A few years ago, I lived in the small town of Douglasville, Georgia. Shortly after moving there, I began to discover that there was a reason that the town was kept in a remote, out of the way county. It had a reputation for being populated by a disproportionately large number of rednecks.
That stereotype was in no way dispelled by the efforts of the people who made the local signage:
As one might infer from the amount of rust seen on the bolts of the second sign, literacy faults like these are seldom noticed in Douglasville, let alone promptly corrected.
A couple of weeks ago at Thanksgiving, Allison and I had the privilege of visiting her parents for a wonderful family get-together and holiday meal. The setting was their beautiful house, nestled in the woods beside a picturesque mountain lake. Their community, which surrounds a golf course, is considered quite upscale, and has a manned security gate where guards issue passes for vehicle access.
This morning, while driving to work, I noticed the pass on my windshield that I’d neglected to remove, and also remembered that I’d planned to blog about the literacy fault I had previously found there. It seems that no matter how formal the setting may be, there will always be subtle, heart-warming reminders that we’re still in Georgia after all.
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There is a popular BBC Dancing programme universally known as Strickly but I think that might be ironic.
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That’s how it used to be spelt in Shakespeare’s day. Probably.
Looking again, I’m slighly more concerned by the hand-scrawled numbers on the pass.
Hmmm. I suspect whilst I’m moderately better at spelling, I’m sure there must be lots of things I can’t do that Rednecks excel at: playin’ the banjo, usin’ mah weird teeth fur eatin’ apples thru a tennis racket, fixin’ up a tire swing in the yard, that kinda thang.
😉
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As a teacher this kind of thing pains me but it is not a Georgia phenomenon. I noticed but never thought to photograph similar acts of illiteracy in Norfolk, VA and Nashville, TN. One of my best friends comes from New Jersey and told similar stories. Laziness and illiteracy can be found everywhere. It is easy to poke fun at Georgia or the south in general but if you lived in other areas long enough you would have a similarly disappointing collection of mistakes. People simply don’t care. Computers tell us how to spell. Consider the recent production with which we assisted. Several well educated people read that play prior to production. These people were from all over. The Pastor was from New England. The author’s husband was from New York. It wasn’t until I read the play and spoke to the author/producer that the narrator’s part was correctly recorded to say Pontius PILATE instead of Pontius PALATE. Her spell checker did not recognize Pilate so it told her to change to Palate and she did so without question.
Now either that mistake went right over the heads of all others who read the script, they didn’t care enough to prevent the potential embarrassment it posed or they thought they were being polite in not correcting the author. In any event could you imagine the impression this amazingly well attended Christmas production would have left in the minds of the audience when they heard Pontius PALATE repeatedly?
Laugh at or mourn the illiteracy but don’t blame it on Georgia. There are idiots enough from all over. One of the office staff that is supposed to check such things for my parents’ community is from your home state of Virginia.
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Check out the T-shirts
http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/793E90EE-83B3-4696-A043-78D8024FF637/
It appears New Yorkers have spelling issues as well.
http://pages.prodigy.net/pizzabagel/MisspelledSigns_001.htm
However, if you want someone devoted to the critique of Georgia highway signage you might visit
http://georgiaroadgeek.blogspot.com/2006/03/misspelled-signs-on-ga-400.html
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I picked on Douglasville because I lived there, met the people, and experienced the local dialect.
I picked on Georgia for “strickly” because it’s spelled the way it’s pronounced by someone with a Georgia accent, not because I buy into the overall stereotype of statewide illiteracy. I even called the reminder “heart-warming,” because even though it makes a part of me cringe, the down-home colloquial spellings remind me that I’m southern, and that I’m among southerners.
I reserve my accusations of statewide illiteracy for West Virginia and Alabama. The New Yorkers get a pass, or at least a bit of leniency, because English is a second language for many of the business owners there.
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Any native Georgian would be happy to give you miles of material against Alabama. It is the backwards, soft-minded child of the south that receives unending abuse from most of its neighbors. It has a few redeeming characteristics but anyone on this side of the state line would be more than happy to add to whatever criticism you have to offer.