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Being Southern is ...

By RICK RYCKELEY
Contributing Writer

The Wife and I had a conversation the other night about a whole lot of nothing. You know the kind. The day’s finally winding down; dinner’s over; homework is done; and the kids are in bed. Sitting in your favorite chair with the television down low, you steal a few wonderful moments with your spouse. Everything is going along fine until you say something stupid. Neanderthal here told The Wife, “Ya know, you’re not really Southern.” That was a big mistake.

We Southerners take great pride in our heritage, which goes without saying, but for our friends north of the Mason-Dixon Line there are a few things about the Southern way of life that seem to have eluded them. Though many have tried before, I’ll try to explain how we do things down “cheer.”

First and foremost, Southern tea has sugar in it which is added as the tea is steeped slowly in the kitchen. Tea IS NOT made unsweetened and served up with little packs of sugar to be added after its on ice. Adding sugar to cold tea is about as effective as trying to mix sand in a glass of water. It just doesn’t work, and it tastes about as good. Just remember if you ever happen to make it, there are only two kinds of tea in the South - sweet tea and sweeter tea.

Y’all is not spelled ya’ll and is a term that can be use to describe one, two, or a hundred people. Also, people in the South don’t talk slow because we’re dumb. On the contrary, we talk slow because we’re thinking. Mostly about our next glass of sweet (or sweeter) tea.

If the drink of choice is not sweet tea then there’s only one other; that’ll be Coke. “Lemme buy ya a Co-Cola and a moon pie” is a phrase repeated everyday down here. Drinking Co-Cola on a hot humid July afternoon - well, it’s a cold that gets inside you and steals your breath away. And if you think a coke is anything other than the original Coke made right here in Atlanta, Georgia - well, then you certainly ain’t from around here.

Southernisms like over yonder, yonder there, yonder ways, and go down there just a piece, are all acceptable ways of giving directions. Mosey is the preferable way of getting there. Mosey is somewhere between standing still and a slow walk. It’s about as fast as you’d want to travel in the steamy heat and thick humidity of the Dog Days of August.

Yes, the taste buds of a true Southerner are indeed unique, and I admit that to some of you we do eat some rather strange things down here. For breakfast we eat cathead biscuits with country gravy or red eye gravy and, of course, a big bowl of grits drowned in real butter. Grits top the list of foods that people not from the South just don’t understand. Lemme explain.

Grits are a form of mashed up corn to which you can add butter, crushed up bacon, sausage, hot sauce, salt or pepper. That’s it. Adding honey or syrup to grits is a dead giveaway that you ain’t from around here. Just like making the statement, “What’s a Grit?” We also enjoy peanuts poured in our Co-Colas, pickled eggs, crawfish, boiled peanuts, squirrels, but most of all, we eat pig.

We love pig - every part of the pig. Pickled pig feet, fried pig skins, pickled pig ears and snouts, bacon, and sausage made a hundred different ways. We eat the whole pig - everything but the squeal. Then we wash it all down with ice-cold sweet tea drank from a quart-size Mason jar. We do eat some strange things down here, but at least we don’t eat snails like those French people. Now there’s a fun-loving bunch of folks. Not so good to have on your side in a fight, though.

So, if you weren’t fortunate to be born down here don’t feel bad, there’s still hope.   All y’all have to do is live south of the Mason-Dixon Line for 25 years. Then you, too, can proudly pronounce that you’re Southern. And that’s what I told The Wife. She only had five years to go and she too could take pride in being a true Southerner.

After my last comment, The Wife got up and announced that the Northerner in the room was going to bed and that the Southerner could sleep on the couch if he made anymore comments like the last one. I agreed and trotted off to bed. Guess the North won again.