Rules for visiting the South
 

(Note: I claim neither authorship nor total agreement)
If you are going to live in or visit the South, you need to know these rules:

1. That farm boy you see at the gas station did more work before breakfast than you do all week at the gym.
2. It's called a "gravel road." No matter how slow you drive, you're going to get dust on your Navigator. Drive it or get the hell out of the way!
3. The red dirt -- it's called clay. Red clay. If you like the color don't wash your car for a couple weeks -- it'll be permanent.
4. We all started hunting and fishing when we were seven years old. Yeah, we saw Bambi. We got over it.
5. Go ahead and bring your $600 Orvis Fly Rod. Don't cry to us if a flathead breaks it off at the handle. We have a name for those little 13-inch trout you fish for -- bait.
6 . Pull your pants up. You look like an idiot.
7. If that cell phone rings while a bunch of mallards are making their final approach, we will shoot it. You might want to ensure it's not up to your ear at the time.
8. No, there's no "Vegetarian Special" on the menu. Order steak. Order it rare. Or, you can order the Chef's Salad and pick off the two pounds of ham and turkey.
9. Tea - yeah, we have tea. It comes in a glass over ice and is sweet. You want it hot -- sit it in the sun. You want it unsweetened -- add a lot of water.
10. You bring Coke into my house, it better be brown, wet, and served over ice.
11. Let's get this straight. We have one stoplight in town. We stop when it's red. We may even stop when it's yellow.
12. We eat dinner together with our families. We still address our seniors with "yes, sir" and "yes, ma'am," and we sometimes still take Sunday drives around town to see friends and neighbors.
13. We don't do "hurry up" well.
14. Greens - yeah, we have greens, but you don't putt on them. You boil them with salty fatback, bacon or a ham hock.
15. Yeah, we eat catfish, bass, bream and carp. You really want sushi and caviar? It's available at the bait shop.
16. They are pigs. That's what they smell like. Get over it. Don't like it? Interstate 85 goes two ways - Interstate 40 goes the other two. Pick one.
17. Grits are corn. You put butter, salt, and maybe even some pepper on them. If you want to put milk and sugar on them, then you want cream of wheat--go to Kansas . That would be I-40 west.
18. The "Opener" refers to the first day of deer season or dove season. Both are holidays. You can get pancakes, cane syrup, and sausage before daylight at the church on either day.
19. So every person in every pickup waves? Yeah, it's called being friendly. Understand the concept?
20. Yeah, we have golf courses. Don't hit in the water hazards. It spooks the fish and bothers the gators -and if you hit it in the rough, we have these things called diamondbacks, and they're not baseball players.
21. That Highway Patrol Officer that just pulled you over for driving like an idiot -- his name is "Sir," no matter how young he is.
22. We have lots of pine trees. They have sap. It drips from them. You park your Navigator under them, and they'll leave a logo on your hood.
24. No, we don't care how you do things up North. If it is so great up there, why not visit a Northern state or stay there. And no, down here, we don't have an accent, you do.

LOL this is so great :))

And 6. applies to San Francisco too - so many times I had to bite my tongue not to say it out loud!

I don't know what to say other than I live in NC and this does not apply to me.:) And yes..Iced tea is very good.;)As well as hot tea.

I've seen this before but as 'Rules for visiting the Midwest'

Fania, I think Rule number 6 applies everywhere these days but if we're lucky fashion will change soon, one can but hope!

If we are lucky? I can see in San Francisco Haight-Ashbury the fashion hasn't changed since 1960s the summer of love!

Seamus, thanks for a good laugh! Some of it is so true, especially for Southerners from rural areas! :-) Regarding Southerners and waving, my DGD, from Massachusetts, was visiting a couple of years ago, was five at the time, and was walking the neighborhood with me. Observing me waving at everyone, she said, "Granny, why do you do that? You don't know EVERYONE, do you?" I said, "Sweetie, I'm being friendly. It's called being neighborly." She said, "Granny, don't be neighborly when you come to my house in Massachusetts. The neighbor's Dalmation pees on Mommy's flowers every day, and she hates her!" :-d

The only thing I noticed moving south, the yankee bast... that I am, was that my children are taught to call their teachers Yes Ma'am and Yes Sir. I like that.
They also call sneakers-tennis shoes and lollypops-suckers.
Oh and underneath our grass is some god awful red dirt called clay!

Bonniebroad,
That is true in rural areas.Everyone waves to everyone.I am from Raleigh,NC but moved south of Raleigh to a smaller rural area about 7 years ago.Now this "smaller rural area" has grown quite alot.I have met some very sweet people here.:)

That is so funny what your grandchild said to you about her neighbor.

