A Southern Girl

I’m kinda new to California and lately I've been thinkin’ a lot about home, which for me is North Carolina. Baby James had it right - "In my mind I'm goin' to Carolina." My husband and I recently visited the aquarium in La Jolla and while talking to a lady there she started laughing when I said I was "fixin to" go down to the village. She inquired where in the south I was from. Just today my son busted my chops for saying "over yonder." Seemed pretty clear to me! That made me start thinking about all the south’rn slang I grew up with and added to after living in Dallas for 24 years. Things like what I say to my husband just about anytime we go somewhere - "I swanee, are you gonna park out in the north 40?" I love that in the south you can say just about anything about anybody as long as you add “Well Bless Your Heart!” at the end. My mama would say, "The kids were out gallivantin all day." Or, "I'm madder than a wet hen! Stop that hissie fit and go fetch me a switch cuz I'm gonna tan your hide!" 

I still say "supper" instead of dinner and never thought anything of it until recently a lady in an elevator commented I must be from the south after I told her we were meeting people for supper. Where I'm from, menus list mac & cheese as a vegetable. When I ordered grits in Solano Beach the girl asked me what "a grit" was! Wonder what she'd have said to chitlin cornbread or fried livermush? In their mama’s kitchen young girls learn that just about anything can be fried and how to make homemade pie crust. My daddy was a Baptist preacher and on Sunday’s we had a big potluck under the trees after church. Before you put food in your mouth in the south, you first bow your head and say grace.

Well, I declare! That beats all I’ve ever seen! Quit wallerin around on the floor! Mind yer manners! Quit smackin yer lips! Yer raisin' a rukus. Southern women don’t have purses, we carry pocketbooks. We don’t turn off the water, we cut off the spigot. ‘Right here’ is correctly pronounced ‘rightcheer.’ Looky here, you need to quit yer bellyachin' or I'm gonna give you somethin' to cry about! Fer cryin' out loud, shut the ice box and go staump that mud off your shoes! I'll do it directly! Don’t you sass me or I'm gonna wash yer mouth out with a bar of soap! She is knee high to a grasshopper! My grandma in Asheville once told me I was "cuter than a bug's ear but if I didn't stop growing soon she was gonna put a rock on my head!" When we got warm we’d ‘go crack a winda.’ Ya'll is a proper noun in the south where we call everyone sweetie, sugah, darlin', babe, or honey. I once slipped up and called the President of the College where I worked as his assistant, ‘sweetie.’ He, being from Berkeley, CA looked at me like I'd lost my ever lovin' mind.

Now wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute! What in tarnation is going on with this election? It's goin' to hell in a handbasket and all cattywampus. Trump's gittin too big for his britches and his chances of winning are deader'n a doornail. He ain't right in the head and thinks the sun comes up just to hear him crow - bless his heart! If humility and good sense was lard he wouldn't have enough to grease a pan. If he thinks he’s gonna get enough votes, he’s barkin up the wrong tree. I swanee, I'll be plum glad when this election is over!

A Southern girl, raised on sweet tea and a whole lotta Jesus!