Chitlins And Grits

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When guys in the Army get together and become good friends,
The close relationships you make just don’t ever really end.
Sometimes we all teased and exploited each other very hard.
This poem provides some insight on my Hawg Jaw name card.

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Chitlins And Grits

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When I was in the Army they made fun of my slow Texas drawl.
They asked if I did everything else just at the speed of a crawl.
I told them I hadn’t really noticed that I was particularly slow.
But being from the South makes me much smarter you know.

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Although I was at Fort Gordon in the heart of the Deep South.
Nearly all the guys in my unit spoke with a northern accent mouth.
So they liked to gang up on me and harass my southern ways,
But I held my own as we became friends on our class days.

 

 

 

One of the guys asked me if I had ever eaten Japanese Sushi.
I said I didn’t even know what that Japanese Sushi could be.
And he told me it was fish that they served raw with no hide.
I smiled and then told him “Sorry, I like my sushi southern fried”

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The conversation then kind of drifted to different southern foods.
Which was right up my alley and put me into a food talking mood.
I said “we eat stuff in the South that you would never ever touch.”
They wanted examples of the southern foods that I like so much.

 

 

 

I asked them if they had eaten those southern chitlins and grits.
They said they had never heard of that strange sounding dish.
I told them chitlins were pig intestines and grits are ground corn.
Mom fixed them both for breakfast as they were southern born.

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I told them that I just love that hog jowl and those collard greens,
And they didn’t even have the slightest clue what jowl did mean.
I told them it was the strip of meat on the jaw of a hog so neat.
One of them then said “Bill is an expert on ‘Hawg Jaw’ meat.”

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He said “Hawg Jaw” tell us more about your diet down in the south.
I said ” my Mom made all kinds of good food to put into my mouth.
She fixed a big bone in Ham with that red eye gravy for sopping.
It makes my mouth water just a sitting here thinking and talking.

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“You guys need to quit calling me Hawg Jaw as my name is Bill.”
They said all together “sure Hawg Jaw you know that we will.”
So they continued to call me that until I shipped off to Vietnam.
Sometimes those old nicknames don’t die in a whole life time.

 

 

 

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I made lots of friends while I was in the Army way back then.
I still think about those memories we made every now and again.
I never did try to find any of those guys when I left the Army
That started calling me Hawg Jaw at Fort Gordon to tease me.

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So now when you see that awful name that I have on my blog,
You’ll know that it came indirectly from the jaw of a big old hog.
Not from the large size of the jaws on the sides of my own face.
I hope that I have now put the name of Hawg Jaw in its place.

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By Bill

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Thanks for reading Chitlins And Grits,
Bill