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

Various links

Here is “Round 40” 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 Darlene and Guy Brittain, Connelly Springs

You have been chased by a black racer snake.
Your brother, cousins, uncles and dad all had nicknames like Blackie, Buster, Cooter, Skin, Tots and R.
On rainy days you sat in the barn and cracked hickory nuts and picked the goodies out with a bobby pin.

From the Horners, Matthews

The tooth fairy brought you a “case quarter.”
When you acted up, Momma or Pop said if you didn’t stop they’d “wear you out” or “knock you winding.”
Someone excited was “all lit up.”
When you were being nosy, adults told each other, “Little pitchers have big ears.”

From Richard B. Gill 3rd, Franklinton

You know which end of a mule the muzzle goes on.
You went to the country store to get soft drink bottle caps to hold the sheets on a tobacco slide.
You know that a wooden peg is used to plant crops.
You can remember surviving without a credit card, cell phone or the Internet.

From Pauline Adcock, Monroe

You watched your mother and aunt pick down off squawking geese to use in pillows and feather beds.
For being good and working hard all week, you could go up to the big road on Sunday and watch cars go by.
When playing “Hailey Over,” you could look under the house to see which way you had to run.
You had a tennis ball and made a tennis racquet by trimming down one end of a thin plank with an ax.
Your father tied a dead chicken in the shallows at the creek to attract cooters.
In the evening you would take a hoe down to the branch to kill water snakes.
In the fall you got new wheat straw in bed sacks, then feather beds on top of that, so you had to climb to get into bed.
You shelled corn by hand before it was taken to be ground into cornmeal.
You grew tater slips in raised beds to make extra money.
After all the open cotton was picked, you picked dried bolls that would open later around the heater.

From Dora Ann Mabe, Danbury

You made playhouses behind the tobacco barn and played very fast between every slide change.
You decorated your mud pies and cakes with daisies, other flowers and pokeberries and made mud sandwiches with tree leaves.
A gang of cousins crawled under the pasture fence where the big mean bull could see you, and then you all nearly died of fright, running and squealing if he even snorted or moved.
Horror movies don’t scare you anything like the booger tales your uncles could tell.

From Rosetta Murrell, Beaufort

You and your cousins had foot races in the middle of the street when no cars were coming to see who was the fastest.
When you were little, you sat on the front porch with your cousins and friends and played “that’s my car” with all the cars that passed by.
You refer to a thunderstorm as a thunda squaw.
Your backyard is one of your relative’s front yard.
Your first pet was a duck named Doe-Doe.
At all of your family gatherings, you have to do the Electric Slide dance.

From Monra Edwards, Sparta

You played in the barn loft and got bird lice all over you, then rolled in the meadow to get them off.
You played cowboy with a gun made out of a laurel bush.
You hoed corn as fast as you could because you knew the water jar was at the end of the row.
Your dad gave you a quarter, and you walked barefoot three miles to town to go to the movies.
You were told lye soap is poison but you still had to wash with it.
When you say, “Gimme that do hitchy,” your grandchildren say, “Granny, what is that?”

From Vickie Keith, Fayetteville