The South has probably more traditions than any region in the United States.  A tradition is a custom or practice passed down from generation to generation.  The importance of family in the South is in itself a tradition.  Only in the South do we classify cousins with numbers.  For example, my sixth cousin is the child of my fifth cousin who is the child of my fourth cousin who is the child of my…  You get the picture.  My Great-Great-Grandfather arrived in America as a child from the Isle of the Skye, Scotland in the early 1770s.  He later fought as a young teen with Major General Nathaniel Greene in the Battle of Guilford County Courthouse during the Revolutionary War.  I now live less than an hour’s drive from his burial site.  Yes, family is very important in the South.  Many traditions are customs based on the premise “my daddy did it that way; my granddaddy did it that way as his father did…” Yes, it’s a family tradition!

When I think of Southern traditions, my mind automatically defaults to food.  To not drink sweet iced tea is to deny your heritage.  My mama never used a recipe to make sweet tea.  She simply grabbed her five pound bag of Dixie Crystal sugar and poured into the jug “enough to make it taste good.”  I was twenty-two years old when I first discovered sweet iced tea could NOT be bought in certain regions of America on certain days of the year.

Late December of my senior year in college, I flew to New York City for a job interview.  I reached the city a few days before my interview with the idea of sightseeing.  I was a little apprehensive about touring the Big Apple alone.  It was unsettling to go underground and board a train with only window views of dimly lit tunnel walls.  My memory of a poster mounted on a pole was the only navigation tool I had once the train doors shut.  Yet, maneuvering via the subway system was painless compared to obtaining answers to my questions on the sidewalks of New York.  Hearing was a problem for those folks.  I had to repeat my questions two or three times.  I don’t even know why I bothered to even ask.  I could not understand their answers anyway.  Those people had a strange accent.

At noon, I did find a small cafe despite the useless information from the city pedestrians.  At least, the menus were printed in English.  I could always point to an item if conversation would not work.  I ordered a Jewish Ruben sandwich and sweet tea.  When the waitress returned with my food, I saw a mistake right away.  A steamy cup of hot, weak looking beverage was not going to work for this North Carolina boy.  “Ma’am, I didn’t order hot coffee,” I injected.  “I wanted sweet iced tea to drink.”  

“That is tea and that’s the only way you will get it!’ the waitress rudely responded.  “You’ll have to wait ‘til summer for iced tea.”  Suddenly, she loudly announced to the entire café, “Hey youse guys, Gomer Pyle wants sweet iced tea to drink!  Didn’t your momsie teach you anything?” she quizzed me.  “We’re in the middle of the winter and Gomer wants iced tea!” she chuckled as she walked away.  Needless to say, I left no tip.  By the way, in spite of this Yankee intelligence input, I still drink iced tea twelve months of the year.  After all, it’s a family tradition!  I just don’t go to New York City during the winter.

Other traditional foods are trademarks of the South.  Eating black-eyed peas and collard greens on New Year’s Day is a meal of every native born south of the Mason-Dixon Line eats on that National College Bowl Day.  The black-eyed peas will bring good luck during the year and the greens will bring money.  I’ve eaten this same line-up every New Year’s for sixty plus years.  My mailbox still fills up monthly with bills I struggle to pay but I will continue to eat the same food for New Year’s Day.  After all, it’s a family tradition!

God created the pig so Southerners can enjoy barbecue.  Every good ole boy has or his friend has a pig-cooker.  After staying up all night cooking, droves of friends stand in line to directly pull pork off the swine resting on the open grill.  This event is lovingly referred to as “a pig-picking!”  The only argument over barbecue in North Carolina is the base seasoning ingredient itself.  On the coast and in the Sandhills, Tarheels season their pig with vinegar while tomato sauce is the base seasoning used in the piedmont and mountains.  Despite their preference, all will agree, barbecue is the signature meat of the South.

