A Northerner’s Observations of the South: Two Contrasting Ways of Life

by Nicole DeNaeyer 

Born in Manhattan in 1966 and raised in the suburbs of New York City, my aunt Ann Marie Thornton spent most of her youth in the North. It was not until after college that she got her first authentic taste of the South, working in Fairfax, Virginia, alongside people from West Virginia. “I can remember those ladies, with their Southern accents. They’d drive an hour, 60 miles, in from West Virginia. They drove their trucks, and they lived on dirt roads, and that seemed very different. So I find it pretty funny that 20 years later I have a truck and live on a dirt road!” (Thornton).

In 1992, Ann Marie and her family moved to San Antonio, Texas, and ten years later they moved to Vass, North Carolina. From her time spent living in Texas and Vass, Ann Marie has come to discern the distinct differences between the ways of life in the South, and those she observed growing up in New York. The main contrasts in culture that she has experienced were those of religion, food, people’s appearances, and attitudes.

Ann Marie was raised Irish Catholic but, attending elementary school in New York, had classmates who came from many different backgrounds and, therefore, had many different religions. In the South, Catholicism is not particularly prevalent, and Protestant Christianity is the more widespread. Ann Marie found it interesting at first that, for example, in the South a person would simply say "Christmas break," whereas in New York she was accustomed to saying winter break or the holidays. “You were always aware that there were people around who were different and had different points of view, and you’d be polite about that. And then I realized that people weren’t accustomed to growing up with different points of view” (Thornton).

In San Antonio, Ann Marie worked at St. Phillips College, a historically black school with a strong Baptist influence. People said grace before every meal and prayers before every reception, and that was something new for Ann Marie. “If you were going to have cookies and juice, someone would say a blessing. That was different to me, even having gone to a Catholic college, I felt like it was really noticeable” (Thornton). In general, Ann Marie found that the way that people talk about religion and incorporate it into their everyday lives is certainly different in New York than in the South. Another interesting experience for her was people inviting her to their church. “It’s meant totally as a complement, but it’s like ‘no, I have a church and I have a system’” (Thornton).

Growing up in the 1970s, it was the time of the women’s movement: moving away from objectification, beauty queens, and Miss America. So as you can imagine, Ann Marie was shocked when someone told her that her daughter was very pretty and she should enter a beauty contest. “It was hard not to laugh. It was bizarre to me, and I think a beauty contest would almost be a put down in the North. It would mean that someone was frivolous or vain, but that’s totally different here, and in no way did they mean it as a criticism of my daughter” (Thornton).

Ann Marie has also observed that Southern women certainly put a lot of effort and care into their appearances. Even just dashing out to the grocery store, the women put time into getting ready, whereas in New York, you just dash out to the store as you are. A funny experience for her was being at a polocrosse tournament where people camp in their cars and are around horses all day. Yet all the ladies were wearing mascara! It was something she didn’t expect to encounter at tournaments here in North Carolina, considering it more of a Texas stereotype. “People like to get their nails and hair done, and dress their best to meet whomever when they go out” (Thornton).

“If you think of a stereotypical New York shopping interaction, New York is known for the ‘whaddya want?’ sort of direct, straight to the point, brusque, no eye contact, that sort of thing. But you don’t typically find that in the South. If you go to a restaurant, it’s “What’ll ya have, Sugar?” (Thornton). This difference in people’s friendliness and attitudes was a pleasant change for Ann Marie. She observed that transactions in the South tend to be friendlier, slower, with more polite talk, and people use words like “sugar” or “sweetie” – words which in the North are not really used unless referring to a sweetheart. There is also an interconnectedness in the people here. Ann Marie remembers that when she worked at Sandhills Community College. If there was a bad news or something in the paper, chances were that one of her students would know the person involved or know their family. “That may be more small town than Southern, but that’s true” (Thornton).

Cooking is an integral part of life here. People cook different things for all occasions, and they cook them from scratch, whereas in New York, people pride themselves on knowing where to buy the best foods. When she was growing up, both of Ann Marie’s parents worked, so not everything was made from scratch. She considers that to still be part of who she is and what she does. She remembers once telling a Southern friend that she didn’t have time to bake dessert when her parents were visiting her, so she went and bought something instead. “She said, ‘Oh, I would have baked a cake for you,’ and that was nothing I expected to hear, but I found it so funny that my friend was like ‘I can’t believe that you would serve Harris Teeter cake when you could have something homemade” (Thornton).

