Living With Sweet Tea - JT's Tales From The Trail

Salt Spring is a hippie kind of place. It’s ‘open-minded’ and liberal (sometimes to the point of absurdity). Pensacola by a twist of illogical mapping is in Florida, but culturally it’s in Alabama. It’s conservative and Republican (also sometimes to the point of absurdity).

When the opportunity to move presented itself, I loved the idea of living in Alabama. I am fascinated with all things Southern. My favorite books are To Kill a Mockingbird and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. I love Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Bluegrass, and Dixieland Jazz. New Orleans, in my opinion, is one of the best cities on earth. For me the southern United States feels like a languid graceful place running amok with art, music, home cooking, quirky customs and people with a story to tell.

While many people share my idealized ideas about Southern culture, others, malign the South. If you watch American network television you'll notice the south isn't always fairly portrayed. I’ve found the South lives up to its stereotypes, both good and bad, while at the same time defying them all.

For instance.

Southerners are crazy friendly. During my first week as a Pensacola resident, I was in the grocery store, arms full of food, ready to drop everything. A young man looked at me and without hesitating, said, “Ma’am, please take my cart,” then turned the cart over to me and walked away.

Nothing beats the feeling of somebody improving your day without expecting anything in return and in the South, that happens every single day.

Neighbors are neighborly in the South. They talk over the fence and bring you food for any reason. I had a cold the first month I was here, and by the end of the week, there was a pile of Tupperware on my counter waiting for a return to neighbors who fed me while I was sick.

A decade later my neighbors are extended family I can count on for anything. They help us one way or another every day and we feel connected to our neighborhood like never before. My neighbor Tena once waded through chest deep, debris filled water, after a hurricane to save my cat. Don't even get me started on Tim and Chrysti.

Southerners love to party. Costumes, crowns, beads and ball gowns are wardrobe requirements. There’s a festival most weekends. Mardi Gras lasts a month. Parading is a verb as in “are you going parading this weekend?” Only south of the Mason-Dixon line will you be hit in the face by a moon pie hurled at you by a 75-year-old woman wearing a tutu and a jester hat in a dive bar.

Southerners share a deep respect for family and tradition. If you don’t have family nearby, they’ll adopt you. I know my southern friends parents, siblings, grandparents, brother-in-law’s mom, and nephew’s girlfriend. I know them better than I know my husband’s extended family.

Southerners are there when you need them. I had house guests once I dreaded hosting. My neighbors took shifts entertaining them. When I expressed my astonishment, they said, “It is important to spread around the taking care.”

Southern kids are crazy polite. If you ask them a question they look you in the eye and say “Yes Ma’am.” While I was lugging lumber out from under my house one day, the 13 year-old-boy who lives four doors down came running over and offered “Can I help you with that Miss Jill.” I felt like a failure as a parent.

Southern women know how to look good. They sport perfectly painted nails, pressed clothes and salon styled hair. Moving to the South has made me keenly aware of my wrinkled shirt and my inability to tame my frizzy hair.

Southerners are fearless and passionate. They ride bikes without helmets, drive cars with a cocktail in one hand and a smartphone in the other. They light off fireworks like birthday candles. They are zealots about their college football teams. They will shoot you if you break into their home.

Best of all Southerners are accepting. I’ve blundered my way through every Southern courtesy and convention. I plow into the back of men who’ve stopped to open a door for me. I am too casual about how I address new associates. I call them by their first names before I should because I can’t say the word ‘sir’ without feeling silly. 

While every day, I find new reasons to love the South there are some things I find baffling and disconcerting.

For instance.

Segregation feels alive and well. Thirty-one percent of the population of Pensacola is African American, but black people do not live in my neighborhood or hang out in the places where I play and socialize. White and black Southerners have complicated relationships — a potent cocktail of hate, terror, tradition, and history. It is a relationship defined by complex social customs and unspoken rules. It’s difficult for outsiders to understand, and navigating racial relations in the south is fraught.

It is evident in daily life in the South that slavery, the Civil War, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movements are recent history. Tributes to Confederate war heroes share the landscape with memorials to Martin Luther King. The scars run as deep as Southern traditions.

Politics, patriotism, religion, and militarism are more points of fissure for me. The majority of the people in my daily life think differently than I do about most topics — whether it be gun violence, climate change, immigration, spirituality or current events. Holding my tongue is hard work and I often fail.

However, my southern neighbors and colleagues are gracious about our differences. We get to know each other before we bring up controversial topics and then we are delicate and respectful.

Sometimes, I feel the need to remind my northern community of friends and family that being progressive means more than embracing liberal causes and organic food. It also means finding common ground with people who fundamentally disagree with you.

The North American demographic studies show that people are moving to live with people who share their political and cultural values. I am learning that interacting only with people who think like you breeds closed-mindedness no matter your affiliations.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to live with people who are culturally different in so many ways. Living in the south is smoothing my rough edges. I’ve learned to curb my cynicism about matters that are close to the heart. I curse less, bring homemade food to a party, and ask my neighbors if they need anything before I go to the grocery store. Most importantly I always say smile at strangers when I pass them in the street.

And I am starting to fit in. I say Y’all and sometimes even All Y’all. I know that if someone says, “Bless Your Heart” they think I’m an idiot. I also know that if someone says “You’re Fine” when I do something silly they mean it. For this and so many other things I am grateful for the chance to live in the south for half the year.

Tell us your neighbor stories in the comments below!

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