The Real South Park

Where a person comes from can determine a lot about that person’s life. The region a person is living in determines who many of their friends are, where they go to school, and even how they speak. A region can embody various values which can then be transferred on to the people living there. I come from a small town called South Park in southwestern Pennsylvania. This is not the South Park one might see characterized on the popular television show entitled South Park; it is indeed quite different from that. As a lifelong resident of South Park, I have noticed an assortment of values embodied by the town; values which I have noticed even more so since coming to college and being exposed to the varying different values of the regions of my colleagues.

Geographically, South Park is about 30 minutes away from the city of Pittsburgh. Oftentimes when people ask me where I am from, I don’t know whether to say South Park or to just say Pittsburgh, because I feel much attached to both. Pittsburgh has a major influence on the values of South Park. In fact, my town is part of a larger country, “Steeler Country,” that is. Many avid Pittsburgh Penguin and Pirate fans also contribute to the makeup of the city. Any given Friday during the Steeler season or any day when the “Pens” are playing a game in the Stanley Cup playoffs is sure to be a “Black and Gold” day in the schools. South Park is affected by Pittsburgh in many more ways. We speak the language of Pittsburgh (or at least a mild version of it) known as “Pittsburghese.” For example, the real name of our favorite football team is obviously the “Picksburgh Stillers.” Finally, as its suburb, South Park inherits the comradeship and friendliness exhibited by the people of Pittsburgh.

As for exactly what kind of suburb it is, South Park can be classified as middle class. In high school, we knew we weren’t the “rich kids” like Upper St. Clair, Peters Township, or Mt. Lebanon. At the same time we realized that we were still decently well off, and that a lot of the schools we competed with had a much larger lower-class population than we did. Like every town, there are different neighborhoods with different income levels. For example, the ranch house that I lived in until I was nine would be considered now to be in one of the shadier parts of South Park, even though it never seemed like it to me at the time. My new house, which happens to only be about three minutes away from my old one, is probably considered to be in the upper-middle of the spectrum. At the same time, I am still not living in one of the “fancy” new plans on the other side of South Park. Just because there are different sections of town, however, does not mean that the people don’t intermingle. It is true that people tend to form relationships with people in their immediate neighborhood because they live closer together and therefore have easy access to each other. Nevertheless, I have friends from all over town. While we all have our differences, the people of South Park are for the most part very accepting of the people around them.

By accepting one another the people of the town have grown very close, developing community spirit. One thing I always noticed about South Park is the pride we have in our town, sometimes known as “Eagle Pride.” The most obvious example of this is in the schools. South Park High School is the base of most of the sports teams in the district. The fact that it is a AA school never stopped the students from being passionate about their sports. We were always very competitive; within my time at South Park High School, the football and girls soccer teams won a state championship each, the boys soccer team had won two, and there were multiple district and section championships, including the track team who were three time undefeated section champions. The students were always very supportive of each other in their athletic ventures. Besides having Black and Gold Fridays, we often had Blue and White Fridays in support of our sports teams. Even in the elementary school, the kids were always excited for the coming week’s football game. It wasn’t only the students, however, that had Eagle Pride. Through the years, I was surprised to learn how much the community got involved in South Park athletics. Most of the people who attended the football games and other sporting events weren’t students but just our friends and neighbors in the community. People that I didn’t even know would sometimes come up to me and congratulate me on a performance at a previous track meet, because even when the people didn’t actually go to the sporting events, they still liked to read about it in the paper or hear about it somewhere else. The competitive spirit in South Park continues to bring the people together and increase community spirit.

Another example of the town coming together, which leads to another value that South Park seems to embody, is community service and the motivation to help others in general. I’m sure this is the same in a lot of towns, but I’ve always been impressed by the willingness of the people to help each other. For example, during the recent blizzard most of the power in South Park went out, including the power on the street where my house is located. My next door neighbor happened to have a generator, but instead of using it all for himself to keep his own house fully powered, he let my family and the other families around him plug into it so that we could all have enough power to plug in a few necessities. Also, despite the fact that teenagers are usually looked at as selfish, even the high school students in my town take part in helping out; the Interact club (a community service organization) at South Park High School was at one time the largest in the country, and about half of the student population of the school currently participates in it.

I have to say that I really do love my town. It’s not one of those towns where “everybody knows everybody” because it is a little too big for that, but I would say that I know a good majority of the town and I am always seeing familiar faces. I think this is a good size because it’s not so small that everyone is in everyone’s business, yet a lot of people have been there for awhile and do get to know a lot of people. I enjoy getting to know all the people because I think that most of the people are genuinely nice and almost everyone gets along. South Park obviously has its imperfections, but I suppose that every town does. As an aspiring history teacher, my dream situation would be to get to go back to South Park High School and teach. That school really helped shape the person I am today, and I would love to do that for future students. The reason it was really able to shape me as a person was because it embodied so many characteristics of South Park as a whole: characteristics, I believe, which are very important ones to have. Being a Pittsburgher, living the middle-class lifestyle, having competitiveness and “Eagle Pride,” and having the drive to help others while having an overall great sense of community are all values of South Park and are major parts of the person I am today.