What is the South?

New Orleans – "What’s the South like?" said the man in the white suit at the next table, mulling over the question. "That’s what they all ask. Well, that depends on which South you mean — the antebellum mansion, the fly-specked roadhouse, or the latest of the New Souths, the Sunbelt. Or northern Mexico, aka Texas. Or one of the uncountable other Souths. Which image is the facade for which?"

The man in the white suit soon warmed to his inexhaustible subject: "One South fits into the next like one of those Russian dolls. Do not be quick to decide which is the real South. There is no such thing. Nor is it easy to see which culture is supplanting the other at any given time. The professional Southerner may turn out to be all leaf and no roots; the most Southern of us all may never think on what it means to be Southern."

Our new friend paused to sip at his mint julep. "Actually, I prefer Scotch. I drink these just to give the tourists something to talk about. The South, you see, is the complete preservation of tradition on selected occasions. The South is the Natchez Trace, that dream highway meandering through forests only as deep as the right-of-way, with faithful old retainers cannily posted at convenient distances to guide and refresh, and assure us that all is as it appears to be before they disappear to rearrange the scenery. The real South? The South is the most unreal part of this dream America, and therefore the most enduring."

The sun shone bright on the tables at the sidewalk cafe, and the man in the white suit paused to set his drink down ever so carefully before continuing. "The South," he said, "is a high road that rises up green and lush beyond every curve and over every rise. The South is also Highway 61 that runs right alongside the Trace, featuring misspelled signs and abandoned drive-in movie theaters. It’s grass growing through the cracks of an abandoned parking lot. New dreams here fade before the old ones do. To be Southern is to want nothing more than to live by the side of the road and board up the windows to outsiders.

"The South is driving along a Mississippi back road in the dead heat of a hot Sunday afternoon listening to a black preacher on the radio praising the Lord in half song, half sermon — as close as contemporary man may come to the original spirit of the Psalms. Logically, it would seem easier to say grace over oysters Rockefeller and trout meunière at Galatoire’s than over potlikker and biscuits with Hoover gravy, but of course it’s the other way ‘round in the South, as it is everywhere. There never was a religion of thanksgiving that could match a single prayer uttered out of sheer desperation. And the South has more desperation than cotton and soybeans and rice put together; it grows like kudzu in the night.

"The South," the man in the white suit continued, his voice deepening preacher-like, "is no longer Christ-centered, if it ever was, but it is Christ-fixated; here even oh-so-rational agnostics seem to have a bitter edge of fervor to their denials of faith. Flannery O’Connor told us that. It would take a Dostoyevsky to understand us; we sure can’t, though we never cease confidently explaining ourselves to one another."

The man in the white suit paused for a sip and the hint of smile before continuing: "Perhaps Dostoyevsky would not know us at all; he is much too dark. But Potemkin, that rascal, would. He reminds me a lot of our own good old boys. The kind who are determined to save our priceless heritage but only if the price is right. The Southern ideal is the classical one — of harmony, completeness, evenness. Our beau ideal is not the tortured and agonized existential hero, or the witty and ambitious leader at the top of the greasy pole, but the whole man. Our ideal is the man without a mark on him, the women in the portraits that grace the halls of antebellum mansions, which were the contemporary equivalent of Disneylands in their time and, strangely enough, remain so. Our hero is Robert E. Lee, never Abe Lincoln. Even if he was born in Kentucky. He is too complicated, too broken and put back together again. We have no use for your knights of the doleful countenance; our heroes must be wrinkle-free. The ideal Southerner must be all of a piece — of alabaster. No wonder we break under the strain of living up to such impossible specifications. Lee never broke, he did not even rise and fall; he was simply, always, Lee. But he is the model, not the reality. The blueprint, not the ramshackle result… .

"Our idea of the good has come to be the simple, the whole, so instinctively understandable as not to require explication, at least not in words. That would be to desecrate it, like cracking a piece of marble. The Southerner aims for a literal integrity. Perhaps that is why we keep producing the partial, the incomplete, the unnatural, and explicating them to death. As usual, Flannery O’Connor explained it: ‘Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man … .’ She had it right. As usual.

