Reply #73: I generally love your posts Maddy McCall,

[eyepaddle]

but the day I was canned from the oilfield and allowed to flee Louisiana was about the happiest day of my life. Granted I worked offshore for a couple of years, and the offshore oilfield is not exactly a thriving hotbed of freethought, but I got tired of the entire "we're the friendliest region in the world--just as long as you admit that where you're from sucks and is a vile boil on humanity. Oh yeah, even though I've never been anywhere else I know this place is the best" routine.

I once had a good ol' boy explain to an Englishman -- In my logging unit -- "Americans hate Yankees more than they hate foreigners." I still don't know where to start with tearing that apart, Yankees are no longer Americans, but the region that attempted to shoot its way out is, as well as the implied postion that non-Yankee Americans hate everybody who is not a fellow non-Yankee American.

Yankee being used as a pejorative or derogatory statement got pretty tiresome. Especially in light of its shifting defintion. People from Alabama think of Georgians and Floridians as Yankees, Louisiana knows Arkansas and Texas is nuthin' but a bunch o' Yankees. Hell, where I lived (Lafayette) anybody north of I-10 was a Yankee. If a club is that exclusive, you'd think other people wanted in.

As long as the assumed theme is "we're better than you" of course people are gonna get annoyed. And the secret is out that the south doesn't like the north.

You might hear about it more than you want to here, but this IS a political message board, so you're gonna run into it more here than elsewhere. I hang out with some fairly political people up here (in MN) and North/South relations usually don't come up at all. Only when we're discussing electoral maps and votes. When I lived in Lousy-ana I heard that topic often, both in modern and historical context.

This was rarely directed personally at me, because I (even though this message might belie this) am pretty good at getting along with folks. But I heard it most days nonetheless. I'm annoyed with large slabs of people from Maine to California, and Alaska to Florida, including many here in my home of Minnesota. As soon as the South stops constantly telling me how f'ing great it is, maybe then I'll start to believe it is great.

Now I hope after that off-the-cuff spleen-filled essay is out of my system we can still be friends.

I am glad I am not in the South anymore for that I am not ashamed.