandkids, and the fun-loving friends who populate this joyful book will bring readers many smiles, laugh-out-loud chuckles, and possibly a few misty eyes. It's a book to be savored not once, but many times. ENJOY!

Settle into your most comfortable chair with this delightful read and enjoy "Simply Southern," as Cappy Hall Rearick tickles your toes and tugs on your heart with her anecdotes of the South.

What a wonderful writer this lady is! Immerse yourself in glorious mini-tales such as "Gloryjean the Butterbean Queen" and "By Virtue of a Vidalia." You can see, hear, and nearly touch the characters she brings to life so beautifully.

In our hectic world, "Simply Southern" is an oasis of pure pleasure. I highly recommend it!

I laughed `til I cried. Then I laughed some more. This good ole gal doesn't stop. She takes on anything and everything in the South where dog-eared expressions are as natural as eating grits. Nothing is spared: Southern traditions, getting older, the station wagon which lasted longer then the husband. Put a pitcher of martinis in the frig and learn how she cooked breakfast for the husband while she was in bed with a stomach virus, why she cannot bear to look at a red velvet cake and how she had to sneak into the cemetery at night to bury the dog between Grandma and Grandpa.

Rearick is not someone whose eggs were loosely scrambled even though she has relatives who are diagonally parked in a parallel universe. She writes about some of the but-ugliest things in the world...things we love about the South.

If you have ever had a dog (she has a spoiled-rotten Cockapoo), a husband (she calls hers "Babe"), a mother (hers made fruitcake and talked in clichés) or grandchildren from hell, then you will understand the source of her stories.

Meet unforgettable characters like Gloryjean the Butterbean Queen and come to understand that if God wanted us to run around barefooted, we would have been born barefooted.

Not everything Rearick writes will tickle your funny bone. She can also be as serious as a brain transplant. Following an accident which nearly took her life, she wrote, "It's the top of the fifth. The bases are loaded. It's my turn at bat. My turn to hit a homer and to break records."

With Simply Southern, Rearick has hit her homer. I can hardly wait for her next book.

Don't forget to honk if you love peace and quiet.

Whether you live on the east or west coast of America, in between, or across the waters on another continent, this book will make you laugh --and laugh -- and laugh. Cappy Hall Rearick writes about what she understands--people. She likes us, loves us, laughs with us and cries with us, but mostly makes us laugh. As any writer or performer will tell you, comedy is the most difficult of arts and skills. Cappy Hall Rearick's first hand knowledge of Southerners makes her stories ring with authenticity and her love of her characters fills those stories with lots of fun and a subtle compassion.
There is a universality in her humor and a power to connect us through her own experiences with the most common human conditions. When you read about her Mama, you will want to reach out and touch Cappy and you will never again try to clean out your mama's closet or straighten out her "stuff."
As you laugh your way through these tales, you will want to meet Cappy Hall Rearick.
Y'all read this book now, ya heah?