Sweet tea, pecan pie and homemade wine

"In the South, the breeze blows softer...neighbors are friendlier, nosier, and more talkative. (By contrast with the Yankee, the Southerner never uses one word when ten or twenty will do)...This is a different place. Our way of thinking is different, as are our ways of seeing, laughing, singing, eating, meeting and parting. Our walk is different, as the old song goes, our talk and our names. Nothing about us is quite the same as in the country to the north and west."
--Charles Kuralt in "Southerners: Portrait of a People"

"All I can say is that there's a sweetness here, a Southern sweetness, that makes sweet music... If I had to tell somebody who had never been to the South, who had never heard of soul music, what it was, I'd just have to tell them that it's music from the heart, from the pulse, from the innermost feeling. That's my soul; that's how I sing. And that's the South."
--Al Green

This week, as I begin the process of preparing for the trip back home, I am finding myself getting downright giddy-- not at the thought of being back in the United States, but at the thought of being back in the South. This sentiment has come as a surprise to many of my friends here, who don't necessarily view me as a very stereotypically southern kind of girl. And truthfully, the extent of my longing for the South has come as a bit of a surprise to me as well.

But southern culture is COMFORT to me. Its what I associate with a sense of HOME. And there is nothing like travel to bring that appreciation and sense of belonging to light. Southern summers have grown idyllic in my memory. Nights spent under the stars on Carolina beaches, country music concerts on the lawn at Walnut Creek, barn parties, family reunions, and barbecues (the kind where you smoke a whole pig and gather everyone you know to help you eat it)-- where cold beer, smiles, and slow conversation are always available in plenty... my heart feels at home there.

My grandparents are currently in the process of putting all of their old home videos onto DVD. They recently sent me footage of the first few years of my life in a care package, and it brought back a lot of sweet memories. When he was younger, my granddaddy built a houseboat by hand, and I grew up spending the majority of my summers doing back flips off its front porch. In a movie of my life, this Craig Morgan song could easily serve as the theme song for my childhood summers.

During the month that I have at home, I have planned to cram in as many of these kinds of uniquely and stereotypically southern activities as I possibly can. These plans include a trip to the Andy Griffith museum in Mount Airy (aka Mayberry) and a Zac Brown Band concert. I only really know one of their songs well, but could any song be more southern than this one?

"What can be more Southern than to obsess about being Southern?"
--Elizabeth Fortson Arroyo