Southern or Midwestern? (state, run, native)

[ajf131]

Originally Posted by aragx6

The only place I knew of to get grits in Columbia when I went to school there was actually the Asian grocery store and it came in these giant dog food sized bags!

I've never been able to find grits in Missouri except around Sikeston or Cape Girardeau, or maybe a Cracker Barrel. Sweet tea is pretty hard to find in most of Missouri too....I have to get into the extreme Southern part of the state before I find it being served in most or all of the restaurants. Few if any serve it in most of the state. Joplin and Springfield serve it, but according to my father that was not the case when he was there in the 1960s and 1970s. It is slowly making its way north as a favored beverage, but I think it's gonna be awhile before I see it in any restaurants other than a Cracker Barrel or Mickey D's (which started serving it north of the Mason-Dixon line less than a year ago)around here.

[STLCardsBlues1989]

I'm German, Irish or Scottish (My sis has red hair and freckles), Native American, and maybe some British. My name is German and my nose is Native American, and my Great-Grandfather always claimed we were English.

[stx12499]

Originally Posted by ajf131

Stx mentioned Louisville as being 14% German. That is a very small amount of German descent. Compare that to St. Louis, which at one time had 46% of the children who attended public schools as being from German descent. Louisville is light GErman...St. Louis is HEAVILY German. In addition, except for a few patches, namely South Central and Southeast Missouri, (the Ozark area starting around Rolla and going a bit to the east and west as well as to the South) which are a jumble of German and Scotch/Irish and maybe some British, the majority of Missouri counties, including those where most of the population of Missouri resides, have people of German descent as the largest group in them, which is again a Midwestern characteristic. Kentucky, like the rest of the south, does not have people with German ancestors dominating any of its counties...maybe one or two, that's it.

Lets see sources please. Louisville was 14% German in 1900 according to my source...I assume that at least 1/3 of the cities residents report German ancestry today. TRUST ME, Louisville is heavily an Irish/German, working class manufacturing city that in the last 20 years has reinvented itself as a logistics (UPS) and medical (Humana and Kindred among others along with UofL research) hub. It also has started to get a new south boom town feel with all the skyscrapers and condos announced for downtown recently. Also, please do not confuse Louisville with KY...they are completely different entities culturally. Only someone who has not traveled the area would say otherwise.

Louisville is certainly a Southern/Midestern mix though, and its Indiana suburbs are the same way. Keep in mind that a quarter of the metro area is in Indiana! You can go to several neighborhoods (Highlands, Old Louisville, Crescent Hill, Saint Matthews, and much of the east suburbs) and interact for weeks without hearing a southern accent except maybe at a gas station or people who travel into the downtown area to work from outlying areas. And even those in Louisville with a southern accent have a distinctly different accent than those in Nashville. Louisville is much closer to Cincinnati and much more like that city than Nashville. Louisville and cincinnati are so close that their suburbs are less than an hour apart! Also to give you an idea, there are hardly ANY country bars in Louisville, and Louisville is a bar infested, heavy drinking kind of city that likes to party until 4 AM.

[ajf131]

Originally Posted by stx12499

Lets see sources please. Louisville was 14% German in 1900 according to my source...I assume that at least 1/3 of the cities residents report German ancestry today. TRUST ME, Louisville is heavily an Irish/German, working class manufacturing city that in the last 20 years has reinvented itself as a logistics (UPS) and medical (Humana and Kindred among others along with UofL research) hub. It also has started to get a new south boom town feel with all the skyscrapers and condos announced for downtown recently. Also, please do not confuse Louisville with KY...they are completely different entities culturally. Only someone who has not traveled the area would say otherwise.

