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Old 07-20-2011, 11:16 AM
 
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I agree the posters from Michigan. You don't have to leave the state for that. You can find that in many places even in the Northeast.
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Old 07-21-2011, 12:05 AM
 
Location: 30-40°N 90-100°W
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Yup, probably.

Also "The South" isn't really monolithic. Many of the descriptions I hear here of "The South" I have had to learn to glide over because I know they're not meaning the parts I have family in.

I was born in the rural "Mountain South" and although it has a certain politeness, lots of "sir" and "ma'am", people there can also be a good deal more blunt than most Midwestern people. In the parts of the "Mountain South" I knew there was little or no "fake friendliness." If people didn't like you, or "your kind", they would often say so in no uncertain terms. Or at the very least it became pretty clear pretty fast. Heck a friend of my Mom's from down home said, on her stepson's suicide, "well I didn't really like him anyway." She was an odd gal, she's over a 100 now, but I'm not sure a Midwestern person would say that even if they felt it. An Arkansawyer sometimes will. Some of them lie and tell stories to be amusing, but there's a cultural tendency to "shoot from the hip."

My Mom moved to Northwest Arkansas a few years after marrying my Dad. As she was Catholic, and Northern, they called her "a foreigner." I think they would have also seen her as "a foreigner" if she'd been a Mormon from South Carolina. Anyway many of them were not real fond of all that and told her so. Others just wanted to "test her" with a series of pranks and see how she responded. As she did fairly well those accepted her at least somewhat. Also some befriended her and were often more loyal than any friends she's had since moving back to her hometown. So some of what I'm going on is her experiences as I left Arkansas at age 5. The only ones I know of who switched and turned against her were ones that had not been "saved" when they met her, but after getting "saved" felt it was inappropriate to be friends with an "idolatrous" woman who likes to dance. Mostly she knew where they stood and there wasn't much fakiness.

Also I think the "fake-friendliness" is a bit of a class thing. I would think even in the "Old South" the lower-classes are a bit more blunt or can be anyway. And there's variety in both, and in Arkansas, just as everywhere.
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