Accent-uate the Positive

Accent-uate the Positive Liz Mandrell "There's a Southern accent where I come from," Johnny Cash sings on his latest released album Unchained. "The younguns call it country and the Yankees call it dumb." "Southern Accents" could be my theme song, judging from the reactions I get from on-line customers. I sell out-of-print books over the Internet, and while the cold print of e-mail reveals nothing, once I get on the phone and confirm the order my customer immediately realizes that I'm down here sweating in a coal mine of a bookstore right at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains of Eastern Kentucky. I twang, I wheeze, I talk through my nose. When I say fire, it sounds like far. When I say leg, it sounds like laig. And the image that my voice brings, say of a large beehived woman in a floral print dress, spittoon close by and a youngun on my hip, is the persona many of my on-line customers envision. I try to shuck and dance like the brick-dumb tenant farmer they apparently think I am, but it is a little insufferable to have the time zones explained to me twice in the same conversation. It's a little hard to stomach having the difference between fourth class book rate and priority mail clarified numerous times and somewhat dumbfounding to listen to a dealer from New York yell into the phone as if anyone below the Mason-Dixon line were just too slow to hear normal vocalizations. I have become a vocal museum, Exhibit A-Redneck Female Does Good in the Book Biz. Spit, sit back, drink some sour mash and sell a few books. My husband, who received his vocal training in Benton, Illinois, has none of the problems of credibility that I seem to have, even though he is relatively new to the business while I have been bookish in a personal way all my life and professionally for the last twelve years. His flat news-anchor voice sails smoothly through the fiberoptic cables, translating into proof that he has a grasp on the elementary principles of life in a bookstore. However, when I pick up the phone, some fundamental encoding problem occurs. I say "I'll check on that book and call you back d'rectly." I say, "Thank you for your inquiry." They hear, "You shore do have a pretty mouth, boy." One California customer asked me to repeat "calendar" four times, Liz Mandrell owns and operates a used book shop in Mt. Sterling, Kentucky. 15 and countless phone customers lob the old I-love-to-hear-you-peopletalk comment at me. Again I get that old museum feeling in my bones, like I'm part of an ancient-civilization exhibit and they're listening to the sound bite of my voice. Isn't that quaint? they might muse. Wonder if she has indoor plumbing in that bookstore. One morning I realized the difficulty people have in separating the competence of an individual from the degree of hickness in one's voice when a New York dealer openly mocked my intonation. She was sure that a book I had on my hold shelf was a book she had requested to be held. However, I was holding it for a book dealer in Canada. "Are you sure it's not my name you have on the book?" she clipped. "Unless ya'll are Book Express, then yes, Ah'm sure," I said. "No we sure isn't. We ain't never been called that," she hooted, imitating my spoken flavor and lapsing into the worst Ernest T. I've ever heard. "Ah'm jest afunnin' with ye," she howled, right before I hung up on her. Another bewildered dealer from New York was positive that I was calling from the wilds of deep South Georgia, but when I assured him that I was in Kentucky, he then pressed me to explain the pronunciation of Louisville. What is it, Lewisville, Looeyville, Looaville, Looavull? I told him Louisville isn't really part of Kentucky anyway, but it was pronounced "Luh-vul." One customer from St. Louis sent...