Louisville is certainly a Southern/Midestern mix though, and its Indiana suburbs are the same way. Keep in mind that a quarter of the metro area is in Indiana! You can go to several neighborhoods (Highlands, Old Louisville, Crescent Hill, Saint Matthews, and much of the east suburbs) and interact for weeks without hearing a southern accent except maybe at a gas station or people who travel into the downtown area to work from outlying areas. And even those in Louisville with a southern accent have a distinctly different accent than those in Nashville. Louisville is much closer to Cincinnati and much more like that city than Nashville. Louisville and cincinnati are so close that their suburbs are less than an hour apart! Also to give you an idea, there are hardly ANY country bars in Louisville, and Louisville is a bar infested, heavy drinking kind of city that likes to party until 4 AM.

Well I'll be darned...just looked over my old ancestry map...looks like i mistook Jefferson County for being in Indiana. So maybe it is majority German...still, that doesn't mean Louisville is not the South. It is ONE Midwestern characteristic. And even if Louisville is only 100 miles from Cincinnati, there is someting called the Ohio River that it lies below, that is a cultural divider. In the Great Migration, Louisville lost black population, unlike places like ST. Louis, Chicago, and Indy, who grew in black population because of many jobs available for factory workers and because blacks had greater opportunity than in Louisville at that time. Also, that part of Southern Indiana fits in better with culturally with the South than it does the Midwest. I have been to the area, so don't try and dictate what my experiences should have been. Louisville may be an hour from Cincinnati, but Louisville is not a city in Indiana. also, you want a source for ST. Louis' German population, type in some like "German percentage St. Louis" on google. That's where I saw the source. 46% of St. Louis children attending public school were of German ancestry BEFORE 1900. That likely suggests even higher numbers for the population of St. Louis as a whole. I also am not going to believe your words over the sources I've encountered on city-data.com. Here is the ethnic makeup of each state as of 2000. Missouri is majority German by a long shot...Kentucky by contrast is majority American. That is why the states belong in separate regions. The accent may not be as thick as Nashville, but it is unmistakably a Southern one. But why am I bothering telling you this. Again, while it does have a sizable Catholic population, it is majority Southern Baptist and is not as fast-paced as cities of the Midwest, at least to me. Louisville is definitely more like Kentucky than like Indiana in every way I would say except it's demographics. Texas has a reasonable number of German communities and Virginia has one or two. And its culture is much more resemblant of Nashville's than Cincinnati's. To me Louisville is clearly Southern. As a Midwesterner I can tell you that Louisville reminds me very little of St. Louis...the two are at similar latitudes and both on rivers and majority German. Other than that, they share little in common.

[WhyteWing]

Mid-West... Though we are also called the "Gateway to the West." How we can be both is a bit of a conundrum, but it works for us!

WW

[ShadowCaver]

Well I'll be darned,,, the authoritative arrogance continues...

[Northwoods Voyager]

Originally Posted by ShadowCaver

Well I'll be darned,,, the authoritative arrogance continues...

Y'all think so? This topic is getting somewhat boring, redundant, and senseless. IMHO. At this point I am tempted to ask, 'Who really cares?' The OP asked for opinions and many have answered. Topic will never, ever have a definite conclusion.

[GraniteStater]

Let's keep the discussion civil please.

[MoNative34]

Originally Posted by Northwoods Voyager

Y'all think so? This topic is getting somewhat boring, redundant, and senseless. IMHO. At this point I am tempted to ask, 'Who really cares?' The OP asked for opinions and many have answered. Topic will never, ever have a definite conclusion.

Ditto. I say close it down for sake of civility.

[northbayeric]

We can nickname the moderator Plains "The Padlock" 10 and make him sound like a WWE professional wrestler!

One little comment: When I've been in the St. Louis area during my three visits going back to 2003, they served grits at the Waffle House restaurants. Boy, were they good! You can just forget about finding any grits at any Santa Rosa, California restaurants, though I think you can buy boxes of them at Wal-Mart and a grocery store or two. But there's something about having grits along with the rest of your breakfast when you're eating out on a Sunday morning!

Meanwhile, I'm happy to celebrate St. Louis for what ajf131 has said it is: Midwestern with a little garnish of Southern. End of discussion, no?