<p>Well, I’ll have to do an experiment and make a note of the trucks I pass on the streets of Dallas. Maybe I’m just not paying attention.</p>
<p>I believe there were actually 2 Southforks. If memory serves, the original house was only used for the first season and then they changed location for the rest of the series.</p>
<p>Dallas was a big hit in France when I was there in the 80’s. It was a hoot to listen to the characters in dubbed French. J.R. is pronounced “Gee Air,” Pam sounds like “Pahm” and I can’t even figure out how to write the way they say Bobby phonetically, but it was really amusing.</p>
<p>This may seem like a negative but it’s actually a positive. When I was much, much younger, we were in line at a cafeteria - which is a southern thing - and this old white guy started jabbering at the black men behind the counter “Boy! Boy! What do you call this?” Not good, right? Well one of the men came over and said, “Sir, you’re not allowed to call us that anymore.” And that was the end of it. No yelling, no threats, no guns, just “You’re not allowed to call us that anymore.”</p>
<ol>
<li> People really smile at you when they say “Hey.”</li>
<li> Its “Hey” rather than “Hello.”</li>
<li> Y’all</li>
<li> Y’alls</li>
<li> “I need to” rather than “I have to”</li>
<li> Calabash</li>
<li> Spring Break in Myrtle Beach</li>
<li> Southerners trying to “patiently explain…” to Yankees.</li>
<li> The Confederate Flag. (its a historical thing.)</li>
<li>Most Southerners have seen “Gone with the Wind” at least 5 times.</li>
</ol>
<p>Just back from New Orleans and two things struck me. I saw a women unwrap her food and throw the wrapper on the ground, not two feet from a trash can, and the sidewalks in some areas are REALLY difficult for wheelchairs and walkers. In my neighborhood in N. cal, the city had to tear up many blocks of new curbs, because the angles weren’t right for wheelchairs.</p>
<p>OTOH, the “ersters” where 6 for 7$ instead of 4$ each, and there’s Black people everywhere! Well, almost.I think those are GOOD things, BTW.</p>
<p>Shrinkrap, did you happen to run into my D in New Orleans? She was hanging out of a window, swinging a hammer at the Habitat build site …</p>
<p>My SIL, a transplanted Ohioan who has been in the south long enough now to be considered southern, says “fixin’ to” and “good to go” … gotta love it, y’all!!</p>
<p>katwkittens, two tours at Seymour Johnson? You’re practically a native!
Would love to attend your neighborhood cookouts…loved my years at ECU.
Sandra Bullock was 2 years behind me there…nope, didn’t know her.</p>
<p>Hanna…lol, S1 lives in Niceville (in the military).</p>
<p>And just imagine the funny looks a Southerner gets when a Northerner asks her where she’s from and she replies in her slowest Southern drawl, “Ael Aeeee!”</p>
<p>"I’m not saying Florida has no pluses, but Southern is not one of them.:</p>
<p>The Florida Panhandle and Big Bend area are very southern . In fact, they are much closer to Georgia and Alabama than to Orlando, Tampa, and Miami. Leon County, Florida had more plantations than did any other part of the country.</p>
<p>Here in Maine people think its a traffic jam if there are 4 cars at a light. My town has two traffic lights, separated by a couple of miles. I can’t recall the last time I heard someone honk the horn. (It was probably in Boston! )</p>
<p>People frequently wave from cars when you are walking down the road, although mostly it is if they know you. People who pass each other jogging or walking on the road always say hi in some fashion.</p>
<p>Conversations at the checkout or with store clerks/owners/librarians/bank tellers are not uncommon. At least not for me. :D</p>
<p>Things I love about the South:</p>
<p>Live oaks with hanging moss
Chicken fried steak with milk gravy
Sausage gravy and biscuits
Fried pork chops with greens and mashed potatoes and milk gravy
All varieties of BBQ
Cheese grits</p>
<p>Luckily most of the food items are replicable here. (You can see I have a thing for milk gravy! )</p>
<p>One thing completely new to me when I moved to TN was “Meat 'n Threes”. They are home-cooking restaurants where you order a meat and two or three veggies to go with it. I had no idea what people were talking about at first.</p>
