Posted on 09/21/2009 12:50:12 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
I never knew that you're supposed to let women out of the elevator before the men. I know now.
I also never knew you're supposed to look behind you when going through a door, and hold it for anyone following you (Omigosh, even for black people! Who woulda thought there is far less racism in the South? It's counterintuitive to this Cali boy, but I know now that my opinion of the South was molded by lies and innuendo coming from scumbag yankees). They don't do that in California, and I realize that there is a lot more tolerance and "love for fellow man" goin' on here.
I feel truly blessed that God sent me to Texas and made me marry a small town Texas girl, and I shudder at the thought of raising children anywhere but the South.
When the Civil War comes, I know what side I'm on.
... There’s also a Southern diaspora, which knows no bounds; you may run into representatives of it on New York’s Upper East Side or in Paris’ fashionable Sixteenth Arrondissement. Or in a simple little pension in Florence. Just listen for an accent that sounds like home and there the South will be, for the South extends far beyond the South...
If you say “diaspora” you ain’t Southern.
“Oh Dixie Land where I was born.
Early,Lord one frosty morn.”
You can’t get anymore Dixie than Yazoo County Mississippy,
where the delta meets the hills.
I am not sure where Dixie ends I just wish it didn’t end.
Anything north of I-10 is yankee country!
I like the idea of drawing a distinction between ‘the south’ and ‘dixie’. I will point out that we should never have stopped using the term “border states” for some states : I have lived in Nebraska, Missouri, and Arkansas, and I felt/thought that MO and AR had more in common in folkways, attitudes, etc, than did MO and NE, and certainly more than AR and NE. I do not feel that MO counts as midwestern, at least not all of it, but it may not be *quite* southern...Border state is the best term IMO.
Having lived the first 27 years of my life in Arkansas, I've never heard any Arkansan deny that any part of the state is in "the South."
Florida is the only State that refused to surrender to the Federales at the end of the Civil War. The Governor wrapped himself in the Stars and Bars and committed suicide on the front lawn of the Capital rather then surrender.
Thanks for the info. I didn’t know that. But Florida was overtaken years ago by the liberal elitists and Snowbirds.
Hearkens to the title to a Three Stooges short: “Dutiful But Dumb.”
Being Southern is a state of heart and mind....;)
Southern Boundary of the South: Ocala, FL
Western Boundary of the South: Fort Worth.
Eastern Boundary of the South: The intracoastal waterway.
Scots-Irish hillbillies (term comes from their support of William of Orange, btw) settle much of Little Egypt, to say nothing of southern Indiana, reinforced by a migration from Kentucky in the mid 20th century.
Occasionally see the battle flag in SW PA, with the drawal present as well.
The Spanish or the English could never get any large scale settlement into Florida due to the susceptibility to disease in the swamps. While it is true that the ranchers who settled on dry land came down from Georgia, many of the citrus pioneers who came down prior to Governor Broward's decision to "re-route" Okeechobee and drain the everglades were from the north. It was really yankee citrus farmers and the original snowbirds who benefitted most from Flagler's railroad.
While it is true that much of the white proletariat that followed the railroad came from other southern states, they were always a minority on much of the east coast of Florida (and the Gulf from Sarasota south). Even a place like Tampa was more noteworthy for its Cuban, Italian, Jewish, Spanish, etc. population than its small population of "true southerners 100 years ago. In short, the only places in Florida that were truly culturally "southern" historically were the cattle counties in north and central Florida, and the panhandle. This is the source of the old joke that in Florida, you go north to go South, and south to go North.
... Theres also a Southern diaspora, which knows no bounds; you may run into representatives of it on New Yorks Upper East Side or in Paris fashionable Sixteenth Arrondissement. Or in a simple little pension in Florence. Just listen for an accent that sounds like home and there the South will be, for the South extends far beyond the South...
If you say diaspora you aint Southern.
The true Southern term is Galut Temanit! ;-)
I am from Louisiana and that is the most agreed upon delineation there.
If by your first definition that the South is as far as a monument to the Confederate soldier then I would have to say its at least as far west as here as my home town of Richmond, Texas. Please look up the Jay-bird Woodpecker Memorial, and I challenge anyone who thinks the South isnt in Texas to say that to the descendants of the Old Three Hundred here in Texas...or to some of the members of my church.
St. Louis and KC were transformed by German, Irish Catholic, Italian, Slavic, and Jewish immigrants in the 19th and early 20th Century. The portions of the state settled by Germans outside of the metro area are definitely NOT southern. The Mississippi River region south of St. Louis, the areas south of KC and the “bootheel” region are very “southern” thanks, again, to the Scots Irish.
“The then-little town of Columbia, Mo., where I went to school for
a couple of idyllic years, was in Boone County, which at the time used
to be called Little Dixie.”
“Little Dixie” is still here.
I grew up in north-central Oklahoma and realized there was a difference
from where I lived and the area you entered by driving fifty miles
north into the Yankee state of Kansas.
Given the passage of time, I was a little suprised to find “Little
Dixie” as the name of a construction-trades company here in Columbia, MO
when I moved in during 2005.
I thought political correctness would have stomped this out by the 1990s.
But it’s still here.
But I shouldn’t be shocked.
The Missouri-Kansas border war still goes on if you listen to local
ESPN radio when Missour-Kansas football and basketball games are
discussed...with much passion.
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