If you’ve ever been a
fish out of water, you’ll totally relate to this blog! Howdy y’all! Let me introduce myself, I’m
Heather Flanigan and no, I don’t sound like you. My husband Brett Garrett and I just moved nearly
1500 miles cross country to the Albany area from Tupelo, Mississippi!
Why in the world would
we pack up and become Yankees you ask?
Well, we’re just crazy like that!
Brett and I met in a television news room in Jonesboro, Arkansas in 2006. He came from North Carolina to be a reporter
and I from Missouri to report and anchor for the ABC affiliate. Fate put our desks side by side in that
newsroom and the rest is history! His
dreams of becoming a sports anchor took him to Tupelo, Mississippi where he was
smack dab in the heart of the SEC and in the middle of the war between Ole Miss
and Mississippi State fans.
I joined him down there soon after we married in Poplar Bluff, Missouri in August of 2008. Believe it or not, our wedding was planned around football season!
Small town television certainly
has its perks. Everyone knows you when
you’ve got to run to Wal-Mart in your glasses and sweatpants to pick up the necessities. Or if you make a quick stop at a gas station
because you just ‘gotta go!’ And don’t
even think of trying to get a bikini wax in town…that gossip will spread
quicker than wildfire. But most folks
might be surprised to know that all that fame comes with little fortune. In fact, usually small market television is about
one step above the poverty level. When I
signed my first contract to be an on-air reporter, I seriously qualified for
HUD housing. But at the time, you’re
young, gung-ho and don’t really know any better, you just want to change the
world with all that hard hitting news you’re doing on cat fashion shows and
such.
Other reporters in the newsroom
taught us how to survive and dress on a dime.
A fabulous junk jewelry store in the hood of Memphis is where we would
find truly amazing knockoff trendy jewelry.
Of course, you’d run the risk that your necklace might break on air or
you’d lose an earring mid interview, which did happen a few times. Fine dining was eating the samples at Sam’s
Club for lunch (or spring for the hotdog combo at the cafeteria for only $1.50)
and groups of photographers/anchors/reporters would get together for home cooked
potluck dinners once a week….and we made sure we had leftovers for at least
another meal.
When the opportunity
for Brett to work for Snap-On Industrial fell into our laps, we realized we
might be able to actually buy something at Sam’s! But the job was in upstate
New York and isn’t
that like the tundra or something? With
great reservations, we hopped on a plane to Albany, had 1.5 days to look around
and had thankfully missed a huge snowstorm that had just passed through the
area. Exactly two months later, we were
loading up an ABF trailer with all of our worldly possessions and embarking on
a cross country trip that would change our lives forever.
So, now we’re pseudo-Yankees
(but not Yankee fans-our alliances stay with the St. Louis Cardinals & Mr.
Albert Pujols) and are trying to not only adapt, but fit in with our new
environment. Things may be different,
but I don’t think we’ll ever stop trying those samples at Sams’s!
Heather!
Hi, A colleague of mine who knows my story sent a link to your blog via our Facebook connection with each other. I, too, am a Mississippi transplant. There aren’t many of us here. I came due to completely different circumstances, but like you, it was a choice and a leap of faith. Because I am a speech and language pathologist, I’m afraid my twang is somewhat set (my drawl HAS morphed, but I can pull it up at will; I mostly get accused of being from Texas these days) but I will never give up certain parts of my original dialect, y’all (much to the general yankee’s chagrin). Welcome to the frozen north ….email me if you’d like to swap so-funny-they’re-enough-to-make-you-cry yankee/southern belle transition stories: Cvanalstyne@gmail.com.
Welcome to the frey!
Great first post, Heather. And it brought back memories of searching for suit jackets in thrift stores when I was anchoring. It’s so amusing to me that people think that if you work in television, you must be rich. I think you and Brett made the right choice to “move on up.” Can’t wait to read more of your adventures!