The use of “Southern” as if there exists such singularity in people or culture is misleading, actually wrong. Across the wide expanse of area usually called “the South” is amazing variety in both people and cultures: Native Americans, African Americans from Gullah-Geechee to urbanites, Cajuns, Appalachian natives, cowboys, modern farmers, those who celebrate Irish or Scotch or Scotch-Irish or German heritage. And that just introduces the diversity of the South.

One quite pervasive practice across differences is use of hyperbole, language that intentionally exaggerates or cloaks reality, in humor or to make a moral point. Both speaker and hearer know that the words are not literally true. In fact, they often are framed as a story, not a narrative. But they communicate.

My father, a hard-working farmer who plowed with mules for too much of his life, once said that he could plow all day and then throw a rock across the area that he had cultivated. That was not true, of course, but it reflected the typical slow progress in such work. A man in that community who was suffering with a cold in the runny nose stage declared, “If my nose had been hooked up to the Ohoopee River, it would have ‘riz’ a foot today.” Anyone who has shared his malady would understand perfectly.

Hyperbole is used to express disguised protest. Some remember Tennessee Ernie Ford’s successful song “Sixteen Tons.” “I was born one morning at a quarter ‘til 9; picked up my shovel and walked to the mine; loaded 16 tons of No. 9 coal and the straw boss said, ‘Well, bless my soul.’ Saint Peter, don’t you call me 'cause I cain’t go. I owe my soul to the company store.”

This is a protest against cradle-to-grave debt peonage, a financial device that tied people to work, even a particular employer. It was ubiquitous across the South and elsewhere, typical in mining, textile manufacturing, turpentining and share-cropping. Debt for food and other essentials from company stores (aka commissaries) or cash advances frequently was greater than workers were paid. Workers could not leave that employer until all debt was paid off and remained bound, almost like slavery. However, it applied to all races. They shared poverty and powerlessness.

Tall tales often were spun just for the fun of it. Books have been written about the John (or Jack) stories from Southern Appalachia. Sometimes, they carried subtle messages against class distinctions or the negative attitudes of outsiders against the mountain folk. Their distortions speak their truths.

There is a similar pattern in the “folk” stories of African Americans. The “Uncle Remus” stories recorded by Joel Chandler Harris are examples. (Yes, I know that the movie, “The Song of the South,” which draws upon his work, has been criticized for its demeaning portrayal of Black characters, but that is Hollywood, which missed the point. Surprise. Surprise.)

In these stories, “Brer Rabbit,” at a power disadvantage against bears and foxes, still wins by his wits. Powerless ex-slaves made their way with their smarts. Gullah folk tales from South Carolina that have been recorded reveal the same themes.

Sometimes, hyperbole in story telling is not meant to take any stance on issues or be profound. It is a tool for amusement. Tennessee Ernie had another song, one entitled, “Shotgun Boogie,” in which a young suitor finds that the father of the girl he is courting rejects him and chases him away with a shotgun. He flees the blast.

“When the gun went off, I outrun the blast.”

With that kind of speed, that boy could play for any school in the Southeastern Conference and get drafted by the pros after two years.

Saint James Aaron, one of my favorite neighbors from the past, could use hyperbole in weaving stories like no one else that I ever knew. According to one, he had a sow birthing pigs in a pen in a wooded area near his house. Here is how his tale went.

“I was going down the path to check on her when I saw two black snakes fighting. Each one had the other by the tail and was swallowing the other. They made a circle. Well, I had to go on down to check on my sow and she was alright. When I got back to where the snakes were, they were gone. They had swallowed one another completely.”

The story of the cat fight is better. “I had a big ol' yellow tom cat and when he got grown, he was mean. Whipped everything that came on the hill, even a bulldog. One day, a stray tom came out of the woods and he was just as big. When they came together, both jumped and met three feet in the air. They just climbed one another and kept climbing until they went out of sight. I don’t know what finally happened to them but hair fell for a week.”

Now, that’s funny, Mr. Saint.

I still miss that man.

Roger G. Branch Sr. is professor emeritus of sociology at Georgia Southern University and is a retired pastor.