sac·cha·rine

amanda-rae:

By e. anne

I cannot put my finger on the exact moment I started to feel a sense of pride for the South. I mean, not the kind of Southern pride involving a Dixie Outfitter wardrobe or even a sole experience handling a firearm — let alone an NRA membership. My sentiment goes to the manners, the hey how’s it going’s, the dogs in bars, the iced tea (that I always passed on), the swamps, Gone With The Wind, the dirt roads, the Spanish moss, the gigantic porches, the sleepy drivers, the deep-fried everything. 

Somehow in the past two years — before I left the old broad — I’ve become a self-appointed and perhaps accidental ambassador for the South. I’ve forced homemade grits and boiled peanuts on the inexperienced (see: folks from Chicago, Auckland, Toronto and Chiba, to name a few) and played defense to some mighty mean (and misinformed) comments on the region from which I hail. The South just gets a bad rap from all the slow-talking fools with time-slots on their local cable access. 

Yes, there still exists too many pockets of ignorance and bigotry yonder and below. But take a big whiff of that fine magnolia, boy, and show me a region in any nation completely void of idiots.