Southern US Culture and Heritage

a reply to: Nyiah

I never would have guessed that you were a southerner. Maybe some people are born trans-region?

EDIT: For a more blunt translation, see reply immediately below

originally posted by: Nyiah
Honest to god, southerners using manners does not make enough of a cultural rift between N & S to even count. Come on, people. To be completely honest, I've been blown away by more thoughtfulness & manners in the north since we moved last year than I did my entire life in the south. Southerners, by strict comparison, are damned rude people in my experience thus far. Embarrassingly rude. We all say New Yorkers are rude bastards, too, but that's no indication of a culture, is it? So why would the opposite be?

In short, what sums up the southern states is poverty, a little bit of regional food & music uniqueness, climate, and Southern Baptists. The south doesn't really have a cultural identity. Most of the US doesn't have a definable cultural identity. Pockets exist, Amish, Mennonite, Cajun, Creole, but on a grand scale it doesn't. Southerners just tend to be extra-butthurt about it when it's pointed out.

Whenever I am in the southern US, it's people like you who mar the area. I.e. displaced northerners, not real southerners, who fled the "great" northeast US to come live in the "poor redneck" south. Basically, your kind brings this condescending attitude along with them and then expects to be treated nicely. I remember stopping at a gas station in a known "Yankee" part of town in the state I was in (NC) and the cashier was this obnoxious cretin from New York State with an awful attitude towards me, and I then told her to f*ck off- she acted surprised and indignant, hilariously enough.

Basically, you are not a southerner and you never were, your family probably came from the North recently. Don't lie to people here, it's very disingenuous.

originally posted by: Vasa Croe

originally posted by: Mugly
a reply to: Vasa Croe

i dont know.
the only thing i can not find super easy that i can down south is boiled peanuts.
of course some of the seafood is easier to come by, cheaper, and fresher.

other than that, i can get all my southern staples up here.

is sweet tea that big of a deal?

LOL...boiled peanuts....yep. I hadn't thought of those. Never looked for them when I was up there but I can walk to the corner 300yds from my house here and have 2 veggie stands to get them from.

And sweet tea is only a big deal when I want my tea sweet. I have given up asking for it outside the south so it's not that big of a deal, but it would be a real strange thing if you walked into any store or restaurant here and they didn't have it.

i dont get why tea is so hard for people to find.
i mostly make it myself but any grocery store around has 3-4 different brands to choose from.
hell, mcdonalds serves sweet tea.
its not like the south does anything special to their tea.

i do miss going into any gas station for boiled peanuts. it was pretty convenient but its not a big deal anymore. ive been making them myself for 20 years.

greens are not the easiest to come by at restaurants up here unless it is a soul food joint. i make those myself too.

A person can sit in a New York restaurant and eat southern style food but it's still northern food, southern style.

Didn't half of Michigan come south in the 80s?

originally posted by: Vasa Croe

LOL...boiled peanuts....yep. I hadn't thought of those. Never looked for them when I was up there but I can walk to the corner 300yds from my house here and have 2 veggie stands to get them from.

And sweet tea is only a big deal when I want my tea sweet. I have given up asking for it outside the south so it's not that big of a deal, but it would be a real strange thing if you walked into any store or restaurant here and they didn't have it.

Boiled peanuts???? Really - just the thought.... Boiled, in the jacket? or shelled?

a reply to: FyreByrd

boiled peanuts are amazing.
start with raw peanuts in the shell.

en.wikipedia.org...

you dont just boil in straight water. i use all kinds of cajun and creole spices when i make mine.
and if you decide to try them, dont get that canned # from the grocery store.

originally posted by: Mugly

originally posted by: Vasa Croe

originally posted by: Mugly
a reply to: Vasa Croe

i dont know.
the only thing i can not find super easy that i can down south is boiled peanuts.
of course some of the seafood is easier to come by, cheaper, and fresher.

other than that, i can get all my southern staples up here.

is sweet tea that big of a deal?

LOL...boiled peanuts....yep. I hadn't thought of those. Never looked for them when I was up there but I can walk to the corner 300yds from my house here and have 2 veggie stands to get them from.