"The key," said the man in the white suit, "is the past. You can change the name of Confederate Boulevard to something else, but it remains in the mind, like a gray ghost, like fallen leaves rustling against the tombstones in an old cemetery. Nothing is more real or renewable than the past. It is the only thing that lasts. Though it lingers longer in some places than others — like here in New Orleans and in the nameless little cotton towns one passes through on the way to someplace else. But there is no escaping the Southern past even along the franchise rows, in the midst of the industrial parks, at the tractor pulls, even next to the air-conditioning vents.

"We are the only part of the country," the man in the white suit explained, "to have been defeated and occupied, and defeat lasts longer than victory and in some ways is sweeter. Whether we learned anything from defeat and occupation is problematic; we were not so much instructed as fascinated by the experience. Its effect has been not cautionary but romantic. The politicians we honor are not the most effective or successful, but the dreamiest. How else explain the pointless worship of Jefferson Davis?

"Most of all," the man in the white suit declared, after a moment’s reflection, "we hate the politician who can see a little further than most and commits the indiscretion of telling the rest of us about it. We cast him into obloquy as soon as he betrays any sign of prescience. The only reason we still honor John C. Calhoun, who may have been the most far-sighted of them all, is that we have confused that hard-bitten realist with a romantic dreamer. How Bobby Lee let himself get mixed up with all that nonsense will always be a mystery to some of us. But you cannot have his kind of greatness without his kind of naiveté."

The man in the white suit looked at the river shimmering in the distance, as if thinking of the whole South sending its watery tribute down the Mississippi to New Orleans and the Gulf.

"Southernism," he said, "is itself a curious, alien patriotism, the product of both America and of the separate nation we were for four long, arduous years, perhaps longer. We are still a different country in the important, informal ways that are the most enduring. The honorable Southerner, like General Lee or Admiral Semmes, is still on parole, sincerely wishing to live up to the terms of his pardon, but without violating some interior honor. That produces an interesting tension. The Southerner is tempted to make up for his slightly subversive past by bouts of star-spangled jingoism that are not very convincing, or lasting. He is bound and determined to be a good American, but something inside still rebels.

"What’s the South?" the man in the white suit repeated. "It is a reflection in a shattered mirror; the images no longer fit if they ever did. It is Blanche DuBois and General MacArthur, John Gould Fletcher and Andrew Jackson, Delta and hills, Ossie Davis and Ross Barnett, Uncle Remus and James Branch Cabell. It has no one, sure image. The best course is to depend on none of them, but to approach the subject without preconceived or received ideas, which, at least for a Southerner, is an impossibility. You have to be a transplant to see it clear, as in a telescope or under a microscope. But then it becomes some dead thing, which is not the South at all."

A streetcar over on St. Charles whirred and clanged by in the distance, and the haze of the day grew steamier. A tray of beignets and café au lait caught my attention and appetite. When I turned back, the man in the white suit was gone. Only his empty glass remained — palpable, shimmering, waiting to be filled again and again. Like the South herself.

Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has been away. An earlier version of this column appeared in the Democrat-Gazette on July 24, 1992. E-mail him at: paul _ greenberg@adg.ardemgaz.com.

He was a Southerner and I was Yankee...

http://cajamnet.net/sleepytime.htm

Why It's "Sleepy Time" Down South...

Why is it that northern folk say that it's always "sleepy time down south" with such disdain?

In my life I have had the distinct pleasure of having visited in all 50 of these United States as well as a large number of foreign countries. I have found few places on the globe more vibrant and alive than the southern United States. I have found none in which I would rather live out my life.

Sure, like all peoples living in closer proximity to the terrestrial equator, we southerners tend to move at a somewhat more relaxed pace than our northern cousins from somewhat more temperate zones. There's a good reason for that. Anyone who has attempted to accomplish anything the least bit physically strenuous in the 98º (and above) heat and 100% humidity that prevail from south Georgia to the swamps of south Louisiana understands without being told why that is. I firmly believe that our Creator allowed mankind to invent air conditioning by way of a celestial apology to southerners for His mix up on the weather.

