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Date: | Thu, 12 Apr 2007 13:08:35 -0400 |
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When I discuss foodways in my geography courses, I
have to START with the assumption that most of my
students have no experience other than the
widespread availability of foreign cuisines. In my
lecture on the subject, I show a clip from the "Andy
Griffith Show" (after they jumped the shark and went
to color) in which a Chinese place opened up in
Mayberry and nobody would try it until it got the
"official" OK from the Sherrif. There was a Chinese
take-out (Ding How) in Springfield as far back as I
can remember (at least the late '60s). We started
seeing Vietnamese restaurants by the late '70s
because of the influx of South Vietnamese refugees;
I suspect the same holds true for parts of the Gulf
Coast. Not counting chains, the last time I
checked, Springfield had six different Asian
cuisines represented in the phone book. In the
1980s Springfield's first "Mexican" restaurant was
Chi-Chi's - if you can call that Mexican. There
were six Mexican places (including Taco Bell, sigh)
in Springfield a couple of years ago. Farmville has
had Chinese for as long as I've been here (16 years)
and now has three. We once had a Chinese/Afghan
restaurant! We geographers work on these kinds of
topics and it would be a nice master's thesis or
dissertation topic to investigate the diffusion of
say Chinese restaurants. The spread is a mix of
processes, including relocation and expansion
diffusion. Most of the new ones look very
cookie-cutterish to me: same menus, same pictures
of food above the counter, and the same art work on
the walls. Either these are franchise operations or
there's only one supplier of Chinese restaurant
supplies in the Mid-Atlantic!
________________________________
Dr. David S. Hardin
Assistant Professor of Geography
Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences
Longwood University
Farmville, Virginia 23909
Phone: (434) 395-2581
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
********************
"For as Geography without History
seemeth a carkasse without motion,
so History without Geography
wandreth as a Vagrant without a
certaine habitation."
John Smith, 1627
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