And sweet tea is only a big deal when I want my tea sweet. I have given up asking for it outside the south so it's not that big of a deal, but it would be a real strange thing if you walked into any store or restaurant here and they didn't have it.

i dont get why tea is so hard for people to find.
i mostly make it myself but any grocery store around has 3-4 different brands to choose from.
hell, mcdonalds serves sweet tea.
its not like the south does anything special to their tea.

i do miss going into any gas station for boiled peanuts. it was pretty convenient but its not a big deal anymore. ive been making them myself for 20 years.

greens are not the easiest to come by at restaurants up here unless it is a soul food joint. i make those myself too.

It's not that I can't find it in store, but I had to travel there 3 weeks out of the month for 3 years and ate out every meal and never could get it at any restaurant. Food was great, but I love sweet tea....and I can't say I've been to a McDonald's in many many years.

Mmmmm....collards!

originally posted by: FyreByrd

originally posted by: Vasa Croe

LOL...boiled peanuts....yep. I hadn't thought of those. Never looked for them when I was up there but I can walk to the corner 300yds from my house here and have 2 veggie stands to get them from.

And sweet tea is only a big deal when I want my tea sweet. I have given up asking for it outside the south so it's not that big of a deal, but it would be a real strange thing if you walked into any store or restaurant here and they didn't have it.

Boiled peanuts???? Really - just the thought.... Boiled, in the jacket? or shelled?

Yep...boiled in shell. Many ways to do it and when I do it at home I add a lot of Cajun seasoning.

Don't knock it til you've tried it. I guarantee you will be making them yourself after you do....very addictive.

And I will second the not buying the canned grocery store ones. The places near me are veggie stands that boil them on site. My favorites are the ones I make at home.

a reply to: Mugly

I don't understand why tea is so hard to find either. Get too far north, and you can't find proper brewed ice tea in gas stations anymore although you can still find it at restaurants.

When you are taking medications that make carbonated beverages taste bad, not being able to find brewed tea makes life tough.

a reply to: ketsuko

Go west of the Mississippi river and suddenly all the Ice Tea is no longer sweet.

I flew with a friend of mine from here in SC to Dallas, TX, and we went to a place to eat. He asked for a ice tea, and the look on his face was priceless when he started to chug it down, only to realize it was unsweetened, hehehehehe.

a reply to: Vasa Croe

I grew up with peanuts in my Coke and Dr Pepper. I prefer that to boiled peanuts.

originally posted by: FyreByrd

originally posted by: Vasa Croe

LOL...boiled peanuts....yep. I hadn't thought of those. Never looked for them when I was up there but I can walk to the corner 300yds from my house here and have 2 veggie stands to get them from.

And sweet tea is only a big deal when I want my tea sweet. I have given up asking for it outside the south so it's not that big of a deal, but it would be a real strange thing if you walked into any store or restaurant here and they didn't have it.

Boiled peanuts???? Really - just the thought.... Boiled, in the jacket? or shelled?

That's something you'll see here in the South a LOT of: Boiled peanuts. My wife eats them whole like that, and her son loves them too. I've never cared for them too much myself as I'd rather have roasted peanuts. You can even buy them in a can down here.

originally posted by: eriktheawful
a reply to: ketsuko

Go west of the Mississippi river and suddenly all the Ice Tea is no longer sweet.

I flew with a friend of mine from here in SC to Dallas, TX, and we went to a place to eat. He asked for a ice tea, and the look on his face was priceless when he started to chug it down, only to realize it was unsweetened, hehehehehe.

I'm in MO west of the Mississippi and they generally ask you which you want.

IME, most places in this area ask and a bit further west of here, they sort of assume you want it unsweetened and then ask about lemon, but that doesn't mean they won't sweeten it for you or bring sweetener.

originally posted by: eriktheawful
a reply to: ketsuko

Go west of the Mississippi river and suddenly all the Ice Tea is no longer sweet.

I flew with a friend of mine from here in SC to Dallas, TX, and we went to a place to eat. He asked for a ice tea, and the look on his face was priceless when he started to chug it down, only to realize it was unsweetened, hehehehehe.

Very true. I grew up in southern NM and we always ordered our tea unsweetened. There's a method to it, though. You pour a couple tablespoons of plain white sugar into a large, very icy, unsweetened iced tea. The tea is too cold to disolve the sugar, so you're left with a sugar crystal sludge in the bottom of the tea that's super cold. When you drink the tea, every few straw sips you dig down to the bottom of the glass and get a load of sugar crystal goodness. It sounds like half-assed sweet tea, but it's one of those regional things that produced some great memories for me.

a reply to: ketsuko

Have to admit that the best sweet tea that I've ever had doesn't come from the South here in the US, but was in Bangkok, Thailand.

