Discovering the Deep South - Georgia

Most of Florida isn’t truly in the “South.” Most of the Atlantic coast tilts toward beach culture with more Caribbean as you head south. A huge portion of Florida residents some from elsewhere, primarily the North. From ~Orlando on down it’s palm trees and beaches, Disney and Cuba and Margaritaville. Many Floridians don’t even have a southern accent, though the panhandle area is more like South Georgia
 

With that in mind, I head for a week in Georgia. First days are north of Atlanta, where I’ve been before. Very red-state, very church-oriented, but not too rural since it is not THAT far from Atlanta. Local food is great if you know where to find it and avoid the national chains.
 

The next couple of days is in downtown Atlanta, which is pretty much like any other large city (as far as overall culture shock goes), but with a Southern accent. Locals pronounce it “Atlanna.” In Atlanta is everything is named “Peachtree” without a single tree with peaches around. 

I’ve spent time in downtown Atlanta before, and will get around via MARTA (Atlanta is a real, grown-up city with public transit.). My last days will be new, as I head south to Macon.

Macon, GA is a decent-sized city, but the vicinity is more rural, and I expect to see more Confederate flags. You don’t see a lot of Confederate flags in Florida, with the notable exception being the World’s Largest near Tampa. Seems out of place there.
  

A site I found on the Internet states:
“Confederate American Pride refers to that unique class of people, native to the Southeastern states, who define themselves as being, firstly, Confederates and, secondly, as Americans, and who are proud of bearing those distinctions. The Confederate Nationalist needs to defend himself and his heritage in the war that is constantly being waged against that heritage.”
 

Some “Georgia Tips” I found on the web:

• Going outside at anytime during the summer instantly guarantees a minimum a 7 bug bites.
• Honey Boo Boo was born and raised here.

• It’s called a “rag” not a “washcloth”.
• In Georgia when someone ask, “Where you from?”, people usually reply with a county, not a city.
• In Georgia it’s not a shopping cart, it’s a buggy.
• Georgia gets more inches of pollen in a week than inches of snow in a full year.

•  You say Georgia, we say Jawja.
• There’s a Waffle House in walking distance of every Waffle House.

Macon will be interesting. I hope I can find a local food joint and visit enough with some folks who live in the area. Perhaps I can find a keychain.

I'll let you know next week how it went.

Top Ten things about life in the South

I've written a few posts lately that talk about some of the things I don't like about the move. Some are things I miss about the old life up north, and others are some things I don't like about here. I just wrote another and decided to save that one and post about some of the things I LIKE about the South. Since it was a last-minute change, I didn't write all of these myself, but pulled some top tens from other folks that make MY top ten, plus added a few of my own comments here and there.

1. The beaches. Southern beaches are among the most gorgeous beaches in the U.S. Whether it's the fine, powdery white sands of beaches along the Gulf of Mexico in the Deep South or the gorgeous, tan sands of North Carolina's Outer Banks and the Atlantic Coast, the beaches are plentiful, the water sports are fantastic and, well, they are just first-rate. I don't spend as much time there as I like, but I can go whenever I want to.

2. History. Inescapable and heavy as a wet blanket: Old country roads, barns and gins, Indian mounds, Ole Man River, ruined mansions, town squares with benches, shade trees, and ancient, heaving sidewalks. 

3. Southern hospitality. Okay, I know the south gets a bad rap sometimes. I know there are racists. I know there are homophobes. I know there are Honey Boo Boos and dynasties of ducks. But there are also the sweetest, kindest, most generous people you will ever meet and they are one of my favorite things about the south. I feel like this way of thinking is just as prevalent as some of the more controversial ways of thinking down south, you just don’t hear about it as much. 

4. Southern colloquialisms. Bless your heart. Don’t be ugly to your “sister, brother cousin,” Carry me to “school, church, Piggly Wiggly”. Act like you’re somebody. Hear tell. Full of beans. Come sit a spell, be there directly, ice box, pea-cans, yes ma’am and sir. And, drum roll please — y’all. Can we just take a moment to talk about how “y’all” is perhaps the most useful phrase in the entire English language, but only a small section of the country actually uses it? I mean, its closest northern variation is probably “you guys,” which is clunky and awkward, not to mention a little sexist. “Y’all” is soft and inclusive and oh-so-lovely when uttered in a slow Southern drawl. It’s a linguistic gem that Southerners sprinkle into pretty much every conversation. Love it.

