Lucy Hale Teaches You How To Be From Tennessee

Chug, chug, chug.

Okay, mm.

Ooh.

Ooh.

Yeah.

[air whooshing]

Hi, I'm Lucy Hale, and today I'm gonna be teaching you

how to be a true Tennesseean by introducing you

to some of my favorite snacks, some of my favorite sayings,

and showing you everything I love about Tennessee.

[funky jazz music]

[air whooshing] [lively jazz music]

Here are some quintessential road trip snacks

that originated in Tennessee,

starting with MTN DEW, y'all.

I'm not necessarily a huge MTN DEW fanatic, but my dad is.

My dad lived in Mississippi a lot of my childhood,

and so it would take about an hour

from Memphis to Mississippi.

And so I call this like [chuckles] Preston's go-go juice.

So my dad's name is Preston,

and he was just a MTN DEW fanatic.

I don't know if I've tried a MTN DEW in many a moon,

but let's...

[drink fizzles]

What makes MTN DEW different than other sodas?

What's the flavor?

The...

[lively jazz music continues]

Guess we'll see. [chuckles]

Chug, chug, chug.

Okay.

Mm.

Ooh.

Ooh.

It's got a kick to it.

It's like lemon lime.

My dad would be proud.

Little Debbie, she did a lot of things right.

She's been busy.

She's making Zebra Cakes, Nutty Buddys.

Yeah, these are the favorites.

So this is just my childhood in a box.

I gotta try it.

I have to try it.

If I'm gonna try one, it's gonna be that.

But of course, I think Moon Pies may be the fan favorite.

Oh, and a Goo Goo Cluster.

Since 1912.

We love that. Okay.

Gonna try a little Zebra Cake.

[wrapper rustling]

Mm.

Spike my blood sugar real quick.

It's just a light midday snack.

Oh, my God, but it's just so good.

Why?

What's in this that makes it so good?

Y'all gotta try this.

Have you ever had a Zebra Cake?

Mm. Okay, that's enough.

And I can honestly say I've probably taken all

of these on a road trip before.

Just wash it down with a little you know...

[drink fizzles]

[exhales sharply]

[upbeat country music]

When I moved to Tennessee at 15,

I had a pretty thick Southern accent,

and I had to take accent reduction for auditions.

I pronounce every consonant.

It's because I had to actively do that

for about a year of my life.

But the one thing that stayed with me,

[pointer tapping]

this bad boy, y'all.

It's like it just sounds better to say,

What do y'all wanna do

instead of What do you guys wanna do?

Love a good y'all, you all.

Oh, this is my favorite one.

[paper rustling]

Okay, such a good one.

So this isn't even a word, fixin'.

It's like, what are you fixing?

It means like you're going to do something.

So like I'm fixin' to go to the store.

Instead of saying, I'm going to go to the store,

I'm fixing to do this, I'm fixing to do that.

[paper rustling]

So, oh, [beep].

So bless your heart

[pointer tapping]

is a term of endearment, but it kinda gets a bad rap.

It can be a little passive aggressive.

We've heard it said like, Ah, bless your heart,

if you mean it in like, You're an idiot. [laughs]

'Cause you can say it in a way like, Bless your heart,

but you're really saying, Oh, you dummy,

or whatever you mean.

So one of my favorite sayings from the South,

specifically from my mamaw, is over yonder.

She still says it to this day.

I still don't know where yonder is.

It could mean anywhere from I'm going

to the store over yonder, the neighbor's over yonder.

There's just like a timeless feel of it.

I might actually start incorporating over yonder

into my everyday life.

Or even to top it is, Are y'all fixin' to go over yonder?

That's a good one.

[upbeat hip-hop music]

There's so many things I love about the South.

One thing that we get so right is the food.

Where I'm from, Memphis, Tennessee,

we're known for a few things,

Justin Timberlake, Elvis Presley, and barbecue.

If you're going to Memphis, come with an empty stomach

and be prepared to eat your way through the city.

And Memphis specifically is known for the pork ribs,

which is what I think we have here.

Let's see what we got.

I haven't had a pork rib in a long time,

but you know what, let's try it.

My uncle actually owns a barbecue shop

in a town called Camden, Tennessee.

His specialty is, I think it's pork ribs and also pork loin.

I don't know what the pork loin is, but it's delicious.

Okay.

It's pretty good.

I love interactive foods.

Like I love food that you have to work for.

That's what's so fun about ribs.

That's what Memphis is known for.

If I weren't on camera,

this would be smeared all over everything,

but I'll try to have a little manners here.

