When my brother and I were babies, our daddy and mama plucked us from the Low Country of South Carolina before our roots had a chance to take ahold and transplanted us to the Appalachian Mountains, in the majestic Alleghany Highlands of Virginia.

By the time we’d learned to talk, that slow, soft, lilting drawl of our forefathers had no influence on us whatsoever. Even though Mama and Daddy carried their deep southern speak to their last breaths, their accents did not dictate how their babies would talk.

No, my brother Graham and I spoke the language of the mountain folk. Can’t became cain’t on our lips, while we preferred the contraction ov’ere to the effort it took to say over there. Mama, however, drew the line at might could and ain’t.

…I knew North Carolina only as the miles and miles of miles we needed to cross to get to Granny’s house. Our parents saw North Carolina with even less regard than I. As South Carolinians they viewed North Carolina as a valley of degradation between two hills of pride… I soon learned that the Old North State is not a valley of degradation between two hills of pride but a vale of humility between two mountains of conceit.

I don’t put much stock in those labels. I just know those three states I love—South Carolina, Virginia, and North Carolina—as the land that made me who I am and gave me a rich mother lode of Southern Speak.