5. The food. Fried chicken. Barbecue. Gumbo. Biscuits and gravy. Boiled peanuts. Shrimp and grits. Pulled pork. Cornbread. Brisket. Jambalaya. Fried okra. Mac and cheese. Catfish po boys. Shall I go on? Actually I can’t because now I’m hungry and need to go get a snack.

6. Friendly people. I had no idea just how much smiling, waving, and “How you doin’, darlin'”s would be involved in daily life here. It takes some getting used to, but overall it’s pretty great.

7. College football Saturdays. Explaining the myriad delights of a football Saturday in the South to anyone who has not enjoyed them may be impossible – like trying to describe the ocean to a blind man. The SEC is king in the South overall, and you'd better follow the games if you want to be part of the conversation in my office.

8. Humidity. OK, I know I’m going to regret saying this when it gets so disgustingly hot and humid that I can do nothing but lay on the floor and beg for mercy, BUT there is an upside to the muggy weather: great skin. Summer in the South is like living in a sauna, which means you don’t need any expensive spa treatments to clear your pores. Plus, your skin never gets dry, which helps stave off wrinkles. Once you wipe off the thick layer of sweat, you’re met with the most lovely, glowing skin you’ll ever see in your life. You could get a $100 facial, or you could step outside for 5 minutes in the South in July. Take your pick!

9. The slower pace. When my coworkers and I go for walks, they’re always like, “Slow down! You’re walking like a Northerner!” There’s some truth to the protests, though: life definitely moves slower here. Is it because of the heat and humidity, which physically prevents you from picking up speed? Is it because people actually take the time to stop and chat with their neighbors? Is it because everyone’s weighed down from eating too many biscuits? I’m not sure, but compared to the never-ending go-go-go attitude of many northern cities, it’s a nice change.

10. Magnolia grandiflora. This grand old tree — the scented flowers of which the Indians claimed would lull a soul into perpetual sleep — grows nowhere else but the Deep South. Azaleas are a close second.

Downsizing

Florida housing has minimal storage. Houses in Florida often have high ceilings and lots of fans, to help with the heat. Regardless of air conditioning, high ceilings help, but that also means that there is little attic space. What space there is, is really too hot to store much.

 
Florida is mere feet above sea level, and the water table even inland is high. That means no basements. For unknown reasons, Florida houses don't usually have front closets. It gets chilly enough in the winter in north Florida to need a jacket, and it rains tons so there are raincoats and umbrellas galore, but no handy place to put them. What Florida houses *do* often have is a fireplace. You'd pay a premium for a fireplace up north, but they are scattered everywhere in Florida. There are also screened porches, sometimes with glass or plastic-paned windows which makes it a Florida room. Sadly, they are not air conditioned usually (even the ones with proper windows) so the humidity limits what you can place there. Also, critters manage to get in regardless, so that also affects your furnishing selections.

What all this means is that a move to Florida from the north means downsizing. The square footage of the house in Florida is a good deal larger than the house in Michigan, but the lack of usable attic space and no basement means much less storage. An open floor plan also means fewer walls for bookcases and other storage furniture. A fireplace takes out a nice chunk of wall space also. And you can't just store books and photo albums in the Florida room - too humid.

On the plus side, we may have the only front closet in north Florida, but it is teeny. As in the door is 18 inches. Go measure your own front closet door. The closet rod has a usable length of just over 19 inches, and the closet is barely deep enough for the hangars to not hit the back wall. Not much storage there.

We've given away hundreds of books and probably thousands of other items, thrown out a 20-yard container’s worth of stuff and discarded a huge amount of duplicate furniture. We still have an appalling amount of things coming to Florida, and there simply isn't room. During my time in Wisconsin, dozens of boxes of books, a good deal of furniture (I needed stuff) and a lot of kitchen items made their way to the apartment. So nearly everything I had came from the house, with the notable exceptions of a couch and a new bed when I moved to Florida (the bed I had before, from Michigan, is now in the guest room). So it's mostly still the same stuff. The house in Michigan had enough belongings to pretty much furnish TWO homes.   

