Just So You Know

I'm proud to say that I'm “American by birth, Southern by the grace of God” and I'm truly sorry if your not.

Henry Clay Duty home he's seated 3rd from the right and my grandfather Ernest Lynn Duty standing 7th from the right. Circa 1915

Now as a Southerner with family roots in the Carolinas since at least 1740, and in later years Georgia and Alabama, and as someone who was raised in the north during my "formative years" of 5-15 yet, for the past 50 years has lived in the South, I'm going to tell you that the true even though truth is no longer politically correct. At this point freedom of thought and speech is still legal unless you happen to attract the attention of the Biden justice department.

John A. Edmonds my mother's great grandfather, Enlisted for the Confederate Cause on October 3, 1861. Wounded at Malvern Hill on July 1, 1862.  Recovered and returned.  Captured at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863.  Received at Fort Delaware on July 6.  Transferred to Point Lookout on October 22, 1863 where he joined U. S. service on January 29, 1864.  He joined Captain Ahle's battery.  Filed for Federal Pension October 17, 1898 in Fayette County, Alabama and later moved to Natural Bridge, Winston County, Alabama.  He died there on November 7, 1910 and is buried at Concord Baptist Church Cemetery in Natural Bridge.

John A. Edmonds 

Neither Edmonds or Duty owned slaves, and while they owned farms they raised hogs, and cattle and the expense of human labor beyond family was not economical. 

So permit me to ponder – while pondering is still permitted in our Reunited States.

To many living elsewhere in our great nation The South is a total embarrassment, for it is the land of deplorables and knuckle draggers. The home of treasonist traitors and insurrectionists. We are especially despised by those smarter people living on our nation's two opposite coasts. Notice I say opposite because they are definitely not opposing coasts. The East and the West Coast are as similar are they can be and they are not the Gulf Coast were kind and considerate people live.

Now, brace yourselves my northern friends because until 2020 confederate veterans and/or their spouses or children were paid a veterans pension. That's right those treasonous redneck Confederate battle flag waving racists were actually paid a pension even though they lost the the war. Believe it or not the last recipient of a pension payment from the US Department of Veterans Affairs was Irene Triplett of (wait for it) North Carolina. Yep, until 2020 your tax dollars paid a pension to the daughter of a confederate veteran.

Now indeed, we talk funny. We’re slow and dumb and backwards and always conservative. We cling to our Bibles and our Guns. We got Donald Trump elected. That alone should make our separated brethren in the Disunited States to want to retroactively secede from us.  

Typically, our kids say “sir” and “ma’am” and, shockingly, we treat men and women differently, and we hold comically to the long-since discredited fantasy that only women can bear children. 

We still put flags and flowers on our ancestral graves – especially those of our our veterans – which is apparently why some folks who come South for the winter in their black socks and sandals, wagging their heads, and honking nasally and incredulously: “Look Martha, these people are still fighting the civil war.”

Apparently, we are not Enlightened and Educated like our neighbors from the Better Regions. We don’t read the New Yorker. We don’t listen to NPR and watch CNN. We don’t care what Whoopi and Joy have to say on the View. 

We don’t realize that we hate our "Black" next door neighbor (whom we are so deluded as to believe that we actually like) on account of our persistent and systemic ‘white privilege.’  In fact it is so systemic and persistent that we don’t notice it.  And we don’t know this because we are ignorant, for our children don’t go to Yale, or Harvard or even Stanford.  In fact, most of us dropped out of school in the third grade, when the booklearnin’ began to exceed our cerebral potentiality.

It seems that we go about in bare feet and overalls. We spit tobacco all over the place and drop our R’s and final G’s. We marry our cousins – but only after asking our uncles for their hand in marriage. Moreover, we eat roadkill and still have outhouses. 

In North Carolina, we either speak mountain hillbilly redneck or a coastal shrimp boat dialect known as bubba speak.  In that sense, we are apparently better than the people of South Carolina who apparently eat sand.  

There are experts in the field of judging groups of people and rating them according to their human worth.  This is apparently called “Intersectionality” and is taught at Columbia and Stanford and apparently studies have concluded that the sum total of our worth is zero.

Of course, they don’t mind when Bubba pulls off to the side of the road to help them change a tire, or when thousands of Billy Bobs join the military and fight America’s wars.

Just so long as we and our filthy kids with mullets don’t move next door to them with our truck on blocks and our dog on a chain blaring our country music and slaughtering our chickens in our backyards, it all good right?

A little history is in order,  you Yankees had a golden opportunity to be rid of us in 1861 without firing a single shot or spending a dime. You people hate us, but wouldn’t let us leave!  And you’re supposed to be the smart ones?

Well now, you’re stuck with us. You created an ‘indivisible union,’ and hence you are joined at the hip with the very people that make you roll your eyes in disgust, the ones that cost Hillary Clinton her destiny, the impediments to Progress, the ones who make you cry and shriek at the sky and dye your hair various and sundry shades of magenta. Yep.  We did that.  

And now, in spite of the largely successful program to vilify our region, our culture, and our ancestors, to destroy our monuments, rewrite our history, assassinate even the memory of our memories –  here we are again, people even in the belly of the beast of the People’s Republic of California are once again speaking the forbidden word, thinking the unthinkable thought, dreaming the impossible dream, and considering the inconsiderable consideration: secession.  And so, you might just yet get rid of the people you loathe. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

But in spite of all y’all’s vitriol and opprobrium, we’re still always and ever hospitable to all who come to visit.  We will gladly share some possum stew with y’all, but only after we all gather around the old table, rise for prayers, and sing Dixie.

I have shocking and scandalous news to deliver to my perhaps soon-to-be ex countrymen, so I do hope you like the smell of irony in the morning: Guess What? We’re all Southerners now.