In visiting with some non-Southern friends over the holidays, I was reminded over breakfast one morning of yet another difference in regional pronunciation.  Syrup — that wonderful elixir most often in the South made from ribbon cane, but from sorghum cane when a thicker, more pungent syrup is wanted.  Maple syrup imported from the North is also considered a delicacy here.  We just pronounce it differently.  Everyone I’ve ever noticed who is from the South says “SUR-up,” the first syllable of which rhymes with  “Yes, SIR!”    Many other folks say “SEAR-up,” the first syllable of which rhymes with “Sears” or with “Cyrano de Bergerac.”  I’ve never heard anyone from the South say it the second way, which makes me think ”SUR-up” is a regional pronunciation.

It’s not terribly important in the scheme of things, I suppose — what’s important is to get a piping hot home-made biscuit, butter it, and slather it with your favorite syrup.  It’s so good it’ll make you slap your grandma away from the table.

Eating greens and peas on New Year’s Day is a Southern tradition many believe stretches back to the time of the Civil War.  After the Yankees invaded Georgia, very little was left in the way of foodstuffs.  My own grandmother, alive and well at 89, remembers her grandmother (who witnessed a well-documented skirmish of the Battle of Atlanta in her front yard at age 9, and who died at 81 in 1936) saying her family subsisted on turnip and collard greens, sweet potatoes, and dried apples, and peas for the better part of a year after Sherman’s scorch.  A lot of Southern families have similar memories, and that is why one is still hard-pressed to find even a single bunch of collard or turnip greens in metro-Atlanta groceries at the last minute on New Years Day.  Better buy ‘em early, because eating greens and peas on New Years is a way of life for us.  We are a people of long memory and tradition, and our New Year’s fare is a big part of that. 

A pone of cornbread is the bread of choice for one’s New Year’s meal — cook whatever meat you want (I prefer pork roast, personally) to accompany the veggies, but eating greens and peas without good buttermilk and bacon-grease cornbread is almost sinful. 

Happy New Year to all, and start it off the right way — with greens, peas, and cornbread.

Merry Christmas to you and yours!

Or Happy Hanukkah!

Or Karmic Kwanzaa!

Or whatever your pleasure!  Just be safe and be happy.  Talking Southern will return on Monday, Dec. 29th.

This really happened in my hometown of Brooks, GA, on Sunday evening, December 7th, 2008.  You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried.

The Women’s Club had been planning the tree-lighting for months, taking their idea from the pair of majestic thirty-foot cedars growing by the post office.  They spent Saturday after Saturday in the buckets of front-end-loaders, putting decorations and lights on one of the big trees.  Saturday Dec. 6th was the trial run.  The lights on the big tree blew breakers in the post office, the only possible source of power.  Not to be dissuaded, the ladies went and bought a six-foot tree to put across the street, by the old post office.

Sunday evening rolls around.  Your commentator had been asked to play two roles in the event — to lead the assembly in the singing of God Bless America, and to give a brief homily about the meaning of the season.  I arrived a bit early, and was given a very nice-looking printed program on card stock, copies of which would be distributed to the crowd.

I headed with several of the ladies from the warmth of Town Hall down to the tree-lighting site.  All the assembly is across the street, by the big tree, which still bears its decorations.  We have to holler for them to cross over the street, and the inevitable “whys” are met with general laughter about the fuse box problem.  Two new problems quickly become apparent:  items one and two on the printed program — namely, the presentation of colors by a high school ROTC corps, and a welcome by Brooks’s mayor.  Both the ROTC group and the mayor are AWOL.  The ladies are also quietly murmuring that the Santa they have hired has not shown up yet.

One of them punches me to go up and give an impromptu welcome to get things going.  I go to the mike (which doesn’t work), and proceed to welcome folks to Brooks’s first annual tree-lighting, with appropriate comments for the many wonderful things the Women’s Club has done in our town since 1921.  As I make these brief remarks, an aged pickup truck comes over the RR tracks, dragging several feet of tailpipe quite noisily.  The truck pulls up by our assembly, and a man with remarkable resemblance to Santa waves to the crowd.  Unfortunately, he is not dressed in a traditional Santa suit, but in  John Deere hat and overalls. I think to myself, “Boy, I hope this isn’t the Santa they’re expecting, but if it is, I guess the dragging tailpipe is a redneck version of sleighbells.”