<p>Walking down main street in Charleston people standing about outside greeting me, smiling, asking me how I liked their city.</p>
<p>I, NE upbringing intact, ignored them while wondering what products they were all so anxious to sell me and wishing they would all just leave me alone.</p>
<p>Took them three days to wear me down. </p>
<p>Wow, people are nice to each other. Just being nice to me for no gain. Who would ever believe it.</p>
<p>Hate sweet tea. After my four years in Chapel Hill and one in Clemson I still question all servers everywhere in the country as to whether the tea is pre-sweetened. The thought of it makes my teeth hurt. Never developed a taste for grits or Stuckey’s or Big Boy restaurants. Liked that it got warm earlier and stayed warm longer. Hated the ice storms and the dirt roads. Loved the pottery in Seagrove in the 1970s. Allegedly some of the stuff we still have is valuable. Didn’t care for the religious stuff, which I found alienating, the fact that we only had four or five television stations, the institutional and personal racism, and Jesse Helms and his ilk.</p>
<p>Having said that, my wife, who also went to Carolina for graduate school, and I are considering North or South Carolina as our final destination. Madison WI, as cool as it is, is just too cold.</p>
<p>10 reasons I left the West (I meant California) and will never go back, ever:
10. The “weather”. It’s monotonous. Boring. Flat. I like my seasonal variations (humans are supposed to have seasonal variations).
9. The “beaches”. I’ve lived near beaches my entire life and I’ve had it just about up to here <strong><em>points to eyes</em></strong>. Someone says “ocean view” when I go house shopping, I’m walking, nay RUNNING away. Because when they emphasize the view they have nothing better to show for it.
8. Financial mismanagement. The state has run itself into the ground. Coming next-crumbling infrastructure, higher taxes, or both. Probably both. Then raging unemployment and obscene amounts of crime.
7. Vegetarians. They **** me off for some reason. We’re meant to eat meat (our teeth are designed for it), get over it.
6. Health nazis. Vegetarians are a subset of this group, and they insist on everything “organic” and “low calorie” and whatever such nonsense that happens to be trendy. Oh the big one: no carbs. They just **** me off.
5. Environmentalists. The ones that donate to greenpeace so that they can mug me on my way to class in NYC yet drive suburbans or priuses. They don’t realize that priuses have ginormous batteries that release all sorts of toxins into the air in the production process.
4. Liberals/socialists. They want to spend MY money on bums (why don’t they donate to the IRS if they think the gov’t will solve everything? They take donations.). If all the pieces fall into place, and the economy isn’t ****ty, I expect to make $200k first year out of law school. I don’t want them touching my money (and wasting it). I agree there should be some sort of social safety net, but only to the extent that it helps people get back on their feet.
3. Snobs that think California has everything but have obviously never been out of state their entire lives.
2. Obscenely high taxes. Sales tax approaching 10% in many counties and top income tax bracket of 9.3% (I’m waiting for sales tax to go to 12% and income tax to go up to 15%). And old people (I’m talking about the nearly dead) don’t want to pay their share of property taxes so the schools suck. No thank you. I’ll take Chicago’s 10% sales tax and 3% flat state income tax any day.
Obscenely expensive cost of living (I left for even more obscenely expensive NYC but at least you get something for it-living in the center of the world-though it’s seen better days). Everything in CA is overpriced. Food, housing, gas, you name it.</p>
<p>This is not to say that I’ll ever live in the south (I won’t) but I’m never going back to that pathetic excuse for a state again. There are more reasons I dislike the west but this is the top 10.</p>
She was hanging out of a window, swinging a hammer at the Habitat build site …</p>