Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Southern Accents

There is a song on the great album “Unchained” by Johnny Cash, named Southern Accents. He is know to have said it should have been the anthem for the south instead of Dixie.

The song talks about how every aspect of the singers life has a southern accent. Not just the way he speaks, but everything. It’s true, and what it makes me think is that we are not any different than anyone else in this world, we’re just from the south. Yes some of our customs, transgressions if you like, old and new, may be questioned by others, but we are no different then anyone else, we’re just from different parts of the world. We are from the south, and we do things with a southern accent, and that’s the difference. We celebrate that difference. We don’t run from history, we know the history of everyone, everywhere, has questionable moments, but we look forward, with a southern accent.

So last night we attended the taping of a pilot for a t.v. show. It was a take off on Iron Chef, with a southern accent. The twist on this show is that the challenger is interviewed before the cook off. So it got me to thinking how everywhere, everyone is basically the same and wants the same things from life. Different cultures are always being bashed for being different. That’s all there is to it, they are different and that alone turns people off. Now I get pissed off when the south and southerners are labeled rednecks. The biggest redneck I ever met was from New Jersey. I’m sure there are what one would call a redneck from everywhere. It’s not the locale that makes you who you are, it only adds flavor to who you are. An asshole is an asshole, I don’t care where you are from. Asshole is just another word for redneck.

But what got me to writing this is the fact that down south here, folks are working on t.v. shows, running huge companies, raising families, wait a minute that’s not true. What really got me to writing this was the job I did yesterday repairing my toilet. See, I replaced a toilet in our house a year or so ago. It never worked very well. When you flushed it huge bubbles came up and not much went down. I asked questions and did research and was told the air vent was stopped up. When you flush the air in the pipe has to go somewhere and if it can’t leave through the vent, it comes back up through the toilet. Well, for a year I have tried every trick I have read about or had been told to try. Nothing worked. So it hit me yesterday, a way to fix my toilet, with a southern accent.

So what I did was, drain the water from the toilet bowl, crank up my heavy duty, backpack leaf blower and stick the blower hose in the toilet and turn it up to top power. Well the back cover of the tank went flying as well as lots of water, the dogs ran for their life and Stacey came racing in to see what was going on. I was soaking wet, the room was soaking wet, but the toilet was working just fine. Thank you very much!