All of us native Southerners living in Atlanta knew it was coming. And now, it is here.

The Sunday paper carried a large article about Northern migration to the capital city of the South.  In the metro Atlanta area, the article said, native Georgians still have the edge, but it's not an overpowering one and the margin is dwindling.  Said the article, "The migration patterns that brought Northeasterners to Atlanta's elite Northern suburbs also sent people from other regions to spots around the metro area.

"These settling patterns ... have brought a new sense of place to dozens of Atlanta neighborhoods, influencing everything from local politics to the inventory at the corner grocery store."  The article also quoted a Yankee population expert, William Frey of the University of Michigan, as saying, "The nice Southern flavor of Atlanta may be diluted a bit with all the Northerners moving in."

The nice Southern flavor of Atlanta may be diluted a bit ...

Although I certainly understand somebody from the land of freeze and squeeze wanting to seek asylum here, I also fear I'm losing my city and may, in my own lifetime, see the Varsity drive-in serving egg creams. Yes, the dreaded egg cream.  A transplanted New Yorker once said to me, "I like everything about Atlanta except for the fact you can't get an egg cream here."  "What is an egg cream?" I asked him.

He explained it was some sort of concoction that sounded a little like a liquid buttermilk pie.

I said, "So you can't get one of those whatever-they-ares, but at least you don't have to worry about alligators in the sewer system like you did before you moved out of New York City."

So what else can I expect as my beloved city becomes more populated with migrating honkers? (Honker: Northerner with a grating accent who always talks at the top of his or her voice.)

Will Southerners start dropping the last part of everybody's first name like the honkers do? Will I forever be Lew? Will Mary become Mare? Will Nancy become Nance? Will Bubba become Bub?  Will the automobile horn drown out the lilt of "Georgia on My Mind?"  Will they dig a tunnel through Stone Mountain so native New Yorkers can remember the dark, choking atmosphere of the Lincoln and the Holland tunnels?  Will Harold's barbecue, 45 years in the business, lose its clientele to delicatessens where you have to scream at the top of your voice to get somebody to take your order for pastrami on pumpernickel?  Will the Downtown statue of the Phoenix, symbolic of Atlanta rising from the ashes, be replaced by a statue of Sherman holding a can of lighter fluid?  Will grits become extinct? Will corn bread give way to the bagel?  Will everybody, including native Southerners, start calling Atlanta's pro football team the "Fall-cuns" like Yankee sportscasters, instead of the way it's supposed to be pronounced, "Fowl-cuns?"  Will freeway replace expressway? Will soda or pop replace Co-coler? Will Southern men start wearing black socks and sandals with Bermuda shorts, too?  Will "Y'all come back" become "Git outta here?"

God forbid. God forbid.