Listen Y’all, This Here Is Serious Business

I was born and raised in a small, rural town in West Tennessee. We could say “aw shucks,” “hankering,” and “bless your heart” with a definite Southern drawl way before we learned to walk. We didn’t “know spit” about dialect, elocution, voice inflection, or elongating vowels. We just talked like all the people around us.

I don’t know exactly where the Heart of Dixie is, but it can’t be far from 1162 N. Stonewall Street. As youngins, we would sit out on the side porch and practice talking as slow at Mr. Rufus Brown and Bailey Moore Wrinkle.

And if you think we were developing an accent, you ought to have heard those folks from over in Tiptonville, or down at Big Sandy, or out along the Steadman Ridge, south of Lawrenceburg. They didn’t say bed, it was “bay-ehd.” They taught us I or eye is pronounced “aah.” Get is, of course, “git.” Fire and tire still rhyme, they just come out as “faar” and “taar” for us.

Some of our third-grade spelling words were “awright,” “gonna,” “lectricity,” and “rench.”

“Cheer” is a multipurpose word in the South. It is a piece of furniture we sat on. “Set that RC Cola case up on its end and make a ‘cheer’ out of it.” And it’s our synonym for here. You can hear a good example of this in Lorretta Lynn’s award-winning song down near the end when she sings, “Not much left but the floors, nothing lives ‘cheer’ anymore, ‘Cept the memories of a coal miner’s daughter.”

You can easily see why the entire South had such reverence for her. I could listen to that song “ah-gain” and “ah-gain.”

Cathy and I once spent a wonderful weekend on the edge of the Outback in Charters Towers, Australia. We found a diner one evening and were hoping for some turnip greens and cornbread. Those people heard us say, “Howdy” and “Howy’alldoin’” and they gathered around like flies on an open honey jar.

We couldn’t get one bite of food down. Those Aussies wanted to hear us talk. They circled around our table, laughing so hard they were near ’bout crying. They were yelling to people walking by on the street, “Hey mates, come and listen to these blokes.” (And they thought we talked funny)

Cathy will tell you, I laid it on pretty thick. I gave them “be-fo-wah” for before. I told a couple of “dawg” stories, sprinkling them with “caint,” “sayd,” “yellah,” “kumpney” (guest), “fixin,” and a couple of “Holy cows” and a “golldarnit” thrown in for good measure.

They made me tell that story about Leon coon hunting in the rain with two stolen Blueticks and a three-legged Treeing Walker four times! They got to calling their friends to come down to the restaurant and listen to these Americans talk….

Sadly, it’s all coming to an end. Or maybe, it already has. I read an Associated Press release just this past week that declared that the Southern accent is losing its voice in the United States. It seems so many people (nearly six million in the 2020’s) have moved into the South that our precious, and special slant on the English language, is going the way of dominoes and Chinese checkers. The article stated most of these foreigners are coming down from the North.

Duh.

They have been invading us since Teddy Roosevelt’s Father snuck down to Atlanta in 1853, married the real Scarlett O’Hara, and whisked her back to New York City. It was also reported that quite a few of the interlopers are coming from California. Well, as bad as that is, it’s hard to blame them.

The article did try to be kind to us. It pointed out that many outsiders (their word, not mine) wrongly associate a Southern ascent with a lack of education. I completely agree that saying “ain’t” and “tarnation” does not relate in any shape, form, or fashion to your intelligence quotient….if you don’t count Bubba and Earl. And the six Cunningham girls that lived out on the Como Road.

I don’t know that there is anything we can do. Short of another Civil War. They’ve already taken our country music and “The Dukes of Hazzard.” I fear they are picking us off one piece at a time.

If they get our language, what will keep them from coming after our sweet tea next! Nothing will be safe. They could take an ax to our magnolia trees. They could outlaw pickup trucks and shotgun weddings.

Our lightning bugs may be endangered.

They might even go so far as to pass a law against taking the wheels off your 1969 Buick Skylark and putting it up on blocks out in the front yard as a souvenir. You don’t reckon there is any way in God’s green earth they could make us wear plaid shorts, with sandals and those long back knee high socks….

Respectfully,
Kes