Oh, I took NO offense at that BB. I'm a hick and have never had any hesitancy in fessing up to being a Hillbilly Hick <LOL>. Like you said, I'm sort of proud of it...certainly not ashamed of it.
I remember back in '74 or '75 I had to make a trip out to Salt Lake City to present a major revision to a Loan System that I'd written. It had to do with opening up Banking to Simple Interest calculations on loans where before that time, Banks used a "Rule of 78's" or "Sum Of the Balances" to compute interest.
Anyway, I had to make a presentation to the CEO, President and Executive VP along with all the officers in the Loan Department. I was shocked that when I finished making points, I would ask for any questions or comments and NEVER received ANY feedback! That was unbelievable because the entire concept was so "bleeding edge" type stuff back then that I KNEW the Bankers were chompin' at the bits to figure out how they could make it work and I'd come up with the methodology to let them do it.
I commented later to the manager of the Data Center about the lack of participation in the discussion. He got red in the face and apologized to me before answering me. He said that they were dumbfounded by my accent...and the fact that my hair was about halfway down my back!
I went out to dinner with them later that evening and after that everything was OK. I've lost a lot of that Hillbilly accent over the years in Kansas, but if you are from "there", you never really lose all of it. And you never lose the colloquialisms.