Foodie Geography

[Jim]

There is a cooking site which is discussing the food choices of the last several presidents. They shoulda stuck to that because their geography stinks.

President Jimmy Carter did not want to leave his beloved Southern comfort cuisine behind when moving north of the Mason Dixon line. ...

http://www.delish.com/cooking-shows/...oods?GT1=47001

(The Mason-Dixon line is Pennsylvania's southern border... and is north of DC.)

[sarongsong]

...President Jimmy Carter did not want to leave his beloved Southern comfort cuisine behind...

Dessert first!

[geonuc]

Jim, what you say is true. The Mason-Dixon line as a matter of history is properly located north of Washington DC. However, the term has come to mean more than just a boundary line between some of the colonies. It has taken on the meaning of a line that separates the North from the South. In that meaning, DC is above the line. Don't be too harsh on the poor foodies for using the term in a way that many now do.

[Jim]

I'm well aware that the MSD is the traditional line between North and South, but the way they used it is just wrong. If they really meant it as moving out of The South they should have said so.

[Gillianren]

These people don't remember their history very well. If Maryland had seceded, DC would have been completely surrounded by the Confederacy. It is, by most standards, a Southern city.

[geonuc]

I don't mean to be contrarian, but I do think you need to cut some people slack, particularly in cases where the issue isn't the point of the conversation. The MDL is often used as a proxy for the divide between what we* call the 'the South' and them Yankees up north. It's not like this group of foodies is the first to use the term in that way.

* As if I were a true Southerner.

[mike alexander]

We lived in Baltimore for several years, and I heard it repeatedly referred to as the northenmost southern city or the southernmost northern city.

Hon.

[ngc3314]

We lived in Baltimore for several years, and I heard it repeatedly referred to as the northenmost southern city or the southernmost northern city.

Hon.

Something about the possibility of having Southern grace and Northern efficiency, but ending up the other way around?

[Doodler]

Something about the possibility of having Southern grace and Northern efficiency, but ending up the other way around?

Sometimes we wonder, particularly after Schaeffer plundered the State to feed that welfare hole...but that's a subject for another conversation.

From personal observation, it's about the furthest north you'll find pasty faced, alcohol fuelled, terminal caucasians roaming the streets in overly modified pick up trucks streaming Confederate flags from the antennae, or anything else that can sustain the wind loads at excessive rates of speed. If not in a pick up, then it's probably some half rusted out muscle car straight out of the 70s-80s era, partially covered in automotive primer that was formerly the other rusted half of the car.

The official beer is whatever can be bought cheap, the official haircut is the mullet, and especially towards Essex and some of the other southern suburbs, you'll feel like you've walked into a timewarp about thirty years out of date after you after you cross the southern boundary of the I-695 beltway coming out of DC.

So, yeah, I guess it does make the place feel rather Southern...


That said, I can just as sarcastically defend its northern heritage as well, so I'd be one to call Bawlmer a hybrid city. I don't think you'll ever nail it down into a pure blue or gray mold, no matter how hard you try.

As to whether its a northern-southern or a southern-northern city...I guess that depends on how well you like the city and which side of the Manson-Nixon line you were born on.

[man on the moon]

Off topic, but I have Johnny Cash in right now.

In the song "Hey! Porter" he mentions the Mason-Dixon Line in a reference that is rather suggestive of the further south "line". Not that he's an authority on such things, but I did find it ironic to read and hear the same word in two unrelated media at the same time!

That said, I like me biscuits and gravy, and sweet tea.

[sarongsong]

1861 map showing the Mason Dixon Line

[Gillianren]

I don't mean to be contrarian, but I do think you need to cut some people slack, particularly in cases where the issue isn't the point of the conversation. The MDL is often used as a proxy for the divide between what we* call the 'the South' and them Yankees up north. It's not like this group of foodies is the first to use the term in that way.

* As if I were a true Southerner.

Call it a symptom. Yes, a lot of people use it wrong, but that doesn't mean it's okay for other people to use it wrong. It's not a bastion I'm going to spend a lot of time defending, if for no other reason than because it doesn't come up very often, but I would correct anyone who used it wrong in speech, too.

[Delvo]

For a long time, I thought the line was someplace else (and a lot longer) than it actually is. I lived in Missouri, most of which is culturally northern. (The Missouri Compromise was not actually nearly as balanced as it's often described, because it depends on counting Missouri as southern but it never really was.) So, because we all heard of the "Mason-Dixon Line" as being the division between northern and southern states, that meant it obviously had to be south of us. That would put it at the Missouri-Arkansas border (or at least most of it, if you cut off the boot-heel). And if you follow that line east, you end up looking at the southern border of Virginia. So I couldn't really accept the idea of Virginia as a "southern" state at first, because it jarred too much with the fact that we were, obviously and beyond any doubt, not southern by any stretch of the imagination, and Virginia was no farther south than us.

[Gillianren]

There's a book I just finished reading called How the States Got Their Shapes that's worth checking out. It explains things like why Missouri is considered a Southern state--as I recall, wasn't there some question as to whether they'd secede or not?--where the Mason-Dixon line is, and why all those Midwestern states are rectangles.

[Delvo]

It explains things like why Missouri is considered a Southern state--as I recall, wasn't there some question as to whether they'd secede or not?

It was co-admitted with a thoroughly northern state in the Missouri Compromise so that neither one being admitted alone would shift the political balance too much. And slavery was legal. But in any other sense but those two, it's best considered either "northern" or a "border state".

Slavery was rare because Missouri had steep rough terrain and soil full of rocks where the people were culturally southern (southern Missouri), and culturally northern people where the land was flat and the soil was soft (northern & central Missouri). The state was generally on the North's side of that issue because its central/northern regions had the majority of the population and even the southerners had no stake in slavery to get defensive about. Missouri also farmed northern crops rather than southern ones because of its intense climate, and had two major cities bigger than most in the South (Kansas City and Saint Louis), so its industry and economy predisposed its people to identify with northern interests over southern ones. And its white population had even mostly immigrated from the northern states or from the same European countries as the Northerners had immigrated from.

During the Civil War, it had two people claiming to be the properly elected governor and similar problems in multiple state legislature seats, and different delegates went to both congresses claiming that the true Missouri government had sent them. It never hosted any major battles in the war or mustered a real army to send out, despite efforts by some on both sides to round a force up themselves. (The movie "Ride with the Devil", I think starring pre-Frodo Elijah Wood, has some amusing lines from guy riding around trying to round up "true Missouri men" for the war, in which if you didn't already know what side he was on you wouldn't know who he meant by "true Missouri men".) As a result, there were some cases of strange bands of fighters wandering around looking for a war to participate in, but there really wasn't one, so there were just some chaotic sporadic skirmishes and some random town raids instead. That led some towns to muster their own independent home-town defense forces. The main state universities of Missouri and Kansas still have mascots named after the local raid-defense forces of their towns, Columbia and Manhattan.

[Gillianren]

Thank you. That was very informative; I'm afraid Missouri history has never really been part of my studies. Though I can tell you more than you want to know about California, of course.

[Graybeard6]

It never hosted any major battles in the war

There was one battle; Wilson's Creek, in August 1861.
"The Federals were outnumbered 11,600 to 5,400. They lost 1,235 (223 killed, 721 wounded, 291 missing) while inflicting on the Confederates a loss of 1,184 (257 killed, 900 wounded, 27 missing)."
Today that would definitely be a major battle, which shows just how devastating was the Civil War.

[Nick Theodorakis]

...
The official beer is whatever can be bought cheap, ...

I thought it was Natty Bo. Or have they stopped making that since I lived there?

Nick