I’m interested in details about life in what to my superficially informed European mind are Confederate States, as my Gringo influences so far have been Yankee largely. Some bloody and feverish experiences in Savannah and New Orleans aside (I remember lying in a hospital next to a guy with a cockroach in his ear) I have seen only through Greyhound windows and the screen. It is not doubtful that the South-East of the united states are the cauldron from which the whole witches brew, that includes all the western contraptions such as google and hollywood, began emitting its fumes world wide. And it is no wonder then that it is the least accessible part to foreigners; the spirit is turned in on itself rather than, as it is in New York and LA, outward, globalist, cosmopolitan, welcoming strangers. Any truly cultural place is hostile, at least instinctively, to the influences of outsiders; not because this is good for evolution, but because it is evolved to act as such; it is simply ‘hopelessly cultural’. In this sense culture is (called) the opposite of civilization.
Roughly, the area I explore is from Washington DC to Kansas City and down to Houston, the southeastern quadrant, with increasing focus toward the south.
I assume all can gather that my naive poetic idealism is only by default. It’s not the way I insist on viewing this, but more like a subtle magnetic current that, all else being equal, draws the needle to it.
Ask away. I’ve been all over this place. Puked on the streets of Memphis, been kicked off the subway and out of a taxi in Atlanta, been back and fourth from Birmingham to Miami and down to Key West so many times I can’t remember, spent more nights in New Orleans than I can remember, hell…I’ve even done a bit of gambling here and there in a few places in Mississippi. I’ve spent the night in the same jail that Martin Luther King was locked in, partied in Myrtle Beach, ridden motorcycles all over the mountains in Tennessee, north Georgia and North Carolina. I could go on and on. Hell, 3 times in my life I’ve witnessed a KKK rally. Once in Bessemer, once in front of city hall in Birmingham, and once when I was 13 my friends and I were walking in the woods behind one of their houses to go and smoke cigarettes and came across a bunch of KKK guys burning a cross out there in a clearing and doing god knows what. We just hid in the bushes for a minute, realized what was going on and got the hell out of there.
Yank carpet baggers have changed Atlanta into a cosmopolitan city. Travel about forty miles from the metropolis, and you’ll find the South as it was a century or so ago. I was raised in the rural South before the onslaught of Northern companies seeking cheap labor and anti-union sentiment.
There was a beauty in Georgia’s pre-industrial environment, in the slower times when people knew who their neighbors were. Joining the commercial enterprises, Georgia sells nostalgia to the yanks.
Do you know Kingston Georgia? I went these with a girl once who hadn’t seen her mom since she was like 5. So I met the girl in college and she was going to meet her old hillbilly mom for the 1st time in years and I was like fuck it and just rode up there with her.
Look man…all these people, like generations of them were living on this one patch of land all spread out sleeping in campers and old busted mobile homes with walls missing and in tents and all kinds of shit like old sheds…you name it. Apparently all this was some grandpa’s land and generations of these fuckers were all still living there like animals. The place was so far out, that I had to drive like 45 minutes to get beer. Not a single light bulb in sight on that 45 minute drive. The fucking woods man. No freeway, no strip malls, no red lights, not even a fucking stop sign except every once in a while. Had to drive past 2 other little shit places just to find a store that was open. I was frightened by the whole experience. Something roughly similar happened to me once in a place called Grundy, Virginia. That’s when I realized that Steven King wasn’t actually creative. He didn’t come up with all that scary stuff he writes. The bastard probably just drove through Grundy and Kingston and wrote down what he saw. I don’t ever want to live in a place like that.
Translation: Nature/World/Reality as it is, is akin to a horror story to this wigger. Lack of artificial protection/provision of the society scares the shit out of him.
I have lived in Southern Ms. for almost 20 yrs. It is an interesting place to live. Modern and old merge and is peaceful yet in conflict. I think most conflict arises from outsiders. Example: The state flag. It is seen by residents as a flag of rebellion not white superiority. Others say it is about slavery. There are black citizens that fly the flag and argue for it. There are white grandparents that proudly bring their mixed grandchildren to stores and spoil them, they fly the flag.
So is the flag about slavery or people telling the Federal government that the state is not subservient to it? Yea white supremists use that symbol but, they are a minority now. It will be interesting to see how the next flag vote goes. Will those that see only
slavery win or will those that see rebel against federal control win. Most down here are fairly relaxed and amiable, I see the flag being voted out just to shut people up more than any other reason
Um, I’m talking about places where there’s no climate control, most of these people don’t have electricity, a lot of them are exposed to the elements. Artificial protection? Scares the shit out of me? I think you’re reaching for something that isn’t there.
A wigger? Who’s exposing themselves now? You’re little dick just stays hard for me doesn’t it? Not being racist doesn’t mean you’re a wigger. Come up with some new material you sad, old joke. Only idiots think you’re smart.
See this is what I mean. All of that sounds immediately interesting. The mere fact of there being such stretches of uncultivated land alone, is virtually unthinkable for a European, not counting Russians.
Not many things in this world make me envious but the South of the US somehow does. That includes Texas, actually. Human life seems to be much closer, in these parts, to human nature, than it is in the more civilized/tamed/uniformalized north.
It is ridiculous, absurdly hypocritical, to try to ban the confederate flag. Or so it seems to me. Not that I am interested in racists, they usually ooze with unpleasantness and stupidity. But the confederacy seems to stand for something much richer than all that.
Well , when you see a black lady driving a truck that has a rebel flag , with a white man as passenger and both are laughing and smiling, you gotta think. Are the ones bitching and bribing part of the community or are they outsiders trying to bring things to their point of view.
I live 6 miles from the nearest store. I cannot even see my neighbor’s homes. But, I was raised in large cities. The attitudes of city is so different than country. The difference is amazing. And I think this is true in all countries.
To most people, the confederate flag might as well be a swastika if that helps to understand the rationale. You’re going to get the occasional person who actually isn’t a brazen racist and who sincerely believes that it’s about more than that, but most of the people who make that argument, when in the privacy of their homes probably say the word nigger like 100 times a day.
Or honky or cracker or spic or fag or , any number of derogatory terms for any group. The whites are not the only bigots in the South or anywhere that use derogatory terms in private.
Was in a Dollar store a few years back and heard an Asian woman and a Hispanic woman talking in Southern accents about a black teacher and white counseler at the county school. The terms used were bigoted and I just shook my head and laughed at the perverse humor of it. Heck even religious use terms about other religions.
If I remember correctly, Cash, in “The Mind of the South”, stated that the civil war occurred because we had two countries in one–one was industrial, the other agricultural. He noted also that the large plantations, like the fictional Tara, were few and far between. But the mind of the South was into the chivalry of Walter Scott.
My great grandfathers were farmer/preachers who did not keep slaves and were almost hanged for supporting the Union.
I see no problem with the Confederate flag. It symbolizes a lifestyle that has mostly “gone with the wind.” It does not have to be racist in the sense that a swastika is.
BTW “Gone with the Wind” (Mitchell) should never be seen as an accurate history book. It captures the dream, but not the reality.
honky is a slang term not a derogatory one. I am a honky and I do not find it at all offensive
I would call any white a honky and would expect them not to get offended though they may
ask what it means. For it is not used over here. And nor is cracker. The term we use is chav
I once got involved in a heated debate about my use of the word geezer which was regarded as derogatory
I was told as an American I should know better. So I then had to point out that I was not actually American
Over here geezer is just another word for a man. It is a slang term like honky and not remotely derogatory
