I grew up in Ohio before going to college in Virginia, and remember wondering why a classmate asked if I had an “ink pen” she could borrow.
Anyone need me to cut the heat on?
It really depends on just where in Texas you are- it’s a BIG place. The eastern third of the state is pretty well Southern- it was largely settled in the 1830s-1840s, by Southerners and their slaves. It’s got a lot of the same food traditions as other Southern states, especially the adjoining ones (Arkansas & Louisiana).
As you go further west, the state gets less Southern and more Western. Somewhere like San Angelo, Lubbock, Amarillo, or Abilene is going to be far more “western” feeling- cowboys, cattle, etc… than say… 50 miles outside Houston.
And there are parts of the state that weren’t even especially American. There’s a Czech belt that runs from roughly Ennis (south of Dallas) clear down to the south-Central town of Yoakum. There were also a lot of German settlements- more or less in the same areas as the Czechs, but with different concentrations.
But… at the time of the Civil War, the majority of the state’s population was in the eastern third, so they considered themselves Southern, because they were.
Similarly, Virginia’s a big place. Not nearly as big as Texas, but still.
The DC 'burbs aren’t Southern at all, of course. And they’re a much bigger chunk of VA’s population than they were when I was growing up there, 50-60 years ago. Hampton Roads (Norfolk, Va. Beach, Newport News, Hampton, etc.) is more culturally southern than the DC burbs, but that’s a matter of degree. It really isn’t all that southern.
The part of Virginia that’s unquestionably part of The South would be Southside, which is basically everything east of the Blue Ridge, south of I-64, and away from the Hampton Roads and Richmond-Petersburg metro areas. That’s where all the plantations would have been, back in the day.
Mrs. J. had a classic experience today.
She heard a knock at the front door, looked out and saw a gas company truck in the driveway. When she answered the door, the guy asked,
“Yew have a lake in the back yard?”
Puzzled, she responded, “Well, we have a pond.”
Incredulous, the man said “Yew have a gas lake in your pond???”
At this point, she realized he was referencing a leak in the gas line at the back of the property they had told us about months ago, supposedly small enough that they were in no rush to repair it. The wheels turn slowly, but they do turn. 