 I finish my brief remarks as the mayor arrives, on what we call “Brooks time.”  I turn the mike over to him, and there being very few original ways to welcome a crowd, he proceeds to welcome the assembly, with almost identical comments to the welcome I had just given.  Farmer Claus has joined the crowd by this time, and as the mayor wraps up his brief remarks, Farmer Claus asks him if he’ll lead singing on his favorite Christmas song.

Playing along and trying not to make the scene any worse, the mayor says he supposes he can do that.  “What is your favorite Christmas song?” he asks.

“There’s a Tear in My Beer ‘Cause I’m Cryin’ for You, Dear,” Farmer Claus responds in apparent seriousness.  The mayor is dumbfounded, along with everyone else, and responds that he doesn’t think he knows the words.  A quick-thinking lady of the club steps up at that point and says that if it’s singing he wants, the next-scheduled girls chorus from Brooks Elementary School will fill that bill nicely.

The precious girls gather round, guided by their director.  She asks the man operating the CD player to start selection 12.  Apparently he starts 14 instead, for it’s the wrong song.  On the second try, selection 12 begins playing — Ding Dong Merrily on High.  The girls begin singing, but the CD cuts off in mid-song.  The director keeps them going a capella.  Then the music turns back on, but not in the right place.  They have to start over.  I’m wanting to go hide at this point.

The incomparable sound of little girls’ voices is interrupted by the heavy tramping of boots — it’s the ROTC corps, to present colors. The girls finish their song at about the same time as arms are presented, and the ROTC corps stands there in pregnant silence.  Another quick-thinking lady of the club steps up and starts the pledge to the flag, after which the corps does an about-face and marches off.

I come up next to lead singing on God Bless America, breifly explaining that we’ll sing a capella because we have no recording.  “Yes we do! I brought one!” said the chorus director.  Giving up hope that anything about the cermony would go by plan, I amended my instruction and urged everyone to sing to the music.  They did.

Then came my homily, during which nothing went wrong; followed by a touching and flawless solo by a high school senior of O Holy Night.  The last two items on the program were another selection by the girls’ chorus, followed by the dramatic appearance of Santa Claus (not Farmer Claus), which is being directed by cell-phone so the timing will be perfect.  The girls begin their last selection, but it, too, is interrupted — by the blaring of the horn of Santa’s car as he is driven down the hill from Town Hall.  Apparently the careful timing did not work, either.

I kept looking for Gomer, Goober, Barney, and them to show up; as well as for Ellie Mae, Jethro, and Granny Clampett.  They would have been right at home.  As for me, I’ve been laughing ever since.  So have the ladies of the club, who take everything in good stride.

Tomorrow (Dec. 9) is my 46th birthday.   I should have passed that milestone three weeks ago, but back in 1962, I seemed to want to stay put.  I was born on Mama’s third trip to Griffin Hospital, on a Sunday evening after she had gone to church, come home and eaten a big Sunday dinner prepared by my paternal grandmother, and gone out into the woods of Hilpine Farm in Brooks, our family homestead, to root kindling stumps up out of the ground with my daddy — partially because the family was low on the fat pine, and partially to see if they couldn’t force her into labor.  It worked, and I was born about suppertime that Sunday night.

She nearly died, and was unconscious for several days.  When she finally came to, a cleaning woman was in her hospital room mopping the floor.  Seeing Mama’s eyes open for the first time in days, the janitress cast down her mop and headed for the bedside.  Exclaiming over how relieved everyone would be when they learned Mama had come to, the woman was suddenly struck with the realization that Mama, who had been knocked out for the birth, had absolutely absolutely no memory of what had happened.  “Honey,” the maid exclaimed, “I bet you don’t eebm know what you had!”

Mercifully remembering nothing of her long ordeal, nor realizing exactly where she was or why, Mama’s mind went back to the last thing she remembered with any clarity — Sunday dinner.  “Yes I do,” she declared weakly.  “I had roast beef, green beans, mashed potatoes…..”

Considering I’m from rural Brooks, GA, a place where folks have all sorts of nicknames, I’ve always considered it a blessing that my own isn’t “Green Bean.”

As we enter this Christmas season, I want to comment on typical Southern (or at least Georgian) pronunciation of two words — hoof and roof.  The letters “oo” have two distinct pronunciations in English — a short, clipped pronunciation like in “foot” or “cook,” and a deeper, drawn-out pronunciation like in “loot” or “boot.”   I’ve heard a few people over the years (none of them native Georgians) who pronounced hoof and roof with the short clipped sound of the double-o.  That just sounds funny to Southerners.  I’ve never met a Georgian yet who didn’t use the “loot” or “boot” sound when pronouncing the two words.

