Missionary to Yankees

24 September, 13

Barkley Pierce was the first real life, dyed in the wool, proud of it Yankee that I had ever met in my life. To be sure, we had some Yankees in Hartsville, SC, but they were more like weeds in the garden. Every respectable Redneck has a garden. Each year, you plant some beans, watermelon, squash, tomatoes and a few collards. Nobody eats the collards, but it just seems right for them to be there, like an appendix. If you're gonna eat collards, you need a whole mess of them, and that takes too much room, so you just buy them off the back of somebody's pickup truck on the side of the road. In every garden, there are always gonna be some weeds, but you don't really talk about the weeds. When you visit somebody else's garden, you just say how lovely the squash looks, or "I just love your tomato plants! Who thought to grow them in a 5 gallon Yogi Bear Honey-Fried Chicken bucket like that? And so attractive on your front porch, too. Your husband is such a handyman, bless his heart." Yankees in Hartsville were kind of like the weeds in the exquisite Kalmia Gardens. So long as they didn't clump up or stand too tall, they were fine. A few of my friends growing up were Yankees, but they were kids, and were thus saved by early exposure to the South. Some of them have even gone on to be NASCAR fans.

Barkley, however, was all Yankee. He was my freshman roommate at Clemson University. He talked funny. He looked funny. He listened to Pink Floyd. He thought Lynyrd Skynyrd was a foot disease. I knew right away I would need some help, so I enlisted all my Hartsville buddies. Luckily for Barkley, there were only about 20 of us at Clemson from the Class of '88. Several others had chosen the path of the dark side in Columbia, SC and were thus beyond saving and useless. We set about to convert Barkley Pierce. In a moment of weakness (maybe a headlock), we even got him to declare, "I love the South!"

Barkley and I went on to become good friends. He even invited me to go back home with him to Delaware for Spring Break. I met many of his friends, none of which made the same declaration as Barkley. That trip stirred up in me, however, a keen desire to see the world.

Clemson prepared me in so many ways for where I am today. I didn't learn a thing in class, but I did learn a lot about myself and other people. Clemson was my first exposure to:

• Yankees (There are many varieties.)
• New Jersey Yankees (I loved them. They always told you exactly what they were thinking.)
• New Jersey Yankee Girls (Mixed results there. BIG HAIR!!!)
• Bagels (Never even heard of them before.)
• Unsweetened Tea (I thought it was a mistake. Still do.)

As backwater as Clemson might seem to some, it was a safe environment for me to to explore other cultures. Living in Pinehurst, NC gave me my Masters Degree in Cultural Studies. I was outnumbered there by a large margin. Tom Bryant and I were about the only Rednecks left in Pinehurst. He has made a nice living selling Grits trees to the Yankees. Now I am in Spain, getting my PhD. I will be Dr. Redneck.