How is your region portrayed in pop culture?

Indiana in the South my ass. The most generous definition I can think of has the South ending at Bowling Green, Ky., and most days not nearly that far north.

 

I don't think anybody claimed that Indiana was "in the" South, only that southern Indiana was culturally like the South, at least in the sense of both being infested by people who speak in a southern drawl, say sir and mam, carry guns, shoot deer, drive pick ups, drink sweet tea, eat ribs, vote Republican, love NASCAR, drink bourbon and visit meth labs.

 

The only reason Kentucky is considered the South is because the University of Kentucky is in the SEC. The state of Kentucky, southern Indiana and southwestern Virginia -- hell, even parts of Tennessee -- are more along the lines of cousins to the South, not really a part of it. They can come to family hootanannies and we'll have a big time, but we'd really they rather not stay overnight.
The true Mason-Dixon Line is the long, straight border that runs along the top of Tennessee and North Carolina.

 

So being Robert E. Lee's home state and site of the CAPITOL of the Confederacy ain't enough to earn Virgina admission into the South?

You Southerners are damn picky about who gets to be in your club.

 

We aren't picky. We lost Virginia in the war, along with peninsular Florida and everything inside I-285.

 

At one time they were. They still have honorary status, and certain parts of the state are invited to the family reunion. But they're like the sibling that hits it big and distances themselves from the rest of the family they're embarrassed to be seen with. Atlanta and, to a lesser extent Charlotte, are also in that club.
Northern Virginia has much more in common these days with the I-95 northeastern corridor and is really the southern terminus of the Boston-NY-Philly-Baltimore megalopolis. The I-81 corridor isn't really Southern, it's more Appalachia. Haven't spent a ton of time around southeastern Virginia, but it strikes me as more in common with Northern Virginia than the true South.

 

I wholeheartedly agree with you on Northern Virginia. Nothing southern about it anymore. It feels kinda like a slice of the Northeast moved south, much like Southern Indiana feels kinda like a slice of the South moved north.

Still, this shit get confusing. I once had a New Orleans native chastise me for saying his city was in South, saying Northern Louisiana was the South, but not New Orleans, or something like that. And I've gotten the Northern but not Southern Florida = South lecture. You guys need to write these rules down somewhere for the rest of us.

 

I have to say, if you're from any part of Indiana, you're a Yankee. I don't even consider most of Kentucky the South. Eastern Kentucky the south side of Corbin gets in, and Virginia gets a pass for historical reasons, but truthfully other than Southwest Virginia and the South Boston/Martinsville/Danville area... not so much anymore.

It was mentioned by someone that some states are really two or more stats in one. Tennessee is exactly that. East, Middle and West - the Three Grand Divisions (as represented by the three stars on the flag) - are all together different. About the only thing East Tennessee and West Tennessee have in common is we both send $24 for our car tags to Nashville each year. We are closer to Windsor, Canada than we are to Memphis. For that matter, Northeast Tennessee is kind of on its own. Heck, most folks in Middle Tennessee think the state ends at Knoxville, and they would think it ends at the time zone change if it wasn't for the Vols.

North Carolina is really the same. Eastern NC (where my wife is from), the Piedmont and Western North Carolina are vastly different.

Tennessee has a saying when you want to encompass the state "Mountain City to Memphis" meaning the extreme northeast and southwest points. North Carolina says Murphy to Manteo.

In fact, when we were carved out of NC back in the day, they really should have made three states instead of two. Put Eastern NC and the Piedmont together, Western Carolina and East Tennessee as a state (and add in SW Va.) and Middle and West Tennessee as a state.

 

Louisiana is a strange beast.
New Orleans is its own thing. There's a New Orleans culture that most people associate with Louisiana in general. Swamps, bayous, the French Quarter, all that crap. There's a culture and a lot of institutions in New Orleans that you just don't find anywhere else.
Southwest Louisiana (west of Baton Rouge, which is the border between it and New Orleans) is more traditional Cajun country. Six pages of Boudreauxs and Thibodeauxs in the phone book, swamps and bayous, but none of the big-city feel of New Orleans.
And then everything between Alexandria and Arkansas is purely the deep South -- and not all the best parts of it, either. It's one of those areas where there's no interstates. Very insular, small towns, farm culture and, I hate to say it, a culture of racism that would make 1950s Mississippi take a step back and say, "Whoa."

 

Yeah, up in Bon Temps they don't like Vampires.

 

The South begins at Fredericksburg. Without question Richmond is in the South.