My love hate/relationship with the South
I have been living in northern Florida since August of 2006. A lot of people don’t really consider Florida “The South.” My house is only about 15 miles away from Georgia’s southern border–quite a ways from the theme parks, sandy beaches and retirement communities that most people think of when you mention The Sunshine State.
Life here took some getting use to. There are definitely good and bad parts to living here.
GOOD:
- I never have to shovel snow or scrape ice off of my car.
- There are LOTS of amazing Mexican restaurants around. And we love Mexican food!
- My drive to work is gorgeous. We live just beyond the city limits–just off of a canopy road. Old oak trees laced with Spanish Moss reach over the road for miles. I also get to pass a goat farm, bulls, chickens and roosters and at least five churches on my way to into the city each day.
- We have lots of really great city parks.
- Really great produce–citrus, peaches…
- We aren’t too far away from the Gulf of Mexico.
- I swear that the Publix grocery store near my house has the nicest employees of any grocery store anywhere.
- People use “sir” and “ma’am” as part of their regular vocabulary because they were raised that way. It’s nice.
- Lots of great Southern cooking: cheese grits, barbecue, biscuits…
- Cute little tree frogs that stick to our kitchen windows at night in the summer.
BAD:
- No real change of seasons. My body still has trouble adapting to this.
- It gets hot. Hot AND humid. This is terrible for a person like me who hates wearing shorts or sleeveless shirts.
- Hurricanes!
- Tornadoes!
- Tropical storms!
- Lots of insects! Big spiders!
- I can never get good apples down here in the fall.
- Eastern European food is hard to come by.
- Terrible pizza.
- Tally is a football town and when you try to explain to someone that you don’t really care about sports, they think you are nuts.
- The arts are rather under appreciated in this town.
- I don’t like that a lot of emphasis is placed on Christianity. Christian daycare, Christian plumbers…if you are Christian, that is cool–but I think that an Jewish daycare center or an Atheist plumber would both do good jobs too.
- I really am not a fan of the Pro-Life billboards.
- I guess all in all, it is a little too conservative here for my taste.
- Sweet tea. I’ve tried to like it and I just don’t. It is WAY too sweet for me. I feel like I am drinking brown simple syrup.
- Lots of great Southern cooking is loaded with fat, salt and lard (but that is what makes it good, right?)
I know that I won’t live down here forever, but I am determined to learn how to make authentic Southern fried chicken and homemade biscuits before I leave.
It has taken me a long time to get comfortable here. I think buying a home helped. It allowed us to put down some roots, which is something I really haven’t done before.
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March for Babies
I think all of that is exactly how I’d feel if I had to move to FL. The hurricanes, for one, terrify me. My brother moved to Miami for 3 yrs for law school and I remember telling him, “Don’t be one of those stupid brave people on the news. If they tell you to evacuate, you GET OUT, okay?”
I’ve been down south a few times (mainly to NC and GA) and the manners are wonderful and the conservatism/religiousness is… frustrating? Stifling? Hard to say what the right word is – but just hard to deal with. I love the idea of a plumber advertising as “Your local, friendly, athiest plumber.” LOL
I didn’t really notice how many businesses advertised themselves as “Christian” until we started looking for daycare. Everyone one of them specified that they were Christian. I don’t get it.