You can buy it from a street vender, in a baggy, filled with crushed ice, with a straw sticking out of it. The closest I've ever seen here in the US is Chai tea.

originally posted by: eriktheawful
a reply to: ketsuko

Have to admit that the best sweet tea that I've ever had doesn't come from the South here in the US, but was in Bangkok, Thailand.

You can buy it from a street vender, in a baggy, filled with crushed ice, with a straw sticking out of it. The closest I've ever seen here in the US is Chai tea.

Being a Kansas native, I grew up on unsweetened tea although I had one grandma who always made sweet tea. I don't know what she did to hers, but I actually really liked it. It was just barely sweet, not that godawful tooth-rotting, pancreas-frying stuff that most places give you.

My husband grew up in Tennessee where he says Sweet n' Low was the sweetener of choice?

a reply to: ketsuko

Sweet N Low........ick.

As a Type 2 diabetic, I don't drink tea sweetened anymore, but I do make my tea very, very strong. Most of my kids who are all grown now make their tea the same way.

a reply to: FyreByrd

I think the whole issue with this flag is due to the fact that when the civil rights act was taking place in the 1960s, at some points various racist groups, among them the Klu Klux Klan, used the confederate flag as a symbol of the old segregated south. (it should be noted the Klu Klux Klan also uses the American flag and nazi flags as well) To some people it symbolizes that. To other people it is a reminder of the civil war, and it should not be forgotten that the Union army did commit atrocities against southern cities and that has NEVER been forgotten. I can understand the point of view of both sides of the isle on this flag, but I don't think people realize how complex it really is, as this flag means a lot of different things to different people.

originally posted by: Drest

originally posted by: Nyiah
Honest to god, southerners using manners does not make enough of a cultural rift between N & S to even count. Come on, people. To be completely honest, I've been blown away by more thoughtfulness & manners in the north since we moved last year than I did my entire life in the south. Southerners, by strict comparison, are damned rude people in my experience thus far. Embarrassingly rude. We all say New Yorkers are rude bastards, too, but that's no indication of a culture, is it? So why would the opposite be?

In short, what sums up the southern states is poverty, a little bit of regional food & music uniqueness, climate, and Southern Baptists. The south doesn't really have a cultural identity. Most of the US doesn't have a definable cultural identity. Pockets exist, Amish, Mennonite, Cajun, Creole, but on a grand scale it doesn't. Southerners just tend to be extra-butthurt about it when it's pointed out.

Whenever I am in the southern US, it's people like you who mar the area. I.e. displaced northerners, not real southerners, who fled the "great" northeast US to come live in the "poor redneck" south. Basically, your kind brings this condescending attitude along with them and then expects to be treated nicely. I remember stopping at a gas station in a known "Yankee" part of town in the state I was in (NC) and the cashier was this obnoxious cretin from New York State with an awful attitude towards me, and I then told her to f*ck off- she acted surprised and indignant, hilariously enough.

Basically, you are not a southerner and you never were, your family probably came from the North recently. Don't lie to people here, it's very disingenuous.

Really? I moved to the south when I was 5 and grew up there, never living anywhere else but the south, save for one Asian country for one brief year and then moving back to exactly where we moved from. I grew up in the BFE sticks, no less. "OMFG-I'm sorry-land", if you will. There is a member on here that lives in the same town, a few blocks from where I was. They moved there well after it started to build up, but I lived there when it was a no-horse poverty hellhole sparsely populated with rednecks, extended families & some immigrants from Europe that didn't know better.

Maybe you should consider where someone spent 75% or better of their life before jumping to conclusions?

Edit: And midwest origin, not northeast. The relocation was spurred by my dad wanting to live closer to my transplanted grandparents, not escaping any northern anything. So boy, are you doubly way off.

a reply to: Nyiah

Sorry you lived in a place that you hated so much growing up.

Good thing that where you grew up is not the same as all the states that make up the South, and I'm sure you wouldn't judge the whole region (that makes up a very large chunk of the USA) on such a thing.

That would be like someone from another country meeting one American who has a rotten personality and is really mean, so they decided that all Americans must be that way.