Damnyuppies - the growing presence of relocated Yuppies in southern US communities - Column

National Review, March 1, 1993 by Florence King

THE LATEST New South--the eighth by my count-is coping with another trauma. This time it's the invasion of Damnyuppies, whose lust for "relocating" (they never say "move") is turning our gothic paradise into a homogenized Sunbelt.

If Oakland has no there, Damnyuppies have no from. Whatever ethnic background they once possessed has faded with the geographical and psychological distance they have put between themselves and their origins. Most of them seem to have no distinctive traits, habits, or accents--just master's degrees. Higher education, which bestows mobility, has made Damnyuppies fromless. If anyone wishes to say, "That's what America's all about," now is the time to say it.

Southerners, perhaps the only Americans still capable of homesickness, can now experience it without leaving home. Damnyuppies are why Southern towns now have Neighborhood Watch to stamp out the crime that used to be stamped out by watchful neighbors. Damnyuppies are why "Mall" is now capitalized, like Golgotha, and why it has replaced the bus station as a good-ole-boy hangout: the bus station has been torn down to make room for a brand-new "Old Town."

Perpetually searching for instant traditions and the quick 'n' easy identity they call the "New You," Damnyuppies display a paradoxical urge to feed off Southern uniqueness on the one hand, and reject it on the other. Take, for example, their linguistic voyeurism. If a Southerner makes an idiomatic reference to the subtle regional hierarchies known as "ordinary, common, and trash," the Damnyuppie gets that lean, hungry look and asks him to explain the difference.

Ever polite, the Southerner complies, "If you have a beat-up ole car in yore yard, but it runs, you're ordinary. If you have a beat-up ole car in yore yard and it won't run, you're common. But if you have pieces of a beat-up ole car in yore yard, you're trash."

A few days later, expect to see a letter-to-the-editor pleading for more sensitivity to what Damnyuppies call "socio-economic status."

Damnyuppies secretly fear Southern excess, as well. they might. In Colonel Effingham's Raid, Berry Fleming says that this trait is rooted in topology; lacking the breathtaking scenic views of the New England coast or the mountainous West, we atone for our humble red clay and commonplace sand hills by substituting breathtaking characters.

I think Southern excess is rooted in our earliest history. The Pilgrims got good Indians but we got bad Indians. Our ancestors had bleeding heads-- not bleeding hearts--from being scalped. They died like flies of famine-not hunger, famine. They fell victim to madness--not neurosis, madness-from living on the edge of a wilderness as sultry as black velvet and not knowing what might happen next. The only way to relieve such tension is to do something outlandish-- i.e., that's what happened next.

Southerners are no different from anyone else, it's just that we do things that never seem to happen in Nebraska and Connecticut. The only shade of grey we ever produced is the Confederate uniform, and Damnyupties know it. That is what makes them nervous. They never know what we might do.

'What will the South do?" has ever been the leading question in American political life. What will the South do if Lincoln is elected? What will the South do if Geraldine Ferraro is nominated? What will the South do if Ross Perot runs? The clot of primaries called "Super Tuesday" grew out of the conviction that the South was bound to do something, and so, unable to stand the suspense, politicians came up with Super Tuesday to find out what we would do before we did it.

Handed the historical role of reacting, we performed it so well, and with such undiluted joy, that the rest of the country is secretly disappointed whenever we seem to settle down. I am convinced that the reason for the current fascination with earthquakes, hurricanes, and meteors is that the South hasn't done anything lately.

THE PRESENCE of Damnyuppies in our midst has given an interesting new twist to Southern graciousness and hospitality. Now that our towns are being swallowed up by interstate highways and metropolitan areas, a new kind of letter-to-theeditor has been cropping up with suspicious frequency in local newspapers.

They are lavishly worded paeans from grateful commuters who have been saved from various fates by native good samaritans. Stalled motorists get help from farmers and hunters, who stop and fix their cars for them right on the road. One obviously awestruck motorist wrote in praise of a samaritan who drove all the way to Napa to buy him a new fan belt, drove back and installed it, and refused to accept any payment for his labor. These letters always end with effusions such as, "I didn't think there were people like that left!" and "It proves how much good there is in human nature!"

Well, maybe. Putting aside the possibility that the samaritan was one of those good ole boys who will grab any excuse to go to Napa, what it proves is the strength of the unreconstructed Southern ego. We simply get a kick out of being gracious when it results in an awestruck non-Southerner. That's why the South is the only place in the world where even the working class practices noblesse oblige.