Posted on 01/24/2013 6:23:56 PM PST by FoxPro
I have lived in Las Vegas and Los Angeles for the past 5 years.
I drove down to Huntsville, Alabama to work on some software, with a friend of mine.
I have never been to the "deep South".
I have been here for 24 hours.
It is really a bit of a culture shock after spending a day sorting things out, here.
Everybody is "Yes Sir" and "No Sir" with people differing to you with "Am I in your way?" and "Can I help you find something?"
Well, this is exactly what happened to me today.
I sat down to get to work, on my computer and the battery in my mouse dies.
I move my mouse and the arrow is just there, not moving.
It always happens at the worst of times.
So I drive down to Kroger's grocery store, walk in, stand there, trying to figure out if I should turn left or right, in my hunt for the "Battery Center".
Well this very large man walks up to me, he is wearing a Kroger badge and below his name it says "Manager".
He intones "Can I help you?"
I said, a bit jaded "Yes, I need ONE AA battery, but I know I will have to buy a 12 pack, but that's just the way things go."
He motions me over to a check stand, grabs a 4 pack of AA batteries, tears it open, pulls out one battery, hands it to me and says "Merry Christmas."
I am stunned...
DO YOU REALLY THINK THIS WOULD EVER HAPPEN ANYWHERE IN LOS ANGELES? Really?
The guy made my day and it is a seemingly small gesture, I will never forget.
But this guy knows I will probably spend $100 or more, at this Kroger's, in the next few months, than I would have otherwise.
He knows that this small act of kindness will be recouped many times over in the near future.
This gentleman knows all about not being "Penny wise and pound foolish."
I think I will like being an Alabamian.
I’m just lucky only one of them is in the family way! Close one...
Having grown up in the mid south we decided to return in retirement. We settled on Desoto County, Ms just south of Memphis. Some of my first impressions were in our neighborhood Krogers. Where we had lived in the east there seemed to be open hostility and a total lack of manners between the races. There at Kroger is where the first impressions occured to us. There were several pretty young cashiers named Ashley, Tiffany or Debbie and similar southern lady names. They were uniformly friendly and helpful. They were also black.
I was not unaware of the history of this region, having been here through the exodus of blacks from the south going north, and their reasons for doing so. Now many have returned to their roots, as have many poor white southerners. The south is still a gracious place to live and to visit.
I remember a cheerful Christian women telling me that when she come from California in the 80’s to a city north of Boston MA, people looked at her as strange when she smiled at them and wished them a good day.
But while i have no doubt people are more friendly in the Bible belt type places, Miami Beach was the worst, and one time in a northern suburb of Boston i had a similar occurrence as you describe here.
The wife of a poor friend of ours ran over a curb and crushed and put a hole in the front of the oil pan. The garaged wanted about 400 to fix it which he did not have.
So we went to a small hardware store and as i was looking at a small piece of rubber tubing to screw a lag bolt through, the manager/owner came by and helped. Looking around for what size i needed and knowing they sell the tubing by the foot i wondered how much it would cost, and he just said, “try me.” Having settled upon what i thought would work, he just gave it to me.
I cleaned the dented section of the oil pan with dish detergent and then alcohol, let it dry and then screwed the bolt through the tube and into the hole so that it mushroomed out and sealed the hole, and then i smothered it with JB weld. It held for a long time (i forget if he ever got it fixed) although the owner said there was a smaller leak that needed more JB Weld.
But it was that small impromptu act of kindness that sticks in my memory, and set that man and store above the chain stores in this regard.
LOL. We have some "snowbirds" who started visiting our congregation in central TX, and they found that to be very unusual.
My job takes me to NC several times a year, and I love it there. So much so that I'll likely be moving in a couple of years. The weather - and the people - are a lot warmer in the South. There are still nice folks here in the rural/exurban Northeast, but over the years too many big city types have moved in and brought their bad manners with them.
I agree. I have lived many places, but the last 21 years ave been rural, and I will never return to the city.
My theory is that the more personal space you have the more at ease you are with others.
Rural people are generally good people.
MamaB your HSV wouldn’t be in Arkansas would it?
I definitely see the point. And kind of forgot, Maryland was considered a Southern state even though especially in the DC area identifies with the liberal Northeast.
Kind of funny, one of the G-berg high flyers would visit our Colorado office every so often and he will always wear the dark slacks, dress shirt and tie even on Friday and be more formal business casual on weekends. I gave him a hard time that ties and fancy pants are not required in Colorado. I personally wore blue jeans everyday especially working in a lab where from day to day, I would be on the floor doing cables. He didn’t quite like it when I said that to him LOL. On weekends if I had to go into the office, I would go with the shorts, sandals and t-shirt/hoodie and our G-burg counterparts would complain about me dressing too casually and I would respond that I am there on my own time (unpaid OT) and I am there to work, not be a fashion plate or model.
> There’s Maryland and then there’s Maryland. When you were being hassled by rude people in Gaithersburg at Lockheed, I’m pretty sure you were talking to people who were not bred, born, and raised in the Maryland countryside.
> a lot of them are very ambitious people who move to the DC suburbs in pursuit of a high-flying career. They’re stressed and exhausted and some of them are not very nice.
Miami is occupied territory, hasn’t been run by Floridians for decades.
Just as mentioned, I dealt with a NJ company in my current job and dealt with a nasty Executive who threatened to take me to court if I didn’t fix his software problem this instant. He threatened both criminal charges and civil suit. A lot of times, I look at tickets I get assigned and I cringe when I see an area code that points to New Jersey.
Unfortunately, I cannot setup the ticketing software where I cannot take tickets that are customers who are in NJ. And the time of my shift, I end up getting a lot of tickets where the customer is in the US Northeast with a majority in NY/NJ, MA, CT and Wash DC area.
> I am over a Purchasing department and I had to implement what I coin the New Jersey rule. We never do business with any company from NJ. They protest every bid they loose and threaten to take you court. Bunch of ass wipes every one in every case, just look at their fat ass governor for a perfect example.
When I read the line, this reminded me of when I was traveling from Florida up to Indy and I stopped overnite in Macon, GA. I went to check in at the hotel and a young black lady checked me in. Very kind and nice. Not nasty, ghetto like a lot I see normally.
> There were several pretty young cashiers named Ashley, Tiffany or Debbie and similar southern lady names. They were uniformly friendly and helpful. They were also black.
Don’t tell ‘em about the “redneck riviera” on the coast of Alabama and the Florida panhandle. Nothing but beach, beer, oysters, and nice folks from one end to the other.
“. . . give me oysters and beer, everday of the year, and I’ll be fine . . . “ Simple pleasures captured by Buffett.
As Jerry Clower told the “she-coon of the women’s lib movement”: “Mama don’t want you messin’ with the deal she’s got!”
Well . . . we don’t want libtard/Marxist Rat Yankees messin’ with the deal the WE’VE got!!!!
I live in a little rural village in central Virginia, just outside of Lynchburg. Up until fairly recently, this was a super-friendly area...the kind of place where people always smiled at each other and struck up conversations with strangers.
But since people began flooding down here from the northeastern cities, there’s been a definite change. Now, it’s amazing how often a smile will be rewarded with a scowl. Virginia natives don’t understand people like that....nor do we really want to.
LOL!
I went to Walmart yesterday. I was driving around looking for a parking space, and I saw two otherwise normal-looking women going into the store wearing their pajamas and slippers. I don't know what planet I live on anymore.
LMAO! I knew that Texas was for secession...I just didn’t know it was from the deep South. The only farther South you can go than Texas is Key West.
Sounds about right.
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