They tried to break me of my southpaw in suspicious Kentucky. I learned to whistle and ride a bike (with training wheels) before the family moved to a region of Missouri known as "Little Dixie"
The Ballad of Little Dixie pretty much sums up the rest:

It's the heart of Missouri, blooded of three,
Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
It's a tall spare man on a blue-grass hoss.
It's sugar-cured ham without raisin sauce.
It's coon dog, coon, persimmon tree.
It's son or brother named Robert E. Lee.
It's tiger stalking a jay-hawk bird.
It's the best hog-calling that ever you heard.
It's fiddler fiddlin' you out of your seat,
Fiddler fiddlin' you off your feet.
It's bluebird singing in a hawthorn thicket.
It's vote to a man the Democratic ticket.
It's crisp brown cracklin's and hot corn pone.
It's catfish fried clean off the bone.
It's hominy grits and none of your scrapple.
It's mellow pawpaws and the Jonathan apple.
It's sorghum sweetenin' and belly-warming corn.
It's old Jeff Davis a-blowin' on his horn.
Unreconstructed it rares and bites
At touch of a rein that would curb its rights.
It's come in, stranger, draw up a chair;
There ain't no hurry and we'll all get there.