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It's Cay-ree, rhymes with May-ree, as in May-ree had a little lamb. And can you cay-ree me to the store. I need to buy some milk.
My wife is a Cary girl...CHS Class of 1970. She knew everybody in town. Real Caryites pronounced Cary either "Carey" or "Kerry" like Drew Carey or John Kerry. She said a handful of people said something similar to Kay-ree...mainly from the Swift Creek crowd
I'll go out on a limb and say rural Orange County is amazingly southern, as well as rural Chatham and Alamance. Mebane and Garner seem like the most southern municipalities.
Least southern... south Durham, RTP, Morrisville, Cary, North Raleigh. Suburban areas with trace amounts of culture to distinguish them.
I'll go out on a limb and say rural Orange County is amazingly southern, as well as rural Chatham and Alamance. Mebane and Garner seem like the most southern municipalities.
Least southern... south Durham, RTP, Morrisville, Cary, North Raleigh. Suburban areas with trace amounts of culture to distinguish them.
This is pretty accurate, IMO.
Alamance is becoming quite suburban and built up around I-40/I-85, just look at Alamance Crossing. Also, LabCorp gives Burlington a slight "New South" feel, certainly a long way from the textile mill days. However, drive 10-15 minutes north or south of I-85/I-40, and it's quite "country." Even then, Burlington strikes me as pretty southern compared to the Research Triangle. I know a few younger folks from Burlington who sound much more southern than the younger folks around RTP. All you have to do is look at the billboards off I-40/I-85 to know Alamance is still hanging onto "old timey" NC/slightly rural roots.
Orange is actually pretty rural if you get away from Chapel Hill and some of the outer suburbs of Durham. Notice how the highway drops to a four lane after you cross into Orange from Durham on I-40 and I-85. Hillsborough is more so southern as opposed to Chapel Hill, and definitely the areas north of Hillsborough. However, Alamance is much more conservative.
Chatham is becoming more suburban closer to Apex, Cary, Chapel Hill, and Durham. Rest of the county, pretty darn southern and rural. Suburbs might leak further into Chatham, though. However, for the mean time, they're staying on the east side of Jordan Lake and closer to Chapel Hill.
Out of all the surrounding counties of the Research Triangle, Harnett might be the most southern IMO. Johnston is up there, but the suburbs around Clayton take some points off. Franklin County is super southern like Harnett, although the Wake Forest suburbs will possibly leak more into Youngsville as time goes by. However, Louisburg is typical rural NC. Granville is very southern with a strong tobacco legacy, and for the time being, towns like Creedmoor are actually remaining relatively small and Mayberry-ish. Hopefully, Granville will remain rural, and Falls Lake is blocking off a ton of North Raleigh sprawl that (fortunately) isn't leaking further north of the lake.
Basically, these towns are the closest to the Research Triangle that aren't too dissimilar from many rural towns across NC: Creedmoor, Oxford, Franklinton, Louisburg, Bunn, Spring Hope, Smithfield/Selma, Benson, Dunn, Lillington, Siler City, Mebane, Hillsborough (kinda), and Roxboro. All of these are quite southern, Mayberry-ish, "old timey" NC, etc.
I'm going to give one of my typically odd answers. Everywhere described is in the South, therefore it is all southern.
I'm a proud Southern woman entering middle age. I can chat with someone about gallbladders in line at the bank (though why would I ever be there, that is what the internet is for.) I can make biscuits from scratch. And Ma A.'s potato cakes. I can also make Nana's gravy (red sauce) because I married an Italian-American. And that *is* the South too, not just N.C., where transplants have been making inroads for decades.
I don't think the South can be judged by Mayberry. The South is also the moccasin-wearing marijuana-smoking folks I knew in my childhood. It was kids in trailer parks playing Pac-Man and running barefoot over gravel roads. Racism? Sometimes. But also examples of pure Southern graciousness who never knew a stranger, and could have supper on the table for unexpected guests in half an hour.
I've never eaten there, but I bet that Hooters in Morrisville employs some Southern beauties. The moms casing the Cary Targets for red tags include women who can trace their N.C. lineage back hundreds of years. And the folks moving in all over will over time *add* to our Southern character. Is New York just Irish and Dutch? No, all the new communities eventually added to the city's character and identity. Someday North Carolinians may look back at the influx of asians and Indians to Morrisville and other Triangle areas the way people look at the Moravian influence in Old Salem. My grandmother could make a mean sauerkraut, learned at her German grandmother's knee. And she was about as traditionally Southern as you could get.
I'm saddened by the strip malls and the lack of accents but change is part of a culture as well. I like walking through a shopping mall where people don't obviously bat an eye at gay or mixed race couples. There have been a lot of good changes too. I refuse to characterize them as less Southern because they aren't traditional.
Life in the 'burbs has its ups and downs but I don't miss my country neighbor's target practice in the back yard. And that's my $.02 y'all.
p.s. "Roundabout?" Seriously. Traffic circle.
Last edited by Kimeri; 04-15-2015 at 03:04 PM..
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