Things only people from the South know

8-27-03 | Unkown

[WKB]

Only a true Southerner knows the difference between a hissie fit and a conniption and that you pitch one and have the other.

Nobody but a true Southerner knows how many fish, collard greens, Turnip greens, peas, beans, etc. make up a mess.

A true Southerner can show or point out to you the general direction of "yonder."

A true Southerner knows exactly how long "directly" is - as in "Going to town, be back directly."

Even true Southern babies know that "Gimme some sugar" is not a request for the white, granular sweet substance that sits in a pretty little bowl in the middle of the table.

All true Southerners know exactly when "by and by" is. They might not use the term, but they know the concept well.

True Southerners know instinctively that the best gesture of solace for a neighbor who's got trouble is a plate of hot fried chicken and a big bowl of cold potato salad. (If the trouble is a real crisis, they also know to add a large banana puddin').

True Southerners grow up knowing the difference between "right near" and "a right far piece." They know that "just down the road" can be 1 mile or 20.

True Southerners both know and understand the differences between a redneck, a good ol' boy, and trailer trash. <> No true Southerner would ever assume that the car with the flashing turn signal is actually going to make a turn. True Southerners know that "fixin" can be used both as a noun, verb and adverb.

A true Southerner knows how to understand Southern a booger can be a resident of the nose, a descriptive ("That ol' booger!") or something that jumps out at you in the dark and scares you to death.

True Southerners make friends standing in lines. We don't do "queues," we do "lines." And when we're in line, we talk to everybody.

Put 100 Southerners in a room and half of them will discover they're related, if only by marriage.

True Southerners never refer to one person as "ya'll."

True Southerners know grits come from corn and how to eat them.

Every true Southerner knows tomatoes with eggs, bacon, grits and coffee are perfectly wonderful; that redeye gravy is also a breakfast food; that fried green tomatoes are not breakfast food.

When you ask someone how they're doing and they reply, " Fair to middlin.", you know you're in the presence of a genuine Southerner.

Southerners say "sweet tea" and "sweet milk." Sweet tea indicates the need for sugar and lots of it - we do not like our tea unsweetened, "sweet milk" means you don't want buttermilk.

And a true Southerner knows you don't scream obscenities at little old ladies who drive 30 on the freeway? You say, "Bless her heart" and go on your way.

[12B]

Lands sakes alive! Ole Henry I ain't heard hoot nor holler from him in a month of Sundays. (Or maybe a coon's age).

[Eagle Eye]

UCLA is Upper Central Lower Al.

Somewhere's right around Crestview maybe?

[Eagle Eye]

Also, we southerners like to say "fixin to" -- i.e., "I am fixin to go to the store".

"fitinta"

I'm 'fitinita' go to the corner store.

[chuckles]

Man, this has been an eye opener for me. I save the grease in a jar on my stove and don't know how you could cook beans without some kinda chunk of ham in it whether it is pork rind, bacon, or pig's feet, it goes in the beans with a stick of butter. I believe it mysteriously makes the beans better about the 4th time they are warmed up. I can't tell the difference from punkin pie or sweet tater pie when my momma makes it, so the seasoning must be the same. And I know Nehi makes grape soda cause that's what I used to order at the Terace Drive in with my hamburger cut the onions extra pickles please! That was about 35 cents then. My wife eats salt on her melon, but I can take it or leave it. Can you eat rice WITHOUT beans in it?

The way it sounds here is that this is all in the past. I live in deeep east Texas and I can assure you it' still done the same way here. Back in the seventies, the snowbirds came flockin down here buying all the houses we couldn't afford and I was a telephone installer then. They would snicker and laugh at the way I talked, and even ask me to repeat what I just said so someone else could hear me. I just said ya'll talk funny to me, and ifIZyou, I keep my mouth shut when you go to town. Show nuff, I would see them in town and folks be laughin at them.

One of the reasons I'm a conservative is because I have wittnessed life in Texas all my 52 years and I can take you to the old folks home in town and show you people 95 years old that eat 3 eggs with bacon EVERY morning and spit and chew on the front porch while someone is rolling their own from their "backky pouch". Half of them have fingers and teeth missing, but they could whop me if they set their mind to it. When deer season comes, the ones that are able still go out and sit in a blind to hunt. It's like a religion. Ya'll ever smelt an acifitity(sp) bag? Ever had Mehaw jelly or Muskidine wine? The jelly is sold out of pickups on the side of the road here. There's never enough of the wine to sell.

I never realized ice tea was a problem anywhere. I don't know how a resturant could make it without grits or hush puppies. Hush puppies were really hard to take because the store sells them in frozen bags. I figured they had to be universal to be in the frozen food section. This is why I can't imagine living anywhwere but Texas, and probably not far from here. I've been other places, but I don't see how they could ever be HOME. I just don't think I could live every day where I had to argue over ice tea or what kinda soda water you might have.

[arjay]

I grew up in Lubbock, Tx and my uncle was a cotton farmer. I am getting old, 61, but not dang old yet.

I have always assumed that is where the expression fair to middlin' comes from because that is the way cotton is graded.

