You Are Very Wiregrass If

You Are Very Wiregrass If......

I sent this statement out to the Wiregrass email list and asked folks to complete the sentence. Below are the responses. While all of these entries accurately define Wiregrass experiences, they overlap the Southern experience too. There are a few gems here that identify things that are uniquely Wiregrass. Keep the Southern ones coming too, but the uniquely Wiregrass ones are the ones we hope to ultimately identify. Quite a few have been coming in daily and I hope to get them all eventually added to this page. They are listed in the order that they were sent to the email list or combined with previous postings by the author. If anyone who is not on the Wiregrass list wants to submit some entries, please email them to SatillaRoots@aol.com. Please put You Are Very Wiregrass If.. in the subject line. Thanks, Greg Wainright

....you know what a pond scoggin and a skeeter hawk is.
....your ancestors swept their sand-covered front yard with a palmetto stem or a broom.
....you've ever poured peanuts in a bottle of Coke/RC/Pepsi before you drank it.
....your ancestors rafted logs downriver to the sawmill during a freshet.

Submitted by Greg Wainright SatillaRoots@aol.com

...you know what part of a car the cooter hull is.

Submitted by Jack Butler JackVButler@worldnet.att.net

...you enjoy a big RC and a moon pie.
... you could be found sitting in a china berry tree with a mouth full of cocoa pretending you are your grandmother dipping snuff.

Submitted by Jeanette Crane delores@internettport.net

...you have photos of your ancestors holding gators.
...the seats of the chairs on the front porch were made of deer hide.
...deer antlers were hung proudly on the front porch (along with all the chairs).
...you hold your family reunions at the Okefenokee Swamp.

Submitted by Nancy Evans Parr nparr@datasys.net

...you know what gall berry is.
...you have a picture of your great-granddaddy in his Confederate uniform hanging on your wall.

Submitted by Sidney SidneyV1@aol.com

...you ever got sick off of a homemade cigar rolled from freshly cured tobacco.
...you ever walked a 50-gallon drum.
...you ever rolled down the lane inside a tire.
...your breakfast consisted of grits, eggs, biscuitts, fat back bacon and tomato gravy.
...you ever made a meal of cornbread and clabber.
...you ever made butter by bouncing a gallon jar on your knee.
...the place to read the Sear Roebuck Catalog is in the outhouse

Submitted by Dot Baker DBaker3381@aol.com

...you know what a pond gannet(sp.) is.

Submitted by Olivia Williamson Saffold saffold@pineland.net

...you use the pages instead of toilet paper. (In response to Dot Baker's posting about reading the Sears Roebuck Catolog in the outhouse.)

Submitted by Phil Wandrey gavinwandrey@earthlink.net

...you know the difference between a dewberry and a blackberry.
...you know what a gator hole, a pole cat, and a he-coon are, and you know how to deal with each.
...you know what a cooter is and you even have an "Uncle Cooter".
...you know that if you break down along US 90, chances are the next house will be a long lost cousin.
...you know City Slickers will pay good money to "live in the swamps and catch catfish in the river ". Here in Clay County, FL it is called "Fleming Island".
...you know that "multiple wives (some legal, some not), children in double digits (some legitimate, some not)" can be found in ALL HUMAN KIND in ALL PLACES......We Wiregrasser's just don't deny ours.

Submitted by Deborah Southernheritage@pobox.com

...you used to break dog fennels and ride them for horses.

Submitted by Cosette Lewis cheeter@mailer.fsu.edu

...you've ever been to a canegrinding
...you know what polecat is, the kind you eat that you scrape off the sides of a syrup kettle with a piece of cane stalk.
...you know what a slop-jar is.
...your ancestors had drink bottles turned upside dow to line a pathway or to make a pathway.
...you have ever had anyone joke with you about the difference in the use of a red corncob and a white corncob
...you know what an outhouse is.
...you know what a smokehouse is.
...you know what a tobacco barn is.
...you have ever worked in tobacco (& every morning at break you have a big Pepsi Cola and a bag of peanuts!)
...you think sweetpotato and cane syrup is dessert.
...you have ever had a syrup biscuit, where you stick your finger in the biscuit and pour it full of syrup.
...you know what a safe is.
...you know the difference between doghuntin, and still-huntin.
...you know what to answer if someone asks you if you want to go snipe hunting.
...mullet & swamp cabbage were a mainstay of your diet
...you ever built a big fire on the bank of a river and catfished at night
...ya daddy ever taught you to cut a short piece of stem off a palmetto bush, and split it down the middle. Then insert a blade of grass in the split to make a squirrel call.
...you ever stood in the back of a pickup truck and watched your daddy boot swamp cabbage that he had just cut [ complaining about how he liked to got "bear caught" out there] waiting for him to hand you the tender pieces of the boots to eat raw. As he cut the swamp cabbage into pieces you waited for the best part, the piece that as you ate down far enough it would open up like a fan.
...you always had guns either hangin on the wall on a gunrack in say the hallway, or in a guncabinet. They were considered prize possessions and no one ever thought of messing with them unless you were going
hunting. And that not without Daddy's permission, and usually Daddy.

