How To Vacation In Dixie When You Can Barely Speak The Language
By Greg Evans
It is that time of the year when you decide to plan a trip, and take the family out of, say, Cleveland and head south for vacation. Traveling down south, down to Dixie, you might as well be traveling to a different country. “Dixie” includes all southern states below the Mason-Dixon line (including Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia, Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, both Carolinas… whoever else we may have forgotten… and of course Florida even though it consists of 98.3% Northeastern transplants).
When I first arrived in Dixie from Long Beach, California, I had trouble understanding people when they spoke. I went to Barnes and Noble to find a dictionary but there was nothing so I bought a French one, maybe that would help?
To help save you from the culture shock, here is a list of 16 insights into understanding the culture of the south when you can barely speak the language.
First and foremost, biscuits and gravy are culinary staples. It doesn’t matter which meal of the day it is (Breakfast, Supper, or Dinner) there is no such thing as “Lunch” in the south. And no, the gravy put on biscuits is not the same as the gravy used for Turkey.
When someone says something “tickles them to death,” that doesn’t mean they actually want you to do it.
SEC football is the most popular religion in the South, followed by NASCAR, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Methodist.
The most popular vegetables are okra, collard greens, soup beans, and sweet potato pie.
Sweet tea is 80 parts sugar, 10 parts water, 10 parts southern hospitality. And yes, refills are free! It’s the southern way.
It doesn’t matter if you are from New York, Maine, Michigan, Oregon, Idaho, or even Texas. If you are not from Dixie, you’re a “Yankee.”
The Confederate flags you still see, pretty much everywhere, are not the homes of a Lynyrd Skynyrd bandmates.
Despite the fact that most lists disregard Florida as being an actual Dixie state, anywhere that alligator, python, squirrel, and Yankee are deep-fried with the chitterlings is as Dixie as Mississippi.
A common stereotype is that all southerners like country music. This is not true of course; some of them like bluegrass too.
If you cut someone off on the road and they inform you that you are “worthless as gum on a bootheel!” Then you have officially crossed into Dixie.
When you are in the north you are in the north. When you are in the west, you are in the west. When you are in the south, you are in God’s country.
What might sound like three words is actually three sentences, all in one breath, no period, no breaks. “Speakin’ southern,” is one of the world’s great ancient languages. To this day it is at least 75 percent deciphered.
Asking for your bacon crispy is as fruitless as asking for your tea unsweetened. And cheese goes into or on everything, eggs, mashed potatoes, on the burgers, with the pretzels, in the chili, in the baked spaghetti, and don’t go complaining or you may make the cook “madder than a wet hen” with that Yankee talk.
There is no such thing as a fast or slow lane in the south. They are interchangeable. And the use of blinkers is optional. Also, all men and women in the South know cars and learn to change the oil on a car, fix the alternator, and change a tire in under ten minutes by the age of seven, it is more or less a rite of passage. Any cars you see stranded on the side of the road are Yankee tourists.
When you walk into the grocery store and 1 in 2 men are wearing some kind of firearm on their hip, it doesn’t mean you they are serial killers. Guns in the south are as common as pickup trucks, dogwood trees, and beards.
And the last thing you need to know about the south is that you need to relax and slow down. Walk slower, drive slower, talk slower, and just relax. It is the southern way.