Ever go to a mobile home lot to tour the doublewides? You should seriously try it sometime. It’s fun, you can pick up some decorating tips and ideas for planning your next house, and you get to eat. It’s a given that you and your pals will go somewhere to eat after the grand tour. Well, yeah. You have to take some good friends to look at the homes – and an outing always involves food. It does in the South. Don’t question the logic.

The lovely, fun, mysterious, quirky, cold, hot, cold and hot at the same time South. I mean, it can be extremely warm in the Deep South in February and as cold as a well digger’s butt in the Tennessee/Virginia/North Carolina area. (we will punch each other out during SEC football season, but don’t mess with us otherwise. We’re all kin)  That’s where you’ll find me. I’m a Tennessee native with deep roots in Virginia and a penchant for North Carolina exploring on the Blue Ridge Parkway. We’re a bit different in this part of the South. Not in a bad way — just different. We’re cornbread and beans and fried baloney sandwiches. On the frying note, you can fry stale Krispy Kreme donuts, too. Oh. My. Goodness. You have to try that — and use butter. That’s another thing to add to the list that everybody doesn’t know about.

I learned how to fry potatoes, stir up a pan of cornbread and grow tomatoes from my momma and my aunts. They taught me the finer points of Southern cooking, including how much lard to melt in the iron skillet before pouring the cornmeal mix in. These women made sure that I knew how to take care of myself and any future family I might have. I’ve done pretty well with that, except I’ve pretty much abandoned lard for healthier cooking oils. They got a little worried when my early twenties rolled around and I wasn’t sporting a diamond and asking them to make my wedding cake. All was not lost though — I was just a late bloomer (after carrying me for “almost 10 months”, my mother declared that “I was late getting into this world and I’d been late ever since”). I caught a man at 29. Glory be.

After living in a rented house for the first five years of wedded bliss, said man and I decided to get a little piece of property out in the country and set a doublewide on it. That was almost 20 years ago and I have acquired quite a bit of knowledge during that time. It could be the influence of my doublewide or it could be the fact that the world has lost a lot of the sense God gave it to start with. Whatever the reason, I have decided that living in a mobile home can give you a different perspective on the world. So, Wisdom from the Doublewide was born. I hope you enjoy my blog and my new website: doublewide wisdom.com