In the deep South - that is, any point south of a line from Macon, Georgia to Shreveport, Louisiana - we have fewer wooden, privacy fences surrounding our homes than are found in more northern climes. Again, it is with cause that this condition exists. It is not that we eschew blocking out vision of, and by, our neighbors, as some may surmise. The true reason is even more practical than that. Our 11½ month growing season, heat and oppressive humidity give us real concerns that the boards used to build the fence just might take root, sprout and start growing again. Anyone who has fought the losing battle against kudzu knows the reality of that potential.

Any Southerner foolish and addled enough to "plant" kudzu does so by throwing it on the ground and immediately running for his life. The slow of foot and uninformed have often been discovered many years later, caught in mid-stride, eternally entwined in kudzu vines. Only one who has fought to contain the growth of kudzu has any real, earthly meaning of the Biblical concept of "eternal life." Scientists seeking to extend the life of man need look no farther than the lowly kudzu vine for the ingredient that can overcome all attempts to eradicate it. Therein that impossible-to-kill vine medical science may one day finally discover the long guarded secret of true immortality.

Deep Southerners will tell you that we have 11 months of summer every year and that spring and fall each last about two weeks. Then they'll tell you with a satisfied grin that winter was on a Wednesday afternoon last year. Show a born and bred southern male a snow shovel and he'll call it a "shrimp scoop" like the ones used on all the shrimp boats in the Gulf. True Southerners have to be told what a snow blower is and its purpose. Life-long Southerners usually scratch their heads in bewilderment as its purpose is explained, however. That bewildered state is akin to the confusion in the mind of a teen-aged boy when he considers strapless dresses on females. He knows they do stay up and even has some understanding of why they do, but he just can't understand how.

The candor and honesty of true Southerners, while commendable, is simply another facet of weather affecting a culture. It takes less effort to tell the truth than to lie. We southern born and bred aren't ones for doing any unnecessary chasing of tales in this heat and humidity.

Southern men are not above settling differences of opinion with a test of capabilities in what are affectionately known in these parts as "good old-fashioned whup butt" skills. Because telling lies can quickly get you involved in strenuous activity in the heat and humidity, plain old common sense precludes any southern male from doing anything that is going to cause him to sweat more than he already is without any real need for doing so.

Southern ladies are special too. A true southern lady can tell you in the nicest way that you should make reservations for a near-future trip to Hades and she'll say it so sweetly that you'll actually be looking forward to the trip. A "southern belle" will slice through to the core of your nosey soul with only a glance and sweet words. Those words will be the social graces' equivalent of a fully armed thermonuclear device prettily dressed in conversational Sunday-go-to-meetin' clothes. These are almost always the result should you dare ask what is considered an inappropriate, ill-mannered question or commit some verbal faux pas in the presence of a true southern born and bred lady.

There is wisdom in the classification of many southern women as "steel magnolias." They have all the beauty and grace of this symbol of gentle southern living, but don't let the looks and slow drawls fool you. Beneath those delicate petals is hidden an inner strength of character and will that can withstand great hardships and endure many personal tragedies without breaking. Look to the ugly historical record of Reconstruction and national laws that have been imposed only on the southern states to understand our ability to endure.

What is interesting to watch is the metamorphosis that transplanted northerners undergo when they move south. Many never yield to their new location, however much the realities of professional lives or personal choices may compel them to do so. Their conversations are marked with allusions to "...how we do it up north." They can own a home, send their children to local schools, join country clubs, operate businesses (even their own) and yet they will still refer to their former states of residence as "home" and subscribe to daily New York, Chicago or Boston newspapers. They can, and usually do, converse intelligently, at length and in-depth on local happenings and events taking place over a thousand land miles away. Of course, they are often unaware of what is happening in their own neighborhoods or local communities of residence.

