Southern Gentleman Has Unexplained Breakdown at Local Outlet Mall Near The Foxworthy Store
If you buy your underwear from the same place you buy your casket, you might be a redneck...
MYRTLE BEACH, SC – As the good Lord is my witness, I swear what I am about to write is 100% true. Well, maybe 90% true. Ok, closer to 46% true.
Fine – the only part that’s true is the name, location and clientele of the store. The rest is just the thoughts from my demented (and at the moment, sleep-deprived and bleary-eyed) head.
Jeff Foxworthy, the ultra-popular and hilarious Southern comedian (from my home state of Georgia, in fact) has a chain of stores named after him. Seriously. If you don’t believe me, click here and see for yourself.
Now, lest anyone accuse me of ripping one of my own, let me make it clear – I ain’t knockin’ a brother for his hustle. The “You Might Be a Redneck if…” line might be one of the all time greatest Southern lines in the history of the region. And Mr. Foxworthy himself happens to be a fine and decent man… with the exception of one or two of his ill-fated sitcoms. Personally, I would love for him to read the blog and sue me for copyright infringement (well, not really – but it would be cool if he read the blog. If you know Mr. Foxworthy, send him a link; I’ll name you as a co-defendant). So please don’t mistake this as Southern-on-Southern crime (or, if you prefer, Bubba-on-Bubba crime, which is not to be confused with other things…). In an odd sort of way this is a victory holler for all of the folks out there who say “ain’t” (definition: am not or is not) and “skeered” (definition: startled, frightened or otherwise set on edge) as well as such beautiful phrases as “and if a frog had wings he wouldn’t bump his butt every time he jumped.”
We have a store out there just for us. And the people who shop there are Yankees.
Kid you not.
Went by the Foxworthy Store at the Tanger Outlet Mall in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (located at King’s Road and Hwy. 17, just a few miles south of North Myrtle Beach proper) and I couldn’t even get in because of the amount of Yankees packing the place out. They were all looking to tear off a piece of the Southern experience, I guess, hoping to find that just-right piece of memorabilia to take home and brighten up their dreary 7th floor walk up in some unnamed, overcrowded city where the sun only shines once in July and once in September. Lots of guys in Yankee and Red Sox hats looking at camouflaged bathing suit models (honest) wondering how they could order the models instead of the swimsuits, lots of interesting accents discussing barbecue sauce and beef jerky while wondering just how Larry got to be a Cable Guy.
And what proves that Southerners are smarter than fifth-graders is this genius reality: a lot of these Yankees were purchasing novelty items to take home to their friends as proof that Southerners are dumb. Now, I don’t have an advanced degree in this sort of thing, but the question that comes to my mind is this: who’s dumber – the folks selling the stuff, or the ones buying it? You can mock my accent, you can talk down about my roots, you can cast aspersions on my region that are about as fact-based as White House WMD informational pamphlet, but at the end of the day, my folks aren’t the ones buying out the joint and slapping our buddy Herb from Pawtucket on the back, saying, “Man, this lemon bah-b-q sawse will taste fantastic on sam chowdah.”
In the end, I’m still ambivalent about this store. It both celebrates and creates the stereotype of Southerners, and I find that dichotomy troubling. I realize that I play to an awful lot of the same stereotypes myself, so maybe in the end all I’m really revealing is my own jealousy at not being able to make a living offering humorous commentary on the people and region I love. So maybe that’s where the discomfort comes from… or maybe it’s the last vestiges of Southern pride (not to be confused with Racist pride or Sexist pride) slipping away from this once proud region; maybe it’s the fact that we have succumbed to the stereotype and learned to copyright it and profit from it rather than combat it and pave new territory. I don’t know. All I know is that, as I stood there slack-jawed at the teaming mass of humanity hankering for their “You might be a redneck if you pick your kid’s booger and eat it” T-shirt, I felt a sense of displacement in my soul, a sense that has echoed long after night’s descent and the time normal people have gone to bed.
The Foxworthy Store – you might be a redneck if you shop here for your wife’s anniversary gift. Or a gift for your nephew’s Bar Mitzvah. Heck, you are a redneck if you shop here, period.
And we’ll be glad to take your money.
I just wanted to let you know that I had the unfortunate opportunity to work at the Foxworthy store for summer break while I was in college. If you want to have these “deep” opinions your pushing, maybe you should pay closer attention. I am in no way defending he store as I hated it myself, but unlike what you stated, we almost never sold anything to people from the North, literally never. It was so rare we started keeping a tally of people who were obviously from the north when they bought something, and it was about one a day on average. True, northerners flock to the store, but they mainly used it as something to entertain themselves while they waited for a table at Margaritaville. Unfortunately for what you obviously think is a deep insight is actually wrong, as basically every sale we had were to some of the most dirty redneck people I have ever seen. They loved the T-shirts and the camoflage bikinis. It made me sick, I had to quit that job because I was sick of dealing with those people. Mostly the northerners walked through and observed the items like one would a zoo. Looking into the southern way, many chuckling at it, as I am chuckling at you now. Although this isn’t anything more that shitty blog, you havent done anything except further demonstrate the ignorance of the south. You thought you figured something out, what a surprise, you were wrong. I have lived in the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, South Carolina and soon to be California, and trying to defend the south is like trying to defend your learning disabled step-son. Sure you love it and care about it, but it’s behind man. No one cares about the South unless you were born there. It is known for its ignorance and it is demonstrated to me everyday that I am there which is why I’m moving again, Im sick of living in a place that doesn’t matter. Ive never been to your home state of Georgia, so I cant speak on it, but what goes on in South Carolina is so ass backwards its insane. If i were you bud, I would do what the rest of the South does, and keep to your damn self. Don’t get me wrong, there are some obvious good parts of the South and I wont deny that, but as a whole the south is laughed at by other parts of the country, and this is why.