"Don't cry when your children leave because they're coming back and bringing more with them."
― Jerry Clower

My Southern Influence

A Brief History

My Southern Influence has served me well. The South is a different country. If you haven't been to the South, you owe it to yourself to pay a visit. If you can become accustomed to the language, heat, humidity, and friendliness of the people, you might enjoy your visit.

Let's go to the South is what you hear, but I've never heard let's go to the North. It's just understood that anything south of the Mason-Dixon is just plain out of The South. I left the South in 1976 and returned in 1996, having served and retired from the Air Force. I traveled all over, but memories and family drew me back to the South.

Born and raised in the Deep South, I never understood Jim Crow. I didn't understand what Jim Crow was as a kid, but later in life, I understood. The conditions that black folk lived through shocked me. It's hard to fathom now because life is sacred and racism is a bad thing.

Black history abounds throughout the South. It is nowhere clearer than in the foods eaten, still today, and still recognized as a Southern subsistence not only among blacks but also whites.

Soul Food is pig nose, pig feet, sowbelly, pigtails, collard greens, and a lot more. If you were a black person living in the South (not that long ago) you ate Soul Food because the conditions black folk lived through forced the diet upon them. These days it serves as a remembrance for what life was like for black people, and I don't mean just under Jim Crow laws but throughout their lives before and after Jim Crow.