Containment Areas for Relocating Yankees, and Half-backs in the Mountains

I have a daughter who lives in Cary, North Carolina -- the nebulous area of urban sprawl around the Research Triangle Park that is now known as Cary, not the original Southern town by that name. This "new and improved" Cary is often referred to using the acrostic that appears in the title of this blog:

Containment
Area for
Relocating
Yankees

The rest of the title refers to those poor, mis-guided snow-birders who moved to Florida, found it lacking, and then moved further north without actually returning to their places of origin. In other words, they only made it half way back home. And since the mid-point between Florida and New York/New Jersey happens to be the formerly Southern state of North Carolina, Half-backs have become as plentiful and annoying as mosquitoes.

Where the hell is she going with this? Well, I'll tell you.

I am a Southerner, born and bred. That once irritated and embarrassed the bejesus out of me -- now it is one of the things that names me. And it also marks me as an endangered species in an increasingly homogenized American culture spawned by an overly-mobile society dependent on the media for self-definition. So I find myself clinging desperately to a label which I once disdained -- it is my life-raft in a sea of sameness.

What started this rant tonight was the assumption by a very nice writer-person (of Midwest origins) that she could learn enough about the South and Southerners by reading books written by Southerners -- books like the Sweet Potato Queen series and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, among others; books that any true Southerner recognizes for the exaggerated, tongue-in-cheek, Yankee-suckering, tall tales they truly are. And therein lies the proverbial rub: Southerners love a good story, and if we don't have a good story, we'll make one up -- or make a so-so story better with a few slight embellishments. Hence the plethora of good, bad, and great Southern writers through the centuries -- in a region where the Bible belt was liable to wrap itself around your bare legs for the sin of lying, fiction covered a multitude of transgressions.

I am a Southern writer. And story-teller. Years after the initial telling, I have had my own well-told lies returned to me as gospel. That cracks me up. It also reminds me that when I was growing up Baptist in Georgia, lying was referred to as "telling a story" -- as in, "So, you say the dog ate your homework. You're not telling me a story, are you?"

Heh heh heh...

Anyway, the idea that someone thought, however innocently. that she could learn to write Southern by studying books fired me right up. How dare she? Then came her admission that books might not be enough, that if she were going to pull off writing a book set in the South, with Southern characters, it might be easier to "move to the South and talk to people."

HAHAHAHAAAAA!!! A good laugh will stop a fight about every time.

Oh, I was just as nice as I could be -- invited her to c'mon down, set a spell, talk to us (by the way, a phrase such as "chew the fat" will garner you more mileage down here than "can we talk?"). I explained that we would be very gracious (to her face), feed her well, and invite her to stop by again the next time she passed through. And that's the truth.

I also warned her that we Southerners will lie through our teeth to anyone we feel is just looking to put us down or verify pre-existing put-downs. We will also lie about the truth -- if it makes the story better. And sometimes we lie in hopes of having our lies presented as truth to other Southerners who know them to be lies. Why? To make the wannabe Southerner look like a fool. Making outsiders, and our relatives, look like fools is one of those "smile to your face, stab you in the back" traditions we Southerners hold dear.

Now I'm up here on my Southern soap-box, preaching to the choir. And I'm homesick as all hell for the South that was, the South that is fast disappearing, the South that is being edged out, covered up, by a bland anonymity I don't recognize. But then, most of you reading this already know what I'm talking about, don't you? And those who don't, never will.


It's a Southern thing.