Some background first. I spent my formative years out West (Wyoming to be exact) and, after moving around a bit after college, I ended up in Athens Georgia. I really like it here (no snow, no jackalopes and more between the North Pole and I than just a few caribou) but there are some parts of Southern culture that drive me abso-freakin’-lutely nuts.
The first of these is the Southern tradition of calling all ‘outsiders’ Yankees. What the hell??! The first time I heard this I almost ended up in a bar brawl. I simply told the (drunk) gentlemen that 1) Wyoming was located out West, not in New England (given their large brow ridges and sloped foreheads, I thought a little geography lesson was in order) and 2) it didn’t become a state until the 1870’s (again, I helpfully pointed out that ‘the Whar’ was over in 1865) so I didn’t really want to get dragged into the whole Civil War thing with them. They were a bit miffed but still friendly until I blandly told them that out West we divided people into Easterner’s (i.e. those morons who try to swim in Old Faithful, put their spouses on buffalo and act shocked when they get gored, act even more shocked when their small, lard-covered children get mauled by grizzley’s and who seem to think the Teton’s would be improved by a good strip mall), Californian’s (crystal hugging freaks) and Westerner’s (i.e. us right-thinking folks). Thus, in my worldview, I lumped both them and the hated ‘Yankees’ together. I did this to illustrate how silly and arbitrary this whole thing was but they obviously didn’t ‘git it’ and flipped. ‘Ah ain’t no damn Yankee!’ one of them screamed as his buddy started fumbling for his ‘naff’. Long story short, a bloody incident was narrowly averted by the bouncer and a large can of Mace. I still get called a Yankee though, and it STILL pisses me off. Fer chrissakes folks, for as much time as y’all spend venerating a war which you goddamn LOST, you’d think you’d at least have a basic grasp of the geography and history of said conflict. I mean, what forces did Wyoming contribute to the Civil War? The 643rd Prairie Dog Battalion? The infamous 16th Marmot Regiment? What? I’d really like to know.
And then they compound their irritating behavior by forcing me to put SALT (yea, that’s right) and BUTTER (yea, you’re still not hallucinating) on what is essentially CREAM OF WHEAT. It’s the most revolting thing I’ve seen since I made the mistake of looking at that damn aluminum Madonna book. They call this pig slop ‘grits’ and wolf it down by the gallon. My first experience with this was at Basic in Columbus, GA. It’s our first meal and I slop some of this pasty crap on my tray and sit down to eat it. First, however, I sprinkle a little suger on it. The next thing I know this gargantuan drill serjeant is hollering at the top of his lungs ‘What the HELL are you doin’ to those grits, boah!" You’d think I’d have just pissed in some holy water or said the North won the Civil War for how upset he was. Anyway, I have yet to get an adequate explaination for why putting suger on what is obviously a warm cereal is tantamount to sodomizing Gawd. What’s really weird is that the rest of their cuisine is really quite good: honey ham, barbecue, fried chicken, chitlen’s, etc. etc. It’s just the grits that suck and, of course (because humans are just perverse) that’s the one item they lionize the most.
Anyway, my guess these problems won’t get resolved until all those idiotic Civil War reinactor’s actually start shooting live ammo at each other. That, along with a bout of diarrhia MIGHT actually show them what their glorious war was all about and debunk this whole grits/yankee mythology which has flourished here.
