The "south"

I heard this convo the other night:

1: Are you from the south?
2: Yeah.
1: Where?
2: Florida.
1: Oh, northern Florida?
2: No. Near Miami.
1: Well that doesn't really count.

Florida's a weird place like that. The northern part of the state, the panhandle and Jacksonville and all that, feels like Alabama – like the deep south (grits, bibles, etc.). But the southern part of the state has Miami and Boca and Cubans and is not at all like what we typically consider "the south."

So the northern part of the state is more like "the south" than the southern part of the state. Which means that if you live in, say, Palm Beach, and someone asks you, "What's the south like?" You'd have to answer, "You need to go north to know what the south is like."

Which, in a way, is always the truth.