After a short time, those who will become "southernized" start adapting in minor ways that speak volumes. "You guys" soon gives way to "y'all." It is a phrase said more slowly and it just has a friendlier ring to it than "you guys.". They soon stop smugly superior, often ill-concealed (if at all), snickering laughter about directions that include the term "yonder" and even begin to give directions to others with the same directional imperative. A Southerner understands when something is "...a piece down the road." Of course, it's not a specific measure, but it tells a tale in and of itself when you tell someone that they will have to travel "...a piece" up, or down, a certain road. You always get greater enjoyment from driving "... a piece down a road" than you could ever encounter from driving "...6.2 miles" on any roadway anywhere else in the world. That's just common knowledge down south and we have the "Honey-let's-stop-the-car-to-look-at-this..." scenery to prove it.

True Southerners seldom experience "cabin fever." Snowfalls in excess of ½" are newsworthy items and markers of historical events in the southern United States. If a snowfall stays on the ground past daybreak of the next day, it will be forever more entwined in the lexicon of historical events recounted for generations to come. One of the greatest problems snow plows and sand trucks have in the south has to do with tires dry-rotting in storage from snowfall to snowfall. We southern folk solved that dilemma with our invention of the concrete block, though. In the upper northern tier of states, wiser people remain locked inside, away from the elements, for much of the winter or only venture out in a mound of clothing that obscures the gender and even the species of the wearer. January and February picnics are not unheard of in the south, however. By March of each year, Louisiana strawberry farmers have their first crop harvested while their New England counterparts are still awaiting the unfreezing of the ground so they can plant their initial crops.

People from the north also discover the multiple hues that are covered by the single word "green" when they head south. A drive along any southern roadway introduces viewers to horizon-reaching rank after rank of trees and vegetation decked out in shades of green upon shades of green mixed with other variations of green that don't even have names yet. Each autumn, our pine trees provide us a verdant palette of colors as a backdrop to the flaming, blazing rainbow of fall foliage mixed in with the evergreen background of our year 'round landscape. Visit the Virginia, Tennesse, North Carolina and north Georgia, Alabama and Arkansas mountains in late September or early October of any year and get back to me about "fall colors" and "rustic, natural beauty."

While it is true that the hills and forests of Vermont and New Hampshire are decked in rolling vistas of majestic fall hues each year, the time of such beauty is far too short-lived. And, yes, there is a certain clean-lined and uncluttered, almost macabre beauty to stark, dark, skeletal-appearing tree limbs raised in supplication to a winter sky filled with snow flakes. The still, echoing sound of footsteps breaking through the crust of new snow in a chill that makes breathing a visual art has a charm of its own as well. But, that too is soon overcome by the wearisome toil of days of such limiting restraint within a small, confined, closed-in space and effort-filled drudgery to accomplish even the most simple of mundane tasks. The same roaring fire in a fireplace that was not so long before a comfort soon becomes the sound and presence of the jailer that holds one captive in a closed-in space without the healing touch of the much needed and desired, warming, life-restoring rays of sunlight astride the land. We've usually got the sun here in the south even on the most bitter of winter days.

Spring in the New England states is lush too, but only by more northern standards. Its wonder is sadly lessened and diminished by its late arrival and the rapidity of its departure. Transplant the residents of those areas to even the upper regions of the south on a comfort-giving March day and they will be quickly overwhelmed by the majesty of a rainbow of emerging colors, all varying shades of green and coral and white and pink and... you just have to experience it to understand what I mean. Only after you have seen the purity of the white blooms that cover Bradford Pear trees lining our streets, the eye-shocking, mind-soothing, soul-thrilling explosion of our blossoming azaleas, the delicate shades of dogwood and crepe myrtle can you truly grasp the concept of "spring time color." When you have known that time of rebirth just once, it is not a memory easily set aside ever again.

