Damn Yankees

If the New York Yankees changed their name to the Knickerbockers or the Highlanders or some such thing, maybe I could like them. But I just can't work up any affection for anything that is called a Yankee. That word has connotations of disagreeableness that I cannot overcome. We used that word to refer to non-southerners, mostly folks in Bermuda shorts and sandals with black socks on their way to Florida in my limited experience. They talked funny, especially those Michiganders and Wisconsonites, and they were our hated traditional enemies. It was the Yankees that burned their way to Atlanta in 1864 and coerced us into staying in their damnable union.

It was inconceivable to me that I would ever live in Yankeeland or even marry a Yankee woman, but I do and did. I figured out that Mrs Vache Folle isn't really a Yankee since almost none of her ancestors was present for the War Between the States. Her one ancestor who served in the Union forces, Shem Lloyd, a recent arrival from Wales, deserted before he saw action, so he almost counts as a Confederate. In fact, a lot of folks up here in Yankeeland aren't Yankees. It would be intolerable if they were all Yankees.

I was shocked when I travelled abroad for the first time and found out that some foreigners reckoned that I was a Yankee. This was appalling.