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want grits with that, honey?::14.01.2004-10:54 p.m. I tend to think that if you don't live here, you can't really understand the South. Down here, we speak a little more slowly. We walk a little more slowly. We like spicy food for dinner and tasteless food for breakfast. Alcohol should be cold. Someone you've never met before is likely to call you "honey," especially if they're in a service profession. You want grits with that, honey? Sure looks like it's shaping up to be a hot one. It's the heat. It's the humidity. It's Julys that make walking outside like pushing through hot damp cotton. You might as well be sleeping at that rate, if you want hot damp cotton. You might as well not be sleeping alone. You want the real South? Don't go to Mississippi. It's not the rednecks that hold the key to the mystery. Go to Southern Lousiana, where the water table is so high they have mausoleums instead of graveyards, and the food is so spicy that your fingers and lips burn for hours afterward. It's the plantation aura that makes the South what it is, magnolia blossoms and drawling and the belief that ghost stories are real. It's that elegance that plantation society had, the almost court feel of it, each man with his colonnaded castle and his flotilla of serfs. It's the mildewing decadence that makes the South alluring. I don't speak as if I'm from the South. I don't say y'all or ain't or call people honey unless I'm being sarcastic. I have a few words in my vocabulary that are distinctly not Midwestern, but my accent doesn't give me away. Now I live in a flat land where loose meat piled onto bread is considered a good meal, and the summers are hot but nowhere near as sensual. %%commentscount%% whispers in the dark Lovings: %%option1%%
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