While a lot of my own posts in this thread are hyperbolic shitposts meant to get a rise out of autistic trads,
Yeah, I can definitely tell the difference between those type of posts and the ones where you're being serious.
it really does suck in the hills and hollers of coal country and the way you describe the Midwest does remind me a lot of shit I've seen in my own life.
Agreed. I've never experienced the Appalachian mountains area but from what you and Wormy describe it definitely reminds me of what I see coming out of the Midwest.
Given that Appalachia effectively overlaps with both the Upper South and the Midwest/Mid-Atlantic, I'm not surprised at all by that.
Yeah, precisely. That's what I was saying. It's not anything familiar to me. It's one large geographic region but the sub regions in it are so different to the point where they are unrecognizable from one another. The whole mountains thing throws me off. The South is supposed to be flat! lol. Gulf South is all flatland. When I think of mountains, I think of the Pacific Northwest or something. If I was ever on or near a mountain, I would fell like I was thousands of miles from the Southeast region that I know.
No, you get the genteel and metropolitan South (I'm going to go out on a limb here and say what you've experienced is suburban Florida, Georgia, or maybe the Carolinas).
No, I mean the Gulf South. I think of the genteel South to be something like South Carolina or Virginia, where you got a lot of rich professionals. Doctors, lawyers, professors and the like. I'm not really very familiar with those areas but I do consider them the South, obviously, since they're the OG's but yes, they are definitely the genteel type. The people I fuck around with are blue collar guys that work offshore or in the chemical plants and refineries and make damn good money.
I've been to Florida a lot too. They are their own thing. Panhandle feels like the traditional Gulf South, the other parts of the state it varies. Again though, the entire state has it's own thing going.
You've been watching WAY too many truck commercials.
No, not even. I mean the type of shit I actually see in person. I don't watch much television, but when I do it's commercial free. I know the type of commercials you're referring to, but it's been so long since I've seen something like that on television that the last truck commercials I remember seeing were the ones where they'd have a Chevrolet parked on top of some Mesa in the desert.
These are the type of activities I witness people doing. For instance, I got a good, old pal, that moved out to the country, about an hour and a half away from me. All the people out there, even the teenagers but especially the married, young adults, are all about hunting, fishing, and driving 4 wheelers and shit. They got money, too. Big, brand new 60k dollar trucks and shit, pulling trailers with their 4 wheelers that they take out to their camps, where they'll spend the week hunting and fishing. There's a reason why the state's motto is "sportsman's paradise".
These are all like blue collar dudes that work offshore or in an oil field, or they're tradesmen where they're pulling in beaucoup dough, and they live it up, too.
and they're up in the mountains of Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, and a small part of Tennessee.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Those places aren't the South to me. I mean, yeah maybe they're on one side of an imaginary line but that's as far as it goes. Culturally, none of the things you talk about in Appalachia is familiar to me. It reminds me more of what I see coming out of the Midwest rather than the Gulf South, what with the drugs and the trashy people.
You forget that the South, like anywhere else, has it's ghetto
Of course, of course. Every city has a ghetto area. But with this part I agree with yall. You've never seen real poverty until you've seen rural poverty. I've seen niggers with pitbulls on two feet of chain, sitting outside a trailer with no windows or electricity. This will be where crackheads live, but still. City poverty is much more manageable. You have buses running all day, every day, that you can take to the temp agency for odd jobs. You actually have a variety of jobs since there are real industries and warehouses in the city.
Rural poverty is really desolate and it's made even more crazy due to the extremely rich and the extremely poor living within miles of one another. You'll have gated Mansions with lakes on the property, horse stables, greenhouses, in ground swimming pools.. and then a few miles down the street you'll have an old fucked up trailer on a piece of property.
Hell, I actually make an effort to do a couple days fishing at the nearest lake every year, but that's more a self therapy thing than a compulsion for being in the south.
I'm not saying it should be a compulsion because of "culture" or "tradition". I'm saying people do these things here because there is so much excellent, untapped wilderness to do it in. And because they genuinely enjoy doing these kind of outdoor activities because they're fun. Hunting can be a very expensive hobby, however.
