How Southern Are You?

Just how southern are you? It’s a good question. Where I grew up, anyone who lived north of Montgomery was a Yankee. Of course back then all I knew about Yankees was that they were from the north, wherever that was, and it was bad. The world can be small indeed, and my world consisted of the people who had ever heard of or attended the Peanut Festival.

A Redneck joke came across my Google Reader today. It said you might be a redneck if you took a fishing pole to Sea World. Really? Well where in the world is Sea World anyway? And we don’t have “fishing poles.” We have cane poles, and you fish with them.

My favorite Redneck joke is the one that goes: You might be a redneck if your brother buys a new house and you go over to help him take the wheels off. Now that’s some funny stuff right there. But I digress…

Back to my question, how southern are you? My wife took a college class called “Southern Culture.” It was taught by a guy from West Virginia. Now I’m sorry, but West Virginia may be in the south, but it ain’t southern. I mean, the guy had never had a fourteen layer chocolate cake, my God! You can’t claim to be southern if you’ve never watched chickens under the house through a hole in the floor or if you don’t know what people used to do with corn cobs. Southern people know what cemetery day is and the real reasons young boys play football and which Sundays you can expect the men folk to miss church.

Now I’m not saying that those who weren’t born in it or grew up in it (southern culture that is) can’t be southern. Of course they can, if they embrace it. Cause there are two kinds of embracers in the south; those who take hold of it like the groom takes hold of his new bride at the reception after a June wedding, and those who clutch it like a parachute after being thrown out of a plane. And believe me, there is a world of difference.

You can tell when someone has embraced their inner southernness. They start using words like “ya’ll” and drop the g on most any word that ends with ing. They say things like, “Me and the kids are go’in fish’in down at the pond” or “Me and Marlene are go’in Walmart’n.” Sometimes that last one is followed by a request for pick’in up some fish bait and ice cream, since you’re there and all.

But maybe the best indicator of southernness is cooking. When your new neighbor Dave, who moved here from Vermont because their property taxes were too high and he can walk out on the back porch in January wearing gym shorts, starts talking about deep frying a turkey for Thanksgiving, you know he’s turned the corner. It won’t be long before his wife learns how to fry anything from chicken to Snickers Bars, and a year or so after that he’ll put his Christmas lights up…and leave’em. If anyone were to ever ask him about it, he’ll probably just point to the top of the town water tower, whereupon is perched a giant star only illuminated from Thanksgiving to New Years, and say that he thought it was aight.

Well I guess I never did get around to answering the question. Instead I just chewed the cud a bit with ya and had a good time. Which, after all, is a big part of being southern, aight.