Tackling a garden for the first time - Kathy Jefcoats

Have I mentioned I am from St. Louis? Well, I am and my husband and his family are from Mississippi, unquestionably the South, as is Georgia. Missouri, as I learned in elementary school, was a divided state, loyal neither to the Union nor the Confederacy. That was quite the different story when I moved to Macon in the 1970s.

According to my southern classmates, St. Louis – and, indeed, any city north of the Georgia state line – is in the north, which made me a Yankee to them. I tried at first to explain the difference but gave up when I was bombarded with the taunting threat, "The South will rise again." I don't think anyone is really concerned about that happening anywhere but in the South but that didn't seem to matter to my fellow students. I gave up and took on the Yankee tag, I don't really care one way or the other. As far as I know, no one in my family ever owned slaves and I can find no evidence that anyone in my family fought in the Civil War.