I am in DE, on the Mason/Dixon line, but we consider ourselves southerners.......
My mom grew up on a chicken farm in MD, as well as her closest cousin who married a dairy farmer. There isn't anything better than sweet tea and Maryland biscuits and gravy. And every meal, you ate something that always went with applesauce......
My grandmother had the cast iron skillet on the stove permanently; it never got put away in the cupboards. It was always in use for something.
Missytara, that's about as Southern as you can get! My grandmother is from Mississippi, so you know I grew up with authentic southern home cookin' - and yes, the cast iron skillet was always on top of the stove. Sweet Tea always available.
We never had applesauce - must be a MD speciality - very glad b/c I hate the stuff.

We did have white rice with sugar and butter though...very deep South and sooo good.
Back to POR Mansions - the first time we visited was when Dixie Landings was brand new and while I liked the architecture of the Mansions, up close did not like all the cement. The AB bldgs looked much more charming. Years later I was walking from FQ to Riverside, looked across at Parterre Place and wow, it was gorgeous. I cannot imagine anything lovelier than a Magnolia Tree in full bloom; that must have been the icing on the cake for your stay!
Will have to check out Oak Manor. Should not have said "want to book the Mansions" b/c we all know it is not a bookable category, but we've always had good luck with requests and tend to travel off season, which helps.
Wonder what will be considered a GV now... We had one of those paid for non river, river views once. A corner room in AB bldg14. It was a weekend of freezing rain and we actually forgot we'd booked a water view (before River view was a category). When it hit us, we tried finding some water, other than the rain, and finally the pine trees blew in the wind and we noticed a sliver of river.

We spoke with a front desk manager and after some discussion she refunded the difference between water view and std. She did not seem to appreciate our reference to the rain being the only water view.
(p.s. We did have a direct parking lot view in bldg 14 once, so those do exist. Did not bother us b/c we had a car that trip and parked very close to our room)