It wasn’t until he was a grown man he realized gravy wasn’t a beverage.
All he needs to conduct an appropriate funeral is embalming fluid and potato salad.
And he has no plans to keep the long-tailed kangaroo rat off the endangered species list because it’s just a rat.
He’s comedian James Gregory and he brought his unique brand of Southern humor to the Park Theater on Friday night, performing before a sold-out house. The Atlanta-based comedian travels about 46 weeks a year and was scheduled to do a show in Gallatin on Saturday.
Gregory’s routine was filled with down-home stories and unique quips about rural America. Much of his comedy centered around food.
“I love KFC, but why is it when you go into KFC and order a 12-piece family bucket of chicken they assume it’s to go?” asked Gregory. “I tell them this is not to go. I need a plate.”
He said food is a constant source of conversation when family members gather before a funeral. He said it’s common for the women to talk in the kitchen and analyze who brought what. Meanwhile, the men will be having a different conversation outside.
“The men, they will always say something like this,” said Gregory. “Have any of y’all heard her say what she’s going to do with his pickup?”
Gregory joked that one of his family members drilled himself to death with a Black & Decker product while trying to put a screw back in a cowboy belt buckle. Unfortunately, he was wearing it at the time.
Another relative died in a chainsaw accident, but it had nothing to do with the chainsaw.
“He was so eager to use that new chainsaw, he ran outside and went right to work,” said Gregory. “The problem is we didn’t have any trees so he started sawing on a fencepost. And we didn’t have a fencepost either so when the neighbor saw what was happening, he came out and shot him.”
As a good Baptist, Gregory said food is always the answer any time someone loses a family member.
“We’ll knock on the front door and say we’re sorry to hear about your son-in-law,” said Gregory. “Here’s some baked beans.”
Gregory said we have too much technology nowadays and are too obsessed with the weather. He said he saw a recent report that indicated the temperature in August 2016 was predicted to be about 3 degrees warmer than the temperature in August 2015.
“Why is that even news?” asked Gregory. “Why do I need to know that six months in the future it’s going to be 3 degrees hotter than six months in the past? My grandparents didn’t have The Weather Channel. Their idea of forecasting the weather was to look out the window and say, ‘Oh darn, it’s raining.”
When people talk about animals on the endangered species list, Gregory said he has no sympathy for the long-tailed kangaroo rat and can’t understand why anyone would want to save it.
“It’s just a rat,” said Gregory. “People say, ‘Well there are not very many of those rats left.’ My response is ‘Good.’”
Gregory said after one of his shows he took a friend with him to a truck stop for dinner. He said this friend was certainly not in touch with truck stop menu offerings.
“When it came time to order the salad dressing, he said raspberry vinegarette. The waitress looked at me and she said, ‘Do you have any idea what he’s talking about?’”