Road Apples by Tim Sanders
Aug. 15, 2011

If it quacks like a duck, it might be a Yankee

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I was born and raised in Michigan, but I’ve lived in the South for almost 40 years. I use dozens of Southern expressions, and my northern friends even tell me I have a Southern accent. But there’s something I’m still not sure about. Actually, there are several things I’m not sure about, but the one thing that’s bothering me right now is: If you’ve lived over half your life in the South, does that make you a Southerner?

I posed that question to three actual, born and raised Southerners, and got three distinctly different answers: a) NO, b) I’ll need to study on that awhile, and c) if you walk like a duck and quack like a duck and have feathers all over your butt, you ort not embarrass your family by taking them to the Fall Festival.

Those answers were not very helpful, but the last one did remind me of Harold. When our family first moved to this part of Alabama, we lived in an old farmhouse, and we had a duck. By which I mean we were given a duck by a fine lady who felt like we desperately needed something to provide our front porch with a protective, waterproof layer of duck poop. The duck’s name was Harold. We named him that because we turned him upside down, examined him closely, and eventually determined that he was a male by flipping a coin. Harold was very young when we acquired him, and since we had a small dog named Sammy who’d just had puppies, Harold decided that he was a puppy, too. It was very disconcerting to see Sammy leading her procession of six puppies around the yard, with Harold waddling along behind. When the puppies nursed, Harold got right in there and did his best, although you could tell by his technique, which involved a lot of pecking, that he had no idea what he was doing. Unless, of course, he was harvesting fleas.

Harold grew into a fine, handsome duck. I’m not sure of his denomination, but if plumage is any indication, he was probably an Episcopalian. One night, however, Harold disappeared. We were never sure if the strain of learning canine behavior had caused him to snap and fly off to Canada, or if he’d just become too chummy with a fox. But the fact that Harold hung around with puppies and joined in their activities and learned to eat kibble did not change the reality that, despite what he may have thought, Harold was still a duck.

Which brings us full circle to Yankees who’ve lived in the South and hung around with Southerners and even learned to like grits. Even though we become familiar, and comfortable, with Southernese, we still feel, deep down inside, that we are only masquerading as Southerners. And my guess would be that Southerners transplanted to the north always feel a bit displaced, too.

For example, there are certain Southern pronunciations which never sounded quite right to me:


• PONCE DE LEON - When I managed an Atlanta labor pool over 35 years ago and directed my temporary employees to “catch the No. 2 “Pon-se-daily-own” Avenue bus, they looked at me as though there was a stalk of rhubarb hanging out of my nose. The proper Southern pronunciation of the 16th Century Spanish explorer’s name, they informed me, was “Ponts-dee-Lee-on.”

• HOUSTON - And another troublesome Atlanta street name was “Houston,” which nobody in Atlanta pronounced “Hughes-ton,” but instead called it “Hows-ton.”

• BLOUNT - Oh sure, “fount” may well be pronounced “fownt,” and “mount” may be “mownt,” but Blount County, Alabama, is “Blunt,” and don’t ask why.

• JORDAN - For reasons known only to Southerners, the “Jordan” in the hymn “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks I Stand” is pronounced “Joar-dan,” but in all other cases it is pronounced “Jurdin,’ as in “Shug Jurdin,” of Auburn fame.

• ARAB - If a Yankee was familiar with Ray Stevens’ Ahab the “Aye-rab,” he might figure this one out. The old joke tells of the Michigander who stopped at a fast food joint in Arab, Alabama, and asked the girl behind the counter: “Just how do you pronounce the name of this place?” Her reply, of course, was “Day-ree Queen.” Needless to say, the proper Southern pronunciation ain’t “Air-ub.”


Other Southern names which are more easily pronounced, but still confuse and amuse new northern immigrants, have to do with grocery stores. In the north, our grocery stores had no nonsense, let’s get down to business names, like Kroger, A&P, and Serious Wholesale Foods, Incorporated. There was nothing exotic about northern grocery stores. In the South, however, there was:


• PIGGLY WIGGLY - When I was a kid in the mid-‘50s, and first spied a Piggly Wiggly grocery store on a Florida trip, I cracked up. It was a creative name that reminded one of ... well, hyperactive swine. I wanted to stop there and watch ‘em wiggle.

• JITNEY JUNGLE - I learned later that “jitney” was a reference to either a nickel or a taxicab. The “jungle” part referred to what we now know as a “rain forest.” Okay, so I still have no idea what the name meant, but I certainly admire it.

• GIANT JOHNSONS - I think this had something to do with Johnson’s Giant Foods, but the sign above their Attalla store said “Giant Johnsons,” and left me wondering whether their products were FDA approved.


In defense of misguided transplanted Yankees, however, I would hasten to point out that a good percentage of Southerners who travel to Michigan pronounce Mackinac “Mack-in-ack,” rather than “Mack-in-aw.” And more than a handful of Southerners, some of whom I know personally, gave up in frustration when looking for Gratiot Avenue to take them from Mt. Clemens to Detroit. From the pronunciation they’d heard, they expected the sign to read “Grass Sh–” ... well, you get the idea.