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

Download this March 2008 article as aPDF

Here is “Round 42” 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 Susan Beaver, Polkville

  • You and your friends ate sour grass in the summer and hoped Granny did not see you or she would fuss about the dog peeing on the grass to make it sour.
  • In winter, you made a playhouse in the house with a blanket and two straight chairs.
  • In summer, you made a playhouse with sawhorses and an old wooden door.
  • In summer, Granny sent you out to play after breakfast and you did not come back in until dark.
  • Supper always included pintos, fried taters and hoecake bread.
  • Granny always made rice puddin’ with leftover rice.
  • When the state black-topped your road, you wrote all over it with chalk.
  • The oak tree on the road had such a big knot-hole you used it as a mailbox and put notes to your friends in it.
  • When you walked in the pasture, your cousin stepped in a yellow-jacket nest and you all ran to the house, and some even ran right through the barbed wire fence you scaled earlier.
  • There were too many to fit in the truck to go to Granny’s, so you piled into the back of the truck.

From Fred Kilpatrick, Murphy

  • You made your slingshot from a forked stick, inner tube rubber and a leather shoe tongue.
  • You used crab apples to shoot eating apples from the apple trees, and one day a chickadee fell to the ground instead.
  • You set your fishing poles while hoeing corn.
  • Your sisters would take their True Story magazine to the cornfield, hoe four or five rounds, then stop to rest and read some.
  • Your neighbor bought a gallon of gas for 25 cents, drove to town, then drove back and bought another gallon on the way.

From Peter Jernigan, Fayetteville

  • Your granddaddy had a mule named Maude.
  • You’ve had a corncob fight in the hay loft.
  • A two-rut road ran by the front of your house.
  • You’ve primed or cropped sand lugs.
  • Your grandma dipped Society Sweet snuff.

From Chelsey Monroe, Carthage

  • When you got a sore throat your great-grandpa would give you a teaspoon of white lightning.
  • If you missed church on Sunday morning, the preacher would come by that evening to see what had happened.

From Roger Askew, Raleigh (formerly Ahoskie)

  • You know that Tyrrell County has only one syllable.
  • Someone brings a Dan Doodle or Tom Thumb sausage to every church homecoming.
  • Your aunt believes your cousin is “above his raising.”
  • Your church had a note-burning when the parsonage loan was paid off.
  • Your folks are convinced that land prices are so high because all the northerners have been movin’ down.
  • The most popular family doctor in town is in his 70’s and will retire soon.
  • No one in your family older than you knows what “google” means, or that it can be a verb.
  • You remember how small you felt when you stood inside the tobacco warehouse.
  • You felt sad when the tobacco warehouse was torn down.

From the Myricks, West End

  • People came in without knocking.
  • Sundays after lunch you’d go to the lake and tie your hair on top of your head so your momma wouldn’t know you went swimming before church later that night.
  • You’ve been driving since you were 7.

From Diane Foster Mastalski, Waynesville

  • When you played Yankees and Confederates, all the Yankees were imaginary because everyone wanted to be a Confederate.
  • Your big sister would boil hickory nuts to make medicine to give to the wounded Confederates.
  • You threw pebbles at the mule’s ears to make him go.
  • When you stumbled on the wild sow and her piglets in the woods, you knew you better run fast.
  • Your Daddy said “much obliged” to people instead of “thank you.”

From Tara B. Moore, Bessemer City

  • You eat the Poor Man’s Supper even when you have the money for a nice steak dinner.
  • Your mountain-raised Grandmaw told you not to beg her by saying, “Quit baggin’ me.”
  • You tell a visitor to “set in that cheer yonder.”

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