Submitted by Sharon Driver Wright brights@perry.gulfnet.com

...as a boy you made china berry pop guns
...you helped gather chinquapin nuts
...you had corn cob fights using a dog fennel switch to launch them
...you rolled an old tireless bicycle wheel down the dirt road with a "U" shaped wire.
...you smoked "rabbit tobacco" or "Indian Cigars"

Submitted by Carl Mobley cmobley@magicnet.net

...you've scrubbed your floors with a corn shuck broom.

Submitted by J. Grubbs jgrubbs@svic.net

...all family photos were taken in front of the fence running in front of the house and includes all the dogs and mules owned by the family.
...your idea of a perfect Sunday dinner (and that is the noon meal)is:
Chicken and dumplings (boney pieces used in the dumplings use the good pieces to fry), Fried Chicken
Turnip greens seasoned with pork backbone, Cornbread cooked in an iron skillet, Boiled okra and Pecan pie, sweet potatoe pie or blackberry pie.
...you have drawn water from a well located on the back porch and drank out of the dipper.\
...you have pulled nut grass out of peanuts.
...you hate to wear shoes even in the winter time.
...you can unstring tobacco with the best of them at a penny a stick.
...you have dipped graham crackers in the cream which granny has skimmed
off the fresh warm milk.
...you have chased and caught lightening bugs at dusk.
...you have jumped in the swimming hole with your sticky tobacco gather clothes on late in the afternoon.
...you call all the elderly neighbors by such names as Miss Ann, Miss Gertie, Mr. Bob, Mr. George.

Submitted by Rhonda D. King samkk@planttel.net

...you sopped syrup with biscuits for breakfast.
...your father is Pa or Papa, and your mother is Ma.

Submitted by Nancy Nilsen nilsen@starlink.com

.... you ever pulled a palmetto leaf (frond) out of a clump and chewed the edible ending.
.... your grandmother taught you how to cut gallberry bushes, tie them together with old rags, and strip the leaves off by beating the broom against a wire fence.
.... you poked a hole in a biscuit and filled it with homemade syrup.
.... you knew what it meant when you heard, "We have to put more lime in the hole today."
.... you heard your Mother say, "We might be poor but we are not trash."
.... one of your chores was to take the slop jar out each morning for a dumping, rinsing, and airing in the hot sunshine.
.... you enjoyed climbing into a freshly aired feather bed in the winter and remember the smell and the feeling.
.... you remember skimming some of the sediment from the boiling cane juice in the iron vat as it was being made into syrup with a cane peel and eating it like candy.
.... you know that "dinner on the ground" meant a gathering of people bringing food together to place on tables usually out of doors.
.... you know what "prime the pump" means and you knew how to do it.
.... you were told "never, ever step on a grave."
.... you grew up hearing, "Don't run in the house."
.... you knew what a "Methodist pallet" was and you slept on one with your cousins.
.... you saw your Mother shine her patent leather shoes with a homemade biscuit.
.... one day your Mother announced that you were "too big" to crawl in bed between your grandmother and granddaddy.
.... the milk tasted bitter because you let the cow get loose and it ate bitter weed.
.... you ever tasted a gallberry or chinaberry or licked your fingers after stripping a fennel weed.
.... you remember the taste of an egg from a chicken who had eaten the berries from Camphor trees.
.... your granddaddy taught you how to find the right rosin (resin) from the pine tree for chewing.
.... you remember the acrid smell of pecan leaves which you had to rake into piles and burn.
.... you know the difference between a foot tub and a wash tub.
.... you know what a water shelf is.
.... you heard the tale of dried rattlesnake rattles falling into a bucket of drinking water and killing someone.
.... you knew what ambrosia was.
.... you "pulled" some one on the bicycle instead of "towing" them.
.... the Confederate statue in the little park in your town was always kept clean.
.... you grew up saying "Yes, mam" and "No, sir", and "thank you", and "please".
.... you knew from the beginning to respect your elders.
.... you heard grace said before you ate your meal and your hair was combed and your hands were clean and you never reached "over" the table but said, "Pass so and so, please." And you asked to be excused from the table.
.... you were taught, "A soft answer turns away wrath".
.... you never called anyone a fool for you were "in danger of hell fire".
.... your pet dog never came in the house.
.... you know what a quilting frame was and remember seeing your female relatives laughing together over it as they worked.
.... you knew that your granddaddy always removed his hat before he came into the house and usually hung it on the deer antlers which were nailed up on the front or back porch, sometimes both porches.
.... The most highly respected people in your community were teachers.
.... you "visited" with your loved ones in the cemeteries in your community.
.... Ironing was never done on Sunday at your house.
.... you felt as close to some of your first cousins as you did to your brothers and sisters.
.... you knew how to trim a wick and clean the chimney on an oil lamp.
.... Someone in your community was ill or "down and out" and your family was
the first to "help them out in their time of need".
.... you heard your Mother say, "I wouldn't be caught dead wearing that outfit!"

