Preaching to the Converted: A southern man

Preaching to the Converted: A southern man

KenKundisHeadshotEver since my first New York-area move four years ago, I've heard something more than a dozen times. Perhaps two dozen. People up here are often surprised that not only am I not a native New Yorker, I am also not someone who has spent the majority of their life in the Northeast, or even in urban areas.

Truth is, my path is pointedly Southern, and if not â┚¬Ëœsmall town,' then at least distinctly suburban. I was born at Winter Park Memorial Hospital in 1966. Back then, â┚¬ËœWinter Park' was a quantifiably different place from â┚¬ËœOrlando.' Downtown to me meant Park Avenue. While I was born in Orange County, I lived and was educated in Seminole County. (Anyone familiar with the subdivision Eastbrook will know how it is bifurcatedâ┚¬â€Orange/Seminoleâ┚¬â€roughly in the center.) And in the 1970's in Seminole County, Florida, with Disney's footprint just beginning to stretch, the children of farmers, laborers and rural workers of all types were the company we kept, at least in my elementary and middle school.

The cultural wrinkle for me was that when my parents moved to Winter Parkâ┚¬â€my mother pregnant with meâ┚¬â€from Mechanicsburg, Penn., with my father's job as a civilian working for the US Navy on training simulators, they did so with the majority of their neighborhood. And so not unexpectedly, many of them landed and bought (unbelievably cheap) homes in the same neighborhoods. (I can't help myself but to tell you that my parents bought our 4-bedroom, 2 bath, 1,700 sq foot, block-built house for $7,000  in 1965. They sold it for an $181,000  profit four years before  the Orlando housing boom.) Most landed in Eastbrook, others in English Estates, and some in Carriage Hill, all situated along Aloma Avenue, and all a short drive to the shiny new Naval Training Center just over the Winter Park/Orlando border in what is now Orlando's Baldwin Park.

These transplants brought with them a good many of their Northeastern ways and in so doing, certainly changed my experience from those of other Seminole County children. Italian, Ukrainian, Polish and Russian names were as common in my elementary school as traditionally Southern, English names.

But at the same time, I still knew I lived in the South. While that ethnic diversity in my neighborhood broadened my perspective, I still was very much in the company of traditional southerners. Rednecks, if you will. My high school had an active Future Farmer of America chapter and a good many students whose families came from orange farming or tangential careers.

While occasionally maligned, I felt I got a great education in Seminole County Public Schools, although even then, I could feel a separation from most of the more â┚¬Ëœcountry' of my classmates. It wasn't that I felt superior, I just knew we didn't come from the same mold, and that made it difficult to bond.

From high school, I went to college in New Orleans, a place so steeped in Southern tradition that it's almost a caricature of Southern life. And then returned home, not to leave again until age 41, when I first moved to New York (officially, New Jersey. On my return, I've settled in Hell's Kitchen in Midtown Manhattan).

I officially don't have a Southern accent, but to be honest, that was probably intentional. That said, I can still locate that Southern boy when in the right mood. I was, after all, raised in the bluest county in all of the country. My friend Skip, born and raised at approximately the same time in Titusville as I was in unincorporated Winter Park, didn't really believe I was from Seminole County until he heard me after four shots of Patron. That's the only time the Southern comes outâ┚¬â€when I shoot too much tequila.

I know it's my pace that throws people off whatever their regional version of gaydar is. I talk fast, I walk fast. I tend to think fast. I have a let's say, dry, sense of humor. So many people have told meâ┚¬â€from lifelong friends to new acquaintancesâ┚¬â€that I seem like someone who should live in New York City. I get that and all that it means. I regard it as a compliment.

So I'm right for the city. But the question begs: Is the city right for me?

In many ways, I'm at home here, among all the noise and the lights. I can walk in to a McDonald's and no matter how long the line is, I know I will be out of there in 10 minutes. There is no such luxury in the more polite, but infinitely less efficient South. And there are, tangible, meaningful reasons for me to be here: my boyfriend chief among them, of course. But also my job, based out of Rockefeller Center, is truly a dream job and a 12-minute walk from my apartment. Another dream. Plus, as many have correctly noted, the city and I are on the same RPMs.

So have we arrived? The boyfriend, the job, the New York City life? Wellâ┚¬Â¦yes. And no.

I can't lie: I miss the verdant physicality of life in Florida. I miss owning property. Yes, I still own property in Orlando, but now from the distance of a landlord.

My beloved Boris, who I suddenly, sadly had to put down in December, was certainly a freer animal in Florida. Critters everywhere to hunt, a lake to swim in just around the corner, and his own backyard definitely spoiled him for the cold streets of Manhattan, peeing on the street and wincing whenever a horn blew. (Which is all the time.)

And in his passing, maybe the last connective thread to actually living in Florida has been broken. But somehow I don't think so. For me, it now, and always has, goes deeper than that. For all the outward appearances, and even my own protestations to the contrary, I am a Southerner by birth and the impression it left on me won't ever leave me.

Under the covers of this New York life, I am still a Southern man. That's where I was born, and something tells me I'll get back there some day.

More in Viewpoint

See More