Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I'm an Alabama native (Mobile) and frankly, I think southern culture is dying everywhere. Can't even go to a restaurant for breakfast and get grits without asking for them anymore. Used to be automatic.
I don't live in Alabama now and have spent my life moving all over the country. Everywhere has it's own pluses and minuses. Your job is going to probably require you to live near a metro area to have the best chance of decent work.
My sister and hubby live in a small town, Lowndesboro, twenty miles west of Montgomery, and they love their home and the community. But they do have to trek into Mg for all their shopping and even to dine out. However, Lowndesboro does have that old southern feel to it. Probably less than a 1000 residents and most know one another.
Montgomery has an AF base nearby and anyplace there is a military base you're gonna have some transplants from somewhere, if only temporary. So living outside in a much, MUCH smaller community is your best chance to keep some southern sanity, while allowing you to do your job and go home.
Texas, where we live has the predominant southern political bent, but also it's own brand of culture. The big cities are too metropolitan to have what you would like, but smaller cities like Lubbock or Wichita Falls, or Abilene, might be easily adaptable for you. And Texas has no state income tax. The high 8 1/4% sales tax does not apply to groceries or prescription drugs.
Arkansas, other than Little Rock, might also be a southern consideration for you. Still lots of old south in the smaller cities and towns---which is everything BUT Little Rock.
Believe it or not, I think the state that I've been in which is very similar to the Old South is none other than Wyoming. You can't believe how helpful folks are with one another. And, since you are in the health field, there is a thread in Wyoming entitled "only in Wyoming would you see this" (I think it's run its course) where someone drove to a lab and saw a technician outside drawing blood from a man sitting in his car. He asked her about and she said that the driver has trouble walking so she always just goes out and draws his blood while he sits. And at the VA (Cheyenne, I think) nurses were in the parking lot this past year to give flu shots to patients in their vehicles. Now that is the certainly old style southern service that I'm pretty sure left the south years ago.
Wyoming is our favorite tourist destination and we've been there or through there going to Montana more times than I can remember. Scenery is varied from north to south, east to west, but all beautiful. However winters can be brutal and if you are a deep south girl it would sure take a bit to adapt. Jobs of any kind are hard to come by. Best spots would be Cheyenne, Casper, Sheridan, or Cody IMO.
Ah, but other posters may have better ideas for you. My only suggestion as a wanderer over my lifetime is that happiness in any locality, is your responsibility to find, not your neighbors. People tend to respect those that respect them, to be polite to those who are polite to them, to be helpful after they have been helped. There are always a few #%&@ anywhere you live. Ignore them, and take the initiative wherever you go to be recognized as the respectful, polite, and helpful person you hope to find in them.
I'm from South Carolina and Greenville, SC is the most conservative part of the entire state. It doesn't make sense what you are spilling out on here. Northerners are moving to Horry, Charleston, and Beaufort Counties. If you don't like it anymore there are hundreds of small towns that have not changed one bit in the same state.
I know this may be totally fruitless, but I am SO sick of Greenville SC and the lack of others here that are like myself. I was born and raised in the South by parents born and raised in the south, whose ancestors actually helped found upstate SC. So yes, I have a Southern accent (I am not going to change that) but I am educated (working on my master's in nursing) a hard worker, and just want to TRY desperately to find a southern town or city that is not so overwhelmingly northern now. I just can't stand it. Every where I go, there is not one person that talks like I do or remembers what places used to look like. Where I work, where I go to church (yes I am a Christian, baptist), where I shop, even the library! (I went to get a new library card, in Greenville, SC no less and the lady said "there arent many of you left down here are there?" I wanted to throw up.)
Don't get me wrong, I don't hate anybody, but it seems illogical to me that northerners want to get away from where they were living and what they were living with and then they turn where they move to into exactly what they left! Crime is up down here, traffic is bumper to bumper, especially in morning and evening commutes (a 15 mile drive takes 35 minutes) and taxes have skyrocketed and there is no where to get away from it, unless you have enough money to buy up a subdivision before it gets built (58 acres) and just fence it off like my husband's ex boss did when his company was bought from him for millions of dollars. And trust me we don't have that kind of money. I really am upset at the loss of the Southern culture and want to find somewhere my husband and I can move where this is not happening, but still be a Southern state.
Any help would be great! Sorry if I sound like I hate Northerners, I don't, but I do hate what they have done to the area that I grew up in. It has lost the very charm and appeal that probably brought them here in the first place.
OK, from reading the title of the thread, I thought you were going to be from Atlanta or Charlotte or Raleigh or something, but sheesh...I'm an SC native and while Greenville is definitely growing, in part due to Northern transplants, from your description you'd think the place was just growing like the aforementioned cities and that's simply not true at all. But it's all relative, so with that in mind, try neighboring Spartanburg or Anderson, or go a little further south to Greenwood. If you still want some sense of civilization with very little outside growth, go to Florence. But trust me, there's definitely not a need to leave the state--unless you just really want to.
I tell you what you do...move to another part of SC...Im sure youll find more "Southerness" than even YOU can probably handle. Northerners might move down there , but there is NO WAY theyll really change that place.
Actually, some of the coastal areas--where most Northerners tend to move to in SC, including retirees--are indeed slightly changing the character and political leanings of the region. It's not going to become another Florida anytime soon though.
I know this may be totally fruitless, but I am SO sick of Greenville SC and the lack of others here that are like myself. I was born and raised in the South by parents born and raised in the south, whose ancestors actually helped found upstate SC. So yes, I have a Southern accent (I am not going to change that) but I am educated (working on my master's in nursing) a hard worker, and just want to TRY desperately to find a southern town or city that is not so overwhelmingly northern now. I just can't stand it. Every where I go, there is not one person that talks like I do or remembers what places used to look like. Where I work, where I go to church (yes I am a Christian, baptist), where I shop, even the library! (I went to get a new library card, in Greenville, SC no less and the lady said "there arent many of you left down here are there?" I wanted to throw up.)
Don't get me wrong, I don't hate anybody, but it seems illogical to me that northerners want to get away from where they were living and what they were living with and then they turn where they move to into exactly what they left! Crime is up down here, traffic is bumper to bumper, especially in morning and evening commutes (a 15 mile drive takes 35 minutes) and taxes have skyrocketed and there is no where to get away from it, unless you have enough money to buy up a subdivision before it gets built (58 acres) and just fence it off like my husband's ex boss did when his company was bought from him for millions of dollars. And trust me we don't have that kind of money. I really am upset at the loss of the Southern culture and want to find somewhere my husband and I can move where this is not happening, but still be a Southern state.
Any help would be great! Sorry if I sound like I hate Northerners, I don't, but I do hate what they have done to the area that I grew up in. It has lost the very charm and appeal that probably brought them here in the first place.
You think SC is bad, try being a Central Florida native and a proud Southerner. 80% of Florida has been utterly ruined. I got sick of it and began looking for jobs elsewhere. There are some parts of Florida that are still Old South, but they are dying and there's not much opportunity in those small towns. I relocated to South Alabama and love it
I would think it would be easy for you! Just move 30 miles outside Greenville to find what you're looking for.
Yeah anywhere that sounds odd and backwards usually has the least amount of northerners.
All of those are college towns, though. They're going to have people from all 50 states, plus professors and whatnot from all over. But it will be mostly a transient population, not really a transplant one (at least I think so). There are other towns in Mississippi that I would consider far, far more Southern and insular.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Montgomery
