Will You Have Okra, Tortilla, or Moo Goo Gai Pan?

A college girl, moving all the way from Pennsylvania to Virginia, said even just crossing the U.S. Mason-Dixon Line resulted in her having trouble getting used to her college roommate calling her parents "Mr. and Mrs." andanswering "Yes, ma'am" and "No, sir" to adults. I found myself thinking, "my goodness, I guess I have truly become a southerner. I don't even notice these differences any more."

I remember when these things all sounded strange to my ears, too. (Perhaps when you read "okra" you thought it was a foreign food.) The first time I faced black-eyed peas in my school cafeteria in northern Florida I thought they had dished up mushy baby rats. Now I love black-eyed peas, fried okra, and turnip greens when I get a chance to eat them (although I don't cook any of them). I grew up in northern Indiana and at the time I moved to Florida, prior to my senior year of high school, I thought I would always feel like a northerner. I was shocked to be called a "Yankee" by my schoolmates in Florida, some of whom added the "d" word in front of it. I learned a lotof new vocabulary that year; most of it was not censored: "crank" for "start" a car; "cracked" for "leave your window open"; "carry" for "take" as in "can you carry me to town?" and "ink pin" instead of pen.

But the years have rolled on and I have now been a southerner almost twice as long as I was a northerner. The more I learn about different countries ofthe world, I find that almost every country of any size has both major and subtle differences between North and South. Persons in the north of Spain and Italy consider their southern brothers and sisters to use a poor, sub-standard version of the language, and to be slower and perhaps "lazy." Cuisines vary from the northern part of India to the southern, and the same is true in regions of China, I'm told. Isn't it delightful that we no longer have to go to distant lands or evenlarge cities to sample all those exotic cuisines? Our relatively small town(approximately 40,000) now has two Indian restaurants, two Thai, one Vietnamese, and several Italian. I'm guessing conservatively we have at least two dozen Chinese restaurants or take-outs. "Mexican" restaurants also abound. You can even get Ethiopian food in our town if you order it catered. I'm probably forgetting a few or am unaware of some other great restaurants.

Our world, no matter where we find ourselves, is an increasingly interesting place to be. That's the Pollyanna version. I know there are frictions between cultural groups, and at worst, outright conflict, fights and even violence. Why make room for people of other cultures, whether from below the Mason-Dixon line, or across the ocean? Why learn to appreciate other accents and other foods? Well, maybe because that's the way it has always been in North America.

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Submitted by Melodie Davis from her weekly column ANOTHER WAY: www.thirdway.com