Gimme soaky bread with grits and gravy for breakfast, pinto beans
with ham hocks for dinner and cracklin’ cornbread in buttermilk for
supper and you’ll have yourself a happy man.~~~~Gene Owens, Columnist –
talking about Southern treats.
The economy of the South has
changed as the nation’s commercial landscape has become homogenized. Yet
the region’s people still talk with Southern accents, walk more slowly
than Northerners do, and make distinctively Southern music (Nashville, bluegrass, country, Southern rock, and Appalachian).
They still think differently. And the place keeps producing well beyond its share of great writers. ~~~Lisa Alther, Southern novelist, on why there are so many great Southern writers.
“In
the South, the breeze blows softer… neighbors are friendlier, and more
talkative. (By contrast with the Yankee, the Southerner never uses one
word when ten or twenty will do)… This is a different place. Our way of
thinking is different, as are our ways of seeing, laughing, singing,
eating, meeting and parting. Our walk is different, as the old song
goes, our talk and our names.”-Charles Kuralt in
Southerners: Portrait of a People
“What is there to see in Europe? I’ll bet those foreigners can’t show us
a thing we haven’t got right here in Georgia.” ― Margaret Mitchell
If you like cornbread n beans, black-eyed peas n grits, too. Catfish n
turnip greens, and Southern barbecue Love sweet, sweet tea and, of
course, coke. In the spring n fall, eat salet made from poke, add peach
cobbler n buttermilk pie. Love okra, green tomatoes and chicken to fry.
Gumbo, biscuits n gravy, blackberry jam and a big old slab of country
ham. Made by the hands of a Southern cook, then you must be Southern in
my book! ~~J. Yeager
Southerners know you can’t be considered a serious Southern cook if you don’t know how to make peach cobbler. – Trisha Yearwood
Southerners equate food with love, so if you love what they cook, they’re sure to love you back. –Kim Holloway
“It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took: we know it because she repented”. –Mark Twain
You might be from the South if – you learned how to make noise with a blade of grass between your thumbs –Jeanette H. Whitfield
The most beautiful voice in the world is that of an educated Southern woman –Winston Churchill
The perfect speech would consist of the diction of the east, the vigor
of the midwest and the melody of the South –Winston Churchill
“In the South, as in no other American region, people use language as it
was surely meant to be employed; a lush, personal, emphatic, treasure
of coins to be spent slowly and for value” — Time Magazine, September
1976
“We Southerners live at a leisurely pace and sharing our hospitality
with our family, friends, and the stranger within our gate is one of our
greatest joys.” -Winifred G. Cheney
“From the mountains of
Virginia to the Texas Plains there is a Southern way of life and it
begins with hospitality and a proper emphasis on good cooking.”
-Winifred G. Cheney
The Southern drawl has many variations, but
all are authentic Dixie. Stretch out words, add pauses, drop a “g” from
“ing” and sprinkle your speech with Southern phrases like, “looks like
somethin the cat drug in” or “like a chicken with it’s head cut off” or
“like a duck on a June bug.” – The Politically Incorrect Guide to the
South.
Southerners love to sweeten their foods-from sweet tea to
sugar on grits, everything is better when it is sweeter. Southern
favorites include fried chicken, sweet corn bread, potato salad &
collard greens. The more the food sticks to your ribs, the better. Large
picnics, family get togethers and after church meals are all highly
popular. If you attend those on a regular basis, you might be
Southern.-Jessica Bold
Made by the hands of a Southern cook, then you must be Southern in my book! ~~J. Yeager
Cause Dixie is a part of me. My Dixieland. ~~J. Yeager
Johnnie!
Susie! Come to supper! The music of iron skillets, the flitting of
lighting bugs, are in that antique invocation. Supper, in the South, was
the light meal: cereal or sandwiches, sometimes bacon and eggs. No
culinary folderol, anyway. All of that belonged to the midday repast
known as dinner, when the whole family turned up, from office or school,
to feast in solidarity on meatloaf and turnip greens.~~by William
Murchison, The Dallas Morning News Columnist 3/13/96
“O
magnet-South! O glistening perfumed South! my South! O quick mettle,
rich blood, impulse and love! Good and evil! O all dear to me!”–Walt
Whitman
Our Southern homeland, beautiful and so grand. Your laid-back Southern ways, Your long, hot, humid days, Your traditions from long ago and your speech that flows so slow. Your native sons and daughters, too My Dixieland! I love you.~~J. Yeager
In
the South, we “sip” sweet tea, mimosas, and mint juleps while “swayin”
in the porch swing or “rockin” on the veranda. These things are all
guaranteed stress relievers! ~~J.Yeager
I’m a Southern girl. I like when they open the door and pull out a chair. I’m really into a man’s man. Brooke Burns
It’s hi ya’ll did ya eat well. Come on in child. I’m sure glad to know ya. ~~Southern Voice Lyrics
Well it’s way, way down where the cain grows tall. Down where they say, “Y’all” Walk on in with that Southern drawl. ‘Cause that’s what I like about the South. She’s got backbone and turnip greens. Ham hocks and butter beans You, me and New Orleans. An’ that’s what I like about the South~~Bob Wills
“She was so Southern that she cried tears that came straight from the Mississippi, and she always smelled faintly of cottonwood and peaches.” ~~Sara Addison Allen
It is so hot in the South tonight, the mosquitoes are carrying canteens. There’s a Southern accent, where I come from. The young’uns call it country, The Yankees call it dumb. I got my own way of talkin but everything is done, with a Southern accent where I come from ~~Tom Petty
“A Georgia peach, a real Georgia peach, a backyard great-grandmother’s orchard peach, is as thickly furred as a sweater, and so fluent and sweet that once you bite through the flannel, it brings tears to your eyes.” -Melissa Fay Greene, ‘Praying for Sheetrock’
“Tough girls come from New York. Sweet girls, they’re from Georgia. But
us Kentucky girls, we have fire and ice in our blood. We can ride
horses, be a debutante, throw left hooks, and drink with the boys, all
the while making sweet tea, darlin’. And if we have an opinion, you know
you’re gonna hear it.” ~~Ashley Judd, Actress
“All I can say is that there’s a sweetness here, a Southern sweetness,
that makes sweet music. If I had to tell somebody who had never been to
the South, who had never heard of soul music, what it was, I’d just have
to tell him that it’s music from the heart, from the pulse, from the
innermost feeling. That’s my soul; that’s how I sing. And that’s the
South.” — Al Green
Growing up Southern is a privilege, really. It’s more than where you’re
born, it’s an idea and state of mind that seems imparted at birth. It’s
more than loving fried chicken, sweet tea, football, and country
music…it’s being hospitable, devoted to front porches, magnolias, moon
pies and coca-cola… and each other. We don’t become Southern – we’re
born that way.
“True grits, more grits, fish, grits, and collards. Life is good where grits are swallered.”–Roy Blount, Jr
About fifteen miles above New Orleans the river goes very slowly. It has
broadened out there until it is almost a sea and the water is yellow
with the mud of half a continent. Where the sun strikes it, it is
golden. Frank Yerby, Author
I was a typical farm boy. I liked the farm. I enjoyed the things that
you do on a farm, go down to the drainage ditch and fish, and look at
the crawfish and pick a little cotton. Sam Donaldson, Reporter and News
Anchor from Texas
About fifteen miles above New Orleans the river
goes very slowly. It has broadened out there until it is almost a sea
and the water is yellow with the mud of half a continent. Where the sun
strikes it, it is golden. Frank Yerby, Author
