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You Know You're From North Carolina If...

Download this August 2005 article as aPDF

Here is “Round Fourteen” 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), Round Ten (March 2005), Round Eleven (April 2005), Round Twelve (May 2005) and Round Thirteen (June 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 Hora Huntly, Stanley

  • You used ‘mader peelings to get ‘bacca gum off your hands.
  • You roasted sweet taters in fireplace ashes.
  • You took a Saturday night warsh in a foot tub behind the kitchen woodstove.
  • You had to prime the pump on the back porch with hot water when it froze.

From Lula Grover, Fayetteville

  • You and your brothers tried to make black moria chewing tobacco by adding grandma’s molasses to rolled up tobacco leaves and pressing it into plugs up under the house.
  • Your favorite toy was a young sweet gum tree, so you could swing from side to side.
  • All the ladies at church had a P.H.D. (“Penticostal Hairdo”).
  • You cried all the way to church because your sister told you that they were having a foot-washing and you hadn’t washed your feet that morning.

From Darlene and Guy Brittain, Connelly Springs

  • You have a flower bed in a tractor tire on your front yard.
  • You think professional TV wrestling is real.
  • Your grandma called you “little booger.”
  • You know where the Old Crow funeral home is.
  • You bait your rod and reel with cheese then cast it around the hog pen trying to catch rats.
  • You pour a pack of Tom’s salty peanuts into your R.C. which you bought at Boyles General Store in downtown Tolucca.
  • Your friend says it is colder than a donkey’s butt.
  • A “haint” got after your uncle on Saturday night on his way home from going a’courting.
  • You had a Pal soft drink from the Pool bottling company or a Double cola from the Granite bottling company in Granite Falls.
  • You remember seeing men in black and white striped suits working on the roads and trimming a right of way.
  • You have watched your dad patch a copper still and bend a worm.

From Dennis Hunter, Wadesboro

  • You washed your undies on a scrub-board.
  • You used iron wire to roll your hair.
  • Your father or mother used a cereal bowl to give you a hair cut.
  • You wore a dry-cleaning bag for a rain hat.

From Clementine Tilley, Rocky Mount

  • You marinate onion and sugar together to get rid of a cough.
  • You rub cornmeal on heat bumps to stop the itching.
  • You’ve crawled under the house after a nice rain to make mud cakes.

From Nelda Hartman, Cherryville

  • Your radio’s battery was bigger than the radio.
  • The only clothes dryer you ever knew was a wire tied between two trees.
  • You cracked open a crawdad head to get the pearl out.
  • You took down the bully of the hill with a twine string tied in a bull-tongue plow.
  • You watched your mom cook a feast for the wheat threshers.
  • You sopped a ‘lassey boiler.
  • You put eggs in a poke and took them to the store to trade for candy.

From Nancy Bodenheimer, Kernersville

  • You shot marbles and played Ring Around the Roses, Jack Rocks, Red-Rover-Red-Rover.
  • You’ve gone on a snipe hunt.
  • You have cut pulp wood.
  • Every time you got sick you got a dose of black draught or catnip tea, depending on what ailed you.
  • You know what sang root and star root are, and what they’re worth.
  • You have dammed up a creek and used it as a family swimming pool.
  • As a girl, you went opossum hunting and squirrel hunting.
  • You learned to drive on your Dad’s doodlebug that doubled as your family’s wood saw.
  • There were so many children in your family that your daddy, instead of calling your name, pointed or looked at you and just called you “young’n.”
  • You know what a scritch owl is.

From Darlene and Guy Brittain, Connelly Springs

  • You were born at Edwards Clinic in Tolucca, N.C.

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