Beneath His Status Quo

My ex husband was from Pennsylvania, when he moved to south east Georgia in this little backwoods town of which I was born and raised he kept saying what a culture shock..

I for the life of me could not understand the meaning of that statement. Sure we are a country people here. Quite neighborly and it is true everyone knows what everyone else is up to and about.

It is quite common to see someone in the local grocery store with bedroom shoes on or pajama bottoms on. The first time he encountered this it happened to be someone we knew he was so embarrassed he couldn't look her in the face.

Savannah Ga. Is 72 miles from here it is what we refer to as town, and the most traffic I had ever encountered until I was an adult and could read a map well enough to travel elsewhere. One day after my hubby and I married we take the trip into town I can only assume the lady ahead of us in traffic had not driven in a lot of traffic either as she kept slamming on brakes zooming in and out of the lanes without signal Finally my husband lost control of himself stuck his head out the window called her everything but nice even suggested he hoped her legs grew together. He would get right beside her and yell out really vulgar name spewing as if he had tourrettes syndrome..

I finally looked at him and said you know you could be arrested for harassment or stalking, remember that you are in the south now, there are ugly words here considered terms of endearment such as, “Bitch” or things I will not mention here. He was so tickled he calmed down. From that point till the end of our marriage he would say “talk to me baby call me something let me know you love me,” and I would call him something off color and we would both laugh.

It took a lot of getting use to for him to understand what we mean by what we say.

When someone drives in our yard we say "ya'll git down and come in".This is from the horse and buggy days when people had to actually climb down from horse and buggy to do so. The first time he heard me say this he went running out to see who was up the tree..lol

One thing that he found hard to deal with,when passing anyone on the street we wave,rather we know them or not.He use to say how do all these people know me,I had to explain they of course did not..lol.He was surprised that friends will drop by and say "make a batch of biscuits and a pot of coffee,and lets visit awhile".

He was amazed during the growing season you will find hanging from your door knob or mailbox a "mess" of squash,cucumbers,onions or whatever is in season, he loved the buckets of sweet potato's and sweet corn..

Steady getting it verses getting it steady. Not the same at all.

We eat supper dinner is at noon especially on Sunday when the preacher comes to eat.

A heck of a note is not written or sung it means my goodness or unbelievable.

We all mash buttons here where as he presses them..

We also wear britches, and of course he only wears pants.

He for ever made fun of me for preparing “supper”, I use to tell him even the good Lord ate supper so the term was correct.

He asked if I could visit anywhere where would I like to go, I said of course more to drive him up the wall than anything else I want to go to Texas and see the Alamo.”why, he said are you into history" No I replied I would like to see where Robert Duvall died as I saw him killed in Remember the Alamo. He always tried to make me understand Duvall didn't really die there it was just a movie. People seem to think when we open our mouth, and this accent comes out that we are stupid or uneducated. He was no exception. At one point, he told me "he didn't know how to live poor, and I didn't know how to live rich". That his grandmother would not have approved of the walk in life I was from. He was born with a silver spoon, and at my house we only had one spoon, so we ate in shifts.

When we first were married we opened a Local Family Restaurant in preparing to open he asked what color should I paint the trim, I stated white with my southern accent he thought I said what and repeated the question, we went through this about Five minutes finally he said forget it, I'm just going to paint it white..

His relatives would ask my husband, "her manner of speech is so different do you have much trouble understanding the southern slang ?" Does it have any bearing on how you get along? He always laughed and said “we get along great because the first 5 years I didn't understand a word she said.”

He cooked all the Italian dishes, and I cooked all the southern ones. Together there was nothing we couldn't prepare. They say opposites attract. Still I consider myself southern, but he as the rest of the world are of the misconception if you are from rural Georgia you are a redneck or a country bumpkin.

I beg to differ.

It takes all kinds of people to make a world.All walks of life make up this nation of ours. The way of life one is raised in does not make you of less importance then someone raised in luxury.After all Some of the greatest leaders we have had in this country were raised in this fashion.

My husband and I were closer before the 4500 square foot house,we spent our time together then, as we couldn't afford to do otherwise.Finances cause a lot of hardships in relationships too much, and too little.

I found the Rich live the same as we did,the table is nicer and the menu is wider, and of course there is a lot to be said for privilege, but they still put their pants on one leg at a time.

Though I worked the fields from the time I was old enough to,onions and tobacco were our main crops, I soon went to "town" to work to get out of the fields.And I have had occasion to use my passport.