Let’s start a fight

Grandma is from arkansas. I've never been, but I've been taught south. The drawl is southern. Then of course she married a winsconsinite, so my mom is a mixed breed. 

South.

I have driven I40 many times after being in San Diego for a while. It is good th see green the predominant ground color after a few months again. That starts in Eastern OK. By the time you get to Arkansas you are definitely in the South.

It also has many trees. berkeley you Kansas!

1988RedT2 said:

I find it disturbing that you all want to assign a particular state to a particular region and associate certain attributes to it on that basis.  We should bear in mind that states, like people, have unique characteristics and don't need to be forced into any one particular category and it's associated stereotypes. 

I expected better from the lot of you.

Aww... now bless your heart.  

Sided with the South in the Civil War, going with south y'all.

Can we talk about how the "Midwest" is an incredibly inaccurate name for a group of states that are clearly in the northeast quadrant of the contiguous 48 states?

Trent said:

Can we talk about how the "Midwest" is an incredibly inaccurate name for a group of states that are clearly in the northeast quadrant of the contiguous 48 states?

 

 

That's only because when they came up with that name airplanes hadn't been invented and thus "Flyover Country" wouldn't have made sense. 

Depends on what you get when you order "tea".

If they give you sweet tea, you're in the south.

If they give you hot tea, you're not.

Also...

I was born in Florida, raised in Tennessee, and was bullied mercilessly as a Yankee. Explaining that my parents were from Maryland, its proximity to the Mason Dixon Line, and that the homeland was in fact, the cherry on top of the Civil War sundae did absolutely no good. Virginia is the South, too, as is West Virginia.

Now Arkansas is past the Mississippi... maybe it is Western. Is the music Country, or Western?

wheelsmithy (Joe-with-an-L) said:

I was born in Florida, raised in Tennessee, and was bullied mercilessly as a Yankee. Explaining that my parents were from Maryland, its proximity to the Mason Dixon Line, and that the homeland was in fact, the cherry on top of the Civil War sundae did absolutely no good. Virginia is the South, too, as is West Virginia.

Now Arkansas is past the Mississippi... maybe it is Western. Is the music Country, or Western?

That reminds me of a line from the Sons of Bill song "Texas" - "And they call me a Yankee 'cause I'm from Virginia, what the hell does that mean?
I suggest they take that one up with Robert E. Lee"

Trent said:

Can we talk about how the "Midwest" is an incredibly inaccurate name for a group of states that are clearly in the northeast quadrant of the contiguous 48 states?

 

 

That is why there is so much fighting in the Middle East.  They're all trying to find some city in Pennsylvania and nobody wants to stop and ask for directions.

(true story: I am going to stop in Medina on the way home from work)

914Driver said:

Sided with the South in the Civil War, going with south y'all.

I'm not sure that alone qualifies states as being Southern, Midwestern, etc. 

I wouldn't consider Oklahoma as being southern, but it was Confederate. To me it's pretty solidly mid-west. 

I wouldn't consider AZ or NM as Southern just because they were Confederate, and I wouldn't consider California "northern" just because it sided with the Union. Southwest is Southern California's "Inland Empire", AZ, NM, NV, West Texas (Basin and Range), Southern Utah and Colorado. 

It's funny because when I think of the South, I think of areas that have mountains and hills, and/or don't have regular snow. Arkansas fits that criteria. 

Both my parents were born in Eastern Oklahoma and both grew up just over the border in Mena, Arkansas. Yes, the same Mena, Arkansas that had an airport that was some kind of drug distribution point run by the CIA and the Clintons or the Bush Brothers or something like that. My parents left long before the airport scandal for California. I was born in California and ended up in Texas. My parents retired in California and moved back to Arkansas, to a retirement community there called Hot Springs Village.

I don't know what any of this means.

Yankee!

I really don't get the Yankee thing. I used to have a girlfriend who was born in El Paso. They called her a Yankee because she actually grew up closer to New Mexico that anyplace South. But New Mexico is the Southwest and so is Texas. The West really didn't have anything to do with the Civil War except for the fact that after the war a lot of displaced Confederates moved West. I actually have ancestors who fought in the Civil War on the Confederate side and are buried in Arkansas. I found their graves there last year when they buried my uncle in the same graveyard. One of them had his rank in the Confederate Army engraved on his tombstone.

There used to be "Okievilles" in Central California settled by people who migrated from Oklahoma in the 1930s during the dust bowl aka Steinbeck and the Grapes of Wrath. My Aunt and Uncle lived in one of those Okievilles. My parents stayed with them when they first moved to California years later.

I never lived in the North and have had no relatives there.

I guess if you weren't born in the deep South...

Honestly I don't think I've ever heard the whole "Yankee"/"Traitor" thing in ages.

My step-father was born in Pittsburgh, lived most his childhood in Florida, and moved back to Pennsylvania in his late teens with a southern draw. 

Despite the fact that he felt very much a Southerner while growing up in Florida (in the 60's), he was affectionately named "the Yankee" by his childhood friends. 

When he moved back to suburban PA, he got called "redneck" or "hick" because of his draw. He once said "I had more black friends in Pensacola than the entire school had black kids in PA, but they assumed I was the bigot." 

Pronounced "Hyankah".  Lived my first 13 years in FL, moved to NY (the home of more rednecks than GA) when my father got transferred back.  
 

The Civil War was almost 150 years ago, when does cultural bias stop?  Lets get some store bought teeth and get past this eh?

In reply to pheller :

By "draw" I assume you mean "drawl"?

1988RedT2 said:

I find it disturbing that you all want to assign a particular state to a particular region and associate certain attributes to it on that basis.  We should bear in mind that states, like people, have unique characteristics and don't need to be forced into any one particular category and it's associated stereotypes. 

I expected better from the lot of you.

Mr_Asa said:

Noooo... the Mason Dixon is the kinda right angle edge of Maryland and Delaware.  Delaware is above, Maryland below.

This  M-D line goes along the Maryland border.  Delaware is more East of it than North of it, but still above.

1988RedT2 said:

I find it disturbing that you all want to assign a particular state to a particular region and associate certain attributes to it on that basis.  We should bear in mind that states, like people, have unique characteristics and don't need to be forced into any one particular category and it's associated stereotypes. 

I expected better from the lot of you.

Lighten up Francis, yeah, like he said.

In reply to Duke :

Yes that. 

Accent? 

It's in tornado alley.  

People complain about the cold we have here in Michigan.  I will take cold and snow over regular tornados.  

Most of Florida isn't the south.
 

I swear the Mason Dixon line wraps across north Florida like a cat's tail. 

Edit:

In reply to OHSCrifle :

Yep. When you think of Florida you don't think of plantations and the Deep South. You think of alligators, the everglades, Miami Beach and spring breakers. It's kind of South of The South. There is a world of difference between Alabama and Key West.

Then, of course there is Florida Man.

Can we just admit that Minnesota is the southern most province of Canada?

wheelsmithy (Joe-with-an-L) said:

 Virginia is the South, too, as is West Virginia.

The entire point of West Virginia existing is that a bunch of counties in Virginia didn't agree with slavery and so separated from Virginia at the beginning of the Civil War.

WV isn't southern.  Country, maybe. Southern, no.