Thursday, March 17, 2005
The North and The South
Last night I was talking with my friend Annie. She's from Mississippi. She's from southern Mississippi. Like only an hour from New Orleans. Anyway, I was telling her about an upcoming trip to the beach that some friends and I are planning. Her response to me was: "You're not going to some Yankee beach, are you?" (imagine a major Southern drawl when you imagine that question being asked). Now, to be fair, Annie and I have, on occasion, teased each other in the past about the North vs. the South thing. So her comment was all in fun. And it was taken that way. And ... to be fair ... I cannot think of any "Yankee" beaches ... unless you consider New Jersey .... but when I think of a nice vacation, I probably don't think about New Jersey.
Well, after I got done chuckling to myself all evening about being asked if I wasn't going to some "Yankee" beach, I started doing some reflecting about the North/South thing. I hope to complete this blog entry without offending anyone ... and without losing any friends. Here goes.
Growing up in upstate New York, we were immersed in a "Northern" culture. How? Well, for one example, I remember that when we were taught about the Civil War, we were always given the impression that we won ... that those Southern rebels were inferior ... that everything about our campaign was "right" and theirs was "wrong". The idea of the "Confederacy" was inane. There are other inaccurate biases that are carried around by many Northerners that I won't get into ... it's sufficient to say that I've needed to address many of those biases since moving to Virginia.
Which brings me to my experiences over the past nine years. When I got my job teaching in Arlington, VA, I moved to Northern Virginia. All of my friends back in Buffalo still say that I've moved to Washington, DC. They don't really ever say that "Lou Ann lives in Virginia now." It's all about Washington, DC. But ... there is definitely that sense that there's something wrong with me because I moved to "the South". I know that many Southerners don't consider the DC area (or even Virginia) the "true" South ... but to anyone from the "North", anything south of the Mason-Dixon line (the border between Pennsylvania and Maryland) is truly the "South".
Well, because Northern Virginia is actually just one big suburb of Washington, DC, there are people living here who are originally from ALL OVER the country and the world. I've got friends from all over the place, including many Southern states. And, as I've said, I had to do some re-thinking of my biases. Also, living here has made it easy for me to make "day trips" to places that are NOT suburbs of DC. Like Harper's Ferry. Harper's Ferry was probably my first day-trip when I moved here. Harper's Ferry is a town where Virginia, Maryland and West Virginia share a border. There is a lot of Southern history in that town, and there are also lots of wonderful little quaint shops to make for a great day of wandering the sights and shopping. Well ... that first time in Harper's Ferry, I happened to wander into one not-so-little shop and discovered that everything in the shop was some sort of Confederate memorabilia. I thought it was a joke at first - the stuff that made the "Dukes of Hazard" an amusing show. But as I looked around, I saw that everyone in that shop was very serious about their ties to the Confederacy. It was a real eye-opener for me. The Confederacy was NOT something to be ashamed of or amused by. It was something that many people are still proud of.
Another, less weighty, incident happened only about three or four years ago. The movie "Sweet Home Alabama" (one of my favorites!!) had just come out. Two of my colleagues and I went to see it. Janet is from North Carolina and Kate is from Long Island. The movie, if you're not familiar with it, is about a girl from Alabama currently living in NYC returns to her home town to take care of some legal paperwork. The entire movie pokes fun at the differences between the North and the South, and is mostly set in Alabama. Several times throughout the movie, Kate and I had to ask Janet to "translate" for us. We had an especially difficult time with "put on the dog", which is a phrase that still baffles me.
Well, after having lived here for nine years, I have fallen in love with my friends' Southern accents, have learned an appreciation for others' love of their home towns, have started eating okra and greens and grits, and have decided that the biases that I learned being raised in the North are just plain wrong.
And - no, Annie, we are not going to some "Yankee" beach. We're going to the Outer Banks of NC. And, maybe next year, I'll drive the Natchez Trace and visit a dear friend from Buffalo who recently moved to Jackson, MS. :-)
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