I Am A Southerner
Copyright 2011 Joe C. Combs 2nd
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Front Cover copyright Joe C Combs 2nd 2011
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I Am a Southerner
I am a southerner, not a declaration you hear often but it is a fact. I was born in Ohio, a place I have lived most of my life, and grew up in the south. I spent my informative years in the south. It was in the south that I was molded and shaped to become the man I am today. Some people are southern by birth, but they are not southerners and visa versa. Being southern is a subconscious way of thinking, you are or you are not southern.
I was raised in north Florida on the St. Johns River, near Jacksonville and St. Augustine in a little town called Palatka, it is a good distance from Pensacola. Pensacola is in the Florida panhandle, the panhandle is not north Florida. Yankees and damn Yankees (that is Yankees who came for a visit and stayed) think the panhandle of Florida is also north Florida (the press think this too), it is not. You would not call the panhandle of Texas north Texas; you would not call the panhandle of Oklahoma west Oklahoma. Culture, history and geography define regions and the culture and history of the Florida panhandle is different from that of north Florida.
When people ask me where I am from, I say Florida. Then with a surprised look they ask why I left. I did not leave Florida; the Florida I grew up in does not exist anymore. However, we are talking about two different Florida’s. They are talking about beaches, Disney World, Sea World and all that twentieth century architecture. Architecture that cooks its occupants when the electricity is off, because the windows do not open and like all new buildings in Florida air conditioning is an integral part of the design. Asphalt, concrete, hotels, restaurants, malls, tourist shops, golf courses and great fishing this is the Florida most people know. (I once saw a bumper sticker that said, “Some of us are not on vacation”.) This Florida has almost choked its older sibling to death. This older sibling is where I grew up. It is still there in small pockets, but now you have to look for it and even then, you may miss it.
Let me tell you about the place I spent my childhood. First, I need to redefine a word for you. That word is cracker. You know the word cracker, every time a speaker thinks he has used the word racist too much he throws in the word cracker. Throughout the country, racist and cracker are synonymous. It may surprise you to know that not only are there white crackers, there are Hispanic crackers, Indian crackers (indigenous crackers for those who are PC) and yes even Black crackers. The word cracker to define a people and their culture is almost as old as cattle in Florida, and Floridians have raised cattle for more than 400 years.
Being a cowboy in Florida has an entirely different set of obstacles to overcome. Swamp, thick pine forests, and the scrub replace the wide-open prairies and deserts of the American west. The scrub, densely packed shrubs and bushes, ranges in height from waist high to head high, with pine trees dispersed throughout. The two most common plants in the scrub are pine trees and palmettos, though you can find almost any Florida plant in the scrub. To herd cattle in this densely packed wall of greenery you need more than a horse, a rope, and a gun. You need a bullwhip, not to hit but to guide. Often the cowboy in Florida could see no more than just the few cattle near him. To herd the cattle you crack the whip. That loud cracking sound of the whip slicing through the air, breaking the speed of sound with its tip, was a sound the cattle knew and understood. Often you would hear the crack of the whip from an approaching herd before you could see the cowboys or their herd.
“Here come the crackers”, some would say.
Soon the word cracker defined almost anything that had a uniquely Floridian twist or design, from people to architecture. The life of the Florida cowboy or cracker was hard, very hard. Almost every snake he saw was poisonous, there were panthers, bobcats, bears, alligators, and quicksand; and if you were not careful, you would become lost only a few yards into a forest, scrub or swamp. All of these hardships with Florida’s unique climate and weather too. To be accepted by crackers you needed to be dependable and tough, their life may depend on it. While looking at old black and white photographs of crackers you are struck by two things; a bullwhip hanging from the pommel of a saddle and that at a time of separate and unequal, crackers were a thoroughly integrated group (like the group on the cover). The cover photograph (over 100 years old) is a group of Florida crackers. They were not enlightened, progressive, or even ahead of their time. They had the language, opinions, and prejudices common to their time and local. However, when out with the herd each day you survived or you died, and you never knew where or what today’s dangers would be. The men you rode with had proven themselves; you shared common dangers and lived common lives even if other people did recognize this, they never fully understood it. Your first priority was to those you rode with and to other crackers, somewhere down the list were other things like race, religion, and color. Crackers were realist and practical because of the dangers to survival they faced daily. A cracker saved a cracker in danger and shared what he had, because tomorrow he may be the receiver and not the giver. Crackers knew this and anyone who has ever shared a life and death existence would recognize and understand crackers.
