"It's still America down here"

In the midst of a blog thread on global warming some lib troll chided Stacy McCain to "work in a Nathan Bedford Forrest quote". He sidestepped the implied insult and happily obliged. But then he followed up with an excerpt from another post on typical Northerners attitudes towards the South.

From my personal experience it's us Northerners who could learn a thing or 2 from the folks in the South.

We recently drove from New Jersey to Disney World and back. The first night we stopped over in Florence, SC, a lovely little town with some extremely nice people. After securing a hotel room for the night we struck out in search of dinner. Across the street was a Longhorn Steakhouse and being familiar with the chain we walked in and asked for a table. There was a short wait so I left my wife and daughter in the waiting area and headed to the bar to secure some badly needed liquid refreshment.

I took them their drinks and settled in at the bar to watch the NCAA Final Four game on TV. I'd been chatting with the young lady behind the bar, telling her about our drive down from New Jersey, and just killing time until our table was ready. A short while later Sophie walked over to me and asked for a refill on her lemonade. There was an empty seat next to me and she started to sit down. "No, no," I said. "Children can't sit at the bar." (That's the law in New Jersey; a bar which allows anyone under 21 to occupy a barstool could lose its liquor license.)

"Of course she can sit there," said my new bartender friend. "It's still America down here." She then added, "She can even light up a cigarette. I might tell her she's crazy to do it, but I can't stop her."

And sure enough I looked around and people were smoking at the bar!

By this time mom had wandered over too, we had a chuckle about the whole thing, and she asked if we could sit at the bar to eat. We were hungry and the wait for a table was another half hour or so. The bartender lady said "sure" so all 3 of us sat down and enjoyed a nice dinner.

The next morning was Easter Sunday. The hotel clerk directed us to a beautiful little Catholic Church for mass. The folks there couldn't have been more friendly and welcoming. The church was fairly packed when we arrived but the usher rearranged some folks so we could sit together. Turns out he wasn't just the usher, he was one of the priests which we discovered when he donned his vestments and concelebrated the mass.

At the end of the week we drove back, this time via Kentucky so we could stop in to visit my brother. On the way up I-75 through Atlanta we came to a dead stop. Not knowing what to do we queried our trusty GPS for a detour. As we were deciding whether or not to get off at the next exit a lady in a white SUV gave us the universal "follow me" wave and so we did.

When we approached a traffic light she hopped out of her car and ran toward us. "I noticed y'all were from out of town. Are you tryin' to go north?" To which we replied "yes". "Good, follow me, I'll get you back on I-75 about 5 miles up."

And true to her word she directed us via backroads to a point above where the highway was completely closed by a massive multi-car accident. She waved and beeped a friendly toot on her horn as we continued on our way.

How nice was that?

So to Stacy McCain and all the rest of the delightful Southern folks I humbly say, please stay just the way you are, do not adopt any "characteristically Northern attitudes" lest we all lose the real America.

Posted at 11:33 by Chris Wysocki   [/odds_n_ends]   Comments | Perm Link |
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