Yes. Haven't you seen Gone With The Wind? As Faulkner says in (I think) The Sound and the Fury, down below the Mason-Dixon line, the past isn't over; it isn't even past. At least _that_ past.
Once, years ago, my girlfriend and I were traveling in Charleston, stopped at an antique store, admired the goods. Asked the proprietor if she was from Charleston. "No," she said, "Ahm from Columbia. We don hayve beautiful things lahk this iyn Columba. It was burned, you know, durin the Wah." It took me two beats to realize that she was talking about Sherman's March from Atlanta to the sea. She said it like it happened 20 years ago, maybe. The Wah was the Wah Betweyn the States, as it's called in Dixie.
Btw, has anyone read Doctorow's The March?
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