More Southern Dialect

Sometimes within the context of a story or novel I prefer to write a character's dialogue in dialect. In the old days this was often done with lots of hyphens and apostrophes. If you've read much of H.P. Lovecraft's work then you will have encountered this type of dialect written into his fiction. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this method of illustrating dialect kind of sucks. There are generally so many little marks and squiggles in the form of those previously mentioned apostrophes and hyphens that it seems as though what you are trying to read is hieroglyphics rather than English letters.

I try to avoid that method for transferring dialect to the published page.

For years I would work in some apostrophes, avoid hyphens, and then just use phonetics to translate the sounds. The first few editors to whom I submitted did not seem keen on this tactic and they tried to school me on writing dialect. Most of the time their advice was for me to just cut it the heck out and forget about dialect.

Yeah. Well. Fuck them.

Sometimes dialect is really hard to convey. The types of dialect I try to use in my work are the types of dialect I encounter in my life--mainly various southern dialects. One kind that is really hard to show on the page is one that I hear when I'm dealing with people who live in the lower foothills of Appalachia. Yeah, that's right. There are actually variations of the dialects of the mountain-speak one hears in the higher mountains. I suppose these are people who either went no farther than the upper edge of the Piedmont and were influenced by folk from lower elevations, or they are people from the Piedmont whose speech patterns have been altered due to relatively recent contact with those moon-shine makin' butt-fuckers from the mountains. Either way, it's a funny dialect that is so unique that I find myself wanting to use it in my fiction.

But damned if it is very easy to do. These people tend to make two syllables out of one-syllable words. Simple words like "and" become "AY-and". While "pan"turns into "PAY-an". Or "bit" is pronounced "BEE-yit". If you try to write anything like that within a line of dialog you are going to run into a Jupiter-sized world of trouble. So the best way to get the idea across is the all-knowing narrator to mention the facts of life of the speech patterns one or two times so that the reader gets it locked into their mind's ear, or to have one of the other characters think to themselves how the speaker of this dialect enunciates their words.

However, for sheer effectiveness, the best method I see is to write stretches of dialect phonetically with no goddamned apostrophes, hyphens, or commas that muck it all up so that the lines end up looking like something Jackson Pollock dribbled onto the page.

I had almost gotten it right a few times when I combined phonetics with apostrophes. My mistake was in allowing the apostrophes at all. The idea first hit me when an old friend of mine from Atlanta was showing me a batch of Civil War letters he had purchased in a collection. These were genuine Civil War letters written by a Confederate soldier to his family back home. In those days a lot of people were only mildly educated unless they could afford advanced schooling. What you ended up with were men and women who had a rough understanding of the written word but not the finer details. In those cases those people wrote phonetically. I'll give you an example from one of the actual letters I was allowed to read. It concerned the outcome of a horrible battle in which the soldier had been involved, and I will quote him exactly as he wrote the line.

"They was considerbel many killt today."

Now...we all know what he meant. What an educated man would have written was: "There were considerable many killed today."

And his letter went on and on in this way. Words like "Yalls" for "your", etc.

When I read this letter I knew how I'd write dialect from then on. The first story I wrote after that was set in the 1870s and was created using snippets of letters from a man in Colorado written to his parents in Tennessee, along with scenes of action and dialog between his compatriots. All dialog was written just as they would have said it--in phonetics. I did not use hyphens or apostrophes to butcher the written words as the characters were slicing and dicing the English language. The reactions I got from editors were less kind than my other methods--they all seemed to prefer Master Lovecraft's manner of conveying dialect.

Some years later I encountered the work of writers like Cormac McCarthy and Harry Crews who were penning critically acclaimed fiction using just such a technique as I had envisioned. This felt good and I knew I had been right all along, and that the editors I'd encountered who had complained were full of shit.

Or SHE it, if you will.

This here is a house I encountered one day in 2008 when I was hiking to the top of a mountain in western North Carolina. Why is it here? Because the South, goddammit. This is an area where you can hear some really amazing, kick-ass dialects, while at the same time seeing some tremendous scenery where ol' Mother Nature works overtime. (On a side note, I have never wanted to own a house so much as I did when I set eyes upon this one. I stood at the edge of the fence and took photos and didn't approach any closer because southerners know not to encroach on private property--it just ain't done. But I would have bought this house instantly if it had been for sale and I'd had the money to complete the purchase. It remains the most ideal home in the most perfect of spots I have ever seen--at the edge of field and forest, just below the summit of an impressive mountaintop.)

This video has nothing whatsoever to do with my blog. I do listen to this guy's videos on YouTube from time to time because he talks often of camping and woodcraft. Also, I love the guy's dialect and try to think of how to translate it to the written page.