Submitted by Christopher Henderson Griffin Boyd Wayxga@aol.com

...you wash your feet before going to bed at night, featherbed of course.

Submitted by Margaret DataProf@aol.com.

...you've ever been Flounder gigging

Submitted by AjusBjus@aol.com

... your mother made you pick your own peachtree switch
...you still say "Yes Mam" and "No Sir" to your elders even though you are an adult -you're not comfortable with any less
...you use a broom straw to pick your teeth.
...the neighbors gather to make each bride a quilt.
...you always try the green persimmons.

Submitted by Marianne mjcrews@brightok.net

...you've ever launched persimmons on dog fennel switches.

Submitted by Olivia Williamson Saffold saffold@pineland.net

...you used broom straws to jerk Chicken Chokers (Doodle Bugs)out of holes in the yard.
...you used a Sears or Monkey Ward catalog in the outhouse. Maybe some preferred the cob method. Catalogs usually lasted until another catalog was replaced with a new one. Mailmen delivered them four times a year.
... you aren't dumb enough to try green 'simmons' twice.
...listen to a battery powered radio, using a 'coal oil' lamp at nite in the sitting room, to see the dial.

Submitted by Harold Lee hleev@host.cullman.net

...you use a broom straw to pick your teeth.
...the neighbors gather to make each bride a quilt.
...you always try the green persimmons.
Submitted by Marianne Lee hleev@host.cullman.net

... you always thought a sweet drink was syrup and water. You couldn't afford a soda.

Submitted by Shirley Hale sahale@train.missouri.org

...you had to pick up lighterd knots

Submitted by Bill Fish H2OWellDoc@aol.com

...put a dime for luck in the black-eyed peas on New Year's Day for dinner.

Submitted by Paul M. Hendricks PaulMHMD@aol.com

...you had to wear a tiny bag of evil-smelling assoephidia (sp? we said ass-o-phiddy) around your neck to ward off ailments.
...your Granny "doctored" your croup with a spoonful of sugar laced with turpentine.
...your Granny gave you hot teas to "make you go ahead and break out (with some disease).
...you got the "itch" and had to go to school painted with a mixture of sulfur and lard.
...your Granny stopped bleeding with spider webs.
...you have ever had the ground itch.
...the folks you know went to the doctor to treat broken bones, gunshot wounds, and snakebite.
...you ever fell off a pair of Tom Walkers.
...your swing was a croker sack full of Spanish moss.
...you learned early on about chiggers.

