Southern Accents... The rant revisited

As a cameraman in 1989, I got to "work" one day shooting behind the scenes footage on the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers "Freefallin'" video shoot.  There were probably 80 people wandering around the set where the Vision Skateboards mini-ramp was set-up, high in the hills, off Muholland Drive, overlooking Universal Studios and the San Fernando Valley. 

At one point, Tom was playing around with his young daughter between takes, and I shot video of them.  He turned to me, said a few words with a characteristic Tom Petty smerk, and I got the point.  I smiled, nodded, and didn't shoot anymore footage of them having family time.  I instantly thought he was one of the coolest people I ever met.  I still think that. 

While drawing a picture of Elvis Presley recently, I listened to the entire live concert of Tom Petty that the clip above come from.  I forgot Tom, one of the people I respect most in the world as a musician and a human being, was a Southern boy from Gainesville, Florida. 

The rant that I originally wrote in this post was nearly 20 years in the making.  I have every right to be pissed off about a whole lot of fucked up things that have happened in my life at the hands of other people.  But as a writer/blogger, making blanket statements about large groups of people in that rant, I became the very ignorance I work hard to eliminate.  That's just irresponsible as a writer. 

In addition, there's a big part of my personal history that I simply can't write about because of people who have interacted with me at times.  I'm literally a writer who can't tell a chunk of my own story.  I touched on things I shouldn't have while writing in anger.  Again, that's me doing a really bad job as a writer.  That's what poetry and song lyrics are for, saying things that can't always be said in a literal way.

I brought up one really serious issue in that rant that I can speak to.  The American South was entrenched in slavery to work the farms and plantations from the beginning.  Slavery is, quite literally, one of the worst forms of terrorism.  Slaves were (and still are in places) terrorized and intimidated to remain slaves.  The mindset that allowed white slave owners to be white slave owners has vestiges that continue today.  Those things, racism being only one, are holding white Southern culture back in many ways today.  In the same fashion, the mindset that allowed black slaves to remain black slaves, also has vestiges today that hold black Southern culture back.  YOU ALL need to confront and start healing these issues if you want Southern states to thrive in our high tech, hyper connected, video camera in every pocket, 21st century world. 

So let me end with a suggestion to ponder four things:
Banana pudding
Homemade mac and cheese
Fried chicken
Red velvet cake
What do these four traditional Southern foods have in common?  Any one of them can bring black, white, and mixed race Southern folk together in friendship at any time.  That's a real good place to start.