Grunion

The English language is a weird thing. I suppose other languages may be just as weird, but I wouldn't know since I don't speak any other language. I once took German, but I never got beyond a second semester. And even the English that I do speak is in a heavy low-country dialect and peppered with various bits of southern slang.

Which is why I wanted to mention the word in the title of this bit of my blog:

grunion.

Now, when most people hear or see that word they either have no idea what it is, or they recognize it as a small fish known for flopping around on the California sand to lay its eggs in vast numbers before either being eaten by predators (including humans) or retreating to the sea.

But here in the corner of the South where I grew up, grunion was something else entirely. What it meant was generally a person of less than average stature and/or strength. Grunion was reserved for the smallest fry who either tried to go out for a spot on the football team, or who actually made the team, but were still tagged with the epithet for being shorter and weaker than everyone else. In fact, most football teams generally have one or two grunions on the squad.

Why did this word make the leap from a fish to a type of person? I reckon, perhaps, because of the allusion I made above ("small fry"). But that could have served for any type of little fish, or maybe some small animal. Why didn't something else catch hold? Why grunion?

Well...it is kind of cool, unique word. And there is something in the sound of it that indicates a certain level of contempt toward those on whom it is used. From what I understand it is pretty much a uniquely southern use of the word. If you played football in vast parts of the southeastern USA, then you likely heard the term or used it, or perhaps were even the target of it.

Football players can be real assholes.

At any rate, from the Big Thicket of Texas to the coast of Virginia I suspect that there are little guys running around on the football fields trying to make the cut, or trying to earn a starting spot who hear it to describe them.

Go get 'em, grunions.

Private Property

My dad instilled in me an almost total respect for private property. If I see a property boundary and I know it's privately owned, I will do whatever it takes not to cross over that line. When I was younger I thought that this was something peculiar to my father, but I later learned through various reading that it is a cultural phenomenon widespread in the area from which he hailed--the southern Georgia, north Florida border. When those poor white folk told you to stay off of their fucking property, they by God meant it. Violating such borders could result in injury or death, and the Law would generally side with the property owner.

These days when I'm hiking in National Forest land I will sometimes come to the boundaries of private property, often with "Keep Out" and "No Trespassing" warnings. When I used to hike with my Yankee pals, they would scoff at my perceived paranoia in avoiding crossing over onto private property. Apparently such things are not an issue where they were raised.

And often I will happen upon some areas that I can see from public property that are absolutely heart-stopping gorgeous, but which lie on privately owned lands. I will do my best to admire such places from a distance, but I will never trespass to see them. Many times I have seen fantastic waterfalls that are on privately owned real estate and wished that I could get a closer look. At such times I wonder why eminent domain has not been declared to put such places into public hands where everyone can enjoy them.

Recently I stumbled upon just such a spot. I won't say where it is, respecting the owner's right to privacy and their right to have their property and not be unduly bothered. But this waterfall was amazing. Probably close to 100 feet in height, it lies completely on private land and is not accessible to public viewing. I got these shots because I paused very briefly along a gravel road just long enough to try to get a usable image. And I was reminded of my past frustration at wanting to see places like this, wishing the government could exercise eminent domain so that we could all spend time admiring this amazing waterfall.

But, at the same time, I wish I had the funds and opportunity to own it myself.

So it goes.

House, staircase, viewing platform. All on private property.

The photo does not do this waterfall true justice. I would estimate the total height of this amazing falls to be about 100 feet.

It's (Not) a Joke, Son!

OK.

At last, we come to the tried and true, the traditional, the reason for most of these Confederate Memorials that pepper our Southern landscape.

For those of you who haven't lived in the South or visited the South, almost every southern city, town, or village has at least one standing memorial to either the Confederacy itself, or to the men who fought for it, or sometimes to specific individuals or armies. Next time you're off the Interstate and riding through a small town, just take a look. Usually they're located either on, or near county courthouse property. But sometimes they're put in more imaginative spots.

The defenders--I say--the Defenders of State Sovereignty, sir!

I hear there are a lot of them in New England, too. For the Union soldiers, of course. But they're around.

A few years ago I read an article about a pair of monuments that had been standing in the wrong towns for about 100 years. The statues were made by the same company and one was sent to a town in South Carolina and one to a town in Maine. Only the company screwed up the manifest and sent the Confederate one to Maine and the Union one to South Carolina. And nobody noticed for about nine decades. Finally a New Englander (it would be the Yankee) noticed the "CSA" letters on his statue's marble belt buckle.

Official communications twixt nawth and souf were exchanged. I think each town let it lie. Which is saying something, if you think about it.

I grew up with a dad who would often say something negative about Yankees. But as my mom was a Yankee, and with the sarcastic voice my dad would use, I always knew that he was kidding. I thought everyone made jokes like that. It was only after spending time with one of my dad's older brothers that I realized that there really were Southerners around who still hated Northerners. It wasn't a Kenny Delmar "That's A Joke, Son" funny, but the real deal. A lot of Southerners who grew up directly in the shadow of the Civil War really did hate Yankees.

