Our southern thang
My daughter, Melissa, gave me two wall plaques for the sunroom. I spend much of my time there because looking out at the water has always calmed me. One reads “Heaven is Just a Little Bit Closer Beside the Water” and the other one reads “The SAU-TH (SOUTH)”
The latter describes why I am from the South and am very proud of it! It tells me that this region where I was born and live contributes to who I am. This is how it reads:
“1) Tea is sweet and accents are sweeter. 2) Macaroni and cheese is a vegetable. 3) Front porches are wide and woods are long. 5) Pecan pie is a staple. 6)
Y’all is the only proper noun. 7) Chicken is fried and biscuits come with gravy. 8) Everything is “Darlin’” 9) Someone’s heart is always being blessed.”
Now, it does not list a tenth description so I will add my own here…10) Southerners trust and respect each other simply because we are all from the SOUTH and appreciate our shared tastes in a number of things…
The South has its own delectables. Besides those mentioned above, we enjoy other taste treats such as fig preserves, slimy okra boiled in purple hull peas, rice pudding topped with brown sugar, and grits served with breakfast. The South has its own points of destination for grand vacations that are not found anywhere else in the world. Galveston, Texas; New Orleans, Louisiana; Biloxi and Gulfport, Mississippi; Alabama’s Dauphin Island; St. Augustine and Daytona Beach, Florida; and, of course, Savanna, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina. At least these are some of my own personal favorites. Just think about it…where else can you find azalea trails, plantation tours, and lazy rivers canopied by moss-laden trees but in The SAU-TH”?
The temperature? Yes, it is hot and humid for most of the summer but we Southerners are accustomed to it--we endure it while waiting for the fall months. We rarely have to bring our outside plants inside before Halloween as people do up North. I have never known anyone who owned a snow shovel. We get all excited down here and turn out schools and dismiss office workers whenever a few snowflakes are sighted. We also don’t have snow tires and those chain things. Our lawns are green while the rest of the U.S. is brown or snow-covered along the Canadian border. We can pull out our shorts and tee-shirts in late February while the rest of America is still shivering in their Long Johns and “sweats.”
The music of the South? It is most often found on C&W radio stations but, of course, there’s plenty of Blues and
Jazz and Cajun fiddlin’ in and around N’awlins. If you were brought up Southern, maybe you heard Carl Perkins singing “Blue Suede Shoes” in 1955 and didn’t quite know what to think about this new sound. A little later it became known as “Southern Rock-abilly” or the “Nashville Sound” that gave us Elvis (swoon!), Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino and my generation’s favorite Rock ‘n Roll. Some preachers were known to preach against it. Whatever it was, teenagers loved it and I’ll give it credit for rescuing “Hillbilly Music” to become “Country Music” for us Arkansas natives. The sound grew in popularity until it came into greater prominence (mainstream?) through the music of Willie, Waylon, George Strait, and others. Though it can now be heard on radio stations throughout the world, remember that TRUE “Country” had its roots in the South!
Last, but certainly not least, is the language of the South. We have our own dialect that only we Southerners understand. When we moved back to Arkansas in 2013 to this home in Hot Springs Village, I really came to realize this final fact. You see, I learned that The Village is made up mainly of people from the North Country who grew tired of shoveling snow and dragging their plants inside for the winter and were unable to enjoy the outdoors for at least six months of the year. Here in The Village, golf and boating are King with 8 major lakes and 9 golf courses so it is a haven for Yankees who come here to “play” all year long. When I returned to Arkansas, I had a difficult time learning the ‘new’ language. My next door neighbor is from Buffalo, New York. She pronounces “rat” as “ret.” The neighbor next to her is from Milwaukee and pronounces back as “bek” and one from New Jersey continues to say “Youse guys” when referring to the rest of us. We Southerners often use two syllables to pronounce a one syllable word. “Door” becomes “do-er.” We often mistreat certain vowels--“awhile” becomes “awhal.” And, goodness knows, we have an affinity for dropping final consonants, running words together, and ending sentences with prepositions. “Ah’m bringin’ you somethin’ “kinda’ sums it up.
YET…WE all get along. We accept each others’ differences and learn from one another. We visit, eat, and laugh together despite the contrasts. And, bless our hearts, we drink our sweet tea, eat our pecan pie, and even kiss each other on the cheek when we part at the end of the night as we smile and say, “G’night, Y’all!”