A True East Tennessean

One of the shows I enjoy on television is “Cold Case,” that is until I watched an episode the other night. The storyline had the stars of the show traveling to Nashville and Knoxville to question people about a murder that had occurred some time before. Some of the things that were included in the program griped me.

For one thing, the actors who played the parts of folks from Tennessee were foreigners. It was obvious by the way they spoke. Their fake East Tennessee drawls grated on my nerves. To those who don’t know better, the minor characters probably sounded fine, but to us who know how a real East Tennessean speaks, the accents were pitiful. Being able to speak the language of our region requires a flatness of pronunciation that just can’t be mimicked. It’s part of our laid-back way of life. We get where we’re going, but along the way there’s no need to run over everybody in the way; the same applies to how we talk.

I’ve taught thousands of kids over the years, and one thing is apparent: people from other parts of the country are moving here in droves. Identifying immigrants from north of the Mason-Dixon line is simple. They have different ways from ours, but what stands out the most is the accent. No matter how long a person lives in the areas after a move from other parts of the country, he never sounds like an East Tennessean. Don’t get me wrong; some of my best friends are from other parts of the country, but they don’t try to speak the dialect. Eventually, some of it creeps into speaking, but they just can’t get down pat the accent of the region.

Another thing that griped me about this show was the way Tennessee was viewed by the characters. It’s the same that’s held by too many others. At one point, the female detective decided to drive from Nashville to Knoxville. She did so because she held fond memories about getting married. According to her, she passed the courthouse in Knoxville where she and some young man went to exchange vows.

Tennessee and its cities are presented as either country music producing places or towns somewhat akin to Mayberry. In both cases, we who live in Tennessee are considered rednecks who come from a life that is backward at best and ignorance-filled at worst. WRONG! A few points about us need to cleared up:

1. We have in-door plumbing.
2. We wear shoes all year round—for most of the year at least.
3. We do read.
4. We can write.
5. We don’t marry our relatives.
6. Our homes aren’t shacks with rusted car bodies in the yard and porches with refrigerators.

In an effort to educate some of those who sneer at us, I present this demographic information from the Internet. Knox County has approximately 400,000 residents. When the surrounding areas are included, the number jumps to more than 700,000. Nashville has a population of 1,363,394. Combined, the two cities have a population of more than 2 million—and that number continues to grow. That doesn’t sound too much like “Hicksville” to me. Couldn’t we find the some small towns in isolated parts of New York State? The problem is that folks equate ignorance with our speech. They assume that we are less than intelligent because we speak slowly and with flatness in the enunciation of words.

A short anecdote might shed some light upon things. Several years ago I spent a weekend with my in-laws in Gatlinburg. Our room had a balcony that overlooked the main street, and we delighted in sitting there and watching people go by. I noticed that several people, young and old, were walking with pieces of rope that had been stiffened. On one end was a loop, and on the other was a configuration that looked like a harness of some kind. Other tourists stopped these people and said, “Geeeez, what is that and where did you get it?” The answer was that they had purchased from a souvenir shop a “dogless leash.” Yep, people who spoke accents peculiar to some northern state paid $20.00 a pop for pieces of robe with loops on each end. I could hear shop owners saying to those customers, “You come back now, ya’ hear!”

Enough said.