I was driving to work the other day when I noticed the bumper sticker on the vehicle in front of me, a black Ford truck with no license or registration showing.

This was obviously Mr. Anonymous at the wheel. He did, however, have enough wherewithal to make his feelings known, as many an American enjoys doing, by plastering his personal opinions on the backside of his car for the edification of all the other idiots on the road.

His one sticker simply stated in bold letters, "Yankees Suck."

Being from the North, I almost decided to stalk him and find out who this "person" was. Unfortunately, I had a deadline to meet. Instead I told myself, "The pen is mightier than the bumper sticker."

I think people from Illinois and Massachusetts and New Jersey and all those other cold, distant places like being referred to as a "Yankee" almost as much as I do.

I never thought about it one way or the other until I packed up all my subversive literature and rock-n-roll records into my big, smelly carpet bag and headed to the Promised Land, Roswell, Ga.

Soon after I arrived, my coworkers who were born here began to point out my "Yankee" status. They would say, "You Yankees this..." and "You Yankees that..." I was not amused.

My reply was usually, "I'm not a Yankee. I'm an American, just like you." Well, that usually left them speechless, mostly because it sounded so lame. But I still feel that way, and I suppose I always will.

It seems to me that people south of the Mason-Dixon line have a little bit of a chip on their shoulder. The War Between the States ended almost 140 years ago, but the spirit of that resistance is alive and well in many a mind here. My advice is to let it go.

It's over. Move on.

I wasn't around when the Civil War went down, really! I just so happen to have been born on the winning side. Frankly, I don't even care about winning. I just want to participate in the game.

Whether you like it or not, you are a part of this country. We are fellow Americans and it's time that we behaved like it.

I live in the UNITED states. I have the freedom to move to any town at any time for no good reason. And that's exactly what I did.

I like it here, despite the suffocating anti-culture that has been left to spread like so much kudzu. I've read "Tropic of Cancer" and I'm not apologizing for it. I don't like oppression of any kind and that is what it feels like to be "labeled" a "Yankee."

Call me crazy (you might as well, you already call me Yankee), but the abolishment of slavery, you know, that thing where you keep other people like house pets who can do all the menial tasks that you, yourself are too lazy to take on, that was a good thing, right?

The really sad thing is that African-Americans had to fight all over again for the basic freedoms and common respect of their neighbors whose misguided pride was just so much ignorance cloaked in society's fancy furs.

Southerners (for want of a better term) are always saying, "If you don't like it here, then go