The one about the South

I just finished watching the more-charming-the-first-time Sweet Home Alabama, in which Reese Witherspoon's teeth looked strangely yellow on my television. But I really watched it for the darling darling Josh Lucas, whose character is more confusing the second time around. I understand the romantic comedy's propensity for the "pretend to hate he/she whom you actually love" formula, but it's a wee bit inconsistent on viewing #2.

But the story is hardly worth analyzing. Its potrayal of Southerners, though, got me thinking. So I came online to download the original Skynyrd version of the song (which is sorely missed in the movie - instead we get a Jewel cover? Disgraceful.), and thought to wonder aloud about the South.

When I was thirteen, I started my subscription to Seventeen magazine, which, in the late 80s and early 90s wasn't so much an ego-stroking for young, hot actors as a focus on fashion, pretty terrific fiction (may it rest in peace), and fairly well-written -- or at least well-edited -- pieces of nonfiction. I remember one entitled "The South and the Fury" written by a teenage girl from Georgia or Alabama - somewhere deep and truly Southern. That I didn't understand the allusion until probably this minute shows how much I ever thought about the South. I did think Southerners talked cute and that it was, supposedly, pretty hot in the summer.

I don't remember now exactly what she disputed, but I'm fairly certain her claims included "just because I talk slow doesn't mean I'm dumb" and "we're not all belles with white dresses and plantations." None of it meant anything to me then, a girl from Utah and California, and not until I started to study the late and much-beloved Flannery O'Connor did I even care. In her essay "In the Protestant South" she said this: "The South is traditionally hostile to outsiders, except on her own terms. She is traditionally against intruders, foreigners from Chicago or New Jersey, all those who come from afar with moral energy that increases in direct proportion to the distance from home." She captures some of the vitals of Southern life-blood: Be suspicious of Yankees, make sure you know where home is, and anywhere other than the South is "afar"; in my experience, "out west" or "up north" are your options. There are more: mind your manners, never forget your sirs and ma'ams, wave when you pass on a two-lane road, talk all the trash you want behind someone's back but you better be gracious to their face.

But, like all things easily stereotyped, the South as myth is about so much more than behaviors and clichés. Just outside of Lexington, North Carolina, for example, a boy in jeans and a red NASCAR cap ran to the car to pump my gas: "We always fill up for the ladies." My instinct, of course, was to refuse and assert my independence, but something about the way he smiled and quietly insisted made me realize this place is haunted by tradition. It is everywhere, and motivated, I think, by unique views on the still sometimes so-called War of Northern Aggression and what O'Connor described this way: "The Southerner, who isn't convinced of it, is very much afraid that he may have been formed in the image and likeness of God."

Since moving here, that has struck me as dead-on. While not all people living in the South are religious or "Christ-haunted," as Flannery also said, there are a great number of those with roots who live a life that they hope will be judged good "when the time comes to meet the Almighty," as my friend Murch says.

Residual patriotism about the Civil War is a sentiment that still eludes me, not being a true Southerner myself, and I wouldn't have believed stories of small towns in which the rebel flag flies high over homes, and in which a woman who served me steak at a truck stop in Alabama wore jewelry made of rebel flag beads. I suspect it's a small percentage fashion statement, and a much bigger part staying wary of forces that may corrupt the place they will always call home.