When the truck comes, the boxes will go into the garage and the furniture initially into the Florida room, while we decide where things will go and which of the duplicate items we'll keep and which get sent to the resale shop. Boxes that have been packed for months are tagged and will be moved to storage in the first week or two, with the goal of taking them out a few at a time each week and sorted. It's just too much to leave in the garage for that long over a Florida summer. Some items will be sent to the kids, though they shouldn't panic since I'm not paying to ship everything we have. Nobody will be in convenient driving distance. 
 

Downsizing is incredibly hard. We've stumbled across some treasures I'd forgotten about, and some I didn't even remember we had, like my grandparent's bible. It's not one of those big fancy Family Bibles with all the family history in its pages - just a plain vanilla book but it has the Doré illustrations that I remember pouring over as a child. Going through stuff rather than just wholesale discarding is how the treasures get found. Some treasures were lost - damaged beyond hope over the years, but that just makes the others more precious. Hopefully, over the next six months or so, we can weed out the unimportant and worthless possessions and downsize to what is important.

Melting Pot?

Today is Easter, and its differing traditions among various ethnic groups, has got me to thinking about similarities and differences between the Great Lakes area and the South. I recall a lot of Eastern European traditions growing up – lamb cake, fancy eggs, lamb butter, Easter egg hunts in the house, and baskets filled with candies. In Michigan, just before Lent, everyone would have pączki. Now, that is a long-standing Polish tradition to use up eggs and butter – it is a rich jelly donut, but rich enough to make it hard to call it a donut.  I’d never heard of it in my Polish/Ukrainian family in Chicago, but in the Detroit area, EVERYONE ate pączki. Didn’t matter if you were Polish, or even Christian. It was a local thing (so was eating muskrat, which I never tried after nearly 30 years in the Downriver Detroit area). I learned from my Polish friend Hanna that even Poland had regional foods, so I guess that may be why the Chicago group didn’t do that. Hanna told me many of my family’s traditions were more Russian. There were so many local traditions when I grew up. The Irish were big on a sunrise Mass. The Swedes had a huge smorgasbord on Holy Saturday. The Hungarians also create intricate egg designs.

 
Anyway, when I moved South, Easter was a big church day, but I missed the ethnic traditions. Look up Southern Easter Customs, and you get menus full of traditional Southern food like banana pudding, corn casserole, lots of ham, and green beans & bacon. You’d see much the same menu for most Southern holidays. Which got me wondering…

According to http://names.mongabay.com/ancestry/region.html, which uses Census data, the great Lakes area is comprised largely of 10 differing ethnic groups, ranging from Italian to Norwegian to Polish to Irish. In the South, in contrast, there are 6 – “American”, Irish, African American, German, French (Louisiana), and English. Perhaps this more homogenous origin is why the North seems, to me, to be more open and welcoming. We’re just used to a greater range of people. To be fair, the North could use a LOT of lessons in hospitality from the South, but one of the overall themes when you look up “how to be Southern” is that you can’t. Vermont has this too, but it seems much more widespread in the South. If you relocated, you’ll always be an outsider. There’s a bit less of that in Florida, where *everyone* is from somewhere else, but even if you listen to the jokes you get the point. “There’s a difference between Yankees and Damn Yankees. Yankees are northerners visiting the South but Damn Yankees are northerners who visit the South and stay.” “Don't go around talking about how much better it is back home. If you don't like it here, take your Yankee butt back home.” “We are fully aware that the humidity is high. Quit your griping, spend your money, and leave.”
 

In the Great Lakes area, there are Chicagoan jokes and Michigander jokes and overall “up north” jokes, but they just don’t seem to have the same nasty undertone – it seems more a friendly rivalry between cities or states.  “Remember to allow for room under your children’s Halloween costumes for snowsuits.” “It’s not a typical Chicago daily commute unless someone almost kills you on the road. Driving for a few months in Chicago will make you a more aware driver than anywhere else in the world.” “Ask a Michigander where they’re from and they’ll point to a spot on their hand.”   
 

Perhaps the people I know from up north are more tolerant because we *have* to be – there are too many different groups. Chicago has a large Chinatown as well as a huge Hispanic population. Dearborn MI, outside of Detroit, has the largest group of people from the Middle East in the world outside of the actual Middle East. The Twin Cities has an ever-growing Somalian community. It just seems that the North is much more of a Melting Pot than the South overall.

My usual disclaimer – this is a discussion of my thoughts and experiences. While I do make an effort to look up some statistics, this is NOT a fully-researched, peer-reviewed paper.