Thursday, April 05, 2007

Notes from Lexington: Kentuckians

Those Kentuckians shore know how to drawl. In the land where "Share the road with Horses" and "Horses have Right of Way" signs dominated, I spent the greater part of every conversation restraining myself from repeating their words, trying to corral those long, long vowels for myself.

Friendly to a one (does that famous Southern hospitality still exist?), they seemed to look for any excuse to converse with us. Among conversation-starters: our Wisconsin license plate, my hiking hat, the reusability of the deli containers - you get the picture. And once they got us started, they played the game I often play (and will only admit to here in the safety of blogosphere). I love to hear people with accents talk. I engage them in conversations of inconsequence and try to stretch out the experience to some level of (unattainable) saturation.

I'm a linguistic geek. But I'm not alone! Those Kentuckians and fellow tray-yul (trail) hikers are guilty too. Even the ones who've moved "up here" to live with their grandmother who's "fixin' to pass" wanted a piece of these Northerners. As we hiked through their hollers (hollows) and basked in their sun, I noticed our commonalities.

The three sixth grade boys hiking in front of us filled the bill of sixth grade boys everywhere. They giggled and exclaimed at the copulating stick figures drawn on a rock wall, "Somebody was rotten up here!" (Rotten??)

They jostled their fellows for the chance to lap at the water dripping down from those same rock formations and successfully ditched red-faced moms who huffed up the trail behind them. ("You go right on ahead, Hon'.") They scoffed at dads and younger siblings who'd opted to ride the lift instead of hike up the trail.

They gaped at spiders,


pretty views,
and natural sandstone bridges.




Yep, I reckon they'd make sixth grade boys anywhere proud.

5 comments:

RunBubbaRun said...

So do I see an IM Kentucky in your future now???

I always wanted to go visit there, sounds like a friendly place to run around in there ye woods..

Thanks for the tour..

Steve Stenzel said...

Thanks for translating the tricky parts....

The Fool said...

TT,
Whenever I read something about you that I share, I get a little spark in my brain, a tiny little heart attack. "I love to hear people with accents talk"..... When I was a phone rep, I would try to tell where someone was calling from by the accent (this was before caller id). "I'm a linguistic geek". I too, love the sounds of certain words and combinations of words. When hearing a phrase or word that interests me, I'll look up it's etymology (today it was "Stadium").

Speaking of words and 6th grade boys: When I think of a single word to describe a 6th grade boy in it's many facets of wonder, hormones, emotion and movement this is it:

Salamander.

(Slinky, not afraid of mud, wriggly, a little dark in ways, always in the window wells, looking for swamps).

"Somebody was rotten up here!"

I LOVE that! "Rotten".

One last thought: If you ever moved to Kentucky, you, like me, would have a southern accent in 6 months, tops. Your brain is wired for empathy (not just in sorrow, but in joy too), looking for the common bridge connection to your fellow man/woman.

I'm working my way backwards through your trip....... It's been great at the end, I can't wait to get to the beginning!

M-

Anne said...

That explains a lot about me and my loquacious ways -- I lived in Kentucky in a previous life. Has to be that case.

Great pictures!

qcmier said...

Nice pics. Glad you f\had a good trip.