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Here is “Round Thirteen” 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) and Round Twelve (May 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 Brian and Suzanne Mitchell, Goldsboro

• Your daddy walked three miles to school uphill both ways.
• You were told as a young’n that you didn’t even have a back.
• You know what boiled custard is.
• The highlight of your week was sitting with Mama and Papa on Saturday night watching “Lawrence Welk.”
• You used to throw rocks in the air to watch the bats swoop down at them.
• You’ve been told you’re hanging in there like a hair in a biscuit.
• You’ve put peanuts in a “little cocola.”
• You have used a “fly flap.”
• You know how long you will be there if you “sit a spell.”
• You have shot the moon in a card game.

From Joy Horrell, Garland

• Your mama caught white-faced bumblebees in her hand to show they won’t sting, but you were too afraid to try it.
• You picked cucumbers by looking through the vines with a paddle made out of a tobacco stick.
• You had to drive the Farmall while Mama and Daddy picked up corn to feed the hogs.
• To cure your earache, your mama put Vicks in your ear and stuffed in a piece of cotton from an aspirin bottle.
• You and your mama went to the woods huckleberrying every summer and then had to take a quick bath when you got home to wash off the redbugs.
• You would eat cracklins and a fresh baked sweet potato.

From Debbie Ross, Kings Mountain

• The foremen yells out to his men, “Y’all need to be working instead of scratchin’ your watch and windin’ your butt.”

From Greg Talbott, Staley

• You get on an elevator and the next person that comes says, “Mash 3 please.”
• You find out when you are grown that an arsh tater is really an Irish potato.

From L.J. “Joe” Crumpler, Mount Olive
(formerly of Pikeville)

• You know natives of Pikeville pronounce it “Piiikevull.”
• You pronounce Goldsboro “Goldsberle.”
• You’ve been to Dobie Howell’s stables or Alton Crawford’s store.
• You know Wilber Shirley (Wilber’s Barbecue) is from Pinkney.
• You know Martie Ruth Pate McCall (McCall’s Barbecue & Seafood) was Miss Aycock 1973.
• You’ve been to “Junebug” Green’s Auto Salvage at Eureka.
• You’ve watched for the Fremont Light.
• You were a Falconette, Falconaire, Dramacon, or know someone who was.
• You knew the late “Mutt” Satterfield of Tri-County EMC.
• You’ve played in (or been to) a Church League softball game at Nahunta.
• You fought (or watched) a fight over a girl at a Church League softball game at Nahunta.
• You know Jeffrey Miles Grimes of “The Embers” is a 1970 graduate of Charles B. Aycock High School, and played first chair tenor saxophone in state band competition.

From Christine Atkinson, Elm City

• You killed hogs in the winter and put the meat in the smokehouse.
• You drank water from a bucket at the well.
• You know what silk is on corn.
• Your mother made tater pudding.
• Chili on hotdogs was so good you often ate part of the napkin.
• Mother made cheese biscuits.
• You rode on the back of a pick-up truck with your feet dangling off the tailgate.

From Peggy Mayes, Benson

• You know someone who fell head phomus into the ditch.
• You know someone else who ran pineblank into the wall.

From Kim Tripp, Raleigh (formerly of Arapahoe)

• When you apologized to your daddy for doing something wrong, he said, “Sorry don’t feed the bulldog.” And you still don’t know what he meant.

From Michelle and Wesley Burton, Mocksville

• You can’t go into Grandma’s house if she is cannin’ and you have your monthly visitor.
• You know sweet potatos as music roots.
• You tried to suck the honey out of honeysuckers.
• There was always a bowl of cucumbers and onions in vinegar on the table.
• You covered up dinner leftovers with a dishtowel until time for supper.
• Granny’s quilts were so heavy you couldn’t turn over under them.
• Grandpa had a shanty built into the side of the pack house for summer guests.

From Myrtle L. Mainor, Harrells

• “Hello, Dolly” is not a Broadway musical but a greeting to your mule.
• Labor pains are sore muscles after a long day in the fields.
• Your kiddie pool is also known as a mud puddle.
• Your backyard barbecue is really a cookout and the dogs outnumber the guests.
• Your foot warmer has four legs and barks.
• An ice-cold slurpy is your toothless grandfather eating soup in the winter.
• A Yoohoo is both a chocolate drink and a call to your neighbor.
• A “hot chick” is your lunch in a bucket with a side of biscuits.
• You think concrete evidence means hardened cement left behind after a spill.

From Nancy Nolan

• Sun Drop is a staple in your life.
• Your daddy said to you, “I’m gonna slap you to the middle of next week” when he was mad at you.
• Your momma said, “I wouldn’t stay with him long enough for water to get hot,” meaning he wasn’t worth our time.
• You have strung beans, shelled peas and blanched tomatoes.

From Tammie Wells Schaaf, Core Creek

• In summer as a child you rode your banana bike on your dirt road until after dark.
• You played night games like hide-and-seek, freeze-tag, shadow-tag and baby-in-the-hole with all the neighborhood kids on hot summer nights.
• Your Mom fried wild tiger lily petals for you when they bloomed along the woods edge down the dirt road you lived on.
• You went bottle hunting from the back of an old pick-up down all the dirt roads in your community so you could sell them for a nickel each.
• You went crabbing with a bucket, crabbing line, dip net, chicken necks and back. Then you went home and cleaned ‘em with the hose and cooked ‘em up in a big iron pot over a fire in your back yard.
• Your whole family went to the sand dump to go swimming in the canal (Core Creek) on Sundays after church.
• You can still find a dirt road to cruise around on.
• You walked a mile to your friend’s house to play and when it was time for you to go home your Mom would whistle for you.
• You went bugging on a friend’s family trawler.
• During a hurricane, as the canal rose and flowed through the woods, the waves crested and broke in your back yard.
• You and your friends helped a neighbor (Mr. Mac) unload watermelons from a big delivery truck and were paid with a dollar and a watermelon.
• Instead of a trampoline you had huge airplane tire inner tubes in your yard to jump on and roll around in.
• Your Mom made blackberry cobbler from the berries you spent half the day picking and eating.
• Your eggs were delivered by the egg lady and milk came in glass jars.
• The tides were so high you got croakers in your collards (so Mr. Macado says).
• The whole neighborhood knows your dog because he wears a bandana and hangs out at the neighborhood store while you’re at school.

From Paula Brigman

• At bedtime after the Lord’s prayer your great-grandma would say “now get under the kilver, hon.”
• You had to go to the bathroom real bad about 30 minutes after early morning cucumber picking began and never returned, praying no one would notice.
• You had to shake the bed sheet about three times before you could get to sleep because every time another cousin crawled in the bed they brought sand with them.
• During outdoor play you pretended the smokehouse was the place the boogie man kept the bodies of his victims.
• On warm days at Grandma’s you took your bath in the foot tub outside.
• You put too many clothes in the ringer of the washing machine and jammed it up.
• You chased your sister with the hog shocker.
• Although you’re a girl, if you forgot clean underwear at Grandma’s you had to wear your uncle’s.

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