Talking Southern – Telling Time

    At a recent national convention in a non-Southern city, your compiler was asked by a delegate with a nasal, northeastern accent what time it was, and he answered without looking.  “Must be about a quarter to three.”  (He had noticed the time in answering his cellphone a few minutes before, so the guess was a fairly precise one.)

     “You’re from Georgia, aren’t you?” the northern delegate asked knowingly.    

      “Yes,” your compiler replied, thinking his rich accent, inch-and-a-quarter cuffed khaki slacks, madras sport shirt, and docksiders had been the clues.  “Why do you ask?”

       “Because of the way you said the time.  Folks in most other parts of the country don’t know what a quarter means when it comes to telling time.”

        Your compiler was so flabbergasted in that moment that one out to hurt him could have run him off the steep side of the Starr’s Mill dam armed with nothing more than a limp dishrag and a chicken feather.   For you see, he had known for years that the younger generations, who have known digital clocks all their lives, don’t typically use that old analog term in telling time, but he had never heard it expressed as being a Southern…or just a Georgia… thing.  He is interested in hearing reader comments on this, for what the northern delegate said truly surprised him. 

     Forty years ago, while in grad school at the University of Georgia, your compiler heard a professorial response one afternoon that he thought was absolutely brilliant.  She finished her lecture, which was a polished gem of a talk, and asked, “Are there any questions?”  

    A  student in the lecture hall raised his hand and asked a long and rambling one designed more to show his supposed grasp of the subject than to increase the learning of anyone else in the class.  The professor looked at him for a long, silent moment, her lips pressed together in a thin line.  Then she asked in a very level tone, “Are there any pertinent questions?”  Everyone in the classroom had to stifle laughter, your compiler perhaps most especially.

    You see, while he thought the professorial response had been absolutely brilliant, he simultaneously thought back to his Brooks, Georgia, roots and to his late grandfather, who would erupt in frustration when someone would not get to the point in telling him something.  “When I ask you the time,” the old man would roar, “I don’t expect or need you to tell me how to build a damn wristwatch!”

    Precious memories, how they linger!  (That would make a good Gospel song!) Meanwhile, your compiler must go, for he has promises to keep and miles to go before he sleeps. (That would make a terrific poem!)  And it’s already a quarter to seven.