I never will forget a Wolfpack Club meeting I attended years ago.  The main attraction was the introduction of new Head Basketball Coach Jim Valvano to the local Wolfpack supporters.  Jimmy V could have been very successful as a stand-up comedian with his quick wit and uncanny sense of humor.  As he stood behind the podium, the now legendary coach told the crowd, “In the thirty days I have been Head Coach of the Wolfpack, I have been to thirty-five pig-pickings.  The Wolfpack Caravan was on a whirlwind tour through the state meeting with all local clubs.  Everyone in the South loves to eat barbecue.  Yes, it is a tradition!

Traditions are not limited to appetites.  Some traditions stand the test of time while others fade away and die.  In the past, Easter Sunday had its place in fashion as well as a reflection on Christ’s crucifixion.  Moms bought their little girls new “Sunday” shoes.  They even dressed their little boys in new white shirts with clip-on neckties.  The church pews were packed with regular attendees and those who only showed up for Christmas and Easter.  Even all the moms and dads were modeling their fashions’ finest.  To put the accent on their fashion statements, all the women and little girls topped their dresses with an “Easter bonnet with all the thrills upon it.”  It was too embarrassing to enter the church without a bonnet.  After all, it was a tradition!

As I looked across my large church congregation this past Easter, I was shocked!  In a crowd of three hundred plus, I could not spot the first bonnet.  A revered childhood memory and tradition had been buried in the tomb of permanent death, never to rise again.

While recovering from that morbid fact, I was again knocked down by an absence of a childhood memory and tradition.  I cannot remember a Mother’s Day at McDonald Baptist when the pastor and all in the church congregation wore a rose to honor their mothers.  The rose is universally known as the flower of love.  The color of the rose worn on that special day was symbolic.  One wore a red rose to honor his living mother while one wore a white rose to honor his deceased mother.  Of the twenty three Mother’s Day Sunday services I attended at McDonald Baptist before moving away, one particular Sunday jumps to the front of my memory bank whenever a rose comes to mind.  Daddy planted and nurtured roses for Mamma.  One bush bore red roses while one bush bore white roses.    These bushes became the source for our Mother’s Day flower.  Each year, Gary, Ken and I beamed with extra pride as Mama gave us her scissors and allowed us to snip the rose we chose to wear. 

One particular year, we had to leave Mama at home.  She suffered from extreme migraine headaches.  Sometimes, the only way to live with her suffering was with a pain killer injection.  Daddy would drive Mama to the office of Dr. C.O. Bristow, our family doctor.  By the time Mama and Daddy returned home, Mama was out cold.  Many times, I held the front door open so Daddy could carry Mama to the bedroom.  For the next forty-eight hours, my brothers and I suffered through Daddy’s cooking as Mama recovered.  Campbell’s Barbecued Beans was his featured specialty.  That specific Sunday, Mama made the extra effort to sit up long enough to make sure we were looking our best and to pin the roses on our lapels.  One by one, we snipped our roses and returned to Mama’s bedside with our choice flower.  Over the years, the bees had cross pollinated Daddy’s rose bushes.  As a result, the white rose bush would produce an occasional pink rose.  Ken was keeping us from leaving as Gary and I sniffed our lapel roses.  Finally, Ken walked in with a huge, pink rose in hand.  I still remember the exchange of conversation between Mama and Ken on that unforgettable Sunday morning.

“Sugar, why did you bring back a pink rose?” Mama asked.  “Why did you cut such a large flower?”

“Mama, I know a red rose means you are alive and a white rose means you are dead.  You looked about half dead this morning so I cut off a pink rose,” Ken reasoned with his eight year old logic.  As I sat in my church on Mother’s Day,2014, I scanned the congregation looking for a red or white rose.  The effort was in vain.  Not the first rose could I find.  Another tradition of the South had died.  Yet, in my mind, every congregation member was wearing a red or white rose with one exception.  One little eight year old boy sat on the second row between his two brothers and his daddy sporting one huge pink rose.  This pink rose will always be one of my precious childhood memories of growing up in Rockingham, North Carolina - a small textile town in the South in the ‘50s & ‘60s.