Okay.

Teeth check.

[bell dings]

No, there's definitely stuff in my teeth.

I can feel it, but... [chuckles]

[producer chuckles]

Ribs would be nothing without a side.

And so collard greens is like a staple.

We have some baked beans, mac and cheese.

Let's see.

I never met mac and cheese that I didn't like.

One of my favorite things

about a Southern restaurant is fried okra.

My grandmother used to make fried okra.

She used to grow her own okra.

And nobody will ever be able

to recreate my mamaw's fried okra.

Okay, so the last thing I wanna talk about is Pancho's.

So Pancho's is a Mexican restaurant

that I used to go to with my family.

We'd go to Redbird baseball games,

and the Pancho's was,

I wanna say it was right across the street.

Really good Mexican food.

I think it's like a tourist hotspot, but it holds up.

[clapping hands]

Just sort of like a nice, light,

healthy meal we've got going on here.

[lighthearted country music]

So just to get you oriented,

Tennessee is in the southern part of the United States.

So if I went on a road trip,

I personally would start in Eastern Tennessee in Knoxville.

So my grandparents used to live in Knoxville growing up.

I have a lot of beautiful memories of the Smoky Mountains.

And it's a lot more green

and there's more hills and mountains in this area

as opposed to where I'm from in Memphis.

And then if you go a little south in Pigeon Forge,

that's Dolly World,

which I haven't been to in a very long time.

Some of my earliest memories are renting cabins

and we would go to Dolly World with my grandmother

and my grandparents.

So we go down south to Chattanooga,

which is also a beautiful area.

But Chattanooga's really special to me because I was 13,

I was living in Memphis,

Kelly Clarkson had just won American Idol,

and I saw a commercial for American Juniors,

and auditions were being held in Chattanooga.

My mom told me we could drive to Chattanooga

and I could audition for American Juniors,

which was a singing show.

And because of that show, that's what led me to acting.

It was sort of the stepping stone to my whole career.

So I'm very grateful to Chattanooga.

We gotta stop in Nashville.

I love Nashville so much.

I love the farmland.

I love the music scene.

I love the people.

I used to do some country music,

so I spent a lot of time there,

and I have a lot of friends there.

My mom lives in a town called Decaturville, Tennessee,

which is somewhere in here.

We'd make a pit stop at my mom's, say hi,

and then we would go up to Union City.

My grandparents used to live there.

My granddad was a pastor,

and so I had so many memories of his church

and this specific home in Union City

that I haven't been to in a long time, 25 years.

But we just gotta make a pit stop there.

And then we're making our way to Memphis,

which is where I'm from.

I love Memphis.

It is such a cool, cool city.

So much culture.

I'm from a little part called Cordova,

which is between Germantown and Collierville.

Memphis is known for Graceland, where Elvis lived.

And Graceland is amazing.

It's not exactly what you'd expect.

They've really kept everything exactly the same

as when Elvis lived there.

There's the TV room, where there's like seven different TVs.

It's really wild, but aesthetically,

I kind of love all the retro interior design,

so I think it's really fascinating.

It's also known for Sun Studios,

which is where Johnny Cash, and Roy Orbison,

and Elvis Presley recorded some of their biggest hits.

There's Beale Street, and Memphis is the home of the blues,

so you can listen to jazz and blues music,

the best probably in the world, in Memphis.

There's a lot of really amazing pockets of Memphis.

There's the Cooper-Young District

that has renovated warehouses.

There's a restaurant there called The Beauty Shop,

a renovated old beauty shop that's now a restaurant.

And I don't know if this is true, but there's a rumor

that Priscilla Presley used to get her hair done

at this beauty shop.

[upbeat country-rock music]

So Tennessee obviously has produced some musical icons.

Memphis is obviously known for Elvis Presley, BB King.

Beale Street is considered the home of the blues

and the birthplace of rock and roll.

And so on Beale Street,

there's a lot of blues and jazz bars.

And you can find music at any hour

of the day on Beale Street.

And then in Nashville,

I mean, any country artist ever lives there.

There's obviously the Grand Ole Opry,

which to me is like peak country music.

It's so classic.

It's just stuck in tradition in the most beautiful way.

I think almost every country performer artist

has performed at the Grand Ole Opry.

I actually did a music video there,

so I got to stand in the circle, which was so cool

because anyone from Johnny Cash to Loretta Lynn

to Dolly Parton to Martina McBride, they all performed here.

So you must stop at Grand Ole Opry.

All right, well, that is it.

Now you know how to be a real Tennessean.

And I will see y'all later.