You Don't Know Dixie...

is a series on the History channel.  I lucked out and watched a two hour special.  I loved it...because it was the truth.  This special had Trace Adkins, Jeff Foxworthy, Al Bell, Bobby Bowden and Lynyrd Skynyrd along with some of today's best known Southerns offering their insight on our culture.

I laughed.  I agreed.  I am proud of my heritage.

Jeff said You can't put the South in one bucket.  We don't all play banjo and date our sister.

We don't talk the same. Different areas of Dixie have different accents.  People hear the accent and think our IQ is low.  Not so, we're pretty smart.  We like words and phrases like ain't, golldurnit, and fixinta.  We are polite, loyal and are concerned about our neighbor.  We can even be mean while seeming to be nice. Example:  Look at her pulling those boards out with spiders on them.  Bless her heart.  This phrase takes away the bite of saying someone was acting stupidly. So basically you can insult someone politely by simply adding Bless their heart!

We were the first true pioneers before the colonies.  We make do with what we have.  If you don't have it, you create it.  That junk piled up in the barn or behind the house is not junk.  It's parts!

Southern ladies are not helpless.  We can hunt and fish with the best of them.  We also know you party with a Redneck but you marry a "good ole boy".

Per state the South has three time the hunters and two times the fishers as any of the other states.  The rule is Don't kill anything you can't eat.  It's tradition.  Living off the land ties us to it.

National disasters...we dig in and survive.  Dixie experienced devastation during the Civil War.  Much was destroyed and took a generation to recover.  We learned to rebuild then and are passing that down.  Through each disaster we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and take a go at living again.

Southerner Bear Bryant was the first college coach to integrate players. Coach Bryant held a record for games won.  College and local football are things we love because we can win!

The South is called the Bible Belt and have more churches per capita in nine out of  ten states compared to the rest of the United States. The religions and denominations vary but it's okay.  Just go to a church.

Food and music are much loved through out the South...and every where else.  No one's barbecue tastes the same so we have competitions with no one revealing their secret recipe.  Trace Atkins said he liked any thing that was fried in deep fat.  He said he didn't care what it was.  "Put a lot of batter around the dead thing and drop it in the fat.."  The saying is you can cook anything if you have these ingredients...sugar, salt, lard or alcohol. With these you can make cat food taste good.

The South brought you Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, BB King, Elvis, Trace Adkins and oh, so many more!
The South gave you air conditioning, Jack Daniels Whiskey and Tabasco Sauce and then some.

 Here I am in the South and I ain't moving!