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Here is “Round Eleven” of your insights into how to know if someone is from North Carolina. You may also want to check out Round One (February 2004), Round Two (March 2004), Round Three (May 2004), Round Four (July 2004), Round Five (August 2004), Round Six (September 2004), Round Seven (November 2004), Round Eight (January 2005), Round Nine (February 2005) and Round Ten (March 2005).

If you can think of anything to add to this list, send it to us:

E-mail: Carolina.country@ncemcs.com
Mail: P.O. Box 27306, Raleigh, NC 27611.
Phone: (919) 875-3062.

From Michelle Allen

• You watched Uncle Jim on WBTV after church on Sundays and know all the words to their “Little Rascals” song.
• You know that a tish, a dab, or a smidgen all mean the same thing.
• You know that a peedab is a small person.
• You know that a gully washer is a severe rain storm.
• You were “in the bed,” not just “in bed.”

From Debbie Mewborn Hames, Asheville (originally from Goldsboro)

• You know where Faro, Eureka, and Bull Head are.
• You went to MYF on Sunday night after playing volleyball all afternoon.
• You rode to White Lake in the back of a 2-ton dump truck.
• You learned at a very young age to behave in church because the church was and still is too small for a nursery.
• You know what topping and suckering tobacco means, and that you should only do them in the rain because granddaddy said so.

From Gwen Walsh Hargett, Connelly Springs

• You have mailed livermush to out-of-state relatives for birthday or Christmas presents.
• You know someone who has been knocked out colder than a kraut rock.
  From Frances Helms, Monroe
• You remember Grandpa putting tobacco on a wasp sting to kill the poison.
• You walked three miles to church every Sunday morning and rubbed blisters on your heels.
• You remember listening to Lum and Abner on the radio.
• Your family sat out on the front porch after supper and sang hymns together.

From Gail Harrington, Asheboro

• Dawn dish detergent doubled as your family shampoo.
• You kept a cardboard calendar near the kitchen trash can to use as a dustpan.
• Tin tubs of ice held the Pepsi and Nehi grape and orange for a family reunion.
• Weekend events include gigging frogs, playing rook and fishing.

From Mae Spence, Maysville

• After a good meal you say that it would “make a tadpole slap a whale.”
• You say, “He loves peanut butter better than a hog loves slops.”
• You say, “Ain’t he cute as a speckled puppy!”
• You put sinkers (corn meal dumplings) in a pot of stew or collards.
• You call sweet potatoes “music roots.”
• You call lima beans “belly busters.”

From Nicole Horton, Laurinburg

• You used to eat sour weed.
• You know that fifty-eleven means alot.
• You say “Laud ham mercy!”
• You ask someone you just met, “Who yo people?”
• You believe that snow left on the ground means it’s going to snow again.

From Rhonda Trueman, Gastonia

• You know the difference between “gee” and “haw.”
• You know Set Back is a card game.
• You have spent evenings calling bobwhites.

From Tammy Thomas, East Peachland

• A can of Rawleigh Salve is good for anything that ails you.
• When a storm approaches, it’s “coming up a cloud.”

From Randy Cline, Concord

• You can’t go deer huntin’ cause you got to git up leaves.
• You know that baby blue was not the Tar Heels’ color but The King’s (No. 43).
• Grandma put Noxzema on your sunburn after you had set in a tub of vinegar water.
• You stole a nest from a passel of wasps for fishin’ bait so you didn’t have to dig worms.

From Judy Pearson, Boomer

• You’ve seen somebody cut a monkey shine.
• You put blackberries in a glass of milk.

From McNeill Watkins, Wagram

• You know that Asheville is not in Ashe Country, that Beaufort is a bit south of Beaufort County, that Scotland Neck is quite some distance from Scotland County, and that Henderson is one heck of a long way from Henderson County.

From Carol O’Bryan, Hayesville

• You know if something’s wompersided, it’s crooked.
• Somebody who could snag lightning and run thunder is awful ugly.
• You’ve had the unforgettable experience of having a “laughing owl” cut loose in a tree right above you.
• You’ve had the equally unforgettable experience of having a setting hen flog you while you’re sitting on the hole in the outhouse!
• You know what ramps are and always dig enough to share with friends at church.

