Yanking out the South?

Associated Press ^ | 11/23/2005 | Allen G. Breed

[Melas]

That's still true to this day. If I offer you "a drink" I'm offering alcohol. If I offer you "something to drink" I'm offering water or softdrinks.

[Americanexpat]

Hell man stop bitching, give the new guy a plug of tobacco, a sic pack of Pabst and show him your prize hog, in a couple of years you won´t know the difference,

Live in the south a lot of years while in the military, the longer you stay the more of it rubs off on you.

[southernnorthcarolina]

The author pays lip service to the thought that some Southern stereotypes are wrong; yet the article is premised upon them. And the stereotypes still abound. For whatever reason, the stereotypical Southerner is portrayed as white, rural, dull-witted, and of modest means at best (or if, as in the execrable Beverly Hillbillies, they lucked into a fortune, they were too unsophisticated to take advantage of it).

News flash: the South, like the rest of the nation, is diverse, not only ethnically, but with respect to the urban/suburban/exurban/rural divide, and also with respect to income, education, intelligence, and accomplishment. And another news flash: this is not a new development. It didn't start with Northerners moving into Cary.

I'll be immodest enough as to use myself as an example of a Southerner who doesn't fit the commonly accepted, or at least commonly promulgated, image of a "typical Southerner." And make no mistake, I am a true Southerner: at least five generations in North Carolina; born, raised and educated in the South, and a lifelong resident of the South. But it may come as a tremendous shock to the AP writer, or to the New York Times, or even to many residents of Cary that:

• I do not "hold court" and spit tobacco juice in front of a pot-bellied stove at a general store, and I never have.
  
• I have never been to a NASCAR race, a tractor pull, or a Billy Graham or Jim and Tammy rally.
  
• I prefer Scotch to moonshine; red wine to "sweet tea"; hash browns to grits; and I've never tasted squirrel nor even seen one on a plate, no matter how many cookbooks proclaim it a "Southern favorite."
  
• I don't eat dinner at 5 PM, and I don't call it "supper."
  
• I have been known to wear a suit and tie. With shoes and socks, too.
  
• I prefer golf to deer hunting.
  
• Country music, especially bluegrass, is like fingernails on a blackboard to me.

I could go on, but you get the point. And please understand, I mean no disrespect to those Southerners who do enjoy some of the items above that I don't. But the "typical" Southerner doesn't exist, no matter how much the AP writer may wish he or she did.

[kalee]

61-year-old retired investment banker from Mount Pleasant, whose family has been in the region since the 1800s.



carpetbaggers? ;)

[kalee]

"we're complaining that folks who have money are ruining the laid back lifestyle."

Only because they insist on telling us repeatedly how things were done wherever they were before they came here...if they don't like it here they should just go back from whence they came.

[kalee]

Try living here where everything you grew up loving has been changed in the name of "progress" by some yankee transplant who moved here to "get away" from the north, yet wants to make his/her new place of residence as much like the north as possible.


That's the truth. LOL If everything was so great wherever they were before they came here, why didn't they stay put where they were?


PS. Substitute moslems for yankees and be very afraid. Guess I'll keep the yankees.

[Alia]

Being Southern isn't about where you're born. It's an attitude and a way life.

Yes, I've learned this is true. I've decided one of my life's minor ambitions is to learn the Mountain accent. You know.. not moving your lips very much when talking to people? Making them say: PARDOn? Please repeat? Or just nodding at the end of each of their bits of speech..

I've have to control giggles at times... Its like trying to carry on a conversation with Crabby from the flick "Blazing Saddles". I wanna learn Mountain talk... :)

[Verginius Rufus]

I missed the first part of the segment, but it sounded like it was some kind of gimmick...Logothetis had a producer who was supplying him the $5 each day. I think he did a lot of mooching and talking people into letting him stay free. There was an envelope with $20 in case of an emergency. I think the idea is to make a TV program or documentary out of it. His accent sounded British.

[MikeD]

9th street is just the hangout for Dookies & S&M students. However, if you want a *real* North Carolina town, go to Sanford or Kinston.

[Ban Draoi Marbh Draoi]

One comment that I heard years ago: the average Yankee knows as much about the South as a hog does the L-rd's plan of salvation.

You have to be a real Southerner to understand.

[FreepLady]

AMEN!! I am a life long Alabamian who now lives in Huntsville. There is barely one acre of cotton fields left due to all the new neighborhoods being built. Highway 72 is looking more and more like Atlanta every day. I am afraid our gentile Southern way of life is slowly coming to an end.

[M Kehoe]

Darn. See what happens when you lose a war.

5.56mm

[csvset]

Hah! Rural PA has a quota for rusted cars in the yard. At least three per.

[FreepLady]

"I am afraid our gentile Southern way of life is slowly coming to an end."


Sorry...I meant "genteel"...not gentile!!haha! Not enough coffee yet!

[Lee'sGhost]

"Ya, no racism in the south."

I don't know of anyone in the South who claims that there is no racism. What we do claim, because it is true, is that the scope of racism is about a thousand times less than the northern stereotype of our race relations, and more important, that it is nowhere near as rampant as it is in the north. The difference is, we have a few morons who still talk like the one you met. They are easily identified and mostly scorned by Southerners. Northerners, on the other hand, mostly deny that they have ANY racism, while the white population participates in "white flight" more than any other region, practices an unspoken, institutionalized racism, and all the while acting superior to Southerners.

Then the yankees that move South commit the unforgivable sin of falsely claiming -- out loud -- that things are better up north.

I have no qualms about northerners moving to the South. Who wouldn't want to live here. It's the morons who move here acting superior and stupidly bleat about "the way we did up north" who are the "damned yankees." Northerners should share our disdain for such unmannered louts as they make the whole group look bad. Just as Southerners like me should continue to point to imbeciles like the one you met and denounce their racism.

[frankiep]

That's what I'm doing. I'm getting out of the Army next month (medical discharge) and I'm originally from Long Island in the People's Republic of New York. But I'm moving to Charlotte, NC. Already got an apartment and a job lined up.

[Romish_Papist]

So two wrongs make a right?

[montag813]

Transplanters is why Florida was in play for the 'rats in 2000.

Hopefully many thousands of those accidental 2000 Buchanan voters will no longer be with us in 2008.

[SmoothTalker]

Cary is a horrible place. Mile after mile of identical subdivisions and shopping centers. Nothing unique in the whole place, and nothing that ties it to the region. It is generic antiseptic Truman show America. National Geographic had an article about it a few years back. Only town in the country to double in size in every census from 1940 to 1990 IIRC. That explosive growth has not been conducive to building a town with a real identity.

[smug]

Yankee's move to the South and have children who become Southerners'. On the other hand Southerners who move north (like my family did to hide from reconstruction) have children who still consider themselves Southern.