The principles that guided the actions of the Florida cracker are not unique to Florida or the south. That element of danger and being far from help still exists in the south as well as in disasters and wars. Throughout the history of America, the north has been more heavily populated and industrialized. In the north, if a snake bit you your neighbor would put you in a wagon and drive you to a doctor in town. During most of southern history help, if there was any, was too far away. This created a culture of independence with a live and let live attitude. Southerners care about the same things northerners do, they just handle it in a different way. You can see this from colonial times (Massachusetts delegates and Virginian delegates at the continental congress) to modern times (congressional vote on Obamacare).
Northerners care about the less fortunate and the government should do something about it. First, the government passes a plan and raises money (taxes) then it puts a bureaucracy in place to carry out the plan. Southerners do not believe taking money from everyone against the will of the people (so someone else can do something) is the right way to do anything. Just as the crackers did before them, when someone is hungry southerners take food, when someone is cold southerners take a coat, if you are out of work southerners will tell you who is hiring. When the job is too big for one person or family, southerners pitch in and help out or pass the hat asking for donations. This difference is seen in charitable donations. Many of the people, who want the most government action, donate the least (it is the government’s responsibility), many people who want the least government action, donate the most (it is my own responsibility). Which of these two philosophies is right and which one is wrong is up to your personal choice, but no matter your choice, these two philosophies are not compatible with each other.
The conservatives attacked Vice President Biden for only donating $3000 to charity in 2007. Why? From a southern perspective, he donated money to a cause he felt was important -- good. That is much better than a faceless bureaucrat taking his money in taxes and using it to support a cause the Vice President opposes.
This is not to say there are no liberals in the south, believe me there are. The difference is that outside the south the opposing side quite often is a force to be beaten and destroyed at any cost, the end justifies the means. In the south the ends does not justify the means, left and right are a necessary balance in our culture and society. In the south you may not like or agree with your neighbor, he may even seem strange, but if he does no harm to others you leave him alone and go to his aid when he is in trouble (live and let live). Progressives in the north have the same solution to most problems, add a dash of government and behold the problem is solved. Liberals in the south like government solutions too, up to a point. Southerners do not like government intruding forcefully into people’s lives against the will of the people. You can see this difference in Florida’s political climate today. The areas of Florida populated by the descendents of the Florida cracker vote mostly for conservative democrats and republicans, while those parts of Florida populated by people from the north vote mostly for progressive democrats and republicans. Today St. Augustine is a city in transition, as more and more of its residents become immigrants from the north. Adams (from Massachusetts) and Jefferson (from Virginia) supported many of the same causes, but Adams was concerned primarily with the end result, building a strong nation. Jefferson was equally concerned with the means to that end result, and the consequences of those means.
A good example of this viewpoint in action is the national healthcare reform. The south, like the rest of the country, was split and leaning towards healthcare reform until a clause was added to the bill that would force all people who did not have healthcare insurance to buy healthcare insurance. This clause also made not having healthcare insurance a crime punishable by law (no you will not go to jail, but you could pay a fine). Forcing each citizen to buy a commodity from the private sector was too much for many southerners; the eleven states of the old south, plus Kentucky, and Oklahoma all voted against healthcare reform (it passed anyway). The president was correct when he said that healthcare reform would fail unless everyone was compelled to participate, but to the majority of southerners (democrat, republican, and independent) this was too much government intrusion. You do not have to accept this observation, but if you are a politician looking for votes, you ignore this at your own peril. Despite the impressions of many northerners, Jimmy Carter is not your average, every day, typical southerner (neither is Strom Thurmond).
