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Download this September
2006 article as a
Here is “Round 27” 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 Patricia Ferguson, Truslow, Va.
- You remember when the “shag” was the “bop.”
- You know there are three kinds of slaw: hot dog, BBQ and fish.
- You had a grilled cheese sandwich mashed to a quarter-inch thick from the drug store.
- You made a toothbrush from a sassafras stem.
- You put cotton bolls on the screen doors to keep the flies out.
- Your mama would say, “You young’ns quit slammin’ that screen door.”
- You remember Tru Ade orange drinks.
- The most important day to go to church was homecoming.
- Sweet potato vines were the favorite houseplant.
- You carried your schoolbooks tied with Daddy’s old belt.
- You ate banana sandwiches with cold milk.
- The store kept drinks cold in a big “coke box” where they were floating in ice water.
From Punkie Jenkins, Lexington
- When you do something wrong, your father-in-law tells you to lick your calf over.
- You take tobacco worms and mash them up in a leaf sandwich.
From Sylvia Moore, Bear Creek
- You go to see if the mail man has run.
- You hear the wind getting up.
- Your fried chicken on Sunday dinner had a pully bone.
- You know what a tumble bug is.
From Sonny Koontz, Thomasville
- The only meat your family had to eat from August until hog-killing weather was squirrel.
- You treated cows for the hollow tail.
- An older woman in the neighborhood knew how to “talk the fire out” of a burn on your hand.
- You swapped two eggs for a Nehi soda and a chocolate bar at Mr. Charley Smoot’s store.
- Your daddy cut your hair with mechanical squeeze clippers and charged 20 cents to cut neighbors’ hair.
- As a kid you rode a tobacco stick for a horse and hitched him up with a piece of baler twine.
- You knew how to plait ropes from baler twine.
- You knew that split tobacco sticks were superior to sawn ones.
- Your daddy took the back seat out of his ’36 Chevrolet to fill the car with tobacco to take to the Winston-Salem Market.
- You ate a lot of corn meal mush before learning about grits.
From Robbie Dixon, Oxford
- For fun you and your siblings would ride in the tobacco slide to the field and walk back to the barn.
- The first time you tried to ride Charlie the horse, you shook so much that he did, too.
- The rocks in the fields had gold spots on them and you dreamed one day they would make you rich.
- Every time a car came by on your dirt road you would run to the window to see who it was.
- You helped a neighbor fill barns and earned a quarter a day.
- You pleated a sheet of paper to make a fan.
From Viola Shaw, Sparta
- You’ve been told to pull up a cheer and set down.
- The chickens ran free and you had to hunt their nests so mama could bake you a cake.
- Your job earned you some back-pocket money.
- You know that “cutting a didoe” is any kind of antic.
- You shot water snakes along the creek with a slingshot.
- You made your own see-saw with a saw-horse and a 2-by-6 board.
- You know what it means to lay someone out for burial (before we had funeral homes).
From Brenda Stockton, Concord
- All kids said “Yes ma’am,” “No ma’am,” “Yes sir,” and “No sir.”
- Your church wasn’t air-conditioned, and the only relief were the hand fans kept with the hymnals. The fans had a beautiful picture on one side and a funeral home advertisement on the other.
From Randy Green, Dortches
- You had to watch out for pecking chickens in the outhouse.
- You took a stick on fire to see your way to the outhouse at night.
- You took off your t-shirt after lunch while priming tobacco so nicotine would be absorbed into your skin for energy.
From Carol Sampson, Rowland
- You sat on your front porch on a summer’s night burning rags in a bucket to keep skeeters away.
From Sarah Raines, Mebane
- You ask your friend, “How’s your hammer hanging?” wondering how she really feels.
- When feeling extra fine, you feel like jumping a ten-rail fence.
- Mama gave you Black Draft to work illness out of you.
- You put four drops of turpentine on a spoon of sugar to cure sore throat.
From Louise Kellon, Clinton
- You know what a stumpy broom is.
- When working in tobacco you know what a feeling party is.
- You know what dark thirty is.
- You fried fish in a wash pot.
- You remember when nabs came in round packs.
- You threw onions and potatoes under the house to keep.
- Your mother could squeeze a dollar ’til George Washington squealed.
From Julie Cuthrell, Aurora
- When you got off the school bus, you picked figs off the tree for a snack.
- While growing up, your daddy called you and your sisters “son.”
- Your daddy made you pick all the pecans up from the yard so y’all could go and sell them.
- Your daddy siphoned gas from the lawnmower so y’all could take the car to sell the pecans.
- All you could hear on summer nights was the ‘squito zapper.
- You wanted your daddy to shoot the rooster for your birthday entertainment.
From Jill Lambert, Lexington
- You can’t lie to mama.
- You can read the daily specials posted at the local restaurants even when most of the letters are missing.
- You gauge how bad something is by comparing it to picking green beans.
- You feed your own deer, but you get someone else to shoot and dress one to eat.
- You can call all of your farm animals.
- You ate beanie-weenies off of a lunch truck and worked piecework at some time in your life.
- You don’t replace the weather-stripping around windows and doors, because the house needs to breathe.
- You have a truck bed cover that protects building supplies out back.
- You say the selenium rectifier needs replacing to cover the fact that you have no idea why the equipment has broken down.
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