Continued

[susandennis]

My new school, in North Carolina was a half mile from home. There were school buses back then but they only served the kids who lived on the outer edge of the district. Unless you went to private school, you did not chose your school - you went to the one you were assigned to.

I was assigned to Whitaker Elementary school. I was there from the second half of 1st grade til the end - 6th grade. We walked to and from school every day. There were lots of kids on our block and the adjacent ones to walk to and from school with. Thanks to Google maps, I can show you the route.



One major issue at my new school that I ran into immediately was the accent. Although I have not been back there in more than 30 years, today, I suspect, you can wander around Winston-Salem and not even hear much of a southern accent at all. Not the case in 1955. If someone was talking, their speech was quilted in a heavy drawl with weird words and phrases. My 1st grade teacher could have been speaking Manderin for all I understood of what she said. It was a little easier with the kids my age but, honestly not that much. I walked around in a clueless fog for most of the rest of 1st grade. Everyone talked funny.

But that summer I spent getting to know everyone in my neighborhood and they 'learned' me the language. So by 2nd grade I could at least understand what I was being told.

The neighborhood was full of the best kids. Next door, down the street, across the street, there was always an army of kids to play Kick the Can with or Sardines. There were kids older than me and my age and younger than me and we were thick as thieves. We'd leave the house and explore everywhere - creeks and caves and dig holes to get to China. We knew to come home at dark and, often, we'd be out again after dinner to catch lightening bugs or play something else.

Babsie was my age and lived three doors down. Her parents were from Vermont and they spoke without southern accents and I could understand everything they said so I liked playing at her house. Ted lived two doors down the other way. His dad was a juvenile court judge and my Mom's favorite threat. "If you don't straighten up, we'll go see Judge Heefner." (I actually swapped some emails with Ted a few years ago. His Mom, still alive, had just moved from that very house only the year before. The Judge died years ago. Ted's a lawyer in Atlanta.)

Stevie, next door, was always great to play with. His Dad was pilot for Piedmont Airlines and Stevie had his own plane which was great fun to ride in. I wrote about it not long ago...

Some families move away and new ones moved in and always always there were kids to play with. Often when people paint a picture of the 1950's it is of an idyllic neighborhood where kids roam free and Dad works and Mom says home and, honestly, that was exactly how we lived. How all of us lived. No one was divorced or a single parent. All parents pretty much had the same rules. No one locked their door. It was very white. And very protestant. And that is all we knew.

Comments

[waitingonsunday.livejournal.com]

Can verify, the Southern drawl is alive and kicking in Winston-Salem. But it's not as thick as a lot of other areas in the western part of the state.

I've been in NC so long now that I honestly barely notice Southern accents anymore and it's odd to think. If I stop and consider, I recognize that they're there, but I don't think about it much, unless someone tells me I make them feel "so country" with all my fancypants enunciating (which happens semi-regularly). But when I first moved here, there were so many phrases I had to learn. Like people referring to monetary quarters as "case-quarters" or using "a month of Sundays" to mean "a long time." Or calling grocery store carts "buggies" or "baskets," which still causes confusion sometimes when I go to the grocery store with my boyfriend and mention that I need a basket and he walks toward the carts. "Might could" is another popular one and I've noticed several coworkers say "moneys" instead of "money." And, of course, "If it were a snake, it woulda' jumped up 'n' bit me!" when they have trouble finding something that's right in front of them.

On very rare occasions, I still get heavily-accented people who can't understand a word I'm saying, which mystifies me, because I share the same generic accent that most people on American television and in American movies have, so I wonder if they just hear a bunch of gibberish when they listen to the radio.

Anyway! Just wanted to say that I commiserate with being schooled on Southernisms and also to comment on how much I'm enjoying these posts.

