Being raised southern
The economy of the South has changed as the nation’s commercial landscape has become homogenized. Yet the region’s people still talk with Southern accents, walk more slowly than Northerners do, and make distinctively Southern music (Nashville, bluegrass, country, Southern rock, and Appalachian).
QUOTE:
“In the South, the breeze blows softer… neighbors are friendlier, and more talkative. (By contrast with the Yankee, the Southerner never uses one word when ten or twenty will do)… This is a different place. Our way of thinking is different, as are our ways of seeing, laughing, singing, eating, meeting and parting. Our walk is different, as the old song goes, our talk and our names.”-Charles Kuralt in Southerners: Portrait of a People
Sweet Tea & Chicken
Southerners love to sweeten their foods – from sweet tea to sugar on grits, everything is better when it is sweeter. Southern favorites include fried chicken, sweet corn bread, potato salad, & collard greens. The more the food sticks to your ribs, the better.
QUOTE:
“True grits, more grits, fish, grits, and collards. Life is good where grits are swallered.”–Roy Blount, Jr
I’ve heard it lots of times… Little John! Mary! Come to supper! The music of iron skillets, the flitting of lighting bugs, are in that antique invocation. Supper, in the South, was the light meal: cereal or sandwiches, sometimes bacon and eggs. No culinary folderol, anyway. All of that belonged to the midday repast known as dinner, when the whole family turned up, from office or school, to feast in solidarity on meatloaf and turnip greens.~~by William Murchison, The Dallas Morning News Columnist 3/13/96
Georgia Peach
QUOTE:
“A Georgia peach, a real Georgia peach, a backyard great-grandmother’s orchard peach, is as thickly furred as a sweater, and so fluent and sweet that once you bite through the flannel, it brings tears to your eyes.” -Melissa Fay Greene, ‘Praying for Sheetrock’
Everybody knows everybody if you are from a small town.
People hold the door open for others and never forget to say thank you. It is not weird for a waitress at any restaurant to call you sweetie, honey or darlin’.
Southern diner
And who doesn’t love a sweet, Southern drawl? Not only is a Southern accent charming, but phrases such as, “bless your heart” and “well, I’ll be” have been known to put a smile on even a Northerner’s face.
Alabama Tailgate Crowd
Football season is taken VERY seriously in the South. Tailgates are full of good food, drinks, and country music. No tailgate is complete without corn hole.
Tailgating
We listen mostly to Country music.
Most Southerners know every word to Johnnie Cash’s “ I Walk the Line.” Garth Brooks, Tim McGraw, and Kenny Chesney are some of the greats. You feel there is nothing quite like the sound of a guitar being strummed while singing about drinking from mason jars and riding dirt roads.
Tim Mcgraw
Now we don’t just sing country, we dress it too!
You proudly own a pair of cowboy boots and break them out whenever possible.
we love boots
What’s the weather like in the southern states… well…
If you live in the southern states, you get to experience all four seasons. Warm weather is a given, at least at some point during the year and, typically, you don’t have to spend the winter wearing a parka.
There’s not much of anything that can take the place of our spring and fall. Beautiful flowers blooming in the spring and the gorgeous colored leaves each fall.
Spring blooms
Fall folage
Growing up Southern is a privilege, really. It’s more than where you’re born, it’s an idea and state of mind that seems imparted at birth. It’s more than loving fried chicken, sweet tea, football, and country music…it’s being hospitable, devoted to front porches, magnolias, moon pies and coca-cola… and each other. We don’t become Southern – we’re born that way.
