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15 reasons you’re wrong about the South

By C Noah Pelletier On
December 6,
2013 · 11
Comments

Photo: Andreas Møller

Southerners talk funny.

Pure hogwash. The Southern dialect is soft and beautifully cadenced and makes
up the largest accent group in the US. Some of our most popular terms are:
y’all, short for “you all;” reckon, which means “to think,
imagine, or suppose;” fixin’ to, which lets people know you’re “getting
ready to” do something. As in, “I’m fixin’ to tell you a few stories.”

Southerners are fat.

While it’s true that the fattest states are in the South, folks in the rest
of the country aren’t exactly walking around looking like beanpoles.

Country music sucks.

Whenever someone says this, I think Bless your heart. It only takes
one artist to change your mind about an entire genre. For me it was David Allan
Coe.

I went to one of his shows. He was sitting shirtless on a stool — tattoos and
belly hanging everywhere — swigging George Dickel from the bottle. Halfway
through “You Never Even Called Me By My Name,” Coe spit up on himself like a
wicked baby. A performer does this and you think Well, he can’t possibly top
that. Oddly enough, he did. Guitar in hand, Coe proceeded to tear the roof
off, changing my perception of country music (and functioning alcoholics)
forever.

Everyone lives in a trailer.

This is false. Whenever a tornado hits some small Southern town, the news
reporters usually cruise over to some devastated trailer park and ignore the
surrounding area. Is this bad reporting? Yes and no. On one hand, it’s not
exactly fair and balanced. On the other, they are giving people what they
want.

If a tornado is going to touch down, many Americans, I think, would prefer to
see it touch down on a trailer park in the South. We want reporters to interview
the victims. We want them to be fat with curlers in their hair, smoking a broken
cigarette and jabbering things that confirm our preconceptions of what it means
to be a “redneck” or “trailer trash.” In the internet age, this is video
gold.

Southerners hate gays.

As a native of North Carolina, a state which has voted to prohibit any kind
of same-sex union, I can see why a non-Southerner would say this. But you’re
wrong. Southerners love gays, so much so that we’ll do whatever it takes
to protect them from having to endure painful dinner conversations with in-laws,
or giving away half their stuff when they divorce.

Please do not tell me about equal rights — I don’t have a facetious comment
for that yet.

Southerners are not well traveled.

In my experience, Southerners do travel, but more times than not they tend to
travel around the South. Growing up, I’d been from DC to New Orleans to Key
West, but had never been north of the Mason-Dixon line. I had no interest in
seeing the North until I was 21, when a college buddy from New Jersey persuaded
me to drive up to visit. I would later drive across the US and travel and live
in Asia and then Europe.

We’re all crazy about deer hunting.

Some, but not all. The last time I was visiting my parents, two men knocked
on our door. “Good morning,” they said, and asked if they could shoot the
squirrels in our yard. A strange request. The men were wearing camouflage and
carrying high-tech pellet guns. My mom said okay (she hates squirrels messing
with her bird feeder) and the men spent the morning stalking around the edge of
our yard like cats, staring up at the trees.

The Squirrel Hunters returned the following week with a plastic container of
squirrel stew, as a thank-you. It was pretty gamy, but when we fed it to the
dogs, they went absolutely wild.

Southerners love their guns too much.

I did not know this was even a thing until I went off to college. Growing up,
everyone I knew had like seven or eight guns in the house, no big deal. When I
was ten or so, our whole family would head into the woods and practice shooting
at cans set up like a shooting gallery. Our family didn’t believe in hunting —
mom made that clear — but it was understood that if anyone ever broke into our
home, they were fair game.

Is that too much?

We wear camo everywhere, even church.

Many Southerners wear camo the way some golfers wear golf shirts off the
course. Camo is functional in that it helps hunters blend into their
surroundings to fool prey. But it’s also an extension of personality, enabling
its wearer to blend into certain social circles, the subtext reading, I hunt
therefore I am.

But I’ve never heard of anyone wearing camo to church in earnest — even
amongst die-hard hunters this would be considered inappropriate. Though that
doesn’t mean it’s never happened.

Everyone in the South drinks Mountain Dew.

Not true. When I was growing up, I had a friend who was a soft drink
aficionado. His whole family was. My friend’s drink of choice was Mello Yello.
His older brother drank Sun Drop. His mother drank Diet Pepsi. His step-dad only
drank Dr. Pepper. His oldest brother drank Mountain Dew, and though he’d already
moved out, they kept a bottle around for when he came to visit.

