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

Various links

Here is “Round 21” 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 Sally Kernstine, Lexington

You picked out the prettiest cedar tree you could find each December, in your grandpa’s back woods, to be your perfect Christmas tree.
On Christmas morning, you pushed peppermint sticks into juicy oranges and sucked out the sweet juice.
On Christmas morning you played pick-up sticks and jumping jacks on your grandmother’s back porch steps in the warm sunshine.
Your grandmother kept fresh eggs and bottles of ginger ale on her screened-in back porch to keep them cold.
You needed to hurry home and were expected to “make tracks.”

From Carolyn & Ron Oakley, Franklinton and Florida

You made frog holes in a freshly plowed garden.
You’ve gone to church on Sunday morning, brought home a friend for the day and took him back to church that night.
Your mother stayed in the kitchen all the time, because that was the only room with a fan.
You dug a few “frush” potatoes for supper and covered the roots back up.
You DROVE the school bus so you wouldn’t miss it (and made a dollar a day).

From Marcy Maley, Rocky Point

From Lisa Carpenter, Bessemer City

You know what your mother means when she tells you your new dress looks like two pigs fighting in a sack.
You know you’re in trouble when your mother tells you “ I’ll snatch you ball-headed.”
You really do fear daddy jerking a knot in your tail.
You go grocery shopping for the first time alone and ask the produce manager why they don’t sell “arsh taters.”
You eat dirt because the doctor says you need more iron in your blood.

From Tammy Reid, Salisbury

From Carolyn Herr Watts, Raleigh

From Francina L. Belton, Wayne County

You ate pee weeds from the edge of the yard, and even though Grandma said the flavor came from dogs peeing on them, they sure tasted real good.
Sweet potatoes and cracklins were a complete meal for you on hog-killing day as you watched Grandma stir the big, old cast iron pot and boil chittlings.
You put out the wash basin and face bowl on top of the pump house so you could catch snow for snow cream.

From Delford Jones, formerly of Sampson County

The wash pot was used on Friday and Saturday nights for the community fish fry.
You went to the sawmill in late August to get in your supply of wood for the winter.
Meal bread was cooked on top of the stove. (Meal bread by itself was not good eating, but add some clabber and collard greens and a piece of fatback, and it was heaven.)
You tell someone that you’re fixin’ to slap a pump knot upside his head.
You made your own kites out of dried dog fennels, twine, dry cleaning paper and your mom’s stocking.

From Doug Cox, Indian Trail

In order to keep the birds out of her cherry trees, your grandma put pie plates and rubber hoses in them. From a hook at her back door she would run a string to each tree for shaking the tree.
Your grandma bakes a two-crusted white sweet potato pie in an earthen dish.
You never got to eat the best of the peanut crop because your grandma would pick them out, dry them and put them in jars for next year’s planting.
Your grandma would cut, fold and sew waxed paper into rectangular tubes which she put around her new tomato plants in the spring to keep the unexpected frost from biting.
Your first portable televisions measured about 3-by-3-by-3 feet and you got one station on it.
Your dentist’s drilling instrument was powered by an elaborate set of strings and pulleys.