By Jacob Hatcher  

Community Columnist  

 Last week I left one of our vehicles at the shop to be worked on. When they called to say the repairs were done, I loaded up the kids to go retrieve the vehicle and found that something horrible had happened while it was in the mechanic’s care: someone had taken my straw cowboy hat and sat it on the seat with the brim down.  

I opened the door startled as I watched all of my luck pour out of that hat and out onto the gravel driveway.  

We southerners are funny about those kinds of things. No matter how rational we are, we can’t help but be a little superstitious.  

I like to consider myself a reasonable person, but I’m not ashamed to admit I once made a person spend twenty minutes trying to figure out how to close a pocket knife I’d let them borrow and they had opened. Closing a knife you didn’t open? There’s just somethings a body cannot abide.  

These days it seems like it’s bad luck to plan a wedding for a Saturday in the fall in SEC country. That’s not so much a superstition as much as it is that no one’s going to like you if you do.  

For what it’s worth, we got married on January 11th just in case Alabama was in the national championship game. My then fiancé said she would not be watching football on our honeymoon. But we did watch Alabama bear Clemson for the title on our second anniversary, so I guess we both won that argument. 

Of course, there are plenty of superstitions I don’t buy into. I’ve never eaten black eyed peas and cabbage during New Years, for instance. I’m far too picky an eater to fall for that one. I also don’t knock on wood very often, mostly because these days real wood is hard to find.  

Some people think we’re crazy down here for thinking this way. Maybe we are. I tend to think the whole world is a little crazy and we’re just the only ones that aren’t ashamed of our crazy ways.