Well Geenius, I am only aware of two situations which could bring such results. One would be an outsider encountering the old established Charleston society and the second would be you behaving like a Yankee. If you did neither, then I would be curious as to where in the South you encountered this.
I agree with you Edlyn. Of course by Charleston standards few of us would be considered southern society. But I love Charleston, it has the true grace and style of the old south.
The only thing I really see that rubs southerns wrong, are all the things the northerns find wrong with the south, as they continue to migrate here.
The South got it right with lighnin’ bugs ( first ones yesterday!) and whipoorwills, wisteria, spanish moss, magnolias, honeysuckle, my beloved cicadas, and even kudzu. I can’t imagine the landscape without kudzu monsters.
The South definitely got it right with music! Somehow, behind the separatist curtain, people got together and created the most delicious aural gumbo of Scots-Irish, African, German, Mexican, et al, that pretty much freed the European pelvis.
The South got it right with Moonshine, and it’s offshoot display of fancy driving…Nascar has become a bit slick, but bless those Petty boys, Fireball Roberts, and Jr Johnson!
Southerners are the best story tellers. The trick is to slow down and listen, or you’ll miss it. The key to Faulkner’s work is to slow his stream of consciousness to the pace of a hot August night, and then it reads mighty fine.
Damn if the South didn’t get it right with okra! Pickled, fried, stewed with maters, thickening gumbo, okry is heaven sent.
Uke- It’s true that NOLA is another planet, but it’s the planet of all the Southern wild hairs who made it across the swamp and created the most Bon Temps on earth. It’s ground zero for Southern peculiarity.
UncleBeer- Well shut my mouth! And bless your heart.
And, of course, the best ahstea is sweet, and has fresh mint, fetched directly from the garden.
Just as a pointless aside (and where better?)…
Geenius is right; there’s a difference between politeness and friendliness. Jonathan Raban did a fine job of drawing the distinction as an Englishman travelling through the South. (No, it wasn’t a hatchet job; just a valuable outsider’s view.)
When “manners” are used as insider-club rules to subtlely put down others, it’s rude. Lord knows Southerners have had enough sterotypes putdowns shoved down their throats. But nothing justifies rudeness, no matter how carefully cloaked. Bad behavior is bad behavior, no matter which side of the Mason-Dixon line the perpetrator hails from. No excuses, no lame historical claims, just knock it off or else we’ll start looking like what used to be Yugoslavia.
Whew. Sorry. Got exercised there for a minute.
The South does a damned sight lot right, by culture, language and tradition. (Not the least is iced tea, which done properly involves 2 huge jars, real tea leaves; one w/o sweetner and the other gently infused with simple syrup and sprigs of mint.)
Okra, soft-shelled crabs, Hoppin’ John, people who don’t count chatting with people as “wasted time”–well, I’ve droned on enough.
Did I mention Smithfield ham?
Veb
I spent a summer on the road, working in Tennessee and Alabama (unique and beautiful states both).
I was all tensed up at first, waiting for the inevitable ‘Yankee-bashing.’ It never happened. And people weren’t being rude in a veiled way, either. They were genuinely friendly.
Maybe I got lucky.
–John, John, John. Do you realize what you’ve done here?
You’ve combined Barbeque with States Rights!
In response to the whole “sweet tea” thing I’d just like to point out that Pennsylvania has Turkey Hill Iced Tea which is either just as good or better. I’ve seen it other places, but not too many, I guess it’s made locally.
But I’ll give you the whiskey…mmm…Jack Daniels.
Yeah! Hoppin’ John! Also pinto beans cooked with a ham hock and onion and red pepper served over crumbled cornbread. And red beans and rice.
Big problem with New Englanders is they feel that their beans need to be cooked with molasses. Or (even worse) brown sugar.
Thank god the famous Southern sweet tooth does not extend to the indigenous bean cookery.
And hey, I LOVE Charleston…Charlestonians are the only Southerners who don’t rise to their feet when a Virginian enters the room. Why is a Charlestonian like a Chinaman? They both eat rice and worship their ancestors!
Ha! And I agree with you ultress. I haven’t had the pleasure of visiting Charleston yet, but when I do, it won’t be during summer.
You have my sympathy. Truly, you do.
Personally, I can’t stand sweet tea. And I’m a Southerner! (Well, okay. A native of Southern California…;))
I used to put sugar in my iced tea. A couple of big spoonsful in a glass. Then one day I was going diving. I thought about how tea I sweetened and kept in a jug in the fridge got syrupy. Gag. I decided I’d choke down unsweetened tea on the boat.
Hot summer day on the Pacific Ocean. I climb up on the boat, the salt water still in my mouth. I got a nice frigid drink of unsweetened iced tea out of the jug in the ice chest. Gawd, it was good! Very refreshing. I swtiched to unsweetened tea right then and there.
