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

Various links

Here is “Round 24” 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 Margaret Campbell, Pilot Mountain

You made mud cakes in lids of zinc cans, let them dry, took them out and iced them with pokeberry juice mixed with flour.
Your garbage disposal was a 5-gallon bucket you used to feed the hogs.
At hog-killing time you and your cousins took the hog bladder and blew it up for a football.
You saved tobacco string, wound it up for a ball, and used a small board for a bat.
In springtime you made a broom from twigs and swept your yard.

From Thayer Jordan

From Janice Oxendine and C.J. Jones, Maxton

A dog chews on grass then you know it will rain that day.
You eat collards with your fingers along with cornbread, fatback, vinegar, and hot peppers or chow chow.
Springtime meant spring revival, planting gardens and setting out ‘bacca.
Fall meant fall revival, planting the fall garden and taking off the last of the ‘bacca.

From Kathryn Hardison

Your grandma’s kitchen may have looked old-fashioned but it always smelled like fresh baked bread and lemons.
Your grandma always had iced tea with fresh lemons waiting for you in the refrigerator and fresh baked sweet potato or lemon meringue pies cooling on the back porch.
Summers smell of fresh-cut grass and charcoal grills with hamburgers cooking.
You get almost all your supplies from the local country store up the road.

From Jerry Chavis, Red Springs

You look through the cracks in the floor and see chickens under the house.
In a restaurant they bring you Kool-Aid in a mason jar.
When putting in tobacco you opened that lightbread bag at lunchtime and pulled out two tomato sandwiches made with biscuits and ate them while washing them down with cold water you brought in your Duke mayonnaise jar.

From Connie L. Lowry, Siler City

From Renee Whitworth, Lincolnton

Your husband compliments your cooking by saying, “This will make you fight your grandma.”
During Activity Week at the high school, students may drive tractors to school, and there are as many girls who drive them in as boys.
People know what you mean when you say, “I ruint the d@*# thing.”
Your partner says, “I’m wit ya, I ain’t again ya.”

From Jo Ann and Dalton Brown, Troutman

You got dressed up and your daddy told you, “If you will act as well as you look you will be fine.”
Every year your mom would crochet another ruffle at the bottom of your crochet dress.
People use the word sort, as in, “What sort of dog is that?”

From Steven Preddy, Franklinton

It doesn’t matter what you drive as long as it is 4-wheel drive and American-made with a V-8 under the hood.
The rims on your friend’s truck are worth more than your truck.
Your mom went through more vehicles than your dad did.
Tow hooks are mounted on the front of your Ford Superduty.
Your dad has more tractors that don’t run than do run.
Your lawn ornament is an Allis-Chalmers combine.

From Jesse English, Churchland,

From Marie Mozingo

You shot marbles under the house on a rainy day.
You made sure you had your clod knockers and steelies.
You told your grandpa you didn’t shoot the pigeon with your sling shot.
You worked 60 hours a week and got $21.
Your mule pulled bed springs to smooth the land.
You made sure that the sweet taters and Arsh taters had enough pine straw in the winter time.
While everybody was sitting on the front porch in warm weather chawing tobackey and dipping their snuff, someone thumped out a cigarette and you hoped it didn’t go out before you could grab it and head to the outhouse and get a couple of drags off of it.

From Erin Butler, Morganton

You’re in the local convenience store and see your cousin’s picture on the wall with a deer he killed.
Your favorite thing to do is go four-wheeling with your cousins.
Your cousins call you Daisy, and you call them Bo and Luke.
Your great-grandma still does not have an air conditioner, so in the summertime you sit outside on her porch and watch the cars go by.
Summertime means eating your uncle’s homemade peach ice cream and homegrown watermelons, and wearing cut-off shorts to the South Mountain State Park.
You know all 32 of your cousins.
You believe dirt track racing is the best sport in the world.
At the gas station you ask the person at the next pump, “How’s your mama?”
All your nearby neighbors are in your family.
The song “Boondocks,” by Little Big Town, is your life’s story.

From Denise Stephenson, formerly of Haywood County

Your babysitter was a kindly older mountain woman who “kept” one of her own grandchildren along with you and your sister, and you called her Granny Roxie. When you moved to another school, you lost touch with her. And now, when you visit friends and family you sometimes pass that little white house with the uneven floors and you remember special times with her.
She would say, “Do I need to get my hickory?”
She baked cornbread cake in a small cast iron skillet every day, and sometimes she ate it with pinto beans and onions, other times with a tall glass of milk.
You sat with her on the front porch while she broke beans in her apron.
She made your sandwich any way you liked it—nanner sandwiches with mayonnaise, bologna sandwiches with mayonnaise—and they tasted better at her house than anywhere else.
She peeled your apple so the skin came off in one long spiral.