From Around Here

My hometown is tucked away in the mountains of Georgia. Until about twenty years ago, getting to anywhere from there was a real struggle because the roads were all two-lane, remote and curvy. Then, a new four-lane highway came through between there and the northern-most suburbs of Atlanta. When this happened, other people began to discover all the small towns and communities along that four-lane road, including the little town my family has called home for over a hundred years.

Now, twenty years down the road, so to speak, when you visit there you will run across a fairly wide group of people from various places. Older people have retired there from Atlanta and Florida. Yep, many people elsewhere retire to Florida, but the Floridians have to go somewhere when they retire and they have discovered the Southern Appalachian mountains where they build houses on sides of hills amid the tall, brittle Georgia pines. You’ll also find folks from other parts of the country and world there. And while it isn’t exactly the big overflowing melting pot that America is, it more likely resembles a bowl of soup or stew with a couple of exotic spices and maybe a dash of hot sauce thrown in for kicks.

While it’s been many years since I lived there I have often returned there over the years. On one of those trips back several years ago, I was sitting in a local restaurant with my Mom and Dad. I began looking around and noting how I felt I could tell who the locals were, who the transplants were and who the tourists were just through a few moments of simple observation. So, I began to amuse my parents by telling them who grew up there, who moved there after living a life somewhere else before living there and who was just passing through. I’m not sure I was totally accurate with what I was talking about the times I tried this, and I'm not sure in a grander scheme of things if it really mattered. I do know as I did this, I felt most at ease guessing who was from my hometown.

Maybe it was their Southern accent I heard that gave them away. And if you are Southern you know there are so many…big city word alert…nuances, in Southern accents, that sometimes only your ear picks up that the accent someone else has may be the same Southern accent you carry around in your own voice, that it may have germinated and aged to perfection on a mountaintop or down in a valley between two hollers over the course of the passing of generation after generation. Maybe it was the clothes they wore that gave them away. Nothing fancy, denim and maybe a Western style shirt for the man topped off with an Atlanta Braves cap and maybe denim and a simple blouse accessorized with a plain pocketbook (yes, pocketbook, not a purse) for the woman.

Maybe it was those things. I though like to think it was the look on their faces that gave them away or more to the point, the look in their eyes that gave them away. I want to think it was that momentary meeting of my eyes with their eyes that somehow transcended any words that might explain the connection we share and into an unspoken recognition that we were born and raised in this same small community. It’s kind of like being somewhere else totally away from that town and running into someone you do not know but when you look them square in the eye you just know without anything being said that this person grew up in the same little town, the same county you did. And when he speaks you more fully understand without it having to be said that he knows where the high school kids park on Saturday nights to get into a little mischief and that he knows the preacher who performed your wedding ceremony and that he knows the same slick-rocked creek banks and shady, muddy lake nooks to catch some fish just like you do.

I was reminded of all this in the last week or so when I came across a lady who spoke with a Southern accent like mine. As I processed the accent, I wondered where this woman was from but only for a second. Her eyes seemed to look a bit deeper beyond cursory eye contact and into a place that seemed to ask, ‘how’s your Momma and all the rest of yuns doing?’ And as I looked at her trying to place in my mind if I knew her I found that she reminded me of one of my aunts in her younger years.

Now, I have no idea where this lady is from originally. I suspect she’s hails from some small Southern town not too far away where folks still number foggy mornings in August to determine how many snowy days we’ll have in the winter and where homemade pies are still baked then cooled by the wind as they rest in the window sill of a kitchen and where a local can spot a newcomer to the area with just a mere glance.

But briefly, she came from my hometown. I could see her enter a restaurant just off a main street in that little town and begin digging into her gigantic black pocketbook in an effort to find an ink pen to write down the address of an old friend she just ran into in the parking lot. I could see her sitting at a table drinking a cup of black coffee with her family. I could hear her talking about going to a gospel singing with her cousins the next weekend or figuring out when she would have time to string, break and can the fresh green beans waiting on the porch back home.

Projection spurs the imagination.

While my hometown changes, it sometimes doesn't seem to resemble the place stuck in my memory. It also seems I lose a bit more of my own accent with each passing year. Maybe all those changes are why hearing an accent that matches my own catches my ear and makes me pause even for just a brief time. Maybe I find a bit of comfort in thinking that the accent that comes out in my own voice when I'm excited or around home folks still echos back in that mountain town where the locals can talk to one another and without words tell anyone observing that they are 'from around here'.