This Is My South

*My South is full of honest, hard-working people. *My South is colorblind. In my South, we don't put a premium on pigment. No one cares whether you are black, white, red or green with orange polka dots. *My South is the birthplace of blues and jazz, and rock n' roll. It has banjo pickers and fiddle players, but it also has BB King, Mussy Waters, the Allman Brothers, Emmylou Harris and Elvis. *My South is hot. *My South smells of newly mowed grass. *My South was the South of The Partridge Family, Hawaii 5-0 and kick the can. *My South was creek swimming, cane-pole fishing and bird hunting. *My South is home to the most beautiful women on the planet. *In my South, football is king, and the Southeastern Conference is the kingdom. *In my South, soul food and country cooking are the same thing. *My South is full of fig preserves, cornbread, butter beans, fried chicken, grits and catfish. *In my South we eat foie gras, caviar and truffles. *In my South, out transistor radios introduced us to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones at the same time they were introduced to the rest of the country. *In my South, grandmothers cook a big lunch every Sunday. *In my South, family matters, deeply. *My south is boiled shrimp, blackberry cobbler, peach ice cream, banana pudding and oatmeal cream pies. *In my South people put peanuts in bottles of Coca Cola and hot sauce on almost everything. *In my South the tea is iced and almost as sweet as the women. *My South has air-conditioning. *My South is camellias, azaleas, wisteria and hydrangeas. *In my South, the only person that has to sit on the back of the bus is the last person that got on the bus. *In my South, people still say "yes ma'am", "no ma'am", "please" and "thank you". *In my South, Sunday is for church. The Ten Commandments mean something. In my south, we all wear shoes & clothes...some of the time. My South is the best-kept secret in the country. Please continue to keep the secret...it keeps the idiots away! (written by Robert St. John)