Question: Why "DumbSoutherner"?
Answer: I love the South. I was born here, and have every intention of dying here. But, I've heard the phrase "dumb Southerner" so many times in my life that I just couldn't pass up the chance to use it as the name for my website. Let me give you just one example:

Years ago, I worked for a small electronics company here in the South. With just a handful of employees, we grew this company from an idea into a thriving business with sales in the tens of millions of dollars. Our profit on these sales was nearly 30 cents on the dollar.

Then, a huge company came along and bought our little company. Their profit margin was just pennies on the dollar. So, you'd figure these interlopers would want to study how our little band of Southerners had managed to make our company so profitable. Wrong. Instead, I overheard one of their Big Wheels say, "We've got to teach these dumb Southerners how we do business."

They succeeded. Under their guidance, our profit margin shrank to nearly match theirs within a year. Our little band of Southerners desperately (and politely) attempted to explain why the outsider's new way of doing business was causing such great harm. Such efforts were not well received. One of the biggest of the Big Wheels flew into town to say to us all, "If you don't like it, you can leave."

So, we did. Within months, over 95% of the dumb Southerners had sadly left the company.

The empty building is now for rent. Several national magazines have published articles explaining why this region of the country is the perfect place for running a company exactly like the one that died in this building.

Dumb Southerners, indeed.

Question: Has this website really been around since 1996?
Answer: Well, sort of. The original "Hey Y'all, Wa' `Chis" website, ancestor of DumbSoutherner.com, was indeed born in 1996. ("Hey Y'all, Wa' `Chis" was the punch line to the old joke: "What did the Southerner holler right before he got killed?")

When I finally decided to purchase a domain name, "heyyallwachis" or "heyyall" just didn't look right. So, I chose DumbSoutherner.com. I killed the old website December 31, 2001, and went public with this site, redesigned and under its new name, January 1, 2002.

Question: What the heck is kudzu?
Answer: Kudzu (Pusraria lobata) is a vine. It's a native of the Orient, but now lives happily in the South. (Come to think of it, this reminds me of a lot of programmers I know.) Back during the Great Depression of the 1930's, the Civilian Conservation Conservation Corps. needed to provide work for unemployed young men. So, they armed hundreds of them with kudzu seeds, and sent them out into the rural South. The idea was to plant kudzu on the roadsides to control erosion. It worked. Oh boy, did it work!

What they'd failed to realize was just how incredibly happy kudzu would be living in the South. The South's steamy summers and mild winters allowed the plant to grow with frightening speed. In fact, there are many places in the South where it grows at a rate of 60 feet per year! In the summer, it can grow as much as a foot in a single day! It can completely cover a house or barn in a matter of weeks. Despite efforts to eradicate it, kudzu can still be seen swallowing up the landscape in many places in the South.

I'm hoping DumbSoutherner will grow just like kudzu.

Direct comments, questions, compliments, and death threats to fred@DumbSoutherner.com.

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