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Here is “Round 47” 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)
• Round Eight (January 2005)
• Round Nine (February 2005)
• Round Ten (March 2005)
• Round Eleven (April 2005)
• Round Twelve (May 2005)
• Round Thirteen (June 2005)
• Round Fourteen (August 2005)
• Round Fifteen (September 2005)
• Round Sixteen (October 2005)
• Round Seventeen (November 2005)
• Round Eighteen (December 2005)
• Round Nineteen (January 2006)
• Round Twenty (February 2006)
• Round Twenty-one (March 2006)
• Round Twenty-two (April 2006)
• Round Twenty-three (May 2006)
• Round Twenty-four (June 2006)
• Round Twenty-five (July 2006)
• Round Twenty-six (August 2006)
• Round Twenty-seven (September 2006)
• Round Twenty-eight (October 2006)
• Round Twenty-nine (November 2006)
• Round Thirty (December 2006)
• Round Thirty-one (January 2007)
• Round Thirty-two (March 2007)
• Round Thirty-three (June 2007)
• Round Thirty-four (July 2007)
• Round Thirty-five (August 2007)
• Round Thirty-six (September 2007)
• Round Thirty-seven (October 2007)
• Round Thirty-eight (November 2007)
• Round Thirty-nine (December 2007)
• Round Forty (January 2008)
• Round Forty-one (February 2008)
• Round Forty-two (March 2008)
• Round Forty-three (April 2008)
• Round Forty-four (May 2008)
• Round Forty-five (June 2008)
• Round Forty-six (July 2008)

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 Marshall McDowell, Weddington

• You had a long bus ride early in the morning to the new consolidated high school.
• More than a few students missed your first day of school because they were pickin’ cotton.
• After a summer of swimming your toenails were stained red from the clay pond bottom.

From Wendy Stebbins, Havelock

• You watched Arthur Smith, Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner every Saturday night on black and white TV. There were only three channels to choose from.
• You mixed a pad of real butter with King Syrup in the middle of your breakfast plate to sop your biscuit.
• On a bicycle with a huge chicken wire basket, the grocery boy delivered to your back porch door.
• At age 8, you rode the city bus downtown by yourself for piano lessons every Saturday morning.
  
• At age 11, you woke up at 3:30 a.m. to take out a barn of cured tobacco, then ate breakfast and were back in the field working by 6.
• You skimmed cream off the milk jar and helped your mother make butter that you poured into molds shaped like flowers.
• Sitting around a huge, vinyl cloth-covered table, you and your relatives cracked crabs in potato-onion stew and talked up a storm until midnight.

From Katie Russell, Rockingham

• You wait all week to see the race on Sunday.
• Your husband loves beef tripe and Prairie Belt sausages.
• Your son’s favorite thing to do in summer is play outside in the front yard with the water hose.

From Sabrina Jackson, Marshville native

• You were told to go outside and play with the tummerturds.
• You’d be sent to Kingdom Come if you got into trouble.
• You’d go to the Horse Pillow if you got sick.
• When giving advice, your grandma was “just tryin’ to hopes ya.”
• You were using “fine language” if you said “shoot” or “dang.”
• Giving directions you would just “take that roeward up yonder and foller it straight on out.”
• You had a country store account for gas and groceries.
• You wore knee-highs with your Sunday dress and it had a split in it.
• Your momma told the operator to intercept your phone call just to tell you to get off the phone.

From Brad Jones, Crab Creek

• In North Carolina it’s called a “pond,” but in Texas they know it’s just a “stock tank.” [For Elisha Ashworth, July 2008]
• You just go down yon hill to his place, and crops grow good in them bottom. [For Virginia Kinley, July 2008]

From Grace M. Ensley, Indian Trail

• You attached Mason jar rubbers around your shoes and skates to keep them on your feet, then you could sound like a motor running when you moved along.
• You played hard all day, came in after dark, dropped your shorts by the bedside, and put them back on the next morning to play hard again the next day.
• You walked from house to house asking for empty Coke bottles so you could get enough “deposit” at the grocery store to buy a hot dog and RC Cola for 25 cents at the local car-hop restaurant.
• You and your sister before leaving for school each morning carried to the pig pen a bucket of slop suspended from a stick. You would swing it around and around the stick so fast that centrifugal force kept the slop in the bucket.

From Keith Honeycutt, Concord

• Your dog looked at the TV show “Rin Tin Tin” through the front porch screen door.
• You sat on the front porch and counted train cars going by.
• Your grandma told you to take your grandpa a jar of ice water so you could ride on the tractor with him.
• Your dad bought an old truck so your brother, sister and you could ride in it to meet the school bus.
• You put rocks in the creek to make a deep swimming hole so the snakes had somewhere to swim.

From Sheila Johnston, formerly of Wilkes County

• You grew up three dirt roads from the nearest highway, but now there’s only one.

From Rita McCormick, Fayetteville

• Your grandmother boiled green pine straw for you to drink for your bad cold. You called it “pine top tea” and added sugar.
• After you picked blackberries or blueberries, your mother washed and cooked them for supper with homemade biscuits and country ham. Your lips and tongue turned blue.
• Your grandmother and great-grandmother would give money to newborn babies to keep the mice away from them.
• Your great-grandmother would rub her legs with green alcohol, a.k.a. wintergreen alcohol.
• You and your brother walked through the woods with a gunny sack to fill with pine cones for the wood stove.

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