Southerners by nature are not conservative or liberal they are southern. When conservative republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan swept the south against incumbent democrat president Jimmy Carter, the press heralded this as a shift in the south towards republican conservatism. Southerners were not becoming more conservative, Reagan’s words were more in line with their centuries old concerns and beliefs. President Carter, a former Georgia governor, was seen as more in line with northern concerns and beliefs.
The United States is an industrialized nation, but that industry is different in the south. Throughout the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries, industry in the south was centered on agriculture, forestry products and food production. This has remained the same until the last decades of the twentieth century when foreign car companies began building manufacturing plants in the south. In the 1960’s Nasa built a space center in Florida and one in Texas, but the high-tech parts and manufacturing were done in the north. In Florida, the spaceships were assembled and launched, while in Texas the flights were controlled.
I have used politics in some places to explain the difference between north and south, but it is not about politics. I used those examples because they are the easiest for most people to find and understand on their own. Do not make the mistake of believing the differences of the north and south are all political. The conservatives find it easier to get votes in the south right now because the means they are using to get to their end result coincide with southern beliefs. Conservative desired results are not necessarily the same as southern desired results. When the conservative means change, so will southern support for conservative politicians.
Visitors to the south usually notices things are slower in the south and often think this means southerners are less intelligent or maybe lazier. A saying from India goes “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” That explains the south to some degree. Better still is one from Egypt “man fears time, but time fears the pyramids”.
I have been through many storms at sea, though I avoid them as much as possible. There is a moment after the worst part of the storm passes and I realize I am going to survive. It is in that moment when I feel more alive than at any other time. That moment is unique and cannot be replicated on land, that moment is drug like. I have heard other men describe that moment by saying with pride they have beaten mother nature. I believe you do not beat nature, nature decides to let you survive this time. The next storm, well that is the next storm and nature has made no decision about the next storm, but this storm you may survive. That attitude is not the mariner in me, that attitude is the southerner in me. The southern attitude that you may survive your environment, but you will never conquer it. The southern attitude that has led to our strong independence. The southern attitude that requires you help those in danger. That is why, when southerners need help, they are gratefully no matter the source of that help.
So, you see southerners are different. They are different because of their environment and history. They appear slower because they are. They are not slower because of a lack of intelligence or an abundance of laziness. Southerners are slower because in the sparsely populated south, haste could kill you. They are slower because patience and persistence in their environment meant survival. Southerners have the same problems and prejudices that exist in the north. But the solutions that worked in the north for more than two centuries do not work in the south and could get you killed if the situation is dangerous enough..
I want to leave you with this. If you still think southerners are slow, dim-witted racists; as a southerner I say that is your opinion and you are entitled to it. As an observer of people, I say in 1860 northerners underestimated the southern determination, patience, and resourcefulness (they also failed to understand why southerners fought, as do northerners today) that mistake gave the United States the bloodiest war in American history.
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Joe & Elizabeth Combs
THE AUTHOR
Joe Combs served in the United States Navy from Jan 25, 1980 to Nov 8, 1988 serving aboard the USS City of Corpus Christ SSN 705 and the USS John Marshall SSN 611. Joe also spent considerable time at sea on the USS Dallas, USS Philadelphia and the USS Boston. He now lives in Columbus, Ohio near his daughter. Joe has worked at numerous jobs from field hand to field service engineer.
Elizabeth Combs attends first grade and dance classes. She lives in Columbus, Ohio.
Joe is also the author of:
Titanic, A Search for Answers
Christmas Patrol
The Art Teacher
One Last Thought
One Last Thought: behind the scenes
Alexandra
I am A Submariner
A Grandfather’s legacy
How To Connect With Me.
My web site is: www.joeccombs2nd.wordpress.com
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Joe’s other books are available in print at Amazon.com
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