Smiley Anders for September 15, 2008

• By SMILEY ANDERS
• Advocate columnist
• Published: Sep 15, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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On learning Southern language

My current wife, Lady Katherine, is one of those snooty English majors, so I should have known she’d find fault with my recent “hurricane haikus.”

She pointed out that a haiku has five, seven and five syllables, and that one of my middle lines had eight syllables.

When I read it and found nothing wrong with it, she said that was because I had used “power” as a one-syllable word.

I pointed out, rather huffily, that I’m from Mississippi, where “power” is pronounced “par.” So it is, to me, a one-syllable word.

“Where I come from,” I told her, “we say ‘Gustav was a parful storm’ and ‘Do you have your par back on yet?’ ”

Ah rest mah case, y’all. …

Calling Lynchburg

Doug Johnson, of Watson, says, “It certainly was nice of Kleinpeter’s to replace the ice cream lost by Michael Bailey during the hurricane.

“One caveat: there may be some unscrupulous copycats thinking to get free ice cream by making the same claim.

“I, for one, lost no ice cream during the passing of Gustav.

“All we lost were two bottles of Jack Daniel’s.”

Hometown blues