My name is Katie

Editor’s note — we’re pleased to welcome Katie Compton Boyd to Columbuscountynews.com. Katie is the owner and operator of Old South Tour Company in Southport. Rather than tell you about her, we’ll let Katie describe herself in her own words.

We speak often about identities these days. So much so I often wonder if the world is completely plagued with its own reflection, the narcissus droops its head, and wilts. I’m a great many thing, as we all are. 

I’m Katie. Just Katie.

It works well as a nickname or I imagine, for a faithful old lab mix with her legs stretched out on a farmer’s porch. I am, however just plain Katie. 

My grandfather was Kenneth Thomas. As he flew the Hump in a P-51, his mates got to shortening it to KT. I was born to later in life parents. I’d never bear my maternal side’s last name as a girl child. 

My aging Grampy, North Carolina farm raised, always smelling of curing  tobacco, bemoaned no child was yet named for him. Maybe it was just retold, like a silk purse made from a sow’s ear, but slurring the initials to a more feminine form, my name was chosen. 

It’s a name firmly rooted in the great state that I didn’t travel far to raise my copper-haired son in. Why would I? It’s in our blood. Perhaps like a good trait, at times especially during hurricane season, much more like inheriting your Aunt Faye’s flounder-faced walleye condition that’s never been diagnosed by the nice transplanted doctor in the Cary suburb. 

My grandmother once called late at night and in a hushed tone drawled, “You must come over right now! There is a drunkard in the home! A hobo! I can smell it on his breath. The whiskey of all things! He’s come for easy pickins!” 

I asked, if it were so serious, if calling the police wouldn’t be a better idea. 

“Oh. No. What would the neighbors say! It’s past 10 O’clock! Besides Alice is in my Sunday school and she will tell everybody there is!” I failed to mention that the notion of hobos were long since extinct. 

I quickly assembled a team of three brawny fellas and over we dashed. We found the despicable culprit, the villain: an apple core that had fallen behind the sofa, hence the “smell of whiskey.” 

You see, that is the hallmark of being a Southern woman. It’s not a mere stereotype of some passive aggressive “blessing of hearts” or how to make a good pound cake, though the latter doesn’t hurt. 

It is grace under pressure. It is understanding someone is being foolish but caring for them with dignity as well. It’s the glory in assembling folks over an apple core. It’s the ability to have a good laugh over such mishaps. 

For some reason I seem prone to those. I’m a coastal Carolinian, I’m a wife, mother. I’ve got a sense of humor but I have the good manners to only use the term “waffle” in Columbus County… and then only if I’m ordering breakfast. A wise man once told me if you were to ask me the time, I’d tell you how to make a clock. 

For the sake of time, my name is Katie. I want to tell y’all a story.