25 Southern Rules

If you are going to live or visit in the South, you need to know these 25 rules: 

1. That farm boy you see at the gas station did more work before breakfast than you do all 
week at the gym. 

2. It's called a "gravel road." No matter how slow you drive, you're going to get dust on 
your Navigator. Drive it or get out of the way. 

3. The red dirt -- it's called clay. Red clay. If you like the color don't wash your car 
for a couple weeks -- it'll be permanent. 

4. Go ahead and bring your $600 Orvis Fly Rod. Don't cry to us if a flathead breaks it off 
at the handle. We have a name for those little 13-inch trout you fish for -- bait. 

5. Pull your pants up. You look like an idiot. 

6. No, there's no "Vegetarian Special" on the menu. Order steak. Order it rare. Or, you 
can order the Chef's Salad and pick off the two pounds of ham and turkey. 

7. Tea - yeah, we have tea. It comes in a glass over ice and is sweet. You want it hot -- 
sit it in the sun. You want it unsweetened -- add a lot of water. 

8. You bring Coke into my house, it better be brown, wet, and served over ice. 

9. So you have a sixty thousand-dollar car. We're real impressed. We have a quarter of a 
million-dollar combine that we only use two weeks a year. 

10. Let's get this straight. We have one stoplight in town. We stop when it's red. We may 
even stop when it's yellow. 

11. We eat dinner together with our families. We pray before we eat (yeah, even breakfast). 


12. We go to church on Wednesdays and Sundays and we go to high school football games on 
Friday nights. 

13. We still address our seniors with "yes, sir" and "yes, ma'am," and we sometimes still 
take Sunday drives around town to see friends and neighbors. 

14. We don't do "hurry up" well. 

15. Greens - yeah, we have greens, but you don't putt on them. You boil them with salty 
fatback, bacon or a ham hock. 

16. Yeah, we eat catfish, bass, bream and crappie. You really want sushi and caviar? It's 
available at the bait shop. 

17. They are pigs. That's what they smell like. Get over it. Don't like it? Interstate 
85 goes two ways - Interstate 40 goes the other two. Pick one. 

18. Grits are corn. You put butter, salt, and maybe even some pepper on them. If you want 
to put milk and sugar on them, then you want cream of wheat... go to Kansas. That would be 
I-40 west. 

19. So every person in every pickup waves? Yeah, it's called being friendly. Understand 
the concept? 

20. Yeah, we have golf courses. Don't hit in the water hazards. It spooks the fish and 
bothers the gators -and if you hit it in the rough, we have these things called 
diamondbacks, and they're not baseball players. 

21. That Highway Patrol Officer that just pulled you over for driving like an idiot -- his 
name is "Sir," no matter how young he is. 

22. We have lots of pine trees. They have sap. It drips from them. You park your 
Navigator under them, and they'll leave a logo on your hood. 

23. You burn an American flag in our state, you get beat up. No questions. The liberal 
contingent of our state legislature -- all four of them -- enacted a measure to stop this. 
There is now a $2.50 fine for beating up the flag burner. 

24. No, we don't care how you do things up North. If it is so great up there, why not visit 
a Northern state or stay there. 

25. And no, down here, we don't have an accent... you do.