[mhking]

MH, that just means that you have "southern" in your background - your Momma's side most likely.

LOL - Both my Mom & Dad's families are from the south - my mom's family is from Tuscaloosa, and my dad's from New Orleans.

[xsmommy]

they talk funny n'at...

[FreepLady]

"Also, we southerners like to say "fixin to" -- i.e., "I am fixin to go to the store"."

I lived in Miami for about two years. One day at work I said,"I'm fixin to leave"...and I had to repeat myself about four times because those yankees had no idea what I was talking about! By the way, I'm a native Alabamian!

[Samwise]

A true Southerner knows you can not cook green beans too long.

Ain't that the truth? :^) I swear no one in the state of Indiana knows how to cook green beans...and their beans don't have any beans in them--they're all hulls.

[arjay]

FAIR TO MIDDLING
From John Rupp, Dallas, Texas: “I have often heard the phrase fair to Midland (middlin’?) in response to the inquiry ‘How are you doing?’ Any ideas on the origins of this phrase?”

I do like “fair to Midland”. It sounds like a weather forecast: “fair to Midland, but the North will have rain”. That’s a Texas variation on the phrase, a joke on the name of the city called Midland in that state. It’s really fair to middling, of course, a common enough phrase—in Britain as well as North America—for something that is moderate to average in quality, sometimes written the way people often say it, as fair to middlin’.

All the early examples I can find in literary works—from authors like Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott and Artemus Ward—suggest it became common on the east coast of the US from the 1860s on. The first example in the Oxford English Dictionary is from Artemus Ward: His Travels of 1865: “The men are fair to middling”. Another is from Horace Greeley’s Recollections of a Busy Life of 1869 in which he records seeing a play: “The night was intensely cold, in-doors as well as out; the house was thin; the playing from fair to middling; yet I was in raptures from first to last”.

Hunting around, I’ve found an example three decades earlier, from an article with the title A Succinct Account of the Sandwich Islands, in the July 1837 issue of the Southern Literary Messenger of Richmond, Virginia: “A Dinner on the Plains, Tuesday, September 20th.—This was given ‘at the country seat’ of J. C. Jones, Esq. to the officers of the Peacock and Enterprise. The viands were ‘from fair to middling, we wish we could say more.’ ”
So the phrase is American, most probably early nineteenth century. But where does it come from? There’s a clue in one of the OED’s later citations, from the Century Dictionary of 1889: “Fair to middling, moderately good: a term designating a specific grade of quality in the market”. The term middling turns out to have been used as far back as the previous century for an intermediate grade of various kinds of goods, both in the US and in Britain—there are references to a middling grade of flour or meal, pins, cotton, and other commodities.

Which market the Century Dictionary was referring to is made plain by the nineteenth-century American trade journals that I’ve consulted. Fair and middling were terms in the cotton business for specific grades—the sequence ran from the best quality (fine), through good, fair, middling and ordinary to the least good (inferior), with a number of intermediates, one being middling fair. The phrase fair to middling sometimes appeared as a reference to this grade, or to a range of intermediate qualities—it was common to quote indicative prices, for example, for “fair to middling grade”. The reference was so well known in the cotton trade that it seems to have eventually escaped into the wider language.

This is from http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-fai4.htm
World Wide words

[Nashphil]

Don't know if anyone has mentioned "reckon" as in "I reckon the boy's gone slap-crazy." Reckon is a true Southern-ism. Also "siren" is pronounced "sigh-reen" as in "Musta been a bad wreck, from all the sigh-reens we heard."

[Rebelbase]

Proper grits eating requires butter and salt. Redeye gravy also.

[FLAUSA]

Naw, Crestview is LA (lower Alabama) just sout of Wing, Al.

[Rightly Biased]

I've been fair to midlin' for ever and can't get no better.

Also of note ain't is a word even if it "ain't in the dictionary" as my english teacher told me.

[ladysusan]

Wail, now, 431 posts and nobody mentioned these; Lord willin' and the crick don' rise; cattywumpus; hide ner hair; 'sugly as the skin on the back o' yer elbow; raaaaaaaaaaht; or DP, as in, I'll hava DP.

[Mrs Zip]

ping

[WKB]

Naw, Crestview is LA (lower Alabama) just sout of Wing, Al.


I heard Atmore was in UCLA

[4CJ]

What about the four guys named Bubba in the pickup truck that show up shortly after you drive your rental car into a ditch and winch you out and refuse any compensation?

The name's not Bubba, but I've pulled people out of ditches numerous times. That's why you drive a truck/4x4.

And a TRUE Southerner gives directions like this, 'Drive a fer piece down the road, keep going past my cousin Billy Bob's house [insert lengthy discussion of Billy Bob, his family, their relations etc], then turn left just past where the old Wilkes place USED to be, ...'

[wimpycat]

...my mom's family is from Tuscaloosa, and my dad's from New Orleans.

Otherwise known as NaaaAAAWWlins.

[witnesstothefall]

I'm originally from Phili but spent years of my youth in the hillbilly hills above Hot Springs, AR. Daggummit, I used to love to try to speak the dialect.