Our family was old school rich and down on our heels or in Southern speak we were in “genteel poverty.” Formerly plantation owners in the South, now poor as shit living in lower middle class neighborhoods but, NO ONE was allowed forgot where we came from especially us kids.
It was an education I received by example and daily comments nothing that was ever made a big deal of and was never forced. Rather it was expected.
In fact family honor and pride were a very important part of life. There were expectations and you had to meet them. Embarrassing your family was the height of rudeness. How could your mother hold her held up in public if she had to be explaining your rude manners or lack of breeding? The utter shame!
I was taught old world manners or manners that you would find ladies using at a DAR meeting or at a country club. By eight years-old I could balance a tea cup and saucer on one knee and a plate of finger food on the other. Ankles crossed, ladies, not legs. Speak only when spoken to and have something to say that is worth hearing. No one wants to hear a child rattle. To do so was considered rude and your parents were frowned at. A grave insult to the family.
Conversation skills were a priority. No one should feel awkward and there should never be uncomfortable silences. You knew what to say, when to say it, how to say it and how to avoid other people’s conversational gaffs. There were signals you would give a person so that he knew when he was suppose to leave or if it were acceptable to stay.
Speaking. That was very important. Elocution, diction and erudition is expected, a given, not an uncommon thing. It is also a signifier of those who are and who are not acceptable society. It wasn’t just what you said but how you said it. Take “cussing” for example. While it was frowned on by most of the women, it was accepted by the men so long as it was used in the right context. Even the women felt this way and never used a “cuss” word in the wrong context. And they knew the words no matter how delicate they pretended to be. But if a woman used one of "those" words, you knew something was seriously bad, this was especially true based on the severity of the word. The harsher the word, the more trouble there was going to be.
You never asked a woman her age. If it came up you knew that no matter how old she looked or didn’t, whatever she told you was just dead wrong. She was always going to skim a bit off, as much as she could get away with. I never knew how old my mom was. I was told that it was none of my business. Along with age, weight, appearance, politics and god are considered inappropriate topics. You should never make another person feel uncomfortable. You should never start a debate in a social setting.
You never discussed family problems or concerns. You never took charity. You simply did not lower yourself to accept a hand out. It wasn’t done. The community would frown. Your status in the community dropped. If it were offered, it was done with the expectation that you would, of course, say no.
From day one I was taught how to walk. To sip my drinks rather than gulp. No sound should come out of your mouth when you were drinking. Once at the table, you didn’t leave unless you were dying. You sat up straight and you used your best manners. Those weren’t reserved for dinners out of with friends. Your family deserved the best from you. Your napkin went into your lap, never leave lipstick on it. Don’t wipe, dab. You really shouldn’t need it. It was just for form anyway.
You were taught what to drink and when. If a cocktail was acceptable for a lady or not. Whether or not hard liqueur was appropriate. What wine to serve. How to dine and what fork to use. What to do during a multi-course meal. Even when we had little more than beans and rice to eat, we knew how to comport ourselves.
Decorum was always expected. I knew the difference between dress lengths, styles and the under garments that went with them, how to distinguish cheap faked manners and clothes from real breeding and taste. New money is gauche even to the poor. There were lines you never crossed. You knew the difference between you and “white trash.” It wasn’t income. It was manners. You could always tell when someone was trash by watching how they behaved.
Having a husband was the most important part of your life because this was where your status came from and all women were taught to depend and rely on men and all men were taught to take care of and coddle women. This is even true in the gay community. When I returned home to Texas this past August to see my oldest friend, who is gay, he spent the who time trying to protect me, care for me and do for me. It’s our culture.
Men are necessary to women and without one you are no one, even in this 21st century. Things haven’t really changed all that much. Your home and your status in the community usually comes next or are of equal importance to your children. They are just part of life, but you don’t live for them. They make life more fulfilling but they don’t fulfill you. Even so you will be judged by their actions and behavior and how you brought them up (the word raising is used for cattle and poultry, not people, just another one of those little “speech” things that are a dead give away for breeding).
Now there are some things that are ill mannered that everyone does but there are even rules of conduct for those. Such as gossip, while you may discuss someone’s antics behind their back, it’s usually done in such way that it never gets back to that person. If it does, it's usually meant to, done so intentionally because the community wants that person to know that she needs to behave and quit making a public nuisance of herself.
You always speak to everyone, too. Even if they are your mortal enemies. If you see the person who stabbed you in the back walking down the street, you are expected to say “hello, how do you do?” as if there is nothing wrong with the world and that person is expected to speak in return. If they do not it is the height of bad manners and this is the one of the two greatest shames in the world. The second is speaking ill of your family. If you speak ill of anyone in your family, no matter who you are in the community, you have automatically become white trash. That even extends to horrible things that take place such as rape, incest, abortion, abuse, etc. You don’t talk. Period.
If you decide to publicly confront someone who has done you ill, then there had better be lots of evidence that you were in fact wronged, and you had better be doing so because the situation has gotten completely out of hand. If you confront this person, you must not loose your temper and you must make sure he is completely put in his place, anything less makes the effort just a public embarrassment to you.
Most of Southern culture is unspoken but understood. Most people not familiar with this code would figure out a cryptograph before they could figure out the innuendo and double entendre of the South. I am not implying that these “signals” are all sexual in nature, they aren’t by any means. Rather they are ways of saying things that would be improper to say in polite society. You just have to understand that much of what is said, is never actually spoken, and what is spoken is not what is actually meant and its neigh impossible for someone who isn’t born into this to understand.
For example, you are in a grocery store, you want to walk down the aisle but someone is blocking your way, so you say “excuse me.” Elsewhere someone might think you were apologizing for walking in front of the person blocking the way or another faux pas but rather in Southern parlance “excuse me” in this case means “get the fuck out of my way.” Said with a smile, of course. It is important to know that an apology is never an apology. For that matter a compliment is never a compliment and if you can’t understand the subtle difference in one or the other you are screwed. With a smile, of course.
My mother had a boyfriend who use to say “Audrey, you are full of magnolia blossoms and bullshit.” It was an apt description of her and it's also an apt one of the South.
