Jenny picks apples off the apple trees.
Her husband Jed gathers the crops.
Some city slickers think they talk funny,
Their bad grammar and hick accents.
But them city folk don’t know nothin’
about the art of living off the land.
And Jenny and Jed are a damn sight
Smarter than those city slickers
When it comes to practical things.
And those good country folk know
What’s right and what’s wrong
And have better values, and
Humility and goodness in them
Than those smug city slickers.
And if another Depression came,
I’d rather be a Jed and Jenny
Instead of a thinks he’s smarter
than me city slicker standing
Like a beggar in the bread line.
Bob Boyd
Some thoughts about this poem:
Of course, not all people who live in cities are like the city slickers in this poem. But some people mistakenly think country folks and their country accents are inferior, and they are not as smart as them.
A while back, I saw Tom Hanks imitate a Southern accent on SNL to take a dig at Trump supporters as if they were racist, hayseed hicks.
Regardless of your politics, Trump hater, Trump lover, or politically indifferent, you might find it offensive that Tom Hicks used a Southern accent to suggest people with such accents are like racist hicks and, no doubt in his opinion, too stupid to vote correctly. And I know without doubt many people with beautiful, Southern accents are far smarter than him and me.
I write this as a guy with a Bostonian accent who lives in the South and loves accents. When a person here in North Carolina sometimes kids me about my accent, I kid that person back by saying you’re hearing the Queen’s English, and we both have a laugh.