Next time you’re around here, stop by and I’ll feed you.
One of the great schisms in my family involves a mother-in-law who scrubbed a cornbread skillet that had been seasoned for generations. I still believe she was acting out of ignorance, but there are those who contend she was motivated by spite and malice.
I can’t remember what kind of oil she used. I remember seeing lard in her kitchen, but also vegetable oil. When she worked at the rice farm in Stuttgart she may have had bacon grease, but in her small kitchen serving two people and the occasional grandchild, I doubt that she kept it around.
Back to Southern Judaism. We went to a chili dinner at a Reform synagogue in Little Rock. There was a 1 1/2 ounce bottle of Louisiana hot sauce on the counter. (It’s Kosher!) I wondered why there was only one. I picked it up, and was going to take it with me to the table, until I realized it was the only one for fifty people. 
She wasn’t from around there, was she?
The Yankee corollary is Julia Child explaining hot to make omlets with butter in a very hot teflon skillet. “You never have to wash it, just wipe it out with a paper towel.”
Exactly. But making people believe that is another matter.
Sugar does not go in cornbread, and it is white, not yellow. Everything else is a corn muffin or some equivalent thereof, and while tasty, it’s not cornbread.
Southeast Tennessee.
I’d recommend John Shelton Reed, a UNC sociologist, for some fine work on defining the boundaries of the South. The first chapter of his book My Tears Spoiled My Aim and Other Reflections on Southern Culture has some nice maps, ranging from “where Kudzu grows” to “States mentioned in Country Music Lyrics” to “Ratio of Homicides to Suicides, 1983.” My own map includes North Florida and some of the interior further south, Virginia outside the ever-expanding DC metro area, and all the usual suspects. In my experience Kentuckians from Louisville seem to identify themselves as less Southern than other Kentuckians do. Same with West Texans versus East Texans. I don’t know anything about Missouri.
My family’s eccentric. I don’t think anyone’s been certified yet.
Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, off hand.
I’ve got both (see below). None of any distinction.
Parents were both born and raised in North Florida. My grandparents are from Florida, Mississippi, Georgia and upstate New York (they met in NYC and he convinced her to move down to Florida).
Most accent confusion in my life has been with my Midwestern cousins (my Aunt married one and he convinced her to move up). I remember “pan” vs. “pen” vs. “pin” being a constant source of debate and ridicule (they thought I pronounced the latter two the same, and I thought they pronounced the former two the same). I have a mild accent that gets thicker when I go home or when I’m upset.
Since I’m from Florida, I mostly get questions about alligators. I play up the danger.
Boiled Peanuts
The convenience store down the road from me has some of the best I’ve ever tried. Ironic since it’s owned/operated by a Korean couple.
Do non-southerners eat boiled okra? (I L-O-V-E it.)
I select small pods and place them, uncut on top of stew, steaming them for a few minutes.
I’m in Huntsville, Alabama. My family are all from Alabama and Georgia except for my grandmother from Oklahoma. No eccentric relatives or Confederate ancestors worth mentioning, I don’t really care for blues or jazz, and I don’t think I’ve read any of the famous Southern writers. Don’t put sugar in my cornbread, though.
I’m a little self-conscious about my accent, never more so than on my weekly conference call with the people in Ireland.
I can’t seem to get plain iced black tea outside of the south. I don’t even want sugar in it, just plain black tea. Everywhere else it seems to be flavored. On the other hand, we have a Yankee transplant at work who complains because iced tea is the only beverage served at company functions. He’s the only one lining up at the buffet with a diet Pepsi in his hand.
Are you in Georgia or Alabama? If the latter:
J.T. Pollard Milling Company
3431 North State Highway
123 Hartford, AL 36344
334-588-3391
Nice username / post combo.
And also about 5 million calories. :eek:
^^ My first hubby loved a breakfast of scrambled eggs, biscuits & sausage gravy, and sausage, all washed down with a big glass of milk. I teased him that it was just lard, flour and milk cooked 3 ways ('cept for the eggs). 
I never thought about this, but at our work lunches we only serve ice tea (sweet or unsweet). Oh and lemonade. I live in Lexington, Ky.
I agree about Louisville being less Southern; it seems a more typically midwestern city and has been likened to St. Louis. Although there is nothing Southern about Northern Kentucky — it’s really a South Cincinnati. They have the same accents.
It gets boggier and more Deep South in Western Kentucky. They’ve even got cypress trees down there. The grandmother of a friend of mine, born and raised in Hopkinsville, sounded like she was plucked out of antebellum coastal Georgia. She even tatted, God rest her soul, the last person I’ve ever seen with the ability.
I grew up 35 miles south of Lexington. As a kid growing up, I never thought about Kentucky as southern or not: it just was. My grandmother was from a Cincinnati suburb, so that colored my views on life quite a bit. For me, going up to Lexington to hit Fayette Mall and White Castle was going to the “Big City.”
I’ve been back to Kentucky since I moved here to Mississippi, and I just can’t see any parallels that would make me consider Kentucky to be southern. It’s just not the same atmosphere as here.
White Castle- or Krystals around here (I don’t think it’s the same chain but same basic food) was the bomb when I was a kid. We got square meals all the time at home so fast food was a treat. Today it’s the exact opposite: I’d kill for country food (which believe it or not there’s very little of in restaurants here) but usually settle for chain restaurants.
Try going further north. I’m in culture shock anywhere north of Cincinnati. It’s just NOT the same atmosphere as here. People don’t say hello! People don’t talk to you about anything, anywhere [see my recent post in the bathroom thread].
Here’s an illustration — I write stories about people for the magazine I work on, mainly about how our programs and services have affected their lives. I write a LOT about teachers, since we provide a LOT of educational services (I work in public television for those of you who don’t know). About a year ago I did a story on an art teacher in a rural mountain county, who uses our Arts Toolkit to provide (state-required) dance instruction. She is grateful for our services and was overwhelmed that we’d decided to profile her. By the time I left her school, two hours later, I knew just about everything essential there was to know about her, personally and professionally, and as we got into the car, she clasped both me and my photographer in a great big hug. She was genuinely sad to see new-found friends leave, and I do consider her a friend to this day.
I can’t tell you how taken aback people were in the midwest when I acted like my normal self, just, you know, TALKING to people. I’m thinking of a trip to Iowa some 15 years ago. They seemed affronted I violated their personal space, yet claimed to be completely captivated by my accent, “friendliness” and “charm.”
Of course I’m overstating it, but at home I feel at home everywhere I go. I get a little further north and, well,
Before we start throwing stuff at each other, as a thread like this ended up…
Culture shock.
It’s what you grow up with.
I married Mrs. Plant in New Hampshire and we drove back to Arkansas with her daughter. Somewhere in Virginia, I believe, we stopped to refit during the 1,500 mile journey at a large store, probably a Wal Mart. The nine year old Sprout wanted to mail a post card to a friend. Mrs. Plant tentatively asked a check out clerk where a post office was to buy stamps, and things progressed the clerk asking her associates to taking the card to the PO on the way home. Mrs. Plant was quite surprised.
She has since learned to like ribs, and on a visit to Massachusetts to see her daughter waved at cars as tey walked. Drivers were apparently quite surprised, but did wave back.
Mrs. Plant has since complained about people her “pretending to be nice”. She is more accustomed to folks in her native New York, who, if they dislike you, tell you to go to hell right off the bat.
There are good and bad things about every culture.
And I really liked New Hampshire, except it was so gawddam cold.