And just for the record, Atlanta is not the south. Ask any southerner.
I never said that it was, and other than the climate and geography, it is not "southern."
The Florida panhandle is, i.e. Panama City and Tallahassee. I lived there for a total of 5 years, and my husband was born and raised there, and he lived there his whole life. He *is* a southerner, no questions asked. I had to ween him off the sweet tea, because that stuff stains your teeth. And naturally, my husband calls Atlanta Yankee land...and *I* recognize it as not being southern.
My paternal grandmother was from Burmingham, Alabama...and she had the thickest southern drawl I have ever heard. Her husband, my grandfather too was from Alabama. I spent a lot of time with them, and my other set of grandparents when I was growing up, in Virginia.
And for the record, many Yankees don't just believe anything a southernor would say just because they have a southern drawl and talk sweetly. Yankees tend to think that someone with a southern accent is stupid, and that is a stereotype of a southern accent. I recently bought the Smurfs , which is akin to The Seven Dwarfs (with the characters)...and the dummy Smurf, "Dopey", has a southern accent. That too is very offensive to me, as is the Yankee superior, smarmy, bigoted attitude towards southernors. It goes both ways for me.