Northernity

I am living in a town that has a statue of a Union soldier in the town square. This town is the place that made Daniel Decatur Emmet miss the south so much that he wrote "Dixie." Today there is snow all the way up to the benches on our deck, and it's still coming down. I've been lounging around reading the latest Diane Mott Davidson caterer mystery, Sweet Revenge (the recipes are now all at the back; I liked them better in between chapters), and I got to this:

I thought of that old story about the difference between a Southerner and a Yankee. You ask a Yankee how much a dime is worth. She gives you a frosty look and says "Ten cents." You ask a Southerner, and she says, "Well, I s'pose it's not worth what it used to be, I mean, I could buy a whole pocket full of Red Hots and Charleston Chews and Sugar Daddys when I was just a little girl, and my momma would see me coming with all that sweet stuff, and she'd say--"

This does sum up one of the differences nicely. It also reminds me of the scene in the Steve Martin movie LA Story where a woman announces to a table full of people that she's been taking a course in conversation. The man next to her says, encouragingly, "so, you're studying conversation" and she looks at him disparagingly and says "yes," turning away.