living in small-town southern USA

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The towns don't exist but People with that attitude and mentality, especially about god and non-believers exist. Most of southerners are not keen of anyone who practices the constitutional law of freedom of religion. They might not say it to your face but you won't get business from them and they will tell everyone they can about it. They don't like northerners. Northerners on the other hand just mock southerners and think of them as backwards. Labeling is underlined in south so if you don't care about sports most southern men consider you sissy or artsy-fartsy. Remember the keyword is MOST not all. On the other hand southerners are more hospitable and warm to you until you screw it up by telling them what they don't want to hear. I have lived 25 years in both areas.

I have descended from a long line of Southerners (Virginia, 1680), have a little knowledge of being raised in a larger city (Miami). But I've lived most of my adult life in a small town or close to it in NW Florida which geographically should be South Alabama. When I first moved up here from Miami the locals thought I was a Yankee because even Miami natives nowadays speak more like a Yankee than a Southerner but once I set the record straight and it got around I finally got "accepted" not just as a local but as what they call a "real" Southerner. In fact, I guess I've adopted their way of speaking to some degree which can be embarrassing some times.

Southerners are really no different than our Yankee neighbors or even the kooks out west. The differences are the same everywhere I think and that has to do with economic class. That the stereotypical "Redneck" lives in a mobile home with beer cans and junk cars all around is not that much different than a poor person in a NYC tenement except they don't usually own cars or have a yard to throw their beer cans in a pile till they are taken to a recycler to get cash for tires for the working vehicle they are using now which will soon become another junker in the yard.

One thing I've noticed when the Yanks come down is that they think that the slow talking Southerner also possesses a slow working mind. Quite the contrary, the slow talking enables them to look you over and judge your attributes (or non-attributes). They can be just as good at the con as the big city hustlers. They just do in in a more polite way and most likely able to get away with it more easily.

True, most are very religious although actual church going is not as popular as you might think. They still have strong beliefs based on the New Testament and any threat can be a fightin' situation. I've found that religion is just not debatable and don't bring it up except to the few folks who come knockin' and they usually leave quickly when I start telling them about my belief that we were created by alien cannibalistic 'gods' who are raising us as a food crop and will soon come back for the harvest in their food processing spaceships.

Politeness is a key in "getting along" in the American South. While we have a fair share of axxholes, most of them are not from here, or were raised by parents who are on the wrong side of the law and most likely also "immigrants" to the South. The wealthier folks are also not much different than the upper class people elsewhere. We are more likely to drive Corvettes vs. a Fararri or a Lincoln rather than a Mercedes. You know, American Made!

But still, we all go to the Wal-Mart Super Store and buy Chinese stuff by the basketful and wonder why the economy is tanked and U.S. unemployment is so high. We will tend to blame it on Wal-Mart for selling the stuff even though Wal-Mart used to have an "All American Made" section in the store which never went over good because we bought the cheaper stuff.

We also hate the Fed, all of it, except the military and the mail-man/woman. We think their #1 goal, when they are not supporting baby killers and sexual deviates, is to take away our God-given right to own guns, lots of them. Just because we store the cases of ammo in the deep freeze and keep our fully automatic assault rifles buried in the back 40 in a water-proof tube doesn't mean we are psychopathic mass murderers. We just think that the 2nd Amendment is the 11th Commandment and ordained by God. Only left out because they hadn't invented guns back then.

We like visitors, even Yankees, because we like your money but don't stay too long because the welcome won't last. We put up with your not being able to speak God's English correctly, your atheism, your belief in baby killing, your impoliteness, and your tendency to lean on the horn too much because you're in such a hurry all the time, but slow down, remember your manners, and spend more money and the welcome will last a lot longer.

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My DVD Collection: http://www.invelos.com/dvdcollection.aspx/jerryel

Don't take your wife or girlfriend there!

The original version was set in rural England. Do towns like that exist in England?


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067800/?ref_=sr_2

i guess you have never seen anyone from a very small town? really?

i lived in 3 different countries in 3 different continents. and it is all the same. everywhere you go. people live. it is the same stuff.

what i mean is...

if you are from a small town from any country, people are like this in this movie. they may not have the same traits. but they are more likely a little weirder than big town city people.

why?

like language, if you are far from somewhere, the language will be different, because you will have to travel so far to speak the same language. and because it is so remote, no travel will be easy. so it gets isolated. and more you get isolated, people start doing things differently. and it will make them think differently too. so story goes on and on... same thing for food and everything else. culture starts to be different.

Well, the ORIGINAL STRAW DOGS (Sam Peckinpah's) is set in England..
And I too, thought, Jesus..I never want to go to England..

I am from a small town in Kentucky and they are DEF similarities between that town and the town and people of the film. Super religious, it is in the bible belt. Town worshiped football. We got away with whatever we wanted because we played. You will see some crazy rednecks in the south, but you will find that most people from the south are polite and will go out of their way to help someone. Communities are VERY tite knit.


Haters gonna hate