To start this off, my 3x great-grandfather James William Henry Salley fought in the CSA’s 3rd Mississippi Infantry and later the 15th. Before that, he owned a small plantation near what is now Grenada.

Every cell in my body is loaded with Southern DNA, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. The same blood that works its way through my veins once soaked the grass at Gettysburg, Atlanta, Vicksburg.

Maybe I’m a little biased (yeah, just a little), but Southerners have a real culture and a heritage. Non-Southerners have a hodge podge of what passes for a culture and very little to bind them together as a people. In the dog world they would be classified as “mutts.”

Northerners will say we talk funny. I say they just listen funny. Bless their little hearts.

My Yankee born father married a Mississippi girl and converted. He even grew to like grits. Started referring to people as “y’all.” Dad never looked back.

I remember when I was in fifth grade, during one of the periods I was going to school in Eupora. The teacher discovered I was severely nearsighted when I couldn’t read the blackboard from the back of the class and I was floundering in my grades.

Grandma Salley took me to her eye doctor in Columbus to get fitted for glasses.

I was horrified and threw – yes – a hissy fit.

Real men don’t wear glasses! They’re supposed to be stomping around the woods shooting stuff. Making campfires and smoking rabbit tobacco. Playing football. Brawling with our cousins and friends.

How can you do all that with sissy specs hanging on your nose? It took a long time to acclimate to the new reality. Then I read in a book that Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson sometimes wore glasses. (Reading glasses, but why nitpick?)

One of my Grandma’s favorite things to say was “Quit bein’ ugly!”

Now she wasn’t talking to some 250 pound green haired female(?) with a nose ring wearing a XXXL Harvard tee shirt. They didn’t exist when Grandma was alive, and that would be a lost cause anyway. You can’t wash away ugly with words.

No, that would have her talking to me for writing what I just did.

Southerners believe in respect for their elders. My cousins addressed their parents (and any adults) as “Sir” or “Ma’am.” “Daddy” or “Momma” was acceptable, but respect was required in your tone.

This also held true if speaking to the man pumping your gas (yes…we had those) or the governor of the state. In the South, rudeness is the 11th Commandment.

One of my favorite phrases is “you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”

I generally use that when speaking about New Yorkers’ (or any Yankee’s) defective DNA.

When I watch modern politicians speak on TV, the saying that pops into my head is often, “That boy’s cornbread ain’t done in the middle.”

If a Southerner goes to insult you, they do it with style.

“That boy’s cheese done slipped off his cracker.”

“That girl is uglier than homemade sin.”

“Even a blind pig finds an acorn once in awhile.”

“Bless his heart. He’s three bricks short of a load.”

“Looks like he fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down!”

“That boy is two fries short of a happy meal.”

Thom Caraccio ([email protected]) is a retired musician and retired motion picture scenic artist living in West Palm Beach, Florida who hails from Columbus. He graduated from S.D. Lee High in 1968 and still considers Columbus his real hometown.