Both, as it turns out, are correct.  Webster’s online gives both pronunciations for both words.  Interestingly, it prefers the “loot” sound for “roof,” but the “foot” sound for “hoof.”   I don’t suppose it really matters, but I personally prefer what sounds right to me — the “loot” sound for both.  Regardless, the important thing is that you be asleep when hoof sounds clatter across your roof the night of the 24th of this month, or Santa might not stop.

This Thanksgiving week, it’s important to note that no Southerner with any pride of place would deign to eat something called “stuffing,” unless of course he or she happens to be visiting Yankees for Thanksgiving.  In that case, it’s far better to be polite and eat what’s set before you, even if it has been pulled straight out of a turkey’s butt, than to insist on dressing the way the Good Lord intended it to be made. 

“Stuffing,” for the uninitiated, is what goes into upholstered furniture.  “Dressing,”  on the other hand, is a Southern dish, made in many various ways, but always baked in a pan and cut into squares for serving with giblet gravy at a holiday table. 

The most common ingredients are similar amounts of cooked cornbread and biscuit (though many fine and upstanding folks use white loaf bread in place of the biscuit), to which are added liberal amounts of sage, onion, celery or celery seed, juices from a just-cooked turkey or hen, and usually an egg or two and a touch of sweetmilk.  It’s so good it might make you slap your grandma away from the table, but doing so would put a damper on the Thanksgiving festivities, so we’ll all just have to restrain ourselves.  (I’ll be happy to pass along a time-honored family recipe for dressing to anyone who might be interested.)

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!  Enjoy your dressing, turkey, all the other wonderful table offerings; but most of all, be safe and celebrate the time with your families.  God bless!

Wouldn, couldn, and shouldn are common Southern pronunciations for the contractions wouldn’t, couldn’t, and shouldn’t.  “Wouldn” rhymes with “wooden,” as do “couldn” and “shouldn.”  Most of us, when relaxing in the language, feel no need to pronounce the terminal “t’s.”  Naturally, we’d write them correctly, but why go to the effort of saying it so precisely?

 We probably shouldn drop letters like that, and wouldn if it made a bit of difference.  It dudn (there’s another one - for “doesn’t”), so what’s the harm?  I couldn care less, could you?

Eating breakfast out with my wife and boys the other Saturday, the young waitress began by taking our drink orders.  The fellows ordered orange juice, my wife ordered coffee with cream, and I ordered my usual breakfast beverage — sweet milk, which I pour myself at home and seldom need to say aloud. The waitress looked puzzled, and asked if I wanted condensed milk.  “No, ma’am,” I told her.  “Just plain old sweet milk — plain milk, if you will — skim, if you have it.”  My boys were hiding under the table by this point, I was embarrassing them so badly; and my country-bred wife reminded me gently after the waitress taken our order in that nobody younger than about forty has any idea what sweet milk is.

That’s a shame.  In the South, buttermilk is (or at least used to be) considered a delicacy.  The late humorist, Lewis Grizzard, reported that his father said he was convinced a good glass of buttermilk would heal the sick and raise the dead.  I agree completely.  My wife likes to eat cornbread in buttermilk (I prefer sweetmilk for that particular pleasure myself), but our kids can’t stand the stuff.  I suspect  most younger folks can’t, which explains why “sweet milk” is no longer in the lexicon.  That term was used to differentiate plain old milk from buttermilk in a day when every Southern refrigerator (or “icebox,” as folks of my grandmother’s generation called their Fridigaires) held a container of both.

Drinking buttermilk has gone the way of the Edsel, and with it, the need for the good old Southern term “sweet milk.”   I guess that’s life, but I’m going to continue to say it, if for no other reason than to fulfill my duty as a parent to embarrass my teenagers.

Similar to “I swannee” is “I declare,” a statement of  surprise and/or emphsis one once heard quite often in the South.  It’s a useful phrase, capable of covering all the territory from “my goodness” to “I’ll be damned.”  Usually, it meant a nice surprise, more in line with “my goodness” than the other extreme. The late Floy Farr, father of Peachtree City, said it to me when we met for the first time in more than twenty years, some ten or twelve years ago.  “Well, I declare, Dan; you’ve grown up since I saw you last.” 

It’s a phrase that’s not much heard anymore, which I think is a shame.  A lot of our quaint Southern sayings are becoming scarce as hen’s teeth.  I declare, that’s a trend I don’t much care for.