It was sobering as a kid to discover this sad fact as I did on a trip to visit one of my dad's brothers in Florida.


My uncle Ersley was a master fisherman. I mean, if there was anyone better at fishing than he was...well, I don't believe there was, so there! The guy was a magician. If he'd waved his arms over the water and the fish jumped out into his arms I wouldn't have blinked. He was that good.

Once my dad and I were visiting him at his home at Sebastian Inlet in Florida. We were on a pier casting our lines out and reeling in one fish after another. Of course we had Ersley to coach us and tell us what kind of bait to use, where to cast, etc.

After a while, a father and son who were standing farther down the dock and watching enviously as we filled our buckets with fresh fish came over. The dad approached my father (luckily it was my dad he chose and not my Uncle Ersley) and asked him how we were catching so many fish. So I stood there while my father explained how to do it. My dad told the guy that he and his son were using the wrong bait and rigs and explained what kind of hook to use and to switch to shrimp as bait. He told the fellow to walk down to the end of the dock and the bait shop would sell him some white shrimp. Soon the guy and his little boy were catching many fish. He thanked my dad.

But my Uncle Ersley was livid. I watched in horror as he walked up to my father and dressed him down, just short of violence. "WHY DID YOU TELL THAT GODDAMNED YANKEE HOW TO CATCH FISH??!! DON'T YOU EVER DO THAT AGAIN, GODDAMN IT!"

He was serious. He was not kidding. He did not like the idea of that Yankee catching our southern fish. What a tool.

For my dad, the "damn Yankee" thing was a joke. After all, my mom was not only a New York-born Yankee, but half-Jewish, too! For my uncle, the Yankee-hatred was a harsh and unending reality.

This is the only photo I have of my Uncle Ersley. With a big fucking bobcat he killt on his property at Sebastian's Inlet. He bought that acreage in the days when that part of Florida was lightly populated, and he scowled constantly as it became surrounded over the years by new homes. "Goddamned Yankees!" He'd tell me, cursing them one and all. I kept my mouth shut. After all, I was half-Yankee!

One Place

I have lived all of my 52 years in the South. I've traveled very little. All of my years I have spent living in two states--Georgia and North Carolina. I've rarely left the confines of the southern USA. I am not, as they say, a well-traveled man.

Because the southern USA is familiar to me, I feel relatively comfortable within it. The various dialects of English that are spoken from the low country to the mountains are all familiar to my ear and I can both understand and converse in these dialects.

The terrain, as diverse as it is here the South, is also familiar to me. I have lived on the coastal plains and tramped through the pine plantations and floated the tidal creeks and explored the swamps; I've also hiked the highest peaks the Appalachians offer, and bushwhacked into deep hardwood coves and have gone swimming in cold, clear streams full of native brook trout.

And I've scrambled around most of the Piedmont country in between these two extremes.

I have almost always been a lover of the rural over the urban. I've lived in homes in cities, of course, but I prefer the green, open spaces of the countryside. I'd rather deal with ticks and mosquitoes than the roar of engines and the screech of the crowds. Even the gunshots are different in the country--the occasional boom of a hunting rifle is almost reassuring after dealing with the pop-pop-pop of turf warfare on a city street.

My earliest memories are of tagging along with my dad into the countryside. We'd drive the dirt roads. We'd stop and explore the woods. We'd stop and buy quail or eggs or vegetables or home-kilned pottery from farmers along the way. I would hike behind my dad through the forests looking for Indian relics or just exploring the woods for no good reason at all.

Physically, I like the South. I even like the heat, although I occasionally curse it as I pursue my job as a laborer when the sun is bearing down and the heat lies like a great, wet, sweat-inducing blanket over the world. As a kid I would stop as we tromped along sandy roads looking for bits of stone and clay left behind by the natives who preceded us to these shores. I would walk atop this sandy soil and look around me and see the pines standing tall, planted in orderly rows, waiting for the saws that would turn them into logs to be pulped for paper. I'd stand there and listen to the world around me--the constant buzz and rattle of a billion-billion insects clattering their wings together, roaring.

No matter where I go or how far away I end up going, I'll never forget the South. I am a part of it, and it is a part of me.

Mountain Trails

Compared to the average person, I spend an awful lot of time hiking on mountain trails. Most people I know never go hiking at all. But I love hiking and backpacking. As the years have passed, I do less overnight backpacks and more and more day hiking. But no matter whether it's a long backpacking trip that takes several days, or just a day hike over a mountain ridge, I get a kick out of seeing new trails, exploring new waterfalls, and conquering peaks I've never seen.

