SOUTHERN CONSERVATIVES SPEAK TO ME
I just returned from vacation with my family a few days ago. We drove down to Florida from Connecticut to visit many of the Orlando area attractions. The vacation was great, but obviously that is not what this editorial is about.
I live in Connecticut. If I remember correctly, Connecticut did not have a single county that went to Bush in 2004...although the city I live in went easily to Bush. I started this site in the beginning of May. I have worn my own ProudConservative.com shirts around Connecticut for 9 weeks. Without actually counting, I would say that in those nine weeks. I had maybe 20-25 people comment on the fact that they liked my shirt. I am talking mainly about the Pro-Life shirt and the Right Wing Conspiracy shirt. I got some dirty looks as well...which quite honestly is a little more fun.
Growing up in CT, I consider the DC/Maryland and Virginia border as the unofficial border between North and South. Literally, the first rest stop in Virginia, I had 3 people comment on my Right Wing Conspiracy shirt in a positive manner. I was at the rest stop for maybe 20 minutes. I thought, "Hmmm....That's interesting." but didn't think too much of it. We continued on a little further and stopped for the night in Virginia. In the hotel lobby, one of the clerks commented on my shirt and actually called another clerk from the back to see it. They loved it. Once again, I found it interesting, but still thought it was merely a coincidence that several people in the same day commented on the shirt. The next day, I wore my Pro-Life shirt. In the little breakfast area at the hotel, a husband and wife commented on my shirt. They told me that it was great to see a young man wearing such a shirt. At this point, I started thinking that maybe there was more to it than just a few nice people commenting on a stranger's shirt. We stopped to gas up, one of the customers at the gas station pointed to my shirt and said, "Me too." We stopped at the rest area in North Carolina. A very nice woman saw my shirt and said, "Come over here. I want to show you something." I followed the woman over to her car and she proudly displayed her "Choose Life" license plate. If I remember correctly, she was from Alabama. I chatted with her for a few moments and then went inside the welcome center. One of the women working there praised my shirt as well as another tourist who overheard the woman praising my shirt. As a new business owner, I started thinking that I should just stand around rest areas in the South to get the ProudConservative.com name out there.
Situations such as these continued over the next 9 days. From supporting the troops, to being pro-life, to having a little fun with the right-wing conspiracy...the nice thing for me to see, was the different people who commented on my shirts. From the teenager in the McDonalds to the elderly woman at the Cracker Barrel to the older couple in the hotel breakfast area to the 20something woman at Disney World to the middle aged man in South Carolina, they were young, old, middle aged. They were white, black, Hispanic. They were men and they were women. Without counting again, I would estimate that in the 9 days (of which I only wore my shirts 5 days) I was in the South, I easily had over 100 people actually come up to me and verbally comment positively on my shirt. I am not foolish enough to believe that it was the designs on my shirts that inspired people enough to comment to a complete stranger about their clothing. Rather, it was the idea or the beliefs behind the designs for the shirts that united strangers if only for a moment.
People reading this may be thinking, "So what? A hundred people commented on his shirt. There are millions of people in the South." I somewhat agree. But there was a certain passion in the eyes of the people that spoke to me. It wasn't just exchanging pleasant words with a stranger. It was a little bit more than that. It's hard to describe in words. We hear all the time that the South is conservative and liberals won't do well there. I'm certain that there are more scientific and political ways to prove this. But I can only comment on my experiences. And after my experiences in the South with something as silly as a few T-shirts and some very nice strangers, I can't help but feel that the liberals really do have problems in the South. That's a good thing.
