Living in the Land of Tacky

---"It's impossible to explain to a Yankee what 'tacky' is. They simply have no word for it up north, but my God, do they ever need one."--Pat Conroy, Lords of Discipline

Florida is a wonderful state in many regards: beaches, fresh citrus, great weather, home of the most tattooed city in America... But even if you can find a more than first generation Floridian, he or she will have to admit that this is one tacky state in many regards. I have personally seen more jean shorts, and not worn in jest, I might add, in my two years in Florida than my previous 24 years in Mississippi.

So when I ran across Pat Conroy's description of 'tacky' in Lords of Discipline, I thought he hit the nail on the head. Tackiness is similar to the Supreme Court's oft-quoted definition of pornography: You know it when you see it.

For those of you who are fans of Southern literature, I encourage you to grab a copy of Lords of Discipline. I ran across it during an Amazon Kindle Book sale a while back, and I believe I bookmarked more pages and highlighted more passages in this book than all of my other Kindle books combined. I love Conroy's flamboyant prose, his flair for the dramatic gesture, and his incredibly dry sense of humor.

Take how he describes Southern women, for example. He calls us "the taloned species who speak with restrained and self-effacing drawls, fill a room with elegance and vulnerability, move with the grace of wind-tilted cane, and rule their families with a secret pact of steel. The sweetness of Southern women often conceals the deadliness of snakes."

After reading this book, I grabbed his autobiographical "My Reading Life" during Borders' closeout sale. In it, he details how reading certain books impacted his life, focusing on both the book and the event in his life it coaligns with. I found it fascinating, and the books he chose to highlight were not what I expected.

In college I read much more Southern literature than I do now. Perhaps it's time to remedy that.