FROM CAROLINA COUNTRY
Y O U
K N O W
Y O U’R E
F R O M
Carolina country if . . . …instead of being attracted to people you
take a shine to them. Nancy Bodenheimer
From Nancy Bodenheimer, Kernersville … You had a cake walk at your school on a Saturday night as a fundraiser. … You brought down a hornets nest, stopped it up, took it to your church during summer revival, pulled out the stopper, then threw it through an open window. … You put a forked stick on your cow’s neck to prevent her from milking herself. … Your pet goat followed you a half mile to the bus stop, then came back to meet you when you got off the bus after school. … You know you’ve been good if you’ve been “walkin’ the chalk line.” … You’re spending too much time with your mama when she says, “Quit hanging on like a calf on a tit.” … You like to look out the winder. From Melissa Taylor, Tarboro … You know not to assume that the car with the flashing turn signal is actually going to make a turn. … Your favorite movies are “Fried Green Tomatoes,” “Driving Miss Daisy,” “Steel Magnolias” and “Gone with the Wind.” … You become best friends with someone while standing in the check-out line at your supermarket.
From Nell Murray, Liberty … You pinched the little green end off a honey sucker and the little drop of sweet juice went in your mouth. … You rubbed a chunk of fatback meat on a chigger bite and snuff on a bee sting. … You made hoppy-toad houses by packing sand over the top of your foot and gently sliding your foot out. … You climbed to the top of a slim sapling tree and swung over. … After your family visited another family and you started to leave, they would say “Yaw-uns come back when you can.” From Becky Deans, Zebulon … Your parents taught you to be respectful of and pray for those who don’t have as much as you do. From Peggy Edwards, Lumberton … You saved brown paper bags to cut in strips and use as hair rollers. … You hauled water in 50-gallon barrels to set out tobacco by hand setters. … You cooked on a two-burner oil stove. … You loved eating salt mullets and baked sweet potato. … You hung sausage, liver pudding and hams in the smoke house.
From Eddie Riffle, Indian Trail … Your mama would not let you in the house until you had pulled all the hitchhikers and petticoat creepers from your clothes. … After a couple days of hard rain you and your cousins would play in a huge deep mud pit in the low spot of the pasture. … After picking cotton all day long you waited by the scales for your pay. … You took to your granddaddy a mason jar of ice water while he was plowing the fields. … Your grandmother had a single shot .22 that made all the squirrels in her pecan trees very nervous. … You looked for arrowheads while bustin’ up clods behind your granddaddy’s tractor. … You flew in a crop duster that landed on the road in front of your house. … Your favorite meal is a platter of cold fried chicken, pimento cheese sandwiches and fresh young spring onions. … You swam with the snakes in grandma’s pond. … You bailed hay with a tractor, stacked it on a wagon, then threw the bales up in the barn loft and drank ice cold grape Kool Aid in the shade.
From Selma Braddy, Tideland Electric … You used matchboxes as cars and played with them under the porch in the dirt. … Girls made playhouses using sticks and strings to separate each room. … Clothes were recycled to wear with patches of many colors to cover worn out holes. … Everyone used the same water dipper at the ‘backer barn. … Comzie Comzie was your favorite game to play when your electricity was off. … You picked up a soda bottle in the ditch and traded it for a Pall Mall cigarette at the old store down the road. … You ran through a tall cornfield during a hail storm trying to find your way home.
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28 NOVEMBER 2007 Carolina Country
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10/9/07 4:23:26 PM