I spent the first half of my growing-up years in Connecticut, and the second half in Alabama. Quite a contrast in weather, among other things. I always felt like a transplanted Yankee, as others would smile at how I said things differently. Like "aunt" instead of "ant," "grounded" instead of "on restriction," "swearing" instead of "cussing," and I called carbonated beverages "soda" instead of classifying it all as "coke." I always figured, since I don't talk like a Southerner, I would always stay a Northerner.
Then I married and moved with my husband to San Diego for the first time. I was taken aback when men would make off-color jokes at lunch in front of me. I told my girlfriends, when I was college in Georgia, guys watched their language in front of girls, and some of them even stood up whenever a girl joined or left the table! There was one sales rep in the office from deep in Louisiana, and I absolutely loved hearing her voice around the office. It would bring out my inner"ya'll." I missed sweet tea, barbeque, and country music. I began to realize I was feeling more like a Southerner than I ever expected.
But two years ago I brought my husband and kids with me to a very large French Acadian family reunion in Northern Maine. (You'd think Maine is ALL north enough already, but Northern Maine is just a little more dramatically north.) My grandparents, on both sides, are from opposite sides of a lake up there, and everyone seemed to be related to me. All the food seemed like home to me. Course, it was July, so the weather seemed fine and dandy, but everyone told me that there were only two seasons--July and winter.
Anyway, all this is to explain that I feel a bit like a chameleon, feeling at home in opposite climes. And I think my family, who still live in the south, can appreciate the differences between the North and the South as well as anyone any Yankee who has transplanted to Dixie.
Then there is my good friend Sarah Smiley, who has spent her whole life in the South (yes, Sarah, if ask a Yankee, Virginia IS the South) and has recently moved to Bangor, Maine. She writes a syndicated family humor column, and I knew the move and adjustment would give her material for a long time to come.You can read her column, like this one, at Military.com:
The oil tank, a big barrel of a thing, which looks like something people in my hometown in Virginia use to cook pigs, seemed very ominous. "You mean it's full of oil, right there in my basement," I asked my friend Stephanie. "Is that safe?"
To read more about her discoveries as a transplanted Southerner, click the link to her archives. I've been reading every week for a laugh.
