by Scott Klaft

Created on: July 23, 2008

A Great Divide, My Eye!

Who can deny the profound divide existing in our beloved country since early in the 1800's? Once, this dividing wall was more than a minor rivalry or an inherited prejudice. It was political, volatile, and founded in a very personal concern for home and family. From the time of the Civil War, however, industry and wealth has spread to the southern states, resulting in a blurring of the reasons for division while the animosity remained. I have spent more of my adult life in the South than I have in my native North, and I have experienced this continuing discrimination. Nevertheless, I have grown to love the southern culture, and I now call it home. It really should not be surprising, after all. The northern states and the southern states may still seem worlds apart culturally, but the similarities in the obscene loftiness of their scholarship, dignity, and refinement are undeniable.

No objective person could possibly miss the history of scholarly tradition in either region of the country. No matter where you go, institutions of higher learning cram with young adults filling their sponge like minds with information, held in place, of course, by cheep keg-beer. Never mind the pizza stain on the young man's t-shirt, the many body piercings and the scraggly, 70's-style hair fill us with confidence in the future of our fair heritage. Visit any college in any state and you are sure to find the leaders of tomorrow hard at work arranging whose frat-house will host the next foundation-shaking party on the weekend. Such erudition is not limited to the young people either. When I visit the homes of people of either region, I find a striking passion for intense reading materials. The latest Sears catalogue graces the counter of breakfast nooks in homes in Pensacola, Florida, as much as it does in Chillicothe, Ohio. The well-read residents of my hometown in Michigan carry the knowledge of Chilton's Automotive Manual with them wherever they go, but no more so than literature-enthusiasts in Dresden, Tennessee. This extensive reading also seems to heighten the eloquence of speech habits all across the country. Mrs. Winoczak at the grocery checkout in Traverse City, Michigan, can do things with the English language that would boggle the mind of Shakespeare. Similarly, the singsong melody in the southern twang of Mr. Mangum at the video store in Honea Path, South Carolina, can befuddle even the most tuned of ears. This, however, is not to slight the brilliantly

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