white trash bash, 11 o'clock

My mom, dad and I headed downtown to the Peabody yesterday for a gorgeous Mother's Day brunch: an unbelievable spread in the Peabody ballrooms with so much food you feel like you need a laxative and some sort of open-intestine surgery afterward. If you're not so familiar with the Peabody, it's definitely the nicest hotel in downtown Memphis -- famous for its parading ducks -- and their brunch on any old weekend is pretty swank. So on Mother's Day, they really throw out all the stops.

But the one thing you can always count on in Memphis, Tennessee, is the white trash contingent. The most recent time we brunched at the Peabody prior to this, there was a couple in jeans and tee shirts that had huge white paint stains splotched all over them, as if they'd just finished touching up the crown molding in the rooms downstairs and had come up for some lobster ravioli before their afternoon shift at the 7-11.

So on Sunday, I was definitely on the lookout for the White Trash Bash. And sure enough, on about plate two, I spotted them -- sitting at about my 11 o'clock -- and pointed them out to my mom. Later, my dad made a comment about spotting the white trash after seeing a woman walking by in jeans, flip flops and an old Joan Jett tee shirt. I said, yeah. She's part of the White Trash Bash at Table 31.

God knows I love Joan Jett. But if your Joan Jett tee shirt cost you one-fourth of the price of your brunch, doesn't a little red flag pop up? Maybe the white trash contingent were born without red flags. Maybe that's the real problem.

Welcome to Memphis, y'all. It's good to be home.


cheers,
elizabeth