How great is it to be a Southerner? It is not just about being native-born. Some people, like me, were hatched in the Midwest or other places but have spent years feeling the red clay of Georgia or the sand of Florida squeeze up between our toes.
So, what is it, exactly?
It is barbecue, stock car racing, hunting, fishing, and iced tea so sweet it will make your teeth curl. It is about going to church on Sunday with people who actually read the Bible and who know when to use the term “y’all,” and to how to pronounce Albany, Ga., as “All-Benny.”
It is about the blues, rockabilly, country, Southern rock, James Brown, Elvis Presley and probably, to some extent, whatever the younger generation listens to at 800 decibels in the car next to you.
It is about football, which is not just a sport but almost a religion. It is about Friday night lights for high school and Saturdays for college.
College ball is the greatest of spectacles, with bands, mascots, and traditions like barking like a dog on kickoffs, letting an eagle fly around the stadium or having a Seminole Indian lookalike hurl a flaming spear into the ground at the 50-yard line.
It is tribalism at its best. After the game you tell the fans on the other side, “Good game,” and head for home. Most people take it in stride. Drunks, fortunately, seem to fade a bit by the fourth quarter.
It is a sport with rich traditions, including in the not-so-distant past of only being able to listen to the game on the radio because so few games were broadcast on TV.
The announcers did not just deliver the play-by-play but the sheer thrill of it all. That includes outrageous comments like Larry Munson of Georgia saying in a last-minute win over Tennessee: “We stepped on their face with a hobnail boot!”
It is about families who are both eccentric and passionate.
What fertile territory for so many great writers like Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Thomas Wolfe, Lewis Grizzard, Pat Conroy, Truman Capote, Harper Lee, and Marjorie Rawlings!
It is about history. You cannot swing your arms without hitting a historical marker in Virginia, home of so many presidents. It is about war, including the War Between the States. The late great historian Shelby Foote remarked that young boys have long pretend to be rushing into battle as part of Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. Reality, however, was a bloody hell on earth, with waves of men swept from the field by a wall of shrapnel and bullets.
Included in the region’s history is the shameful stain of slavery and violence against civil rights protesters in the 1960s. Thankfully, history includes heroes like the Rev. Martin Luther King who turned the old ways on its head.
It is about great natural beauty like the Everglades, the sea, and mountains. It is about great universities; new tech wizards on the Space Coast; “progress,” whatever that is; and people trying to at least limit the number of acres plowed up and paved over.
It is about trying to preserve what is important; acknowledging the past, however painful or glorious; and trying to enjoy every minute of it before it morphs into some kind of chain-restaurant, Interstate highway, neon-sign morass indistinguishable from anyplace else.