A different South

     This isn't the South that I grew up in.  I grew up in the rural South where it seemed everyone went to church, policemen were former neighborhood bullies or those that were to much of a drunk to keep driving their cabs, where blacks had their own neighborhood and place, where ruthless bank robbers could be hero's but  most citizens were so honest stores sold newspapers on the honor system.  There were lots of things to like about the old South and there were a lot of things to not like also. 
   For one thing, why good church going people who believed Jesus died on the cross for everyone still found it justifiable to exclude a good portion of society from dignity.  Even if the races remained separate everyone deserved to be treated with the same amount of respect.  The majority had no cause to hate the minority.  Even so, the redneck, outhouse owning, backward living barefoot half toothless character of cartoons were far from what the average Southerner was like.  That idea is as far from what a Southerner truly is as the idea that a Yankee is an educated, tolerate, highly advanced form of life that can drive in three feet of snow with nary a problem.  Being more subtly about ones vices doesn't make them more virtuous. 
   Honestly, I miss the old South.  Not the part about separate but equal because there was nothing equal or fair about that policy.  Today even with integration the equal part just doesn't seem to exist.  It's been a hundred and fifty years since there were legal slaves in the country.  I believe it is past time both races forget and forgive that part of our heritage.  The part of the South that I miss was the part were family's stayed together and gathered at Grandma's house on Sunday's after church for a chicken dinner and a soda in the back yard under the shade tree. 
  I miss the part where strangers said hello to each other and were often seen stopping to help one another.  I miss the part where a man's hand shake and his word meant something.  I suppose that part of the South has moved on too and now times have given away  to an era of selfishness where people want to act like they want to act and one has to force them to behave, where people do illegal and immoral things but the people who are hated are the ones who stand up for what is right.