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8:01 a.m. - Friday, May. 23, 2003
The Entry Ms Leslie Couldn't Write

It�s hard to know where the north ends and the south begins.

The government tries to define it for us, but so typically, they screwed it up. The Mason-Dixon Line means nothing. I mean, it�s easy, when one crosses the line that divides one time zone from another. Almost without a thought, we change our watches� all except my dad, who delights in obsessing about what time it REALLY is� and as far as we are concerned, the new time is the right time. Crossing the Mason-Dixon line isn�t like that at all. It�s more� spiritual.

The presence of sweet tea in the restaurants is one sign you�re in the south. Northerners don�t quite understand that tea is better if the sugar is added at the same time the tea is brewed. Ask for sweet tea in the north, and all you get is a funny look and a pale finger pointing out the packets of sugar on the table. On I-75, sweet tea seems to appear like magic on the south shore of the Ohio river, just across the Kentucky line from Cincinnati. That�s fine, I guess. On fact, I used to look forward to crossing back into Kentucky as a sign that I was back in the sweet arms of Dixie. But I was wrong. Northern Kentucky especially, isn�t much more than an extension of Cincinnati. The freeways and highways are clogged with harried and aggressive city folk, rushing bumper to bumper and door handle to door handle to and from wherever it is people in big cities go. Apparently all that sweet tea doesn�t do a thing to calm them down. The line between north and south is somewhere else.

There�s another yardstick of southern-ness I�ve discovered over the course of several road trips, but it�s only good in retrospect: Road kill.

The freeways of the south are littered with the corpses of unfortunate critters that many northerners spend a lifetime without seeing. Foremost among these are armadillos, but possum and turtles make a good showing as well. Since time immemorial, these creatures have had more sense than to spend any time at all scrounging around in the snow for food, and they will not sleep half their lives away in a frozen hollow stump. Therefore, their disappearance as road kill is a clear signal that a driver has left the south for sure.

Somewhere equidistant between the last squashed armadillo and the first pungent skunk pancake lies the line between north and south. I�m just guessing, but I�ll bet that line never moves more than a foot in either direction.

The problem with looking at road kill, besides the obvious gag factor, is that you never know when you�ve seen the last armadillo until you see the first skunk.. or vice versa. The passage from north to south is lost in recent history. Besides, who want to keep track of this kind of carnage.

A slightly less distasteful way to tell you�re in the south, of not when you actually arrived in it, is to look inside the cars of your fellow travelers. Female bare feet propped on the dashboard on the passenger side means you�re in the south. For some reason, no one does this in the north. I think even southern girls put their feet down when they are in the north. How they know they are in the north, I�m not sure. Road kill maybe.

Or you can order a pizza. If it comes with Catalina dressing included unbidden, you are in the south. If even a request for Catalina dressing brings a stare of incomprehension, you�re in yankeeland.

This nation is, of course, a Christian nation. The land was torn from the hands of its previous owners by Christians, it�s laws were created by Christians, and it was Christians who fled here in search of religious freedom. In the beginning, the universal assumption was that the bible was the only valid religious document and that anyone who did not live according to some interpretation of that book was heathen. Over time, however, the people learned that the only way to protect religious freedom for themselves was to protect it for everyone. Thus evolved what is arguably the most enlightened and representative legal and political system in the history of civilization. Here is a place where Christians can worship without fear� well, most of the time� and here too is a place where Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus (Hindi?), Wiccans, Pagans, Witches and yes, even atheists can enjoy an unparalleled freedom of and from religion.

In the north, this freedom is evidenced by a kind of studied tolerance. In the north, you can find huge mosques, complete with minarets, rising out of the suburbs of even mid-sized cities. Mormon temples abound, but more so in the north than the south.

Coming Soon: What Not to do with Siang�s Pure Oil

Suite Dreams at the Wildwood Inn

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