I am a Southerner.
I am from the Deep South. If you order tea at a restaurant and have to request it unsweetened, you are in the Deep South. If your waitress speaks to you with more concern and compassion than your Aunt Mildred, you’re there. The Deep South is not found in Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, most of Florida, the city of Charlotte, North Carolina or the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia. Some then ask, “Where is it?” My instinct is to say that you can smell it in the air, see it in the people, feel it when you are there, but I know that is not all helpful. All I can say is that within me, there is a resonance with a place, a concept, a collective identity that few who exist outside of it know well.
Regardless of what Forrest Gump showed you, I am like you. I did grow up wearing shoes. I have never considered marrying a cousin, though I do have a couple pretty ones. I love my momma but not any more than any momma should be loved. I and the stock I am from are not simple-minded. We may not be able to conjugate Portuguese irregular verbs or tell you much about quantum mechanics, but that does not mean we are stupid or rely on “folksy” ideas. I use colorful phrases not to be cute or because “that’s what my momma always said,” but because if you are going to talk, you might as well make what you say memorable. Southern accents and vocabulary may be a bit strange to your ears, but maybe it’s your hearing that is the problem and not our way of speaking.
I do not drive a truck. I only watch the Superbowl for the commercials. My idea of a good time has little to do with a recent rain, mud tires, and an open field. I do not think that if everyone owned a gun, the world would be a better place; nor is someone’s right to do whatever they want with their land their birthright. I don’t go hunting. I don’t think that a woman’s place is in the kitchen because I quite enjoy being there. Yet, who I am is not opposed to my identity as a son of the South. Our best writers are those who are most like us and also most different. Our social activists often represent the best of who we are and our most colorful politicians are those we sometimes would most like to forget. They are united by a place and in an idea that is greater than any notion of those outside of it. I am a Southerner that recognizes that being Southern is more than just fulfilling someone’s stereotype.
Gump was right in one thing, we love food, ’specially food with a story. From roadside stands and city squares to backyard gardens and unattended tables in someone’s front yard, it’s not just about the food but what comes with it. “I only tend my garden in the moonlight,” “…won a local pie bake-off with those peaches,” “…got those tomato plants from my grandpa’s garden when he passed on.” With every purchase comes a story. Most gatherings in the Deep South are simply an excuse to talk and eat. Funerals and weddings are always so. Yes, Southerners love their food and just about anybody they run into who is willing to sit a spell and listen. It seems I get it “honest,” or for those unfamiliar with the local tongue, I am the same way.
Every Southern family and every Southern town has that person that on our best day, we would wish not to claim; however, they are just as part of us as we are part of them. I rest in that fact. Beyond the food I eat at dinner, the sports I don’t watch on TV, and the deer I will never kill, I am Southern through and through. ◊
