Conspiracy Theory

[Blackleaf]

Southerners generally come in two varieties - legit southern hospitality (friendly AF and will invite you to the pig pickin') and crazy xenophobes.  Tourists come away with two very different impressions based on which of the two they interacted with.

I've lived here in Texas my whole life, and I don't see the distinction.

[Cassia]

Makes sense we have plenty of Southerners on an atheist forum. Don't feel so all alone, LOL.

[Mike Cl]

I'll never forget that St Patty's day parade in Savannah. A mostly black high school marching band from Atlanta was simply killing it, making the previous college band sound like they needed more lessons. At first... from the crowd behind me.. it was one guy mumbled something about apes, and then another, and then another. I turned around and saw several fine examples of inbreeding. Real "Squeal like a pig" types if you get my drift. I started uncontrolled laughing out loud after seeing them and hearing what they said. They didn't even figure out I was laughing AT them.

In the mid 70's I drove from CA to Upper State NY.  The trip took me thru a slice of West Virginia.  Stopped at a gas station and a station wagon pulled up behind me at the pumps.  While I was gassing up, the Deliverance style family came boiling out--all 70-11 of them (yeah, a bunch!),  of the car.  Wow!  What a collection of slopped foreheads and droolers!  I did a record filling up and paying.  They looked like a cartoon come to life.  No, not a funny cartoon, but a cartoon nonetheless. 

[Shiranu]

Makes sense we have plenty of Southerners on an atheist forum. Don't feel so all alone, LOL.

It was definitely different when I was "growing up" (not to imply I'm not still young, but I mean as a teenager), but I think nowadays (at least in Central Texas) identifying as an atheist is not something that anyone is going to look at you twice for, and I don't really know the religion of any of my friends, coworkers or acquaintances, besides one or two who do wear and have tattoos of Catholic iconography.

When I was a teen that was definitely not the case. The only people who would dare to identify as atheist back then were the real weirdo kids that no one wanted to talk to, and parents would flip their shit over them wearing "anti-Christian" band shirts or jewelry. However I don't know how much of that social stigma was from them being self-professing atheists, how much of it was from them just being incredibly socially inept, and how much the two factors played off of each other.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I would point out that the Indiana had a very large KKK contingent. Some of the local klaverns were held in our garage.

[Cassia]

I would point out that the Indiana had a very large KKK contingent. Some of the local klaverns were held in our garage.

I spent some time working in Kansas. Holy crap. Made parts of GA seem like VT in contrast. Rebel flags flown from gun-racked pickups. That and that spine chilling tornado siren. I was chatting away, all friendly during my cafeteria lunches and most of my temporary coworkers mostly just silently looked at me while they chewed, LOL.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"Ya'll sound funny."

[Unbeliever]

Makes sense we have plenty of Southerners on an atheist forum. Don't feel so all alone, LOL.

I was born and raised in the Deep South, but I got better.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I went to school in Alexandria, Indiana. I had two teachers named "Gaither", the third one taught Home Ec., the spirit crusher of female students in the '50s and '60s. If you're religious you might recognize the name. "The Bill Gaither Trio" still has a show on some of the religious channels in the US. They made good money in the 60s, in part because a celeb used them for backup singers. This got to be such a money maker that they built their own sound studio in a town with <7,000 people. The singer I mentioned would stay at Bill's little place, built on an entire city block of land, and so tastefully landscaped.

Oh, the singer's name? Elvis Presley.

[SGOS]

Oh, the singer's name? Elvis Presley.

As I recall (I don't know why), I remember Elvis having a backup group called the Jordanaires (Jordan airs).  Are they the same as the gaither Trio?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

He recorded with more than one backup group, of course. The Gaithers' setup gave him a way to avoid fanatic fans.

It's a pity nobody got footage of the Gaithers' swans chase Elvis around the grounds. That was epic.

[SGOS]

Those larger domesticated birds can be aggressive.  My ex and I were driving a country road, and decided to turn around and go back in the opposite direction.  We pulled into someone's driveway, and I noticed that 10 to 15 of those big white geese were hanging around the front of the house.  We pulled in just enough so we could back out, and this flock of geese came running down the road making frantic geese noises, and then started attacking the car, I guess they were trying to bite the car or something, because their beaks were slamming into both sides of sides of the car.  After we got away from the house, I stopped to see if they had dented the car, but there were no dents.  I'd never heard of such a thing before.

[Hydra009]

Geese are notoriously aggressive, often intimidating much larger and more fearsome animals and bluffing them into fleeing first.  Geese are almost always willing to throw down when threatened, and are known to chase after adult humans despite the massive size difference.  Your car was likely too close to the flock or a nest.

On foot, if you ever hear a Canada goose start hissing like a snake, it's time to back away.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The first time I was attacked by a swan was on a tour of Strafford-on-Avon, IIRC. We knew better than to mess with the "Gaither Nazgul".

In Europe it was common to keep geese as watchbirds, they strenuously objected to unannounced visitors in the night.