On Being Southern 2005

Recently I received an e-mail about terms used only by southerners; I’ve borrowed a few and then added some of my own,

• Only a Southerner knows the difference between a hissie and a conniption — you don’t have ‘em, you pitch em.
• How many turnip greens, peas, beans, collard greens and fish does it take to make a “mess?”
• Explain just where “yonder” is.
• Just how long is “directly?” ie: “Going to town, be back directly.”
• What’s the difference in “right near,” “fir piece,” “just down the road a piece,” and “a right fir piece?”
• Only a true southern cook says “cook a cake,” instead of “bake a cake.”
• No true Southerner would ever assume that the car with a flashing turn signal is actually going to make a turn.
• Southerners never refer to one person as “y’all.”
• Only Southerners say “sweet tea,” “sweet milk,” or “buttermilk.”
• Southerners can say anything about anybody just so long as they preface it by saying “bless their heart.”
• A Southerner knows that “fixin’” can be used as a noun, verb, or adverb.
• When Southerners say they are fed up, it means they have a bait or a belly full.
• Here on Sand Mountain we still have supper instead of dinner.
• Do you remember fender skirts, foot feeds, running boards, steering knobs, Continental Kits and curb feelers?  Can you describe a crank?  Where was the dimmer switch on a 1940 Ford?  Why do people now say “parking brakes” instead of “emergency brakes?”
• Can you make a drinking cup from a sheet of notebook paper?  Have you ever seen a hat made from green leaves and pinned together with dried sticks?
• Have you ever teased a doodle bug from its hole in the ground?  Do you know the rhyme to say?
• Can you repeat a chant that goes with jumping rope or playing hop scotch?
• Do you know what tars are?  Southerners know they go on the car or truck.  Trucks especially need good tars.
• Have you ever seen a mule-drawn dirt scoop, or a yoke for a team of oxen?
• In hitching a team of mules to a turning plow do you know what “riggin” is needed?  It includes a double tree and two singletrees.  What else?

If you’ve used these terms, heard them or know what the items are, as I’ve told you before, you are older than dirt, but you must still be doing tolerably well. Have a plum good day and keep on keeping on.  To coin a popular phrase, “This is My South” and this is country living.