Very true and very funny.
Although, where I grew up it was just a lift of the index finder off the wheel rather than a full wave!

#25 While standing in any line, Post Office, food store, bait shop, you must talk to others in said line.

#17 The ONLY way to eat grits. Sugar?!! Good god. No way.

Seamus,

You gave me my gut laugh of the day...thank you !

With great respect for Southern ways from one of those dam Yankees :-)

Marion

This applies to #14..nothing like some good ole Collard or Turnip greens.

I hear that up North..people eat Dandelion greens.Is this true..if so,I could get some of them out of my yard for free.;)

Very funny post!

I thought #18 was a national holiday. Most of the men I know take that day off from work.

I don't think it is to actually hunt but an excuse to sit in a duck blind and drink brown liquor.

#x+1: "Bless your heart" has two meanings.

I had a good laugh over this list. The late Lewis Grizzard of the Atlanta Constituion used to say I-85 does go north to all the transplants (d*** yankees) who commented on how things were done 'back home'.

Red clay, good for making bricks and pottery, not growing things except crabgrass.

Thanks, Seamus. I just loved it.

Ditto on almost 2/3rds of the number in my small rural MI, IN towns.

Maybe someday when I retire to MI, I will find a small town exactly as you describe in Northern Mississippi, Alabama, or a bit North of there where they will put up with a Yankee for a couple of months a year after Christmas.

And in Minnesota the entire state practically closes for the first day of the hunting season. Wisconsin & Michigan almost the entire state. I know you can't stay on my lake without wearing a bright orange jacket or you are taking your life in your hands.

#6 Please, please I am so sick of looking at bellies here.

Had to copy this to send to my friends in CA. Too funny and so true!

Y'all have a great day, y'hear!!

Born, bred, and lived as a Yankee my entire life. And I say Amen to this list. Mostly. I live in Central Western NJ. Used to be farm country until about 5 years ago. Now the sprawl has hit here. Yeah, we wave to people, have that "red dirt", and many hunt/fish. But I am sorely tired of the urban crap being brought out (droopy pants, for example). And people in the country drive trucks because they need to, not because its a fad. Maybe I need to move south. LOL

Do you chew a piece of corn and smoke a clay pipe at the same time ?

As a confirmed damn yankee (yankee= visits and goes home, damn yankee = visits and stays) I am so pleased this little chestnut has been received in the good humor with which it was offered. Even more pleased to see the responses noting that some of the observations pertain even waaay up north. Geee, do you suppose that maybe it is just possible that we are all just folks, after all?
Bless our hearts...:-p

JJ5, you're lucky it's only the bellies you notice. I see them boys from behind, some of them without underwear. It seems nobody's bothered by this sight in San Francisco.

I think that many of these are rural versus urban observations.

Fainaagain, if you can see the crack they get sent to dorms to change, we are private and can sustain some rules. But this last year the girls have been the worst and from the other angle.

SO GLAD the other isn't pervasive here, essentially we see the underwear more than the underwearless.

Very cute, and thanks for sharing.

Being from (Wilmington - NO, not Wilmington, DE - Wilmington, NC), and living in Fuquay Varina, NC, I have seen (and lived) a lot of these items on the list over the years.

A few more.

#? Don't even ask where to get a good bagel around here.

#? Yes, we do REALLY only have one snowplow for the entire county.

#? You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

I have a contractor who does some odd jobs for me. He has a bumper sticker on the back of his work van. It says, "I don't CARE how you did it up north." :)

I have to say, this made Southerners sound like Nazis to me.
(insert stupid smiley face icon here!)

oops, maybe everyone else wasn't reading all the threads pertaining to Nazi overuse and PC stuff lately.
Nevermind!

christiegr - we like to refer to those dandelion greens (aka field greens) as road kill salad because it looks like someone just ran over a patch of weeds with their mower and called the trimmings salad :)

Diana,
How ironic..I live in Fuquay Varina also!(Actually Chalybeate Springs..but we do not have a delivering USPS here)so FV it is!:S-

The growth has gone wild here.I moved from Raleigh to get away from the rat-race 7 years ago..and now it has followed me!My husband is an Electrical Contractor..so he loves the growth here.

j-correa,
Thanks for the clarification on the *field greens/dandalion greens* :S-

Diana,
LOL..I have seen the van with the bumper sticker..I don't care how you did it up North.I cannot remember what company it was though?

I once met a girl from the south who spoke so slowly that, by the time she told me that she wasn't &quot;that type of girl&quot;, she <i>already was</i>.

christie, It's just a fellow who does odd jobs around here. There's no name on his truck.

