Essays

PEOPLE

“In the South, the breeze blows softer than elsewhere through the pine trees, and accents fall softer on the ears. Neighbors are friendlier, and 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.

What we carry in our memories is different, too, and that may explain everything else.”

Charles Kuralt

Southerners: Portrait of a People