I’m from southern New Jersey. It’s as close to the actual south you can find in the northeast. Everything down there is an outskirt of Atlantic City, and completely divided from the rest of New Jersey, so it’s probably not what you’re thinking.
Picture this, everyone with a real job works in casinos and lives in trailer parks or newer suburban popups. Ladies get fake boobs and spray on tans and get married to dudes with boats who drink beer and go fishing. Oh and everyone talks like a redneck with a philly accent and pronounces “water” like “wood-er” which is frightening to outsiders.
When my grandfather died, he wrote an 8 page letter summarizing the entire history of his time living in Jersey. It’s mostly about growing up as a minority Italian Catholic in a WASP world who didn’t want him. He wrote the letter to my oldest cousin, but photocopied it for the other 18-20, I forgot how many there are. Italians have a shitload of kids.
Here’s an excerpt:
Your Great Grandparents had Nine(9) children. Four(4) died either at birth or shortly there after. In those times medicine was not as you know it. We had asprin. People died from the flu, pneumonia, etc. Hospitals were places people went to have children or to die. Penicillin wasn’t here till about 1942.
As I said, we lived on 6th street. We lost our house during the Depression. So we had to move to Main Street. We moved here when I was two(2) years old, in 1938.
You will have to understand certain terms. South Jersey was WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) country. Foreigners were unwelcome.
Stay tuned, and go blow something up for Amerikkka!
i respectfully disagree. central pennsylvania, aka ‘pennsyltucky’, and rural new hampshire are more like the south than anywhere in jersey. the only places north of the mason-dixon line that you will see unironic confederate flags.
south jersey is SOUTH of the mason-dixon line,
so we’ve got plenty of unironic confederate flags