I am not a Rebel

Nobody will call me Dixie...and I'll never live on, at, near, or under the Southern Cross.  I am, of course, talking about the Confederate flag:

I am a Yankee living in the South.  I am not often reminded of this but do get reminded a couple of times a year.  And...I was reminded yesterday....mainly because of this:

This is the vanity license plate on my car which was parked in the driveway when the electrician came to do some work at our house yesterday.  He noticed it and told me in his very thick North Carolina accent that he "would get a lot of gruff from his buddies if they knew he was working at my house".  I told him that I like it here and that I don't impose any of 'northern ways' upon anybody here.  He promptly told me that it didn't matter..."you're a Yankee" and that was that!

He was partly joking but mostly serious.  He is actually a really nice guy (and excellent electrician) and he explained to me that his great, great grand daddy founded O'Kelly Chapel.  (For those of you outside of Durham, O'Kelly Chapel is a very old and very small rural church.  There are also a handful of roads near the chapel named for the O'Kelly family.)  I immediately understood that he is not only Southern but he is old South...his family has been here for a long time.

When I first moved to North Carolina from Michigan I didn't fully appreciate the Yankee comments.  I likened them more to a college sports rivalry.  It wasn't until I became friends with a woman from an old Southern family.  She explained to me that a lot of the Southern families lost quite a bit during the Civil War.  Not only did they lose their land, they also lost family heirlooms, family pictures, homes, family members, etc.  I think the most important thing that may have been lost, and she did not say this, was their pride...or maybe that isn't the best word...their sense of identity.

By no means do I condone slavery but hearing this from her totally shifted my perspective.  I had previously held a rather arrogant attitude that slavery is wrong and we...since I was from Michigan I was part of the winning team...won.  I had never before thought about the impact that the Civil War had on the families that were living here.  Shame on me.

I don't think I can ever fully appreciate the sense of having outsiders move in when you have family that have lived on the land for hundreds of years.  I do, however, have a sense of pride of where I come from.  I was born and raised in Michigan and I am proud of that....hence the vanity license plate.  It has nothing to do with being from north of the Mason-Dixon line.  It is totally an inside Michigan thing that you will likely only understand and appreciate if you are from Michigan.

I suspect that the equivalent of Yankee in Singapore is expat...