On a beautiful Central Pennsylvania day, when my oldest son was about two years old, I had an experience that nearly fried my chitterlings. My kid bopped into the room and said “Hey, you guys!”
“Guys”?! To what does that even refer? Why is my own flesh and blood speaking in the northern neuter tense with all the accompanying jarring rhythms? Where was the dulcet “Y’all”?
The pain lingers. Adding insult to injury, a so-called friend looked at my wife and me inquiring, “You do realize you’re raising a Yankee?”
I could, as of that moment, no longer live in denial.
I began searching for answers. But before I could devise a plan of action a second harrowing event occurred: we traveled back to South Carolina for Christmas with my kin. Back in the bosom of family, my mother one morning tried to get my son to eat grits.
“Yankees don’t eat grits!” he firmly announced. Right then I knew that I had to take control of the situation.
Initially we came to Pennsylvania for employment. It seemed harmless at the time. Before we had a child I told myself that I was yet another expatriate forced to leave the land of my birth, South Carolina’s Lowcountry, but that I was gaining a deeper understanding and appreciation of it because I lived in exile.
Like many before me I now wish to raise my child in the ways of the old country – I want him to be Southern – in the best sense of what that can mean. Now I am in the midst of an 18-year project to raise a southern children within the North. Here are some of my rules for bringing up a Southerner above the Mason-Dixon Line.
Rules
¨ The Leadbelly Effect: It’s never too early to start making your child Southern. Although research on the so-called “Mozart Effect” remains inconclusive, take no risks and play or sing to your child in utero and ex utero. One is never too young for Hank Williams, Bessie Smith, Dizzy Gillespie, Patsy Cline or Bill Monroe.
¨ Sports Do’s: Expose your child to football. The pigskin sport is enlightened, it emphasizes athletic prowess (although shield their eyes from the Big Ten). Help develop her vocabulary with key phrases like: “rammer, jammer, yeller hammer, Roll Tide,” “Root Hog” and by enunciating the invisible ‘p’ in Clemson.
¨ Sports Don’ts: Shield your child from hockey. It is nasty, brutish and any sport on ice is unnatural.
¨ Food: Culturally you are what you eat (unless you are a postmodern, in which case Indian cuisine just means it’s Tuesday night and Wednesday you will use a recipe from your Basque cookbook). Southern cuisine is at the heart of southern history and culture – the intriguing synthesis of Europe, African, Caribbean, and American styles and foods. My wife has said that this fusion, at its worst, produces vegetables that are cooked to death and taste like meat. I think she mean that as a criticism.
¨ Hand’s On: Nothing is more important than extended and frequent visits to the South. You owe it to your child to have them know the smell of and feel of a tidewater marsh and a bayou (and when they are old enough, a French Quarter street on a Saturday night). I have managed to have my kids in the South for about four weeks each year of their life. When my oldest son turns twelve next year he will have spent a whole year of his in the South.
¨ Geography: Can the kid identify a building’s city by its photograph: “Port city, old stucco, bit French…N’awl…wait you almost had me – Mobile!” Make sure that when you say the family is headed to L.A. for a week she assumes rightly you mean Lower Alabama.
I have been thinking we Southern expats might benefit from creating something like the Alliances Francaises for French or the Goethe Institutes that dot major US cities and promote German language study and culture. Call them Faulkner Institutes. They could offer after school and summer programs to promote this agenda. One can readily see the value of core courses such as “A History of the Southeastern Conference;” “The Swamp in Southern Literature;” “Southern Accents and Dialects 101;” “Hymn Studies 1: From Spirituals to Sacred Harp.” Advanced classes would involve deeper plunges into topics like “The Sheriff in Southern Myth and Movies,” and “Modern Agriculture From Mules to Massey-Fergusons.”
The skeptical among you (Missourians) will ask, does it work? There are promising signs. A few years ago my eleven year old had the temerity to say to his Bama born and bred mother “the problem is that you aren’t southern enough.” At that moment it seemed to work too well. I am proud to report that he now eats grits, drinks sweet tea and claims that when he grows up he want to move to South Carolina and live on the family farm.
Our first-grader, though, has some distance still to travel. After laboring hard to get him to change his style of address he recently met me half-way with: “hey you all guys!”
2 comments:
It does feel like being from the South is like being from another country, usually good, until comedy shows have fun at the expense of our politicians, etc. When the boys are old enough, give them some Faulkner, plant some tobacco for them to pick and argue with them about the cause of "The Late Unpleasantness" - or do you prefer "The War of Northern Aggression"?
I have always loved this.
I would like to also comment that just two weeks ago, Quinn served Tom his lemonade with a mint garnish. Something's working.
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