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The American South

Today's post is dedicated to all things Southern. You'll find some quotes and song lyrics that I think really sum up what it means to be from the American South. I can't imagine my life if I had been born anywhere else. You don't get much more Southern than among the cotton fields where I grew up, in a place that has changed little over the span of time. Neighbors are still friendly in the South, especially the rural areas. We talk a little slower, laugh a little harder, and love a little deeper, I think, but yes, I'm biased. Some days I wish I was still that little girl riding the tractor on my daddy's lap or running barefoot through the cornfield, and the following quotes and images always take me back to those days.

Growing up southern is a privilege, really. It's more than where you're born- it's an idea, a state of mind that seems imparted at birth. It's more than loving fried chicken, high school football, and country music. It's being hospitable, being devoted to front porches and sweet tea, and each other. We don't become Southern, we're born that way. -Unknown

We learned in Sunday School, who made the sun shine through. I know who made the moonshine, too, back where I come from. Back where I come from, where I'll be when it's said and done. I'm proud as anyone, that's where I come from. -Kenny Chesney



Honey, just because I talk slow, doesn't mean I'm stupid. -Sweet Home Alabama (the movie)

Painting by Jim Harrison.

The South is the only place in the world where nothing has to be explained to me. -Woodrow Wilson



Oh I wish I were in the land of cotton, old times there are not forgotten. Look away, look away, look away, Dixieland.
Painting by Jim Harrison.

What can be more Southern than to obsess about being Southern? -Elizabeth Arroyo


In the South, the breeze blows softer...neighbors are friendlier, nosier, 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. Nothing about us is quite the same as in the country to the north and west. What we carry in our memories is different too, and that may explain everything else.
-Charles Kuralt



Song, song of the South. Sweet potato pie, and I shut my mouth. Gone, gone with the wind. Ain't nobody lookin' back again. -Song of the South, by Alabama

Y'all come back now, y'hear?