Once, I mistakenly poured myself a glass of Sun Drop, and my friend told me,
with absolute seriousness, never to drink anyone else’s soft drink without their
permission. It was a house rule. After that, the bottles huddled on the kitchen
table began to look more and more like a plastic depiction of his family.

Everyone is inbred.

I’ve only known one person who married a cousin. I remember she showed us her
engagement ring on the school bus. People’s first question was, “You’re
engaged?” followed by “To who?” We all lived in a pretty rural area, but
her answer to this second question was flat-out bonkers no matter where you
lived.

Everyone makes moonshine.

You wish! I’ve had the good fortune of coming across a batch of moonshine
from time to time. One Christmas morning I found a jar of it in my stocking. The
note attached read “From Santa” and looked suspiciously like my mother’s
handwriting. Not everyone makes moonshine, though, and that’s one of the things
that makes it special.

Barbecue is just barbecue.

This is just plain wrong. Barbecue, like dialects, changes with the region.
In North Carolina, for example, there’s Lexington-style barbecue, a
vinegar-and-ketchup-type sauce that uses only the pork shoulder. And there’s
Eastern Carolina barbecue, which uses every part of the hog except the squeal.
It’s chopped up and drenched with a vinegar-and-pepper-based sauce with no
tomato whatsoever.

In college I took a geography course called the “Geography of Barbecue.” Best
field trips ever.

Chewing tobacco is gross.

I don’t think so. I used to work at a golf course with an old groundskeeper
named Jimmy. We’d talk every day, but once a month or so he’d pull out a pouch
of Red Man and say, “You want a little chaw?” His voice was very kind. I’d take
the occasional chew with him, and there we were, two guys sitting in a golf cart
on a hot summer day, spitting into the pine straw.

Yes, old Jimmy might have developed a fatal mouth cancer by now, and yes,
chewing tobacco is a nasty habit, but memories have a funny way of filtering out
the negative.

Southerners are racist.

I included this argument because it is a common one. My first instinct was to
exclude it altogether — an easy way out. Nobody would probably notice or say
anything. But this strikes me as kinda cowardly. My biggest fear is coming back
to this piece one day and seeing a hole, a place where I shied away — like a
scaredy cat, basically.

I wish I had a story to tell, but this feels better than nothing.

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About The Author

C Noah Pelletier

C. Noah Pelletier is working on a series of essays about growing up in the
American South, marrying young, and living abroad. Having spent two years in
China, he has traveled extensively throughout South East Asia. A native of
North Carolina, Noah now resides in Germany with his wife, where they have once
again come to terms with metal cutlery. Follow him @flyingknuckle.

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view all → C Noah Pelletier

Scott

Spoken like a true Southerner

Steve

You contract most of your own points in the body text.

Jrh

Not sure if serious

Costa del Tennis

umm…wow

Paul

This is a bizarre article. As someone else comments, not sure if this is
serious. To a non-southerner, you reinforce every stereotype in the headings
in the text below them.

scryberwitch

It’s half-serious. I’m a Southerner, and he’s spot on. All stereotypes
have a kernel of truth in them.

Jennifer

agreed with the other commenters, not sure if this is serious. and honestly
the part about the South loving gays so much sounds a lot like something a Tea
Party member would say…

scryberwitch

Spoken like a true son of the South. I want to take that “Geography of
Barbecue” class!

http://www.theepicadventurer.com/ Julia

I appreciate that this piece isn’t cruel (like a lot of other posts on
Matador can be). This northerner with southern family appreciates it

john doe

“Southerners love gays, so much so that we’ll do whatever it takes
to
protect them from having to endure painful dinner conversations with

in-laws, or giving away half their stuff when they divorce.”

….ugh….wait what? First, by ‘protecting them’ from painful dinner
conversations’, I’m pretty sure you just mean “we don’t talk about the fact so
and so is gay, cause it’s awkward telling someone they’re going to hell at the
dinner table”. and I’m especially confused about the “giving away half their
stuff when they divorce”… as though gays can get married in the first
place

Kit Kimberly

wow, some people really don’t get Southern humour. Or humor. Oops, lived
abroad too long.

But missed the South every single day.

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