I know what you mean about the rat race. We are actually considering moving somewhere more &quot;remote.&quot;

We've been here since 1988, and the influx of new people has just gotten overwhelming.

I used to joke that we were going to have to move to Lizard Lick if it got any worse, but now LL is overrun too.

I'm thinking maybe over toward Smithfield or Wilson out in the middle of about 25 acres will get us what we are looking for.

I've been spending a lot of time over that way because my horse trainer lives in Snow Hill. The farmers are bringing the 'baccy in. The whole pace is slower and people still wave and smile.

I miss that... :(

Diana and Christie, are you girls coming to our NC GTG on Nov. 19, at Neo-China??? Hope so... :-) (My e-mail is [email protected] ...) Diana, the kind of community you want is the kind I grew up in, up in Yadkin County in tobacco country, eons ago! Loved it ...

Diana,
We have small children so we will have to wait to move on a few acres of land as they would get bored with no kids to play with.;)

My family is from Wilson..so I am familiar with that area.

I was behind that guy's van at a light oneday and laughed when I saw the bumper sticker on it.

Bonniebroad,
It depends on if I have a babysitter as to if I would be able to go to the GTG..thanks for the invite.:)

Diana, will wonders never cease? Now even Lizard Lick has made it to the internet....I lived for a few years (and the Old Home Place is still) a half mile from there. The old joke used to be that they only needed one &quot;Welcome to Lizzard Lick&quot; sign. It had the same message on both sides.

Except these don't apply in Atlanta where my sister is always reminding me, &quot;don't talk to people!&quot; I always imagine the poor people she's warning me against are exiles from the lovelier parts of GA, forced to move to Atlanta for jobs, and starved for the way other southerners love to strike up conversations in line.

Here's a few rules for visiting the North:

- Don't say hello to me unless you've been properly introduced. It's considered rude to bother people you don't know.

- If you're going to mosey, please move to the right. We've got places to go, and things to do.

- Don't order country ham for breakfast. We eat Canadian bacon.

- If you ask for pop, expect me to reply 'I'm sure I don't know where your father is'.

- Dr. Pepper? Did he lance that boil I had last year?

- If you're here on business, yes you will be expected to show up for work if there's an inch of snow on the ground.

- And for heaven's sake, don't clear the snow off the hood of your car with a metal shovel! A new paint job costs a fortune.

My mother was from a small town in NC, she married a Yankee. We still try to go down to see the family every few years, and everyone in the town waves to us, whether they know us or not. Up here in New York, there's no waving to neighbors because we rarely see them. We get in the car (which is parked in the garage) and go to work. When we come home, we pull the car into the garage. But we do all get together for a neighborhood picnic once a year!

Sweet iced tea, hush puppies and grits are my favorites! (And biscuit gravy...)

jnn1964, don't know where you're from, but &quot;pop&quot; is a northern thing! In the south, it's Coke--no matter what flavor it is (orange, 7 UP, etc.). Most Chicago area people call it &quot;pop&quot;. Most of the rest of the state calls it &quot;soda&quot;.

What a fun post! I have to say that as a PNW girl who was moved to SE GA, I learned a lot of this VERY quickly, lol! Then to upstate (yes!) NY, so can appreciate the &quot;northern&quot; rules too.

Growing up in the PNW, we use the term &quot;pop&quot;. After getting scolded in FL and GA, I promptly learned to call it &quot;soda&quot;. Obviously lived there long enough for it to become habit, because even though we have been back here for 7 years, I still call it soda and all my friends and family look at me and wonder why I still have not adjusted to being back home, lol!

I like the list and I speak as a Northerner (PA). People from the NE are notorious for verbally putting down people from the Southern U.S. and it sickens me. They have their traditions and we have ours and both can be respectful of each.

This is sooo funny and true!

And soft drinks, soda and pop are all called COKE no matter what brand! Of course everyone in KY drinks Ale8One not Coke.

My daughter goes to school in the north (Boston) and last year she had a damn yankee boyfriend from California. He kept insisting he wasn't a yankee because he was from CA. He didn't get that if you aren't from the little cluster of southern states you ARE a yankee.

She had to explain to him southern manners before he came to visit last summer - holding doors, responding to clerks, the whole yes ma'am/sir thing.

KY is a border state with the Mason/Dixon line running through it. They ask when you order tea(iced is a given) if you want it sweetened or unsweetened. If you go one state south it will be automatically sweet tea - no asking. Also no asking if you want grits with breakfast, they will be on your plate.

JJ5 - Do I remember you wanting Amano or was that another poster? My local wine shop seems to always have it in stock.