In Mississippi The Important Thing Is Hooch,

When You Go Apartment-hunting In The South, You Encounter Little Old Ladies Who Ask You If You Use Strong Drink. In New York You Encounter Paranoids Who Wonder If You Will Commit Suicide--not That They Care; What They Worry About Is Blood On Their Fresh Paint, A Dubious Smell In The Hallway, Or A Hole In The Awning As You Pass Through On Your Way To The Sidewalk. The Southerner Who Moves To Any Part Of The Country Has Problems, But The Culture Shock That Attacks The Southerner Who Moves North Is Almost Indescribable.

Owning Your Own Home Is America's Unique Recipe For Avoiding Revolution And Promoting Pseudo-equality At The Same Time.

It Takes Only One Child To Raze A Village.

There Are So Many Different Kinds Of People In America, With So Many Different Boiling Points, That We Don't Know How To Fight With Each Other. The Set Piece That Shapes And Contains Quarrels In Homogeneous Countries Does Not Exist Here. The Frenchman Is An Expert On The Precise Gradations Of Espèce De And The Italian Knows Exactly When To Introduce The Subject Of His Other's Grave, But No American Can Be Sure How Or When Another Will React, So We Zap Each Other With Friendliness To Neutralize Potentially Dangerous Situations.

The Proliferation Of Support Groups Suggests To Me That Too Many Americans Are Growing Up In Homes That Do Not Contain A Grandmother. A Home Without A Grandmother Is Like An Egg Without Salt.... The Emotionally Satisfying Discussions That Take Place In Chronic Pain Outreach And Depression Resources Are Simply Updated Versions Of The Grandmotherly Practice Of Hanging Crepe. We Could Eliminate Much Of The Isolation That Support Groups Exist To Fill And Save The "traditional Family" That Everybody Is So Worried About If More Couples Took Their Aging Parents To Live With Them.