The South is a big place. There are lots of bitches in the South. However, many of them started life as Yankee Bitches and continued the tradition by moving to the South. At least that is what my Southern born wife would say.
They tell you if it weren’t for them you’d be speaking German?
Should tell you something right there.
Oklahoma is, IIRC, the most “southern” of the western states since its population includes many of the same Native American place names (e.g. the county seat where I grew up is Wetumpka, a name from a Creek Indian word that is also the name of a town in OK). Also, many former Confederates went there in the land booms after the war, though of course so did many Unionists and many immigrants who weren’t here in 1865. (Sarah Vowell is an OK born author who is a descendant of Confederate soldiers.)
Texas is of course more Texas- it’s own thing- than it is southern, and then there’s many subdivisions of Texas.
Alabama tends to be subdivided into North Alabama, Birmingham, Central Alabama, and “The Beach”. Each has its own identity and ethnic mix and accent to a large degree.
The Gulf Coast in general, stretching from the coast of East Florida up the panhandle through Alabama, Mississippi, and ultimately Texas, is an almost Tolkienesque diversity of cultures that bleed and blend into each other. Most places have a tiny nucleus of people whose families have been there several generations, then a vast majority of people who either have relocated or are the children and grandchildren of people who have relocated since the beach culture became huge in the early/mid 20th century and of course the people who got out of the Jeep last Thursday. Whatever you would call the culture, it’s not exactly southern, traditional or otherwise, due to the heavy influence from damned near everywhere else. (A lot more internationally exposed than you’d think as well- my sister’s “world famous in Baldwin County” drug store in Foley, a town perhaps 10 miles from Gulf Shores, was profiled in magazines and newspapers in England, Germany, and Russia in the '90s and early '00s before she sold majority interest and retired.)
There are also oddities in each region: for example, even before the recent draconian illegal immigrant laws the Alabama beach areas didn’t really have a strong Hispanic presence compared with Florida or Texas, but they have a strong Eastern European and German presence. (There was a German speaking community in Baldwin County [the absurdly large county that includes the Alabama beaches] recently enough that when my grandmother was in a nursing facility there in the late 1980s her roommate, an octogenerian with dementia, often spoke in (as her mind unraveled) a German dialect that was her first language, and she had grown up a few miles away. Move west into Fairhope and Daphne and you find a much larger Mediterranean influence because of Greek and Italian settlements in the 1920s and 1930s [including at least one tiny colony of refugees from Mussolini] who had many descendants in the area), then in the swamps you have an occasional Cajun who either drifted eastward or had grandparents who did and more than a few Vietnamese fishermen and their families (almost all of them devout Catholics and some of whom communicated with the few-but-extant Cajuns in a French patois- apparently there’s a Franco-Vietnamese dialect that can be understoo
Sorry, where was I? Ah yes, divisions, divisions, without our divisions our lives would be as shaky as… as a gumbo pot on a hot tin roof!
What I like about Southern bitches, though, is they know how to use makeup.
And a “traditional southern bitch” is only a bitch to her husband and family. To the outside world she’s the epitome of courtesy.
Unless you piss her off.
You won’t regret it. As for the heat inside, if you go to the officer’s wardroom, it is air conditioned so you can rest up there.
When I visited Texas and Alabama as well as several other southern states a couple years ago, I thought the people were very nice. But again, I was just touring and not planning to move there.
While I suppose it’s not “Deep” South, I was very amused the first time my mother-in-law visited us in Chicago from Virginia and commented on how much friendlier everyone here was.
Rightly or wrongly, Virginians have a centuries old reputation for haughtiness. It was mentioned by Adams and Jefferson.
The friendliest place I’ve ever lived was a college town Georgia; the unfriendliest was Tuscaloosa, AL. As a general rule [all bets off on the individual level] Midwesterners and West Coasters seem more outgoing than those from the northeast U.S. (be in NYC or New England); New Yorkers and New Jerseyans are the most notorious for acting like a citizen of Rome slumming in Gaul, though I’ve known nice people from both.
I have a cousin who manages a resort in an upscale beach near Destin that markets to [upper middle class] families from all over during the summer season and to [upper middle class and above] snowbirds during the winter and as a “Disneyworld beach stopover” during spring and fall. If you were dropped into the most climate controlled part of the hotel so that you’d have no idea what the outside weather was like you would know almost instantly from the attitudes of the staff (whether they approach you or wait to be approached, whether they smile always or not, etc.). Also interesting how much different it is from the Alabama beach resorts.
Yeah, going back into Texas and its own regionalism…
Some are on official state maps, some I made up in my own years in Texas.
