...I myself am a transplant from a shack in the swamp at the outlet of the Cape Fear River in NC, to the asphalt jungle of the San Fernando Valley in SoCal at an early age...
I was born and raised in the very west end of the SFV, close to the Ventura County line. It was a newly built area in the late 50's/early 60's that was very middle class. Lots of young families with loads of children in decent tract housing. I'm sure us kids would have thought an actual swamp in the area would have been really cool, what with quicksand and killer critters and Adrienne Barbeau and stuff.
While us "natives" took little jabs at the "immigrants" from parts of America with curious speech (did you know some people actually called jeans "dungarees" back then?), we were clueless about reverse discrimination. Sparing you the story about how she and I met, there was a girl in Oklahoma that I thought was great (I didn't much like Cali girls; pretty, but what crappy attitudes). We talked about her moving to CA and settling down with me. Running this scenario past her relatives at some family function, she was informed by the powers-that-be therein that no way no how uh-uh was she leaving the South to marry some guy that resided in the Land of Fruits and Nuts. Never mind that I had an established career and made 10 or 12 times what she did, and had been on the Honor Roll at a private educational institute. Nope, I was unworthy scum because I was a Californian. They threatened to ostracize her from all members of the family.
I was shocked, of course. I thought they would be DELIGHTED to see her live in the great Pacific Utopia, with a really forthright person. Understandably, she caved in and stayed there. And as for me, I never did get married at all, but instead slunk into the wretched, vile, non-human you see today, foul of breath and absent of a sole redeeming quality.
Oh well, zhit happens. Tell your buddy that latching relentlessly onto picaninny infractions eradicates respect while trumpeting dysfunction. I could spit out a hundred posts a day just about observed inept punctuation. It's an impotent endeavor on the Net. Heck, I'd rather swim in a swamp.
