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As a black female
growing up in the South, you learn how to experience life differently from the
rest of the females around the U.S. I am from the small town of Ocilla, Georgia.
It’s located in the southeast part of the state. In Ocilla, almost everyone
knows everyone else, and if you do not know everyone you at least know someone
who knows the people you do not know.
I am from one
of those small towns where there is no McDonald’s and there are only two
traffic lights. There is more farmland than land taken up with retail and/or
commercial businesses. There is a lot of fresh air and wild life.
For entertainment,
people in my region do many different things. We go out to the movies, go to
night clubs, go bowling, skating, fishing, hunting, ride around town and the
surrounding towns for joy riding, have dances, house parties, go to live stock
shows, go to local hang outs, go out to eat, have pool parties, and/or travel
to other places on the weekend.
Our major form
of transportation is personal vehicles. Most people drive around in their
cars, trucks, SUV’s, motorcycles, vans or the infamous hoopties. We do not
have a public transportation system where I am from unless you count the
school bus as public transportation. Most of the places you need to reach
are all downtown within about four or five blocks of each other. These are
not the longest blocks in the world. If the place you need to travel to is
not downtown then you need a vehicle to get there.
A lot of people
who live near downtown can walk downtown to pay bills, go to their banks, go to
the post office, and go chat with friends who may work or own a business
downtown. Some people walk around for exercise, some walk around town just to be
seen in their new outfits, some walk around to be noisy, while other walk around
just to be outside.
With the town
being so small, I personally have walked to my school before. I have ridden
my bike to various places around town. While I am there, the bike is my main
source of transportation if I just need to travel somewhere in town. If I
need to travel outside of town I take a car.
Some of the
popular foods in my region are the foods the South is known for like deep fried
chicken; collard, mustard, and/or turnip greens; Brunswick stew; BBQ ribs;
catfish; biscuits; corn bread; grits; apple, sweet potato, and pecan pie, peach
cobbler, and different fruit preserves.
In my town
sweet potatoes are one of the most popular foods because we have a Sweet
Potato Festival every year during our town’s homecoming. Over the years
different celebrities have come to this festival from various soap operas
such as Days of Our Lives and The Bold and the Beautiful. The entire day
everyone in the county and surrounding counties come dressed up and walk
around town looking at the different attractions for that year. There is a
parade and everyone finally settles down and uses the whole town as a hang
out spot for the day.
Like in many
southern towns, we speak with a southern dialect. We don’t always pronounce the
whole words, and there are short ways of saying almost everything. We do speak
proper English in formal settings but we rarely use proper English to talk to
friends or family.
Racism still exists in the South just like it exists in most
other places. It may not be as bad as it was in the early 1900s, but it is
still present. A lot of the people in my generation and the generation right
before mine interact with one another well on a day to day basis. We can get
along fine; however, there is still evidence of the divisions between blacks
and whites.
Stephene Evans |
