Weekend Wisdom: Southern Hospitality

To continue the theme of kindness popping up everywhere around me this summer, I spent this past weekend in one of the kindest places I’ve ever been.

I was visiting my sweet friend Anna in Fayetteville, Arkansas, home of the University of Arkansas Razorbacks. More hippie/indie than small town southern, Fayetteville has gorgeous historic buildings laid out in a very walkable setting. I enjoyed visiting the unique boutiques and restaurants & regret not picking up a souvenir tank at Fayettechill, a kind of outfitters store with great graphic prints. Lunch consisted of gourmet grilled cheese one day and local fried chicken another. It ain’t the south without some calories y’all. 

What struck me as the weekend went by was how considerate everyone was. Making eye contact with strangers wasn’t avoided like the plague, jokes and little comments were traded in passing & excuse me’s rang out in gentle southern accents. Everyone I met shook my hand and looked genuinely pleased (if for nothing more than a good southern mama’s training) to meet me, holding conversation instead of looking down at their phone or jetting away as soon as possible. I left thinking, I could get used to this and I should try this. 

Was this my first time in the South? Absolutely not, but I had never experienced good southern hospitality outside my beloved Kentucky, where people who have known me since childhood are expected to love me.  

A word of advice, if I may, to the rest of the world not born with sweet tea running through your veins:

Put down the eye daggers, shake someone’s hand and smile at a stranger. You’ll feel better and so will everyone else around you.