When I visited the South, I ordered tea and was unpleasantly surprised to find it was sweet. And the diner didn’t have real tea (tea + water + ice).
I found a couple of places in Vancouver, B.C. that didn’t have unadulterated tea too.
Well, it is in southern Canada, right?
Well, Edlyn, I am a Yankee, so if the problem was that I was acting like myself, then I think my point is intact: Southern “hospitality” isn’t really worthy of the name if Southerners are hospitable to everyone except non-Southerners.
I just wanted to chime in here and mention that I own the book referred to in the OP!!! So, I know what the South was right about according to the authors! (I just continually feel the need to point out my superiority to y’all!)
I also own a copy of The South Was Right by James and Walter Kennedy. It’s interesting that while I’ve seen copies of this book in a number of southern bookstores, I’ve never seen even a single copy (other than my own) anywhere in the north.
The sweet-tea-or-the-highway thing is really a Deep South proposition, particularly Georgia or Alabama. Here in Kentucky or in Tennessee, if you order iced tea, you will either be offered a choice or brought unsweetened tea and directed to the sugar packets on the table.
My girlfriend and I go around on this issue–I prefer my tea with just a bit of sugar and plenty of lemon. She prefers hers supersaturated, so that a single additional sucrose molecule would result in an inch of precipitated sugar at the bottom of the glass. I call it her “diabetic coma” tea. I prefer my cornbread yellow and sweetened, which also flies in the face of the Southern preference for white and unsweetened. (Worse than that, I’d really rather have a yeast roll.)
That said, Southern cooking is the stuff of the Gods. I spent a summer in New Hampshire when I was in high school, and one night the menu at the cafeteria read, “Southern Fried Chicken”. What we got was such a poor excuse for fried chicken that I stopped on the way out and erased the word “Southern” from the menu. I told them, “I don’t want all these Yankees to get the wrong impression. In the South, you see, fried chicken is actually good.”
On Southern hospitality–it’s largely a front. I believe you Northerners when you say that Southerners have always treated you with the utmost respect and politeness. Believe me when I say, though, that they were talking bad about you the second you were out of earshot. Don’t feel bad–we do it to each other, too. Most of these people are genuinely nice, and would give you the shirt off their backs if it came down to it, but Southern warmth usually overlies a layer of frigid waryness and exclusivity. You have to also break through that layer to get to the real Southern personality.
Dr. J
I really realized I had become a Southerner when…
I was working in an old school camera store, ie; service and expertise. A guy came in, making it well-known that he was from LA (Yeah, I’m a 4th generation Angeleno, so…?) He was so obnoxiously overbearing and pushy that I found myself slowwwinnnngggg down to compensate for the drag of his yeeha-ness. He had the attitude that no one in this hickfest of a town could possibly live up to his high standards, and so, he would just suffer through the inadequacy of it all. I kept a sane tempo, and by the end of the exchange, he said he was amazed at the personal attention paid to him. He’d slowed down a bit too, you see, and benefitted from that glimpse into a really fine personal exchange.
Southern manners are often the chance to get it down to that level, and if you’re all in a muster and rush off, you miss out on time well spent.
Must Be The Heat, sure as hell ain’t the stupidity.
A N’awlins tradition, red beans and rice on Monday’s (at Smilies–the best), gumbo on Friday’s (at Boutte’s)and po-boys made with french bread any day in between. Thats what the south got right. Take that you Yanks! Oh, and about the sweet tea, its mostly home made. Not to many places actually serve it.
For Arnold Winklereid: zydeco rules! the Blues [capital B without fail] are the most wonderful sounds in the world: Stevie Ray Vaughn, BB King…
My favorite Yankee-culture-shock exclamation: “WHAT is a ‘mudbug’ and are you really gonna eat one?” Poor, poor, yankee, what they are missing about cajun, creole, and music could fill the world.
And Geenius, what Edlyn most likely meant by “being a Yankee” was the all-too-frequent Northern condesention towards Southerners. Y’all keep coming down, complaining, and staying!? Have you ever noticed that few Southerners move up North? Why stay somewhere if all one does is bicker about the differences?
I don’t know about the South. I grew up some in Virginia, which, at that time, seemed to still consider itself England’s westernmost county. Now it’s just another suburb in the national blandness. Don’t nobody talk funny or nothing. But there was a uniform rejection of the rest of the Confederacy, as if they were poor relations, not worthy of being on the same continent. I guess the FFVs figured everybody else lost the War for them.
“Ya’ll” is an extremely useful word. And the pies are good. But grits suck, unless you let 'em congeal, slice 'em, fry 'em, and put some syrup on 'em.
I am very proud to be from the South.
This whole thread reminds me of a joke :
How are Yankees like hemorrhoids ?
Cause the really bad ones come down and don’t go back up again.
