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I Reckon there's lots of things folks not from around here are missing out on. Down here in rural South Mississippi, funerals at the house with family sitting up with the dead are still common, as is the family getting together to dig the grave with the shovel and Uncle Lavon taking the extra dirt to fix his drive after covering the box.

Fried "chicken mushrooms" (grow on the bottom of trees) and Muscadine or Mayhaw jelly with whop biscuits (only in an emergency) compliment the poke salad. And you can't eat greens, black-eyed peas or poot beans unless they're over cornbread and have some pepper sauce on them.

We eat potted meat and egg sandwiches, and know that the only real way to eat oatmeal is with oil sausages.

As for language, look over Yonder is still pretty common, but take a gander at this ain't out of style yet either. We holler at one another on the phone, and mamma's tell their sons to truck-it after some firewood.

Weather wise it's either hotter'n 4 hells (dunno why there's 4 of 'em), cold as a wedge, come a storm, bone dry, dry as a coon's mouth (no saliva glands, I hear -- they wash all their food), a mite breezy or blowin like there's no tomorrow.

Where I live, you don't say the blessing or grace, you ask it -- because you know who's in charge.

We have a handful of fictional folks around here to whom we compare things -- Dick (that nut was tighter'n Dick's hatband) and Cooter Brown (he was Drunker'n Cooter Brown)are a couple of examples.

The double name is common, and even if it doesn't sound right to you, it does to us.... Aunt Curly Joyce, Annie Pearl and Elsie Dorilla went to the store. Dorilla is actually pronounced Doriller just like Lena is pronounced Leaner. There's a small chanch that when you take your car out from under the car porch and go to the grocery store that you will run into your cousin Eddard Earl while getting your buggy.

My Maamaw always put the groceries in the "turtle hull" when she left the grocery store, and papaw would help her take 'em in when she got home.

A few other secrets --

Panty hose and catfish food makes the best bait for a catfish pond... you can catch dozens if you tie that food up right. If you aren't catfishing in a catfish pond, but down at the creek, you can go ahead and gut the first one you catch on chicken liver and use his heart or liver for bait. You'll catch catfish all day.

Never hunt the same drive the same way twice. If you started up top last time, start at the bottom next time. Put in from somewhere different every time and the dogs will be fresher. Dog hunting is exactly what it sounds like (hunting dogs). Usually one drive is it.

If you want to train coon dogs, you'll have to learn to Squall them out of the tree like my papaw did. You can't shoot 'em down. I never could squall, and if I could, I'm not sure I could've caught the coon in that croaker sack like papaw.

Never mess with a freshly descented skunk kitten.

How do you spell the breed name of a small white dog with black spots? Faulkner spelled it "fyce", I think Texan John Graves used something like "phyce"; "feist" would be the origin of the term "feisty", I guess. During squirrel season the woods are full of "em.

Yes, you're from Mississippi. So was my dad.