I'm worrying these days about all the people who have moved to the Southland and who are ill-prepared, without the most rudimentary tools for getting along in this part of the country. So today the "Southern-fried Perfesser" is giving a lecture on understanding southern-friedness.

     In the first place, in order to live in the South you need to be an astute judge of people. This is true whether you are evaluating a preacher or a politician--it's all the same. You can tell you are dealing with a level-headed feller if his chewing tobacco drips out of both sides of his mouth. I learned this basic principle as a teenage Lothario. It's also a good way to evaluate a potential sweetheart.

     In the second place you must learn to understand southern expressions of religion. And in the third place you can't do that without grasping southern pronounciations of common words. A lot of southern-friedness is preserved in the religious ideas, behavior and accents of our language. So, in the interest of brevity (which seldom applies to either religion or speech in the South) I will wrap these two topics into one ball of wax. Take a look at this list of stuff which you can easily find all over the Southland:

1. Bubba has a fish (ancient Christian symbol) on both the bumper of his pickup truck and on the butt of his assault rifle.
2. Billy Bob pronounces it: "Bab-tist."
3. Sister Sue Ann pronounces it: "Pull-pee-it."
4. The saintliest cook in the church always brings the tastiest deviled eggs to the church suppers.
5. People often pray so long before a meal, the food gets cold.
6. People in the South call Israel the "Holy Land."
7. Even in some large cities, people still honor funeral processions.

     Now the plain truth is that we are losing a lot of our distinctive southern accent at an alarming rate. It's because we're listening to too much radio and watching too much television where a generic accent is spoken. It is such a relief when you hear somebody pronounce "sin" with two syllables--"see-in." You know you're listening to a southern-fried somebody. Some folk think it's a "see-in" to laugh in church. Those same folk tend not to laugh much anywhere else either. The Lord is rumored to be puzzled by this.

     Now, it's true we have some pretty nutty religious ideas down here in the South that we need to "git shed of." (That's a southern-friedism that means "shuck off." Which means "git rid of.") And there's a bunch of behavior inside and outside the church that is just not right for decent, civilized people to do. But all right-thinking, religious people know that the first step toward doing right and getting right with God is to "repaint" and "see-in" no more.

     That's what we've got to do. I'm as serious as a heart attack about this.

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