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So I was watching an episode of Hoarders and the family had a very thick Southern accent (think rural Tennessee). And then they flashed the location across the screen and it said, Vienna, Illinois. So I immediately looked at a map, and sure enough that town is practically in Kentucky. I was just so shocked at how thick their Southern accent was. I live in Greenville, SC (granted we're an area with a lot of transplants, but still) the accent in Illinois was way more rurally Southern than I have encountered here.
Yeah. Vienna, Illinois is actually pronounced "Vi-anna". Just some trivia.
Illinois within 30 miles is pretty well part of the south in every way. It just happens to lie in a midwestern state, much like the bootheel of Missouri.
I once stopped for gas in Mt. Vernon, IL and saw a dualie pickup truck with Confederate flag stickers all over it, and a giant Confederate flag in the back window. Illinois plate. Coincidentally, I learned a few weeks later about the existence of "Copperheads" in southern Illinois. (They were Illinoisans who sympathized with the Confederacy during the Civil War.) I still consider southern Illinois to be Midwestern at its core, but with progressively more Southern influence the farther south of I-64 you go. Cairo and Metropolis are basically the gateways to the mid-South. Both towns are actually closer to Birmingham, AL than they are to Chicago.
I once stopped for gas in Mt. Vernon, IL and saw a dualie pickup truck with Confederate flag stickers all over it, and a giant Confederate flag in the back window. Illinois plate. Coincidentally, I learned a few weeks later about the existence of "Copperheads" in southern Illinois. (They were Illinoisans who sympathized with the Confederacy during the Civil War.) I still consider southern Illinois to be Midwestern at its core, but with progressively more Southern influence the farther south of I-64 you go. Cairo and Metropolis are basically the gateways to the mid-South. Both towns are actually closer to Birmingham, AL than they are to Chicago.
Cairo and Metropolis don't have much if anything in common with the midwest.
Yeah. Vienna, Illinois is actually pronounced "Vi-anna". Just some trivia.
Illinois within 30 miles is pretty well part of the south in every way. It just happens to lie in a midwestern state, much like the bootheel of Missouri.
And to fix this post, I meant "Within 30 miles of the Ohio River"
Yeah. Vienna, Illinois is actually pronounced "Vi-anna". Just some trivia.
i.
That's with a long I. "vigh-ANN-a" And when it's pronounced that way, you just KNOW it's in the south. Like Tivoli (tigh-VOLEY), Texas. And Vidalia (vigh-DAIL-ya), Georgia. And DeWitt (DEE- wit) Arkansas. And only Mississippi would accent a syllable that doesn't even have a vowel in it: D'Lo (DEE-low).
Tony Horwitz's book "Confederates in the Attic" has a chapter about how, even though Western Kentucky was pro-Union during the Civil War, today it's full of Confederate flags and emblems.
Tony Horwitz's book "Confederates in the Attic" has a chapter about how, even though Western Kentucky was pro-Union during the Civil War, today it's full of Confederate flags and emblems.
The Jackson Purchase (Kentucky west of Kentucky Lake to the Mississippi River) supported the Confederacy stronger than any other region of the state. Even to this day one can make a very good argument that Western Kentucky is more aligned with the Missouri Bootheel and Western Tennessee than the rest of the state. The parts of Western Kentucky east of the lake are a different story however. There was much talk and a meeting in the Purchase region to secede from Kentucky and become part of Tennessee, but this didn't happen probably because they thought that Kentucky was going to secede anyway.
Cairo and Metropolis don't have much if anything in common with the midwest.
That's why I said that southern Illinois has progressively more Southern influence the farther south of I-64 you go, and that those two towns are basically gateways to the mid-South.
Yeah. Vienna, Illinois is actually pronounced "Vi-anna". Just some trivia.
Illinois within 30 miles is pretty well part of the south in every way. It just happens to lie in a midwestern state, much like the bootheel of Missouri.
Hr sounds really young to be married. Ive always been interested in southern OH, IN, and IL because in many ways they are as southern as VA and closer to major southern cities than their state's large cities in the northern half of the state.
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