Don't get me wrong. I am not unashamedly proud of my southern roots. There are drawbacks, to be sure. For instance, a palm tree covered with sprayed-on flocking doesn't really quite invoke the true spirit of an old-fashioned American Christmas for me. But then, that only happens in south Florida and most southern folk don't really consider south Florida to be part of a southern state. To us, south Florida is more like a mobile-home-littered suburb of Detroit, Chicago, New York City and Pittsburgh. To the people of south Florida, the first sign of spring is not seen in the greening of shrubbery or the blooming of flowers. That's a year 'round occurrence there. If spring is indeed heralded in for those in south Florida with the arrival or departure of any species, it is most often marked by the arrival of the snowbirds each fall and their return to the north each spring. You can tell a long-term snowbird by the way that they tend to say, "Vot can I tell y'all?" while munching on a cornbread bagel. Natives of south Florida mark the changing of the seasons by setting up lawn chairs near roadside rest areas on I-75 and I-95, staging family reunions to mark the event and then waving at the arriving or departing paychecks-on-wheels the invading northern horde represent as they arrive or leave like clockwork.

We southern folk don't tell those folks, but their departure is the start of our vacation, of a sort. It gives us a time in which we don't have to endure yet another comment about "... the way we do that up north." We have surcease from folks looking down their noses at us for eating grits while they put milk and sugar on rice, sugar on grits or unknowingly embarrass themselves by asking for "Cream of Wheat" or wheat bread in public dining areas. You northern folk don't seem to understand that takes real restraint and strength of character to refrain from putting a case of overdue "southern whup butt" on someone who orders a bagel in a Krispy Kreme shop.

Their exodus will offer us a respite in which those departing aren't around to intimate that there exists some sort of magical degaussing station at the Mason-Dixon line that removes intelligence, logic and creativity for the south-bound traveler and restores it only on the return trip. Were there such a device, the only ones so affected would be the Bermuda-shorts-and-knee-high-dress-socks clad northerners coming south to Heaven each year. Haven't those folks ever heard of Miller, Faulkner, Capote or Williams to name only a few? Don't they drink "Coca Cola"? Watch "MTV" or "old folks MTV" (the Weather Channel)?

You see, despite eons of teaching to the contrary, the celestial wonders of life after life don't require a trip northward. Your preaching folk lied to you northern folks. I'm here to set the record straight. Heaven is not north of your domicile. Heaven is south of wherever you happen to be north of Baltimore, Maryland or Richmond, Virginia. Here's another travel tip. Heaven accepts Visa, Mastercard and greenbacks that our northern visitors leave behind on each trip they make here to court a serious case of "old-fashioned, well deserved, southern whup butt." We southerners have forged a thriving industry out of allowing northern folk to sneer, make disparaging remarks about us to our faces and look down their noses at us in smug, misguided, misplaced arrogance and totally wrong-headed feeling of supposed superiority born of geographic place of birth over which they had absolutely no control. If they had any choice in where they were born, they would have chosen any southern state as the desired starting point for their lives.

Sure, we know that many northerners, though admittedly not all of them, think we are all ignorant, uneducated boobs and bumpkins, but it's their northern money in our southern bank accounts when they leave. Those dollars buy our grits, folks. Think about it. You would never see a true southerner buy pink-flamingo-shaped salt and pepper shakers or a carved-from-cypress-scraps outhouse that says "Souvenir of...(insert any southern state name)" to give to anyone for any reason. While they're here reminding us they won the War of Northern Agression, we quietly remember that it took their much larger and much better equipped army over four years to impose our continued "voluntary" membership in their union on a much smaller and less well-armed army. We also remember that there was no need for conscription to fill out the ranks of the Confederate forces and there were never any draft riots in Richmond, Raleign, Charleston, Macon, Montgomery, Jackson or Alexandria.

There is always that one redeeming grace about the annual invasion of our homeland by northern folk. They always go back north and leave us to count the money they left with us while we sit on a shaded porch swing in the heat of the day with frosty glasses of ice cold lemonade or "sweet tea" (southern champagne) and just "sit a spell and visit." That's the same place we'll be in the gathering dusk of a warm summer day, watching nature welcome nightfall with the twinkling of a million "lightning bugs" to welcome the cool nighttime breezes.

Y'all come back now, y'heah? But watch what you say and do or we'll just have to administer some "old-fashioned southern whup butt" on y'all.

© 2002 J. James, all rights reserved

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