By Lanny Morgnanesi

Outside Philadelphia, I’m driving 65 mph in pouring rain on a four-lane highway. My thoughts turn to North Florida, where I lived for several years. Here are some of those thoughts:

1. It’s understandable that light snow paralyzes traffic in The South. What’s hard to understand is why rain slows it down considerably.
2. In The South, iced tea is always refilled.
3. Fried chicken is good – everywhere.
4. If a restaurant does not have a huge chimney billowing waves of gray-black smoke, it is not and cannot be a barbeque restaurant.
5. Natives of Florida try to frighten newcomers with exaggerated stories of gators, snakes, and man-eating fire ants.
6. When a newcomer complains about the heat, native Floridians say, “Wait a month or two. Your blood will thin and you’ll be fine.”
7. Some plants do not grow in the sandy, acidic soil, but those that do really grow.
8. You fertilize a plant in its first year and cut it back every year after.
9. Ocean water can get uncomfortably warm.
10. Social activity slows during July, August, and even September. It bounces back around mid-October.
11. In the summer, you take a jacket to the movie theater and put it on inside.
12. If you go on vacation and turn off the air conditioner, the leather jacket and leather shoes in your closet turn green.
13. Strict Baptist do not drink coffee because it is a stimulant.
14. In North Florida, people go to church twice a week, on Wednesdays and Sundays. This prevents backsliding.
15. College football is more popular than pro football, and everyone has “a team.”
16. Generally, a man will not marry a woman with a different team.
17. The easiest cars to sell in The South are the color of the most popular football teams.
18. I thought the colors of The Florida State Seminoles were maroon and yellow. I was mistaken. The colors are garnet and gold. Until moving to Florida, I didn’t know garnet was a color.
19. Florida State fans have great respect for the tribe of Seminole Indians and never caricature them.
20. The Seminole Indians avoided capture and enslavement by fleeing into the Florida swamp. They were never conquered and never signed a treaty.
21. One of the biggest sports stories of the year in The South is on signing day, when the top high school football players commit to a college team. I had not known there was such a thing.
22. The South tends to be more gentile and discreet than The North, but at a college football game it is not uncommon to see a poster of the home team mascot sodomizing the mascot of the visiting team.
23. There is NASCAR. Enough said.
24. The former “colored only” bathrooms still exist, although they are now for everyone. Some younger generation blacks avoid them.
25. Although it is not common, talk not heard up North since the 1950s is used, like, “Hey, why are you walking in this neighborhood? You don’t live here.”
26. One sort of gets used to cockroaches, hush puppies, and always letting women enter and exit the elevator first.

Tags: sports, football, Lanny Morgnanesi, gators, The South, Florida, Florida State, ncaa-football, college-football