What is the South?

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette ^ | March 6, 2005 | Paul Greenberg

[writer33]

It's Southeriffic!

[Redgirl]

I get tired of outsiders automatically assuming all the white southerners are dumb, redneck racists. I remember when Ray Lewis was charged with murder in Atlanta all I saw on the news were people "worried" that Ray wouldn't get a "fair" trial (even though the sheriff and DA are both black) since he was in the South. I don't know if he got a fair trial, but someone got away with murder.

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Nice quidnunc, thanks from a Southerner.

[Search4Truth]

Ya'll come back na, ya hear!

[mdittmar]

I wish I was in "Dixie"

[Arkinsaw]

Another gem from Paul Greenberg. Nothing I could add would be worthy.

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

What is the South?

My Grandma's

My Mothers home Cooking

My Wife's family deep in Kentucky

A Southern Belle Cousin who's half crazy !

[jess35]

Very nice.

I've lived in the South for 26 years and I couldn't begin to explain it to someone who has never been here.

[Knitting A Conundrum]

Excellent...reminds me of Dr. Holditch, the professor I had for my Faulkner seminar...his grandfather had served with Faulkner's grandfather, I believe (and would have been truly jealous if he had known my family was related to Faulker, something I didn't know at the time!)

Some of the best, most erudite, or just plain good, or both together writing in this country is Southern...there is something about the water, the soil, the experience, or perhaps the heat, that brings forth people one after the other like Faulkner and Williams and O'Connor and all the rest. I personally think it's the blood red soil and the light that is brighter than anywhere else, and learning to live with human frailty and failure between the blue sky and the good earth, baked by the long hot summer of life...

[norton]

That is so, SO, good.

I'm dropping the guy in the white suit and re-setting in into dramatic cadence just so I can read it every once in a while.

Thanks.

[ChadGore]

Q: What is the South?
A: A place democrats go to loose elections.

[SamAdams76]

For me, the South is an endless string of Waffle Houses and Cracker Barrel restaurants with nary a Dunkin' Donuts to be found anywhere. For me, the South is where the speed limit on the interstate highways is 85mph regardless of what is posted for the northerners. The South is a very friendly and hospitable place. It is a place where the summer air hangs heavy and is filled with June bugs and other flying insects. There is nothing like the smell of freshly cut hay and cow dung wafting in the wind. You only get that smell when you are down South.

If you have to keep a lookout for fire ant hills, you know you are down South. If you are walking down the road and everybody stops to offer you a lift, you know you are down South. If everybody is sitting out on the porch with a pitcher of iced tea, you know you are down South. (And no matter how much you try up North, you just cannot make iced tea that tastes the same as down South.)

If the restaurant you are at offers grits as a menu option, you know you are down South. Ditto if biscuits and gravy are on the menu for breakfast.

If you see huge billboards on the highways advertising FIREWORKS FOR SALE, you know you are down South.

If NASCAR trumps major league baseball on the sports pages, you know you are reading a paper from down South.

Those are just a few trivial observations...I could go on for many more pages. BTW, I visit the South every year and like it down there much better than here up North, where the people are usually rude and obnoxious.

[norton]

what frustrates me the most is that when I lived in Arkansas, the Journal just flat sucked!
("he said")

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Thank you for your sweet reflections on the South.

We set our tea out in the sun for about 8 hours to get that great taste. Sun tea cannot be beat.

[TomServo]

Dixie Ping, Sir...;-)

[stainlessbanner]

Southern ping

[Knitting A Conundrum]

Now about them dunking donuts...when I left, they were in New Orleans...and had been since I was a kid.

But you should see the Fireworks for Sale signs in Wyoming! I do believe it's a major industry, to sell tourists fireworks that are illegal to shoot in Wyoming, but legal to sell.

I do admit to enjoying having left the land of fire ants. I used to garden barefoot so that when I got a fireant bite, I could immediately flood my foot with the waterhose, cause it made the bite sting less. I still have a number of little circular scars on my feet from the ant bites.

I miss the taste of water in the air, the sweet voices from North Mississippi, that nasally sounds of east Texas, the almost Brooklynese of a proper New Orleans Yat...and Magnolia grandiflora...and crape myrtles...

Can take the Southerner out of the south, but probably never take the south out of the Southerner...

[SamAdams76]

Just got back from a trip to South Carolina and Georgia. I visited Charleston, Beaufort, Parris Island and Hilton Head Island (SC) as well as Savannah, GA. Very nice part of the country. I have yet to be disappointed with a trip to the South, be it Nashville, New Orleans, Atlanta or Virginia.

But my favorite place of all is northern Alabama in the Guntersville Lake area. Every summer, I visit there for at least a week. That is where my folks live and where I intend to retire myself someday. My father was born and raised on a farm down there but he relocated North for a job when I was born so I lost the opportunity to grow up there myself. Nevertheless, I have the South in my blood!

Whenever I drive down South and I see that first Waffle House off I-81 in Virginia, I know I have arrived!

[Radix]

The "South" is anything not north of Rhode Island!