| This is for my GA peeps...even those who've left the motherland. We're still Georgians at heart!
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There are some things that all non-Georgians should know:
Coca Cola is ours, and unless you've had one in a green six-and-a-half ounce
bottle, with a slight crust of ice on top, you don't know what the real
thing is. And you might want to try pouring about half a pack of salted
peanuts into one sometime.
If it weren't for a Georgian-Crawford Long of Jefferson---open-heart surgery
would hurt like hell.
True Georgians say "ma'am and sir" and call their mothers "mama" and their
fathers 'daddy".
They know that y'all is perfectly good English and never means just one
person.
"Fixin to" is perfectly acceptable, too.
And if y'all don't like the way we talk, well you can go on home!
Long before the Olympics brought the world's greatest athletes to Atlanta,
we gave the world Ty Cobb, Jackie Robinson, Walt Frazier, Luke Appling,
Johnny Mize, Fran Tarkenton, Bobby Jones, Wyomia Tyus, and Herschel Walker.
If you don't know who these people are, you ought to find out before you go
to bed tonight.
Long after the Atlanta Olympics have faded from memory, the greatest
tourna-ment in golf will still be played in Augusta every
April, with or without Jessie Jackson's and Martha Burke's approval, and on
autumn Saturdays, 90,000 or so Red-and-Black faithful will gather in Athens
for a prayer meeting between the hedges.
No matter how many times the Braves play in the World Series,
nothing will match the excitement of that first one.
The Stone Mountain carving is lots bigger than the one on Mt. Rushmore and
the people etched into the side of Stone Mountain deserve the honor. It
wasn't just about slavery.
Atlanta was called "the city too busy to hate," back in the sixties,
because it really was, and we should be proud of that fact.
We don't grow the most peaches, but we still deserve to be called the "Peach
State" because ours are the sweetest. That includes the Georgia peaches that
don't grow on trees. We do produce the most peanuts, pecans, and poultry.
Elvis wasn't ours, but Otis Redding, James Brown, the Allman Brothers,
Johnny Mercer, Joe South , Ray Charles, Bill Anderson, Brenda Lee, Trisha
Yearwood and Alan Jackson are.
So are Sidney Lanier, Joel Chandler Harris, Margaret Mitchell and Alice
Walker.
And I still miss Lewis Grizzard every day.
Julia Roberts may be Georgia's prettiest movie star, but Holly Hunter is the
most talented. Dakota Fanning may one day surpass them both.
FDR adopted us. His "Little White House" in Warm Springs is exactly as it
was the day he died there, near the end of World War II. Every Georgian
needs to visit Warm Springs.
Georgia once had three governors at the same time. Lester Maddox wasn't one
of them, but was elected by the General Assembly without getting a majority
of the popular vote. He did a good job too, God rest his soul. Zell Miller was the best governor I never voted for.
Gone With the Wind belongs to us. We own it. Not only is it by one of our
own and is about us, but it's also one of the great novels of all time and
an absolute film classic-and we shouldn't apologize for liking it.
The Brown Thrasher, the Cherokee Rose, and the Live Oak are our symbols.
Proud, decent, honest people are our heritage.
None are as plentiful as they once were, but none are on the endangered
list, either.
The best fried chicken in the world is served at my mama's house,
Grits is groceries and sugar doesn't belong in cornbread.
God intended for iced tea to be served sweet.
And lastly, Georgia ain't exactly heaven-but it will do until I get there.
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