The South is unique, though. There's something about hiking in southern high country. The place is so lush that it's almost without equal as far as the range of flora is concerned. We have literally hundreds of species of trees down here. It's no wonder that places like the Great Smoky Mountains and the related ranges are considered precious biosphere preserves. You don't run into temperate rain forests very often. We have some of those here.

This is one reason why I never get bored when I'm in the southern mountains. You can never tell what kind of forest you're going to enter and what types of trees and micro-environments you're going to encounter.

The trail to a peak called Pickens Nose. Through a classic rhododendron tunnel.

Breaking out to see Mooney Falls near Standing Indian Mountain.

Along the Black Mountain Crest Trail, North Carolina.

Another shot on the Black Mountain Crest Trail. More about this trail tomorrow.

The Pull of Dirt

Well.
 

You live your life getting away from a place. You live there and grow there and are familiar with it...and face it--familiarity breeds contempt. It's true.

But you go back. There's the familiar. It can feel good to go back to a place, especially when there are a host of good memories that do a fair job of covering up the bad times. It can seduce a fellow.
 

Just about any place has its charms, I'm sure. My dad spent a good part of the later years of his life doing his best to get the Hell away from the Georgia low country where he was born and raised. And what the heck? He ends up back there at the end of his mortal coil.

I recall my father and my cousin Gene standing beneath the Glynn Oak, where it's said that Sidney Lanier penned "The Marshes of Glynn". And Gene and my dad gawked and gabbled over the beauty of the place. It was a beauty that I could not see, then. Later, I could and did, but just at that time I couldn't give a rat's ass about the marshes. And to hear my dad waxing all droopy-eyed poetical and softy over the place--well, it shocked me. The man who generally had nothing but ill to say about the land that was the bosom at which he had sucked.

It's passing strange, the pull of dirt.

Home is where you make it. And you're best served to make the best of things where you are. I can recall my dad champing at the bit to get up to the mountains of North Georgia where he thought the people would be different--where they'd be friendly and have a sense of fellowship. He supposed, I suspect, that there was a magical sense of the egalitarian up in those hills. What a shock he got when he found the mountain men of Georgia to be the most hideous humans he had ever faced. What a great gout of monsters into whose midst he had plunged himself and his family and his future.

The hot, mosquito-plagued flatlands of South Georgia suddenly seemed not so bad, after all. And at least he could understand the dialect and had a sense of what was in the heads of his fellow citizens of Glynn County, even if the mush between their ears was poisonous feces. It was poisonous matter that he at least recognized.

My dad spent the last months of his life having a fair time of it, I think. He reconnected with his nigh life-long best pal, Guy Frazier, from whom he had become estranged for a while. They caroused and I have to say that my dad seemed truly happy when he'd rediscovered his friendship with Guy...one of his old-time revolutionary pals who'd ended up going to work at the Paper Mill and becoming head shop steward and big shot with the Union. Those two did nothing but drink beer and talk politics and go on fishing trips the last few months of my dad's life. I remember feeling totally crushed when they packed up the truck one day to head to Florida to go on a weeklong fishing trip with my Uncle Ersley. And they went without me. It was the first time my dad had gone fishing without me. Man, it hurt. But my dad was happy. I think he dropped dead not ten days after that trip. Good for him for heading off and having a grand time.

Yeah, the old home turf can feel good to a wandering set of feet.

Me--I don't really have a home turf. Born in Brunswick--lived there twice. Done that. Hated it, both times. Lived in Ellijay, and there are some great memories. But the 120 acres is gone--sold off and likely developed (from what I can see from Google Earth). I have no desire to see the 120 acres cut up into four of five "farms" with strangers on my old stomping grounds. It would likely kill me. As for the city of Ellijay--well, it's a land of ignorant, inbred, ultra religious buggerers. James Dickey wasn't speaking in metaphor when he turned Gilmer County and the Cooswatee River into the nightmarish environs of his novel, DELIVERANCE. I have no more desire to venture there than I have of walking into a lion's den covered in bloody ribeye steaks. Decatur, I will visit. Especially now that Mead Road is taken once again by the gentry and the poor are gone.

I don't really have a home turf, as most do. I feel connected to so little. No religion ever fevered my brain. Family ties are all but shattered. I care not a whit for any particular spot I ever lived. (Well, I did love Mead Road--but that was merely a neighborhood.)

The closest thing I think that I have to the feeling most get when visiting a place they think of as “home” would be The South. As a whole. It's my Land. My Nation. I like southern accents. Low country drawl. The Elizabethan gibberish of the mountains. The city-bred accents of the New South. I know what's in the minds of most of these idiots. Their minds are full of crap...but I know what it is. It stinks, and that's okay. It's the way things are.

But that's the size of it.

No more, no less.