East Texas (the Piney Woods)
Panhandle (I don’t even know what they think about the rest of Texas)
West Texas (to me, the arid bits not in the Panhandle, like the Big Bend area)
Texas Hill Country (some people include in West Texas, Texans don’t)
The Valley (one big Hispanic city)
Texas Gulf Coast (excluding Houston area)
Houston (which itself is broken into its own regions)
Dallas (Damn Yankee Texans! :p)
Austin (its own little world)
Many Oklahomans seem to feel kinship with the Dallas area of Texas, but I don’t think those feelings are reciprocated. Even OK is split into The City (OKC), T-Town (Tulsa area), and the Southeast vs the Northwest (tho many split it even further, Panhandle, Ark-La-Tex, Kiamichi, Ouachita, etc…)
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Wait…are we related? Cuz I was about to post the same thing verbatim. Plus, it’d be kinda cool to be related to the mighty Sampiro
You wound me, Sampiro, you wound me.
Sampiro, I grew up in an all-white town of about 600 people in Blount County, so I feel your pain. 
I’ve lived in Tuscaloosa for over 20 years now. As far as it being unfriendly, it depends on where you go and who you hang out with. Tuscaloosa is very conservative for a college town. Campus politics, etc. are completely controlled by the rich white kids (fraternities and sororities).
If you ever get back to Tuscaloosa drop by Egan’s Bar, it’s the friendliest, most laid back place in town and if I’m there I’ll buy you a drink. (Ask for The Ringer).
I just want to say that, in my travels, (outer-borough) NYC and (outside of Boston/Providence) New England have what I’ve found to be the friendliest and most accommodating people in the US. There could be mitigating factors; the stereotypes of the northeast as cold and unfriendly were already known to me, for one. For another, the character of southerners, midwesterners and Californians can easily come off as overly familiar and disingenuous to Europeans. I’m still kind of on the fence on that point. I’ve spent time in the south (it’s far more blatant in the south) and I’m never quite sure what to make of people’s familiarity and ‘friendliness’. On the contrary, New Englanders have always come across to me amiable, helpful and genuine. It could just be that rural New England culture is a bit more similar to northern European and UK culture. But whether it was a blue-collar worker on a cranberry bog (where I was unwittingly trespassing) or an elderly Boston-Brahmin-accented couple (I was genuinely surprised they were even speaking to a scruffy-looking foreigner like myself), I’ve always been made to feel comfortable in New England, and to a lesser extent NYC, than in any other region of the US.
I’m well aware that nearby scenic beauty is far from enough to make you happy in a place, but there are parts of Blount County that just make me say “Damn!” with admiration and awe (the caves, the streams, the covered bridges, etc.). I try to make it up there and to Guntersville (in Marshall) in years when we decide to have winter. (It was voted down, of course, this year).
East of Huntsville is scenic and full of big hills and long open meadows and the town itself tech oriented. I would say that a lot of what one receives in a place is what one sets out to perceive and works like a mirror in that way. I’ve never had more of a problem anywhere in the US than another. Most folks will pull your leg about as far as you will let them down south and just like up north you win their freindship by pulling back (or joshing or having you on depending where you are from).
That’s the reasonable answer. Here is the southern one-
Damn son, grow a sense of humor or some tits to look at if you can’t because you bore the mess out of me. Do the women up your way like to change mens diapers? Drop a couple of danglers and you won’t have a problem. And send some more of them carnivorous penguins. Them things are tasty.
The men were nice enough, actually, it was only the women! IN MY EXPERIENCE, men tend to be less catty anyway. But I’ll have a list of women to unleash the carniverous penguins (?) on soon.
That’s really odd. I’ve heard about this before but haven’t experienced myself.
I’ve traveled to Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana for business regularly for the past twenty-two years.
Maybe your accent is so much different than theirs that it is notable and it’s just a conversation topic and that it’s their way of joking about it? It doesn’t seem funny to me either but maybe it’s the height of hilarity to southerners.
I’ve heard that people from the midwest and especially from the St. Louis area like myself have relatively accent free speech to most peoples ears so maybe it just isn’t remarkable enough for them to bring it up to me. < shrug >
I can understand where you think that maybe I would just need a sense of humor and take a good natured ribbing…but the way that I was called it wasn’t funny. They were genuinely looking down on me, because I have a really good sense of humor and I can tell these things.
The few people I have talked to/been friendly with will use the Yankee thing as a joke and it’s fun when they do it. However, the random chick at the bar that I’ve been talking to for only ten minutes does not mean it to be funny
As a Yankee living in the south for about 4 years, I’ve never run into any actual south v. north prejudice. But I live in transplant central (Charlotte) so that might explain it.
Agreed. I hear “Yankee this,” and “Yankee that” on occasion, but usually it’s tongue-in-cheek. I will say that senses of humor are definitely different. Sarcasm is lost on these people… 