Alabama and Mississippi (the two states I’ve moved between all my life) are twin sisters. Tennessee is our orange hat. Kentucky is a blue bow on top of it. Georgia is the red purse, Louisiana is the spicy snack in our hand.
I don’t know why.
That’s actually the easiest one. Vermont is hippies (and old-school dairy farmers) and Green Mountains; New Hampshire is anti-tax gun nuts and the higher White Mountains.
Despite the similar shape and locations, in many ways the two most differing states in New England. Although, sadly, the distinction is breaking down as New Hampshire has started blending into Massachusetts more and more. I mean for God’s sake they have Democrats in Congress now!
TN vs KY: TN has Memphis, Nashville and the Smokies. KY has the Derby.
I’ve lived in Tennessee and southern Indiana, so I can help out (both states look down on Kentucky, who returns the disdain).
Tennessee does have a wider economic base. It’s also somewhat more urbanized, with Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville, Chattanooga, the tri-cities (which shades into Virginia), where Kentucky has mostly Lexington and Louisville which are not hugely far part or distant from Cincinnati. Tennessee has widely-spread urban areas. Kentucky seems to have some dirtier politics, although both states have a very local political orientation.
Although both states possess a solid rural population, Tennessee is a Southern state, and has some different customs and culture. Food is a distinction. I’ve also noticed some very traditional (Amish?) people in central Kentucky that are not present in Tenn.
Although I don’t know about Kentucky, Tennessee is almost three seperate states. The state government doesn’t excercise a lot of control, so the Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville-centered regions have very different interests. Central Tennessee, near Nashville, is the biggest city and most wealth, but is a little bland culturally.
East Tennessee is somewhat economically isolated from national and even global good and bad times (our housing market has barely budged). East Tennessee has a lot of pride in being “different,” even going back to the Civil War. There’s been a lot of expansion in recent decades, so that some local culture has been lost in the cities. Suburbs are still forming their own identities. We tend to look to Atlanta as our economic center, and to western North Carolina as very similar people. (On occaision, we might even suggest breaking away with western North Carolina and making a new State.)
West Tennessee has some absolutely amazing culture, but still has a hard time getting past some serious racial tensions and integration; this is not repeated much outside it. Memphis is the hotbed for this, probably excaberated by poverty; the latter is not helped by the gambling problem in that city. (Racial tensions are not very strong in most of Tennessee, but there is still a lot of ignorance in that some areas simply don’t have a lot of outsiders, non-white or otherwise.)
Do they . . . share the hat? Monday, Wednesday, Friday on Alabama; Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday on Mississippi, and alternating Sundays?
Or are they more like the conjoined Ray Milland/Rosey Grier monster in The Thing With Two Heads?
It’s like when you use a cross lego to join two vertical pieces. So I guess they share - and think of sister in the less literal meaning but to mean more like “partnered pieces”
Tennessee is the South.
Kentucky is southish.
This makes perfect sense. I had the hardest time between Alabama and Mississippi, because they are mirror images of each other. Then look at the college sports teams: UT is orange, UK is blue, and UofGA is red. Louisiana is known for cajun/creole/spicy food.
My 10 year old daughter, who is studying US states and their capitals right now, really loves your description.
So, Calipari is responsible for/had knowledge of Marcus Camby meeting with an agent at UMASS? He expressly knew that Rose cheated on his SAT’s?
Funny how he’s never personally been implicated in either of those affairs. I wonder why that is?
You sound like a sour grapes Memphis fan that’s pissed because UK is about to return to the Final Four…repeatedly.
In Kentucky, even if your wife divorces you, she is still legally your sister.
My favorite Kentucky joke: Boy and Girl are having sex. Girl say to boy: “Brother, you do it jest like Paw.” Boy says to girl: “Yep, that’s what Maw says.”
By the way, I lived in Kentucky for a while; in the general area of Covington.
Run. Run fast… (remember Kentucky has lots of horses).
My main Kentucky:Tennessee distinction is horses:music. By music I’m referring to Beale St. jazz and country and mountain music of course, though folks I’ve known who live in Nashville say you don’t really notice the country music if you don’t want to since it’s more service and government jobs these days. And like the rest of the nation I’m guessing you’ve got so many Walmarts and Starbucks that the differences are negligible.
The mountain regions of Tennessee and Kentucky of course have a lot more in common with each other than the flat regions of either state, just as the Gulf Coast is its own culture in the southeast (i.e. Gulf Shores AL has more in common with Biloxi or Fort Walton FL than it does with Montgomery or, God forbid, Birmingham [which most Alabamians don’t consider southern]).
In my experience- having visited both places but never lived in either- I think Tennessee has a more of a sense of its own history. Speaking of the Civil War, people realize Kentucky was a border state (home state to both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis just for overkill) that supplied a lot of troops to both sides, but many don’t realize that Tennessee was pretty much the same. Lots of Tennesseeans (East especially but not only) were pro-Union throughout the war and probably just as many were loyal to whichever army was closest. The tiny teenaged bootlegger Jasper Newton “Jack” Daniel avoided service in either army but had brothers who fought on both sides, including a couple of brothers who fought on both.
Driving through it seems that the Tennessee mountains are far more commercialized, especially since Dollywood was opened. When I was a kid Gatlinburg was probably the cheesiest tourist trap on Earth, but we loved going there.
Don’t look at this unless you want to read an even more disgusting hillbilly joke:
Q: How does a hillbilly mom know her daughter’s having her period?
A: Her son’s dick tastes different.
Ok, both states are notable for feeling up many of their sister states. That gibes with the incest stories I’ve heard.
Whch state are Hooterville and Bug Tussle in?
Bug Tussle is in Texas although I forget the name of the nearest metropolis. In times past, a huge chili cook-off was held in Bug Tussle but I think the place lost out to some place that had more amenities—indoor plumbing, hot and cold running water, air conditioning, things like that.
So where’s Hooterville?
So does Tennessee, and a lot of other states. They’re just in dog food cans.
Washington has raspberries, apples, onions, Seattle, and sales tax.
Oregon has blackberries, beer, pot, coffee, rain, and hippies.
We both have volcanoes.
I grew up in Lexington and spent three years in Nashville, and in my experience the main difference is that Kentucky has Kentucky Fried Chicken while Tennessee has Bojangles. (The fried chicken itself tastes basically the same.) Other than that, the two are quite similar, especially since the suburbs in both places underwent massive expansion in the last 10 years. In fact, I was once at the Hamburg Pavilion in Lexington and got disoriented and started thinking that I was at the Cool Springs Galleria in Brentwood (a suburb of Nashville).
Uou shouldn’t let the hippies hang around. They cause trouble.
See what I mean?
I can forgive them for the volcanoes on account of the beer, pot, and coffee.
…can’t really blame the blackberries on 'em, though. The volcanoes, sure, but those blackberries are an unstoppable* force of nature*.
I go to Hamburg and think I’m in another state all the time. I remember when it was A HORSE FARM! <shakes fist at sky>
Kentucky: basketball country
Tennessee: football country
(Go Vols! 
)