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Download this April
2006 article as a
Here is “Round 22” of your
insights into how to know if someone is from North Carolina. You
may also want to check out
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 Frances Farmer, Madison
- You put pennies on the railroad tracks so the train would smash them flat.
- You’ve stood in front of the old Mayodan Coca Cola plant and watched the bottles go around in the front window during the bottling process.
- You and a buddy each bought a Coke in the bottle and the one who got the one from farther away had to pay for them.
- You bought a 5-cent pickle from the huge jar on your way home from school.
- You got to ring the school bell for dismissal of school.
From Camille Carswell
- You tasted your Paw Paw’s muscadine wine.
- Your momma kept a grease can on top of the stove with strips of fried fat back on top.
- Your alarm clock on Sunday mornings was your Daddy turning up the TV when the “Gospel Singing Jubilee” came on. Then “Ju-bi-lee” rang in your head all day.
- Saturday afternoon was time for watching wrastlin’ with Chief Wahoo McDaniels, Rick Flair and Ricky Steamboat.
- Your favorite TV personalities were Arthur Smith, Fred Kirby, his horse “Calico,” Uncle Jim Patterson and Clyde McLean.
From Sheba Spurling, Dallas
- You have 50 chickens and 30 rabbits and know all their names and can tell them apart.
- You made pickled corn-on-the-cob in a crock.
- You strung up green beans to dry out so you could make leather britches.
- You rubbed walnut on ringworm to make it go away.
- You put a wild onion in a hole in the ground, waited for it to move, then jerked out a grub worm.
- Your mother-in-law told you to pour your breast milk on the ground to make your milk dry up.
- You drop off your kids a block away from the school because they are ashamed of your car.
- Your husband picks up the kids from school while hauling a 400-pound male pig on a trailer.
- You took baby pigs you were raising on a bottle for Show-and-Tell at school.
From Josie Jefferson Flynn Widener, Dobson
- You hauled water in large barrels from the creek to the tobacco field to be used in setting out the tobacco plants in the old-timey tobacco setters that had a water compartment and a place to drop the plants.
- You went oak ball hunting and remember how the shell had a real sweet taste.
From Doug Cox, Indian Trail
- The school cafeteria staff would mix, roll and put out dough to rise for yeast rolls that you would have for lunch, and the aroma would permeate the halls.
From Delford Jones,
formerly of Sampson County
- When your car burned oil, you said it was burning lidda knots (pine tar).
From Mary Wilson, Vilas
- She’s purty as a speckled pup.
- You’ve been feeling puny.
- You’re happy as a rabbit in a briar patch.
From Nan McGirt, Lumberton
- When school began you couldn’t see the school bus coming because of the corn fields.
- Your husband goes hunting all day on Saturday but never brings anything home.
- You know where Saddletree and Magnolia are.
- You put newspapers on the living room floor and shell butter beans while watching soaps on TV.
- You know your fingers will be black and blue from shelling butter beans.
- You had to wash your dad’s Ford truck if you wanted to drive it that weekend.
- You know that country girls look cool driving Ford trucks.
From Essie Gillespie, Morganton
- You say “warsh” instead of wash.
- As a little girl you used your mother’s empty thread spools to make yourself some high heel shoes. You took the sticky stuff that ran from pine trees—we called it “rasum”—to glue the spools on to your bare heels.
- You made skirts or jumpers by attaching leaves to thorns, and you had to be careful wearing them.
From Elaine Hairston-Simmons, Westfield
- You know that the red spot on an egg yolk is the “rooster.”
- You know what sawmill ham is.
- You know what a jar tree is.
- Your grandfather carved you a top from a No. 8 wooden spool.
- You know that a lazy person “won’t work in a pie factory.”
- You have seen the “mother” in a jar of vinegar.
From Rebecca Payne, Brasstown
- You know what “like a chicken on a junebug” means
- You got chiggers picking blackberries with Mama.
- You raked up leaves in the woods so you could run and slide through them.
- You leaned out the window of your family car to keep cool on summer drives.
- You dried and smoked rabbit tobacco rolled in a brown paper sack.
From Felicia Jordan, Alexis
- Your grandpa put axle grease on his coon dogs when they got hurt.
- Your grandpa put chewing tobacco on a bee sting.
From Donna Clark, Taylorsville
- Your husband uses wood from the old kitchen table to build a tree stand.
- The lawn mower, four-wheeler and family boat are under the carport instead of cars.
- If it weren’t for crabgrass and weeds, you wouldn’t have any grass at all.
- You are reading Carolina Country and sawdust falls from your hair from working at the furniture factory.
From Dale Campbell, Statesville
- You played Bum Bum Bum and Red Rover.
- You looked for crawdads under rocks.
- You used “Catawba” worms as fish bait.
- You couldn’t go barefooted until after Easter Sunday.
- You picked up buckets of rocks out of the garden.
- You dad smushed muscadines in
the bathtub with his bare feet to make wine.
From H.H. Bolton, Asheboro
- You fell out of a persimmon tree trying to catch a possum.
- Your neighbor said, “Ain’t none of them ol’ REA waars on poles comin’ across my land,” but you persuaded him otherwise.
- You’ve carried a buckeye in your pocket for good luck or to cure rheumatism.
- You have been instructed to keep your pea-pickin’ hands off someone’s belongings.
- You have described your health as “one foot in the fur (furrow) and the other on land (not plowed).”
- You have played mumble peg with your two-bladed pocket knife on the bench of a one-room school.
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