This sort of relates to RE: Space, RE: America and RE: Trash. I love the north and the south and I mean no disrespect to the either.  I’m not a storyteller so excuse me if I jump around a bit. It's hard to condense two life times into a few lines. 

Both of my parents were born in the south and moved to the north.  My dad is from Yazoo, Mississippi (look it up it’s a place) and my mother is from Independence, Louisiana (though she claims New Orleans aka ‘Nawlins’).  My dad was raised on a plantation where he picked cotton.  No he wasn’t a slave, he was slightly better than that.  He was a sharecropper. In the south, my mother’s social life involved her friends coming over and her dad making them all go out to the fields to dig potatoes or pick strawberries. They lived in the time of Jim Crow and experienced too much of what the south had to offer. 

By the time they were eighteen both decided country life wasn’t for them so they moved to the north.  Ohio provided a faster life with fewer restrictions.  My parents met each other at a mutual acquaintance’s wedding.  She was the little sister to his best friend.  He was the guy that gave her a ride home from the wedding and made the other girl (his date) sit in the back.  Long story short they got married had three children and worked a host of jobs to provide for them.  They moved from an apartment, to a house, to a bigger house in the suburbs. They were by no means wealthy but they had come along way.

Growing up we made a yearly pilgrimage back down south to visit family that still lived there.  Over the years the one thing I’ve noticed from these trips:  the landscape (and in some places the people) have changed so much slower than their northern counterparts.  I’m almost thirty now and I still try to go with them at least once a year to see the same places:  The old shack with the dirt floor that housed my father’s family; the old tree and overgrown cemetery where my great grandmother was laid to rest.  The witch’s grave that my father told me stories about.  The fields where cotton still grows.  I see these places and I am both thankful and heartbroken to know that my future children will not understand what my parents left behind.

Everyone eats everyone else: Whether that means literally picking at a person's flesh, or slowly devoring their heart and soul.