Song of the South

Song, song of the south
Sweet potato pie and shut my mouth
Gone, gone with the wind
Ain't nobody lookin' back again
- Alabama

I just glanced at the Table of United States Metropolitan Statistical Areas (courtesy of Wikipedia). Wow, I need to reorient my thinking. We're all in the big leagues, now.

New York tops the list, of course, with 18.8 million folks. And Los Angeles is second with 12.9 million (although when you add in Ontario/Riverside/San Bernardino, the number climbs to 16.9). And Chicago is third with 9.5 million. That's the way I always learned it.

But now it gets different. Dallas/Ft Worth is fourth with - 6.1 million! When did that happen? And although Philadelphia is fifth with 5.8 million, Houston is close behind with 5.6 million. Miami comes in seventh with 5.4 million.

Here's the next big surprise. Washington, DC is eighth (that I could foresee), but now with 5.3 million souls (well, a large percentage are attorneys, so maybe "souls" is a stretch, but you get my meaning). And here is another big stunner: Atlanta now also has 5.3 million people living there! What would Aunt Pittypat say now about Yankees in Georgia? But there are plenty up north, too: Boston rounds out the top ten with 4.9 million.

We all seem to be growing boys and girls, but the huge, double-digit percentage increases are happening in the South and Southwest (Phoenix, Austin, Orlando, Las Vegas, Raleigh-Durham - you get the picture). In fact, of the top 50 areas, only four have lost population since 2000: Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo and Rochester. Do we discern a trend here?

But the biggest surprise came when I found my home town, Tulsa, Oklahoma. We're number 53 on the list and it showed us with 905,755 inhabitants - and predicts we will reach one million before the next census! Wow. Our neighbor down the turnpike, Oklahoma City, is number 44 with 1.2 million.

There was one other notable population loss. New Orleans, currently with 1 million people, has lost 21.74% of its population since 2000. In fact, it would probably be safe to say the exodus has happened since Hurricane Katrina.

It's a fascinating look at the country and, for me, took me back to Mrs. Trundle's fourth grade class for a moment before slingshotting me into the future.