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‘Who’s your daddy?’ is so Southern

By RONDA RICH

In the South, it’s an important factor of life: Who your people are and where you’re from.

It doesn’t matter if a family is high class or no class, it’s still a part of your cultural identification and it’s considered a necessity in order for people to really know you.

For years I have heard every woman in my family introduce someone by giving a rundown of her lineage by saying something like, “You know Betty’s brother, Jake. And you know that Jake married Estelle Merriwether whose sister is married to John Miller at the hardware store. Their son is dating Geraldine’s daughter. Did you know that?”

I am a grown woman, many years on my own and proudly independent. Yet, repeatedly I am asked when I’m introduced to someone within a five-county region of the town in which I was raised, “Now, who was your daddy? Who was your mama before she married?”

And, of course, it’s always pertinent to add where they were born and raised such as, “He’s from Cleveland but he married a girl from over in Dahlonega.”

I swore I would never do this. Swore I’d rise above and break the nonsense of it all. To know how successful I have been at this, you should have heard my conversation while having my hair done the other day.

I go to a beauty shop, not a hair salon. The difference is that beauty shop prices are much cheaper, women still come in to be rolled, set and teased and the same person who cuts your hair also washes it, colors it and perms it.

At my beauty shop, there is a large charcoal drawing of Barney Fife hanging above the dryer chairs and my dachshund, Dixie Dew, is welcomed to wander around and visit with the other customers.

Rickey, who does my hair and whose family owns the shop, is also married to one of my best friends, Karen. I was in their wedding and they were in mine. He is also my third cousin, our paternal grandmothers having been sisters.

I once dated his best friend from high school and he and Karen, who began dating when she and I were roommates, live in Yahoola, the rural community where my daddy was born.

His brother, Tommy, has cut my brother-in-law and nephew’s hair for years and when I was married, he cut my husband’s and his daddy’s.

See how important all these connections are? It shows how intertwined lives can be.

The other day as I sat in his chair and he clipped away, I gave Rickey a complete rundown of the lineage of every person who walked in and the lineage of anyone remotely connected to them. I told him things that he had never known and was glad, I’m sure, to learn.

I was quite proud until I suddenly realized that I had become exactly what I had planned to escape: A Southern woman wrapped up the family roots of our culture.

I guess there are some things about being a Southerner that are inescapable.

[Ronda Rich is the author of “What Southern Women Know (That Every Woman Should)” and “My Life In The Pits.” She lives north of here in Gainesville, Ga.]