Fixin ta . . .
In the South, as in any part of the world, we all have dialects, phrases, and ways of talking. Its
“The way people talk” Cybill Shepherd says about her song about her hometown “Talk Memphis to me”, (check it out on YouTube). While we are a region that is really SouthEAST US, we also used to call it “Dixie”. This is normal for people, the words and phrases and way they pronounce things. Cairo is Kyro in Egypt, but KAYro in Illinois. That long slip of land going east out of New York City is Long Island, but to hear them say it, the sound is “Lawn Gyland”. We’ve all got our ways.
One particular expression tells you that Southerners never “prepare” to do anything. When we get to changing up what we’re doin, we are “fixin to” do something else. Nothing needing repair, mind you, we’re just changing our upcoming activity. Who KNOWS where that came from? Nobody knows, as usual. Its just a way of talking heard commonly among us.
One thing we are passionate about is our college football! We watch in the thousands, in the stadiums and thousands more on TV. The Southeastern Conference is the longtime leader in TV revenue earned in game coverage. NO other conference in the country comes even close in the size of TV audience for games where we play with pigskin. It’s a point of Southern Pride. A lot of large TV markets are in that area, a factor leading to defection from other conferences by Arkansas, Missouri, and schools within, like South Carolina. We all are fixin to watch our game, so don’t bother us, just pass the popcorn and beer!
Lots of people LOVE to say that the Civil War was about slavery. Back then, folks in the South thought it was about the government in Washington telling them how to be, passing laws and attempting to enforce them within our borders, etc. There was slavery all over, really, just concentrated in the South. Yankees had slaves, too! Its just ignored by most historians, except the honest ones. And it was also NOT originated by white people, either. Black slave owners in Africa saw a market for the business, so they exported them here. And Africa owned no monopoly as a source, either. Scots and Englishmen were brought, bought and sold here as well. Owning slaves was a cultural norm in that day, judged ever so severely by some folk today. Get a LIFE!
Stop at a Waffle House up in Illinois, and order grits with your meal. WHAT’S THAT? A tasty Southern side to any plate of eggs and ham or bacon. It’s a foodstuff added begrudgingly by most NON-southern restaurants, unless the headquarters are in the South. Then its assumed what the breakfast menu will include. Coming off the Gulf Coast, a tasty dish included shrimp and grits- HMMM! Interesting combo there. It got spread around a lot just after Hurricane Katrina, when displaced Southern restaurateurs relocated their eateries all over the country. Café Biloxi and Rue de Canal showed up in Wyoming, Washington State and other non-Southern places.
Preachers could preach all they wanted, but they’d be on TV and cut off when a Southerner wanted to see the coaches’ show coming after a game, if they went one second after noon. Some of them observed that and kept within the bounds of folkways. Bear Bryant, and Johnny Majors OWNED Saturday, and their part of Sunday when the coach’s show was on. For those of you unacquainted with college football, they were coaches with stadiums to fill, and they filled em. If a rivalry was getting too one-sided, a new coach was brought in, as RR Neyland was at Tennessee, to “beat Vandy”.
We in the South are fixin to run off and do something else, now. So “keep it between the ditches” when you’re driving, now, ya heah?
