1. Convicts working on the side of the road. Sometimes dressed in black and white stripes. The Sheriff's Officers watching over them with shotguns resting on their shoulders. Actually, I kind of like this except when they are working near my neighborhood.
2. Schools here close at the mere mention of snow.
3. Supermarkets run out of bread and water at the same mere mention of snow.
4. Hush Puppies: Deep fried cornbread.
5. There are no Cider Mills here to visit in the Fall. I miss "real" Pumpkin Patches. Pumpkins are sold at the grocery store or out front of Baptist and Methodist Churches as fundraisers.
6. Banks and drug stores on every corner.
7. Banana Pudding: Just not my thing. It is very plentiful down here and it is not complete without lots of "Nilla Vanilla Wafers".
8. Pepper Jelly: Now I am not sure if this is a Southern creation or not but I discovered it while living here in the South so that is who I am giving credit to. It is usually a pretty red or green jelly that I have seen and served myself spread over cream cheese and you put it on a cracker. It is sweet and spicy at the same time and DELICIOUS! My daughter and I love to spread some cream cheese on a "Wheat Thin" Cracker, a dollop of pepper jelly and then top it off with a dill pickle chip. You get it all. Sweet, Salty, Creamy, Spicy. Try these.....they are addictive!
9. Pimento cheese: The look of it makes me gag. Sorry! I have a HUGE aversion to anything made with mayonnaise!
10. Hurricanes
11. Okra: Slimy!! Now I had it deep fried once and that was okay but I hate finding it elsewhere.12. Bermuda Grass: This stuff is EVIL!!! If left alone it would devour your house. You cannot kill it. It can grow vertically and has creeped up the sides of my garden boxes and invaded my vegetable garden I can't tell you how many times. It never dies. It looks dead in the winter but when the warm weather comes back it comes back to life with a vengeance. Once you have it....you will wage a battle with it forever! Evil I tell you.
13. Kudzu Another green evil. However, it actually looks kind of nice the way it grows up telephone poles, climbs across fences and covers dead trees but it too will devour anything in its path. Thankfully, we don't have any Kudzu in our yard. (I recently heard that someone figured out a way to cook and eat it. I would turn down that dinner invitation.)
15. Magnolia trees: They can be humongous and gorgeous! The blossoms are white and creamy and gorgeous and the leaves are shiny green on one side and a fuzzy brown suede on the other.
16. Nobody honks their horns at you at the traffic light. If the light changes and you are daydreaming they just wait until you are finished! I love this
17. Sometimes traffic stops in both directions when a funeral procession drives by to pay respects.
18. People always hold the door for you. And they always stop to let you cross in front of their car in parking lots. Southerners are very polite.
19. Fields of Tobacco growing. No matter how you feel about cigarettes.....the fields of green tobacco are very pretty. I got very excited when I saw my first field of cotton too. (In Michigan it is corn fields that rule.)
20. North Carolina has beautiful flowers growing in the median areas of their highways. Absolutely gorgeous!!
