Home Sweet Home Alabama

My wife’s great-grandmother passed away earlier this week, so Thursday morning, Caroline and I drove 10 hours to Huntsville, Alabama for the funeral.

With both Alabama and Arkansas being southern states and also located fairly close to each other, many people, especially over-generalizing Yankees*, would probably think that they were very similar. I am sure there are many similarities, but there are also some glaring differences, and I’m going to briefly mention a few I noticed over the past few days.

1. There are way more southern accents in Alabama. Now, Fayetteville might be somewhat of a high-brow locale compared to much of the rest of Arkansas, but I’ve also lived in more rural Searcy, Arkansas, and there is still no comparison: the southern twang is much more prevalent in Alabama.

2. Apparently, there are Old School, non-Supercenter Wal-Marts in Alabama. In my part of Arkansas at least, this is not the case.

3. Funerals are way different. Not only was the funeral at a local funeral home instead of the church that Caroline’s great-grandmother attended, but the family also sat up on a stage off to the side, out of sight of everyone else. Once the funeral was over, a curtain closed over the stage; I guess so the family could have privacy while looking at the casket. Different.

4. The Alabama/Auburn rivalry is way intense. Being from Arkansas, where the Razorbacks get top-billing in everything, this is completely foreign to me. I think it’s neat having the vast majority of the state unified in support of a team, but coming from a state with no real rival, the intense rivalry thing seems pretty cool too.

5. According to a sign we passed, in Alabama, coon dogs are apparently a very, very big deal. At least, more so than they are here.


*Yes, the ironic word choice was intentional.