From Ronda Sue Galyean, Lowgap

• Instead of going to a funeral home for a viewing you go to the person’s church to look at them.
• You go to the horsepittle instead of the hospital.

From Sonya Weiss

• You’ve toted water from a spring to use for cooking and bathing.
• You know North Carolina has five seasons: spring, summer, fall, snow and ice.
• Going out to eat means dining on the porch because it’s too hot in the house.

From Angie McCaskill, Ellerbe

• You know what BBQ sauce is supposed to taste like and what goes in it.
• You issue W-2 forms to your hunting dogs.
• You know the plural form of “ya’ll” is “all ya’ll.”
• When your daddy wants to take you outside for a word of prayer, you know you are in trouble.

From Ray Bledsoe, Kenansville

• You know what a mader sandwich is.
• The gun cabinet is the nicest piece of furniture in the living room.
• You know that “Yaw get on” means please leave.
• During May’s full moon you’d be on the river catching red bellies.
• You got a whippin’ at school and another one when you got home.
• You’ve heard your Daddy tell you, “Boy, if you had had it is bad as I did when I was your age, you’d be dead now.”

From Adam Raskoskie, Charlotte

• You mash the power button on the TV to turn it on, mash the accelerator to speed up the car, and mash out a letter to your aunt on the computer keyboard.
• After mashing the power button, you look at TV instead of watching it.
• When a woman calls another woman a “hussy,” the other is prettier and drives a nicer car.
• You’re on a first-name basis with the check-out woman at the grocery store, and the woman at the gas station.
• You know where Frog Pond is.
• You’d rather fix it yourself than take advantage of the warranty.

From Sally S. Kernstine, Lexington

• You love the smell of freshly mowed grass on a hot summer evening.
• You think nothing tastes better than sweet, sugary lemonade that your grandmother just made specially for you.
• The neighborhood kids gathered on hot summer nights to play Ain’t No Bears Out Tonight and Kick-the-Can.
• You and all your childhood friends stood waiting anxiously by the curb for the ice-cream truck.
• Your cousin secretly pierced your ears by numbing your earlobes with ice cubes and poking a threaded needle through them.

From Ruth Belk, Monroe

• You cut paper dolls out of the Sears Roebuck catalogs and made play furniture out of shoe boxes.
• You’ve felt a head full of cow feed as the cow shooed flies.
• You never knew that eating cornbread or corn would run up your sugar.
• You ate onions to gather germs from your body.
• You dissolved a spoonful of sugar with a drop of turpentine in your mouth to help a sore throat and cold.
• You wore your mama’s old stockings over your shoes for snow boots.
• You know maypops are car tires ready to blow out.
• You poured cold water in the top of the churn to make the butter gather.

From E. Lee Richards, Taylorsville

• You had black friends and some of these friendships endure to this day, but you had no black classmates.
• Your wife, who does not hunt, has received at least one shotgun for a Christmas present.
• You understand the cotton mill terms of flume, tailrace, and Minute Man. (Flume is large metal pipe at bottom of a dam that feeds water to the turbine in the mill. Tailrace is the outflow of water from the mill after it passes through the turbine. Minute Man is an old term for the first Time Standards personnel.)
• You have hand-cranked Model A Fords and a 1936 Terraplane and you still use the term “crank the car” when you really mean start the engine.
• You knew where the bootlegger lived and the local law didn’t.
• You knew that Billy Joe Davidson from Marion was the best left-handed pitcher ever to pick up a baseball.
• You used the term “straw tick” in front of your granddaughter and she had no idea what it meant. (A “straw tick” referred to a Depression era homemade mattress filled with straw and the ticking (mattress cover) was from flour bag or feed bag fabric.
• You got one pair of shoes a year whether you needed them or not.
• You went to a small country church located in a white frame building that had a mourners bench and a grandmother who, when asked to lead in prayer, would get on her knees to pray.

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