[susandennis]

Hilariously, I did not realize all those examples were Southern!! Seriously, even after all these years. Of course, I should have because it has been a month of Sundays since I ever heard anybody mention case quarters or grocery buggies :)

It reminded me of a phase that used to drive my first Yankee boyfriend. 'Sure am not' - He said my speech pattern was so slow, that he always thought I was answering in the affirmative and had his counter all ready by the time he heard 'not'!

Good point about radio and television. But, then, I don't remember anyone ever having trouble understanding me - they made fun of me but they knew what I was saying...

Kinda comforting to know there's still some of this left. Thanks!

[sweetmeow]

You and I shared some similarities about our elementary school experience even though yours was in the south and mine was in the northeast. I never took the bus, either - in elementary and high school both. I looked at your route, and my route was so similar - seemingly a similar distance and with only one turn. I also lived in a neighborhood of kids -- let loose to play outside in all of our yards. I didn't know anyone who was divorced until I got into 7th grade, and moms who worked were basically non existent until I got into high school, and even then they were rare. Yeah -- that 50s stereotype was true - at least for me, and clearly for you, too. However, I often wonder if we were more insulated from differences back then than now. We barely knew -- it at all -- that "others" existed - sometimes living not that far away.

I wonder how I'd do with the accent issue.... Not well, I suspect. Did you ever get a southern accent from living there all those years. My Aunt Sally moved from PA to North Carolina after she married, and she ended up with a thick accent.

[susandennis]

Oh I really feel like we were very very isolated. Some by geography, some by default and some by design. That was made very clear when, years later, school integration happened there and everywhere else.

I did, in fact, join right in and developed a Southern accent which, when I entered the work place turned out to be a huge determent. In the corporate world, particularly, being female with a Southern accent was as good as wearing a sandwich sign that said I'm Stupid.

I worked every night after work with a tape recorder and Walter Cronkite to get rid of it. It took about 3 months but I was victorious. Finally.

[sweetmeow]

I'm sure much of the isolation had to do with segregation, which was so much more stringent back then. But -- it isn't only about the black / white segregation. In our town (in PA) there were not only the black communities, but the Italians immigrants lived in one neighborhood - the Irish lived in another. Some of the separation was economic based, some of it was choice to live with those of similar backgrounds - and the combination of the two. But - some was outright segregation.

That is sad that your accent became such a detriment to you career wise. Such detrimental stereotypes we have. My Aunt Sally embraced her southern accent. She married my Uncle Ben - a Southern Baptist preacher she'd met at Yale Divinity School. (No lie - that is quite an oxymoron as Southern Baptists don't usually get their education at a "fancy northern school".). He returned to the south -- with Aunt Sally -- to be a "country preacher". Aunt Sally used to tell me that in the beginning she wasn't "southern" enough. I'm reminded of so many stories about the two of them just writing this, but this is your page!

Speaking of accents - quite a number of years ago, I spent 5 full weeks in rural Georgia with my girlfriend. I returned home and I think I had the beginnings of a southern accent from what others told me. It happens.

[maju01.livejournal.com]

I've never had any trouble understanding various American accents (but I did not encounter anybody from the US until I was an adult). However, in my twenties I went to Indonesia and lived with an American family for a year or so, and after I'd been there a few months the eleven year old daughter told me she had not been able to understand me at first.

[susandennis]

I have not had a lot of experience with Australian accents but New Zealand??? My Kiwi friends kid me that I start every sentence with what? spell it. When they talk to each other, I have to listen really really hard to even get the gist of what they are saying.

[maju01.livejournal.com]

I can understand the NZ accent but I find it fascinating. Some English accents (from the UK) are similar to the Australian accent, but the NZ accent sounds really unusual to me. Scottish accents and some regional British accents have different vowel sounds but they also have some different consonants, whereas the NZ accent sounds eerily like an Australian accent but with shifted vowels.

[rosegardenfae.livejournal.com]

Love this..."their speech was quilted in a heavy drawl ..."

[badrobot68.livejournal.com]

I played Kick the Can with my cousins in Indiana! I don't remember much about it, but we loved it.