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If you are going to live or visit in the
South, you need to know these rules:
1. That farm boy you see at the gas station did more work before breakfast
than you do all week at the gym.
2. It's called a "gravel road." No matter how slow you drive, you're going
to get dust on your Navigator. Drive it or get the devil out of the way.
3. The red dirt -- it's called clay. Red clay. If you like the color don't
wash your car for a couple weeks -- it'll be permanent.
4. We all started hunting and fishing when we were seven years old. Yeah,
we saw Bambi. We got over it.
5. Go ahead and bring your $600 Orvis Fly Rod. Don't cry to us if a
flathead breaks it off at the handle. We have a name for those little
13-inch trout you fish for -- bait.
6. Pull your pants up. You look like an idiot.
7. If that cell phone rings while a bunch of mallards are making their
final approach, we will shoot it. You might want to ensure it's not up to
your ear at the time.
8. No, there's no "Vegetarian Special" on the menu. Order steak. Order it
rare. Or, you can order the Chef's Salad and pick off the two pounds of
ham and turkey.
9. Tea - yeah, we have tea. It comes in a glass over ice and is sweet. You
want it hot -- sit it in the sun. You want it unsweetened -- add a lot of
water.
10. You bring Coke into my house, it better be brown, wet, and served over
ice.
11. So you have a sixty thousand-dollar car. We're real impressed. We have
a quarter of a million-dollar combine that we only use two weeks a year.
12. Let's get this straight. We have one stoplight in town. We stop when
it's red. We may even stop when it's yellow.
13. We eat dinner together with our families. We pray before we eat (yeah,
even breakfast). We go to church on Wednesdays and Sundays and we go to
high school football games on Friday nights. We still address our seniors
with "yes, sir" and "yes, ma'am," and we sometimes still take Sunday
drives
around town to see friends and neighbors.
14. We don't do "hurry up" well.
15. Greens - yeah, we have greens, but you don't putt on them. You boil
them with salty fatback, bacon or a ham hock.
16. Yeah, we eat catfish, bass, bream and carp. You really want sushi and
caviar? It's available at the bait shop.
17. They are pigs. That's what they smell like. Get over it. Don't like
it? Interstate 85 goes two ways - Interstate 40 goes the other two. Pick
one.
18. Grits are corn. You put butter, salt, and maybe even some pepper on
them. If you want to put milk and sugar on them, then you want cream of
wheat- go to Kansas. That would be I-40 west.
19. The "Opener" refers to the first day of deer season or dove season.
Both are holidays. You can get pancakes, cane syrup, and sausage before
daylight at the church on either day.
20. So every person in every pickup waves? Yeah, it's called being
friendly. Understand the concept?
21. Yeah, we have golf courses. Don't hit in the water hazards. It spooks
the fish and bothers the gators -and if you hit it in the rough, we have
these things called diamondbacks, and they're not baseball players.
22. That Highway Patrol Officer that just pulled you over for driving like
an idiot -- his name is "Sir," no matter how young he is.
23. We have lots of pine trees. They have sap. It drips from them. You
park your Navigator under them, and they'll leave a logo on your hood.
24. You burn an American flag in our state, you get beat up. No questions.
The liberal contingent of our state legislature -- all four of them
--enacted a measure to stop this. There is now a $2.50 fine for beating up
the flag burner.
25. No, we don't care how you do things up North. If it is so great up
there, why not visit a Northern state or stay there. And no, down here, we
don't have an accent, you do.
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