Here the values surrounding cooking are definitely different than in New York. People adhere to traditions, eating the same meal every year for certain holidays, and not straying from that. Ann Marie was attending a friend’s New Year’s brunch one year when they had collards, hambone, and black-eyed peas. The peas are eaten for good luck in the New Year, something that Ann Marie had never heard about. She remembers her friends were mildly shocked when she told them she had never had black-eyed peas before, and furthermore had no traditions for New Year’s Day!

Because Ann Marie’s grandparents emigrated to the US from Ireland, most of her extended family’s food traditions are Irish, and “old country” dishes.” She grew up in New York surrounded by other families, where the kids her age were also only second-generation Americans. “Most of my Southern friends, their families have lived here for a long time, so their traditions are more Southern, more so than in New York” (Thornton).

These differences in culture are something that I, as a European, have also observed in my short time in the South. I found it extremely interesting to listen to Ann Marie’s stories about her experiences here and compare them to my own. While the North differs from the South in many ways, both cultures are unique in their own ways.

Work Cited 

Thornton, Ann Marie. Personal interview. 13 Sept. 2013.



Note: Nicole A. De Naeyer lives Southern Pines, NC, and is studying for an Associate's in Arts degree at Sandhills Community College. She is a native of Rotterdam, The Netherlands, where attended an American school.

Southern Connections

by Charlie Wright

How can someone born in the North have a Southern connection? My dad, David Wright, was born on March 28, 1948 in Southampton, New York. However, his connection to the South and his close ties to the land provided the basis for the Southern culture that he believes influenced his closeness to family, his values of tradition, and even perhaps his self-reliance.

Although one might question how someone from New York could have any bit of Southern culture in him, a strong Southern influence was passed down to him (and ultimately me) from both his parents and grandparents. Both sets of my father’s grandparents (maternal and paternal) hailed from North Carolina. On his maternal side, the family resided in Henderson, North Carolina. My dad’s mom was also born in Henderson. As a young woman she moved to the small town of Eastport, New York, where she worked with her mother in a duck packing plant.

My father’s paternal grandparents came from Greensboro, North Carolina, where they made their living as farmers. His grandparents moved to the rural town of East Quogue, New York where they purchased a farm. My great-grandfather (whom I was named after) worked as a state highway foreman, in addition to farming. My grandfather helped farm with his father, and later my father helped his dad on the farm.

My father grew up on the family farm, about thirty minutes from where he had been born. The farm was used to grow potatoes, cauliflower and lima beans, which were sold to Birds Eye, a flash-freezing vegetable company. Other things that were raised on the farm were milk cows, beef cows, fruits and vegetables. The crops and the livestock from the farm supported his parents and siblings (five), making them almost completely self-sufficient. This strong connection to the land and its agricultural importance was a way of life for my dad. To this day, my father has always been an ”early to bed, early to rise” person. Work had to be done during daylight, so all other schedules revolved around what was happening on the farm.

When I asked my dad what it was like growing up on the farm, he said to me, “It was hard work.” For his whole life, he worked at hard jobs and he has always worked outside. I asked if he remembers his jobs on the farm, and he related a story about the first “job” he remembers. When he was eight years old, he was given the task of driving a truck through the rows of the field while his father and other workers picked and sorted lima beans by hand. He said, “I couldn’t reach the gas pedal or brake, so when I got to the end of a row, I would throw the clutch into neutral and my father would run over and turn the truck around, and I’d do it again.” He told me that he drove the truck all summer long and later during the year, he drove the truck to pick up hay and straw. When he got a little older, his father would let him plow the fields. He told me about how everyone in the family did their part on the farm in one way or another. His brothers and sisters would be helping with the cooking or planting or weeding or feeding. His mother would sometimes drive the truck when my dad was in school and with each season canned the fruits and vegetables that were ripe.

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My dad also said it was “hard” because as he got older, he was interested in doing other things. He really wanted to play baseball, but that was planting season. He wasn’t tall enough to play basketball (winter sport) so he wrestled. His nickname at school was “Farmer.” Not many farms (or farmers) were still being operated by the early 1960s. The year before my dad graduated from high school (1965), his dad decided to rent his farmland to other farmers, and he bought a cesspool cleaning and building business. My dad worked with his father for over thirty years after that. Although my dad said work was hard, there was a closeness from working with family members that has remained to this day. Work was hard, but there was a satisfaction in completing a job and there was food on the table as well.

