Jerrica Lamb (jerllamb@mars.utm.edu) from 208.47.6.158 at 09/28/00 05:24PM
comment
    The South is definately heading for change. I can see the good and bad quickly approaching. Being a "die-hard" Southern, I try to be optimistic and embrace the change, but there is still a minute, nagging voice in me that wants to reject the changes we see coming and beg for the older South. I don't mean a racial South, instead I mean a South of time and genteel ways. I can slowly see us becoming busier and faster in pace with every passing day. We now hardly have time for a friendly call to our friends that are in another state, instead we hope an e-mail message will suffice in contact. I can't think of an e-mail message as being very genteel and full of the Southern graces that we once held so dear. Don't get me wrong...I could not possible imagine my life without the net, but how do we keep the "Southern graces" alive when we don't even have time to really talk to another individual. I want the slower South back. I want the afternoons I had as a child on the back porch with my momma and granny. I want those Southern childhood days where we ran bare-footed through the kelly, green grass. I want it to be o.k. to say, "ain't" again, and never to worry about verbs and subjects agreeing. I want my Southern childhood back. I want to again listen with anticipation to the ol' hoot owl and huge, bull frog at night and proclaim, "Daddy, did you hear Mist'r Bull Frog a singing to Misses Bull Frog." Maybe, it's not the South I really want to stay the same, it's me. I loved my Southern childhoon full of drawls and slangs, and with each passing day, I feel those things slipping deeper and deeper away from me. I feel those future generations will become so saturated with speed and technology that we will forget the priveledge of slowing down and enjoying the sweet, Southeren air filled with the scent of pine and the sound of a dear, Southern momma's voice singing in the breeze.