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Here is “Round Nine” 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) and Round Eight (January 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 C.S. Heafner, Lincoln County

• You have entered or seen a hollerin’ contest.
• You make and eat straw pies (sweet potato).
• You have made or drunk corn cob wine and moonshine or know someone who has.
• For New Year’s Day lunch you have hog jowls, field peas and cabbage.
• You know NOT to eat a ‘simmon before frost.
• You have had a retired hunting dog as a pet.
• You have been scooterpootin’ (messin’ around away from home).

From Ryan Clapp, Kenansville

• Your dad tells you to mow the lawn and you sit on the tailgate of a Chevy holding a push mower while your older brother drives the truck around the yard.

From Joan Long, Harmony

• You remember meeting Fred Kirby at Tweetsie Railroad.
• You tell your company when they leave your house at night to “watch out for deer.”
• You have kudzu growing in your backyard.
• You know who Chief Henry is.
• You know who wrote the song “Carolina Calling.”
• You know whose band the Cracker Jacks was.
• You know what a hoecake is.

From Jane Owens, Francisco

• You’ve been told upon sneezing, “Skat tom, your tail’s in the gravy!”
• You’ve gone down to the river to swim on a hot summer day, fish for small mouth and get baptized.
• You know that “high as a Georgia pine” describes someone who has had too much alcohol.
• You know who Brisco Darling is (“The Andy Griffith Show”) and what it means to “put on your square wheels.”
• Your first driving experience was driving a Cub tractor while sitting on your favorite uncle’s lap at age 4.
• You know that primin’ biccar is something you do for your neighbors when they are down sick and need help harvesting their tobacco crop.
• You were too little to go to the field or lay biccar on the tie-er (or stringer) so you had to pick up leaves or lay on the stick.
• You’ve spent the night under the shelter of a wood-curing tobacco barn to help your daddy keep the fire going. Maybe you ate roasting ears from the coals for supper.

From Lareen Beach, a teenager in Morganton

• Your Paw-Paw took you out on the riding lawn mower to make you stop crying.
• You know what a possum-hunting torch looks like and have used one.
• It’s not “egg salad” but “deviled egg,” and your friends picked on you for taking one of these sandwiches to school for lunch.
• You think an old coon hound is worth more than a registered fluffy lap dog.
• You’re a 16-year-old girl and own your own duck dog and rabbit dog.
• One of your year-old cousin’s first words was “four-wheeler.”
• Your math teacher’s son was called “Biscuit.”
• You actually know who Biscuit and Big Country are (Morganton’s Little League all-star first baseman and pitcher).
• You’ve watched cloggers at a 4th of July celebration.

From Mildred Willoughby, Greenville

• You remember sitting under a shade tree eating a moon pie and drinking Pepsi.
• Your Sunday dinner is collard greens, potato salad, fried chicken and barbecue.
• Men could dress up on the weekends in a white shirt and overalls.
• You known the word cruck means truck.

From Tammy Joseph, Fayetteville

• You know tearing up a tail has nothing to do with an animal.
• You know the difference between coleslaw and barbecue slaw.
• You have picked your own switch and then got a switchin’ with it.
• You know all about sandspurs and licking your fingers before pulling one off your foot.
• You’ve picked catnip to make tea for a baby
  with colic.

From Lacey and Dolly in Gold Hill

• You scrubbed slime off your foot after stepping on a slug.
• As a child you ran barefoot into the middle of a sandspur patch and had to be carried out, and still wouldn’t put on your shoes.
• Your grandmother wrapped your foot with buttermilk and bread to draw a splinter out.
• You dug crawdads out of the creek mud.
• You know what the bay of a donkey sounds like and enjoy hearing it.

From Bertha Seagraves, Laurinburg

• A textile plant was known as a cotton mill.
• You used a dooky book when you went to the
  company store.
• The kitchen was known as a stove room.
• People from the Great Depression had Hoover carts.
• You eat poke sallet and creecy green.
• You called biscuits “flour bread.”
• You called a slip a “shimmy.”
• You made whistles from squash leaf stems.
• You went to big meeting instead of revival.

From Victoria Dickerson, Murfreesboro

• On Sunday you cook black-eye peas and cornbread.
• You go downtown with hair rollers all over your head.
• Your aunt pulls the quart jar of pickles from under the bed.

From Latoria Lassiter, Woodland

• You walk in public with your bedroom shoes on.
• You leave church and the whole family goes to their mother’s or grandmother’s house after service.
• Every night someone is trying to play a spades game.
• You look out your window 24-7.
• Everybody who goes to the county jail knows
  each other.

From Kay Hobbs and a group of seniors who live at Mary Gran Nursing Center in Sampson County

• You’ve put lightnin’ bugs in a jar.
• You’ve busted a watermelon in the tobacco patch and ate it with tobacco gummy hands.
• You never wasted any part of a watermelon, not even the rind.
• You have looped tobacco or poked it up.

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