The last topic that we talked about was family tradition and as soon as he started to answer, I recognized the Southern ties. He told me how every summer, in the month of August, they would have a huge family picnic, similar to a hog roast. The picnic included all members of his extended family and friends who came together to spend time. He told me about some of the foods, including cold watermelon and lots of corn.

My father may have grown up in New York, but he grew up with close ties to the land. Now living in North Carolina, he is always out digging in the dirt. When we first decided to move to North Carolina to live, he said, ”I’m just returning to my roots” – back to slow and easy, big front porches, NASCAR racing and barbeque – all things he’s always liked, but didn’t realize it was because of his “Southern connections.”

Work Cited

Wright, David. Personal interview. 13 Sept. 2010.

Note: Charles E. (Charlie) Wright, who lives in Whispering Pines, is a university transfer student at Sandhills Community College where he is pursuing an associate in arts degree.

Hot Fudge Experience

by Biminii (B.J.) Heard

A wise man once said, “If you don’t know where you came from, you can never understand where you are going.” With this in mind, the interview of one of my grandmother’s younger sisters became even more meaningful. When I asked my great aunt, Emma Gillis (also known as Fudge), about the period of history best described as the Civil Rights Movement, I learned about differences in today’s society as compared to when she grew up: her memories concerning the Civil Rights Movement as well as differences in politics, world views, and family traditions.

Auntie Fudge, when asked if she seen a major difference in today’s society compared to when she was an adolescent, replied, “There is a whole heap of difference in today’s society compared to my younger days. For one we have a black president. We still see racism, but not nearly as much or as bad as when I was a young lady. I recall babysitting for a young white couple’s five-year-old son who actually called her the N-word. In my day whites and blacks didn’t live in the same neighborhoods under any circumstances.”

I asked Fudge about the Civil Rights Movement and her activity involving the movement, and her response was, “I definitely backed them in what they did with the sit-ins, the marches, and the soapbox speeches on the corners and supermarkets. I personally did not march or anything like that because I worked for and with whites. I wanted to save money so I could move away and had no idea how my boss and co-workers would react, but I do regret that I didn’t because my siblings were actively part of the movement.”

My next question was, what was the most memorable moment in civil rights history from your experience? She replied, “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., being on the radio, speaking of racial equity and unification, was the most memorable moment for me. Then one day I heard on the same radio about the good doctor’s assassination; my stomach immediately dropped like a stone in a lake. I was at work around the same people that I felt wouldn’t understand my wanting to march for my people’s equal treatment.”

To the question of whether she can see a major difference in family values and traditions now in comparison to when she was growing up, “Yes, of course I do. Boy, what are you talking about? We had regular family reunions every other year, and y’all haven’t carried that on at all. We had big reunions where every branch of the tree was represented. Even add-ons, like if a member of our family got married, their household came and their in-laws would also attend, and this was so with everyone considered part of this family.”

Do you think that people today are more deeply rooted in traditions versus generations ago? “Nah,” my great aunt said laughing, “When we were coming up, we did everything together. I mean every detail of everyday was a family event. By my father being a minister, it was days and nights that we were the only ones at church preparing for the next service or just receiving the word itself. I even remember growing up and praying before opening Christmas presents. How’s that for traditions that you all don’t do?”

When asked about the differences between foods and the methods in which they were cooked and prepared, her response was, “Yes, there is a big difference between foods today because my father slaughtered our cows, chickens, and pigs. We caught our own fish in our lake on our property. We grew vegetables and fruits without pesticides, no hormones, all natural homegrown. We pickled a lot of our foods to preserve them. Cooking methods were different as well. We used an old cast-iron potbelly stove that my brothers had to chop wood for us to heat it with, no just walking in the kitchen when you’re hungry and whipping something up; we had to prepare ahead of time.”

Doing this assignment has reminded me of something I hadn’t thought of since my grandmother’s passing, the fact that we were from different worlds even though I am her descendent, lion of her lions, offspring of her offspring. I learned things about my great aunt that my thirty years on earth hadn’t taught me. Aunt Emma Gillis was a great candidate for my interview because her experience is priceless. She agreed to this interview only under one condition; it was, “I hope that me answering these questions can help you get a good mark on this paper.”

Work Cited

Gillis, Emma. Personal interview. 12 Sept. 2010.

Note: B.J. Heard lives in Southern Pines, NC, and is majoring in business administration at Sandshills Community College.