I miss the way my parents talked. I love accents.
Colloquial pronunciations, phrases, and speech patterns seem to be
disappearing. I believe that mass communication like radio and TV have
played a part in watering down our familiar ways of speaking. When I was a
kid in the 70’s, I watched The Brady Bunch and The Partridge family. The
actors spoke as if they had no accent at all. Some of it rubbed off on my
generation. Migration played a role in softening our accents as well. During
my elementary school years, there was only one family that I knew that was
from somewhere besides Charlotte. It was a place called New York City. The
Carney’s were our next-door neighbors and they spoke very differently from
us. When their nephew, Jerry, would visit from New York, it was like some
exotic foreigner had come to town. We asked him about the Statue of Liberty
and the Empire State Building. We were astonished that Jerry had been to
neither of them.
I wish that I had managed to hang on more to the gentile
and lyrical way my parents spoke. I mean, I still pronounce many words just
like my parents did, but it does not sing and flow or follow the same
cadence. The way they waxed poetic about the pinkness of the sky as we
took a sunset boat ride up the main channel of Lake Norman. The sun would
disappear just beyond the tree-lined shore. Their words sauntered like a
walk along a meandering path. My parents were both born and raised in
Charlotte, North Carolina in the 40s and 50s. People from other parts of the
United States probably thought that all southerners sounded the same. They
could not discern a Piedmont accent from an Appalachian or Coastal accent.
To some we just all sounded southern, which is fine, but do not confuse
southern with Country. Country is not just in the south. North Carolina is
blessed with three distinct geographical regions. For most of our history,
geography kept Carolinians somewhat isolated. Our coastal areas were
difficult to navigate due to treacherous shoals and shallow sounds. Before
modern highways, the Appalachian Mountains were only reached by those who
had previously resided hilly country in some other part of the world.
Charlotte sits squarely in the Piedmont. Charlotteans, and residents of the
other mid-size cities in the Piedmont developed a style of elocution that
was Charleston elegant, without the haughtiness. My parents spoke in an
elegant, yet humble tone. I find that a difficult line to walk the talk, but
it was second nature to them. I can hear a Charlotte accent a mile away.
Several months ago, an elderly gentleman came into a store where I was
working. His accent was exactly like my fathers. I asked if he happened to
grow up in Eastover or Myers Park, both are old Charlotte areas where my
father had spent his childhood. The man seemed happy I noticed and said that
he had indeed grown up in Eastover. He even shared a memory of having a
grade school crush on my father’s sister Mary Josephine! My Aunt Jo.
When I hear someone from Charlotte speak in that old Charlotte way, it melts my
heart. Sometimes I hear my parents in the voices of their friends that are
still with us, like Nancy Thomas and Catherine Barnhardt Browning. I hear
the warmth of my mother’s tone in the natural drawl spoken by my cousins
Marimac and Suzanne. They managed to hang on to more than I did. My siblings
and I sound like each other. We certainly use phrases that came directly
from our parents. Yet, Charlotte has grown so much that most folks are from
somewhere else. All those new bits and pieces of language work their way in
to and meld with our own and create something new. I guess that is the way
language works. But I would give the world to hear Mom to say that something
is, “just wuhndehrful,” once more. I want to hear her kind, soft southern
voice say, “It’ll be bettahr in the morning. Ev’rything seems worse at
night. I want to hear my Dad say that he can’t talk on the phone right now
because, “I’m holdin’ court on the patio.” Oh to hear him say any of these
things one more time! “I’m watching the Golf Toonament.” “Pass the Wooster,
please.” “These pi-tachios are great”. I want him to tell me how much he
always loved my “muhther.”
