Hunker Down

I’ve lived my whole life in the south, but am not southern.  My family just isn’t southern.  My grandparents were eastern European immigrants who ended up in Savannah.  Because of this, there are certain southern sayings and mannerisms I don’t have.  There are some things I just don’t understand.

I was born in the metropolis of Huntsville, AL in 1972.  When I was four, we moved to Slidell, LA.  At eighteen, I set off to Atlanta for college and beyond.  I’ve now lived more of my life here than in any other place I’ve been, which makes me an Atlantan, I guess; certainly as much of an Atlantan as anyone else here.    Though I am an Atlantan, I do not seem to be a Georgian, based on some of the things Georgians tend to say.

When I originally came here for school, I noticed a curious colloquialism Georgians would say when they didn’t quite catch what you said.  Generally you’d expect people to say something like, “pardon,” or, “excuse me,” or, “sorry,” or, “I didn’t quite catch that,” or, “what,” or even, “come again.”  Instead Georgians reply with “Do what?” or “Do what, now?”  I’ve wondered why the default behavior for Georgians is to expect that people would be asking them to do something.  So, I’ve been obliging them by handing out chores. 

“Want to go grab a burrito?”

“Do what, now?”

“I said, ‘mow the lawn.’”

That query, though, wasn’t the most confusing southernism I experienced when I moved to Georgia.  I remember my freshman year seeing a poster showing a scene from a U[sic]GA football game.  The caption on the poster was, “hunker down you hairy dogs.”  That was the first time in my life I had seen the word “hunker.”  Since I understood the other four words in the statement I thought I could figure out what that fifth word meant using the old high school English trick of context clues.  Unfortunately, I had no idea what message that statement was supposed to convey, so context clues were of no use.  I wasn’t entirely sure, even though I recognized most of the words, that it was actually English.  Subsequently, I have learned that “hunker down” is a phrase unto itself, so trying to separate the two words would not have been any benefit.  I have looked up the word hunker in Merriam-Webster.  While it does appear alone, the definitions claim that it is used with the word down.  The two words are inseparable.  Apparently, one may not hunker in any other direction than down. 

I don’t recall people in Louisiana saying hunker down.  Do they say that down there?  It certainly wasn’t in my family’s vernacular.  Hunker down isn’t the kind of thing you expect to hear from southern Jews.  Southern Jews are charged with delivering kitsch like, “shalom y’all,” which supposedly honors both the Jewish and southern heritages of the speaker.  I have never once heard a southern Jew say, “shalom y’all,” in the wild.  I think it’s pure fantasy.

Over the years I have tried to get a better feeling for the phrase hunker down so I can understand it and, maybe one day, actually use it correctly.  I do recall once in the 90s smiling when President Clinton used hunker down during a State of the Union speech.  I’m sure it was a calculated ploy to make us think he was just a regular guy from Arkansas, not the Rhodes Scholar who earned a degree in law from Georgetown.  In fact, I recall Clinton attending the 1994 NCAA basketball tournament in support of Arkansas, a school he never attended, against his Alma Mater.  Typical politician.

Recently the phrase hunker down has raised its hoary head again.  We’re behind on our yearly rainfall totals here and may be headed toward a drought.  PSAs are all over the radio urging Georgians to conserve water.  Now who in the great state of Georgia would be the perfect pitch-man for the PSA?  Short of hiring Jesus himself to do the voice over they’ve hired the next best thing: University [sic] of Georgia head football coach Mark Richt.  Let’s face it, while approximately eighty-five percent of Georgians identify as Christian, the predominant faith in this state is actually college football. 

So, ol’ coach Richt is urging all Georgians to hunker down and conserve water.  The PSAs are a bit laughable, using football analogies such as, “Drought has gripped Georgia this year like a Bulldog tackle,” or, “Georgia's water supply is ticking down as fast as the final seconds of a football game.”  I suppose if you want your message to get across to an audience you have to speak in a language they understand.  More people around here can diagram a hook and ladder than can explain the hydrological cycle even in very broad terms. 

What’s most depressing about this, though, is that I have to hear Richt continually refer to this area as the “home of the Dawgs” when I’m specifically listening to the sports-talk station that’s home of the Yellow Jackets.  I just can’t escape it.

I guess it’s about time I hunker down and get some work done.