Our Charming Speech is Gone With the Wind
by William Murchison, The Dallas Morning News Columnist

This column originally appeared in the Dallas Morning News on 13 March 1996

What we had right here in North Texas the other day was a "norther" -- except that we didn't call it a "norther." Following the lead of our weather prognosticators we called it a "cold front."
This discrepancy dawned on me as I sat before the fireplace, glancing over the periodical mailed by a chicken-fried organization to which I belong, the [League of the South]. The league encourages Southerners in the exercise of their indefeasible right to be Southern, never mind Northern reproaches and sneers.

To this praiseworthy end, a certain James E. Kibler, Jr., of Whitmire, S.C., exhorts Southerners to speak like Southerners rather than, well, non-Southerners. He'd rather we not just blend input stand out. "I believe," says Brother Kibler, "we have the capability to assemble lists of ... Southern words and expressions toward the goal of creating a respected Southern idiom and way of speaking."

"Recreating," it might be more accurate to say. We had the idiom once. We just mislaid it, suh -- doubtless while watching TV.

A pertinent example would be "norther." I am not sure what Alabamians and Tennesseans call these blasts of air that roll down from the frozen Northland, but Texans formerly called them "northers." We have not done so for years -- though "norther" is easily more shivery and evocative than "cold front." Nor is there any meteorological substitute for "blue norther" -- the species of "front" that, while bearing down on us, imparts to the sky the hue of a Sunday-go-to-meeting suit.

Brother Kibler is full of recommendations to restore distinctiveness in Southern speech. One proposal is that we drop "lunch" and recommence calling the mid-day meal "dinner." The evening repast would become once again "supper."

Johnnie! Susie! Come to supper! The music of iron skillets, the flitting of lighting bugs, are in that antique invocation. Supper, in the South, was the light meal: cereal or sandwiches, sometimes bacon and eggs. No culinary folderol, anyway. All of that belonged to the midday repast known as dinner, when the whole family turned up, from office or school, to feast in solidarity on meatloaf and turnip greens.

Brother Kibler's linguistic preferences fly in the face of drastic changes in Southern society since World War II. We "lunch" at our desks on vending-machine salads. In the evening, the business day behind us, we finally "dine" -- if we dine at all. The language of the older South is the language of the small towns in which most Southerners grew up. Gone with the wind! The culture of the towns, and sometimes the towns themselves, have disappeared.

But Brother Kibler is right: The old way of speaking has charm and value. Language is a part of being. To talk one way is to be something that people who talk differently are not. This means the lords of language sometimes meet with defiance when they mandate change. Brought up saying "ice box" rather than "refrigerator." I would not now dream of speaking otherwise. I am frozen in solidarity with the past, on this question anyway.

Particular customs also can command defiant affirmation. A well-educated Texas woman I know relates how in the old days her equally well-educated mother, whenever a black cat crossed her path, would spit and say "damn."

It's a good custom, the woman still insists -- not for any theological purpose it serves but rather as a tiny, feeble thread linking generations. The more such threads we break heedlessly, the more isolated we become in a society seemingly bent on annihilating memory itself. We're not supposed to love the past we're supposed to hate it. Modernity drums this message into us relentlessly.

Thus the woman of whom I speak, whenever a black cat crosses her path, spits and says "damn" to all who say it doesn't matter what you say. That's the spirit! One day she and I and our families will have to sit down and talk about all such matters. Over supper.

William Murchinson is a columnist for the Viewpoints section of the Dallas Morning News.