"Do you have a pin?" Angie, queen of the Southern Belles asked me.
"What kind of pin. A safety pin or a straight pin?" I asked.
"No, no. A pin! You know, that you write with. Like a ballpoint," she answered.
"Oh you mean a pen!" This was one of the first conversations that I had with Angie. She is the wife of my husband's best friend. They visited us from Alabama a few years ago and I must admit the there was a language barrier. It reminded me of how my aunt, a native Mainer must have felt trying to explain to my southern stepmother how foxes were destroying her backyard.
"You should see all the forks in my yaddd," she told my stepmother. I am glad I was sitting at the table in order to translate. I could see by the look on my stepmother's puzzled face that she was envisioning my aunt's finest silver forks littering her backyard. I cleared up the confusion but almost 20 years later there is still a language barrier between the two of them.
I have to admit that some of the differences between the north and the south are pretty dramatic, even when you live just a few miles north of the Mason-Dixon Line. My husband and I tell our sons all the time, once you cross into Maryland, it's an entirely different world. It would stand to reason that because we live so close to the southern part of the United States that we would have adopted some southern traditions or some part of their culture but it's not so. I think living just a few miles outside of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania makes a difference too. We are proud of our Yankee victory and we are reminded more so than other northerners, just who we are as we pass the battlefields of victory, the site of Lincoln's address and many other Civil War historical sites on a daily basis. Just a few miles south across the Mason Dixon Line they refer to the Civil War as the "War of Northern Aggression", but won't hesitate to flock to Gettysburg's annual reenactments. They cheer loudly for Dixie, I think in hopes of changing the outcome.
Southerners are obsessed with the Civil War and history in general and like to keep their culture alive. Southerners are more old-fashioned than northerners and have manners. A southerner's life involves his family and his church. To a northerner the southern lifestyle is slow; no one is ever in a hurry to do anything. Isn't this really how it should be? Northerners live a totally different lifestyle. While we consider our religion important to us, sometimes we are too busy to go to church and we are always way too busy to visit our family. Perhaps we are always in a hurry is because we have only three months out of the year to enjoy the outdoors and life in general before the cold winds start to blow and winter again is on its way. And that is why my husband and I have decided to sell our house in Pennsylvania to move to Florida.
"Do you really think that you'll fit in down there? You are a Yankee Doodle if I ever saw one," my husband asked me when we were still undecided as whether or not to move.
"Of course I will. It's not like Florida is the south ya know. Everyone who lives there are native Yankees! And why shouldn't we get to enjoy some of that sunshine. Northerners pay our dues during our working years, slaving away, driving through blizzards, getting frostbite at the bus stop and developing herniated disks in our backs from shoveling snow, all so that someone else doesn't have to. After all, someone has got to live up here. If no one lived up north, the country's financial industry would be much worse off than it already is."
My husband limped over to the medicine cabinet to take his daily dose of ibuprofen to relieve his own newly herniated disk. "Yeah I guess no one can say that we won't fit in living in Florida."
"You're right they can't. Our family's tourism dollars alone have been keeping that state afloat for years. And besides, when you call me a Yankee Doodle, you forget that my grandmother's family was from Baltimore!" Yes, it's true I have southern blood although I don't think that I would get accepted into the Daughters of the Confederacy.
The only cultural difference that perhaps I might have trouble adjusting to is the difference in cuisine. Let's face it. Everyone loves southern cooking but Yankees definitely make healthier food choices. After 30 years of eating bean sprouts salads with vinaigrette dressing and skinless chicken breasts for dinner, I am not sure that my stomach can handle fried chicken with a fried salad on the side. I don't eat green boiled peanuts, pecans or alligator. And if we move to the south I will miss chicken corn soup, real pot pie and I might not eat a good potato chip again.
I guess that the instant diet that I will be on once we cross the Mason Dixon Line will help me keep weight off as I do plan to live more like a southerner and become a lot more relaxed than I am now. I also plan to attend church every Sunday as I will have more than three months to enjoy sunny, warm days. I might even adopt a hint of a southern drawl. However; don't expect me to be waving the flag of Dixie. Once a Yankee, always a Yankee. . .