Submitted by Dot Brown dottom@gulftel.com

...you enjoy a nice big bowl of boiled peanuts

Submitted by Gwen gmac@azstarnet.com

...Gramma cooked cornbread and butterbeans flavored with salt pork every
single night cause Grampa didn't have teeth.
...Mama made hoe cakes and home made grease gravy.
...Daddy had to hide in the bushes to get swamp cabbage.
...your favorite breakfast is a mixture of grits, cut up over easy eggs, salt, and butter with a side of bacon.
...you love field peas.
...Gramma and Grampa ate onions like yankees eat apples.
...your family called the annual family reunion "The Chicken Pearlo".
...you went hunting for squirls and rabbits.
...you had a pet gopher.
...you called your grampa "G-Dad"
...all the men dumped sand out of their boots when they came home from work.
...you say "Hot Dam", "All Be", "Over Yonder", or "Aint Dunnit".
...you crumbled your white cornbread into a bowl of milk.
...you referred to Mosquito's as "Skeeters".
...you asked for a coke and you were given a Coke instead of a Pepsi.
...you ever had "Sasafrass tea"
...you called your Uncle Gearld "Gearl".
...you ever got spanked with a "Switch" all the way home.
...you eat banana sandwiches.
...you eat pickled: eggs, sausages, and pigs feet.
...you call potato's, taters and tomato's tamaters.
...you ate turnip greens, and collard greens.
...you ate fried ocra.
...you had to make a pallet when you slept at Gramma's house.
...you ever got your arm stuck in your Gramma's washing machine roller.
...its a New Years tradition to eat blackeyed peas for good luck.
...you eat salt on your watermelon.
...your family got together to burn their cast iron skillets in an big
outside fire.
...if there were bubbles in your yard from the kitchen sink and the washing
machine.

Deborah Davis jayrah@aloha.net

...you toted water.
...you attended quilting bees
...you ever rendered chittlins so you could enjoy a big hunk of cracklin corn bread with some home churned butter
...you made mayhaw jelly
...you ate sweet tater pie
...you went to the swamp to dig up lighterd knots to start the fire
...you ever cooked on a wood stove
...you know what goobers and penders are

Submitted by Priscilla McCormick cilla@azstarnet.com

... instead of a washing machine, you used a boil pot & scrub board

Submitted by Carl Mobley cmobley@magicnet.net

... you if love purple hull peas, vine ripe tomatoes & cornbread & Southern iced tea with LOTS of sugar.

Submitted by Cynthia Carter Dyer wsdyer@centuryinter.net

...while going fishing, you cut saw palmettos to use as the fish stringer.

Submitted by Steve Tanner stfla@juno.com

...you had an ice man deliver ice to your house every day (no refrigeration)
...you had wood floors that were scrubbed with lye soap (homemade) every week

Submitted by Melba Denmark golfnanny@perry.gulfnet.com

...you have ever fished with a wasp nest.
...you have ever slept on the front porch.
...you have ever cut a tire in half to create a border for flowers.
...you have ever been frog gigging.
...you have ever eaten a cat head biscuit.
...you have ever slept at the foot of a bed.
...you have ever called lunch "dinner" and dinner "supper".
...you have ever cropped, strung, and hung tobacco, or drove the sled
and fired the tobacco barn.
...you know what a hog haw is.
...you know what a gopher is.

Submitted by Wanda Sumner wsumner@surfsouth.com

...you've gotten chiggers picking blackberries
...your family uses turpentine medicinally (also see above)
...your grandmother dabbed damp teabags on your sunburn
...you've fed ants to the doodlebugs under the porch

Submitted by ScoutK1951@aol.com

...you know how to "chip" pine trees and get the sapp;
...you know what the Rooster was crowing for;
...you know how to de-bloom tabacco and squash those big ugly "backer"
worms;
...you appreciate being able to go to bed at 6:30 pm cause you were up at
4:30 am and in the fields at 5:30am;
...you never go to town except to take the "backer" to market;
...Paw goes to town to get sis her feminine napkins and brings back a roll
of paper towels;
...the only vehicle in the family is the tractor;
...you know how to get the eggs out from underneath the hen before she
pecks your hand off;
...you stay away from that little wire that runs along side the fence. Or
you got a city relative to pee on that wire.
...or you know when to watch the wire box and see when the little red light
is off , you touch it and then get others to touch it who don't
understand how you don't get shocked.
...you know what syrup bisquits are;
...you only went to church once a month cause the preacher was at another
church;
...you understand what a cemetery clean up day is;
...you do genealogy searchs on Greg's web site. and know all his kin folks.
...you understand all the messages that the others have remarked to on this
page.

Submitted by Phyllis Warren pwarren@techcomm.net

...you go to the cemetery to find a relative and come home knowing about thirty or forty.

Submitted by bhmiller@knology.net

...the best smell you can ever remember is coffee brewing and oak wood burning in a woodstove on a crisp winter morning
..."water-hose is really a "hose-pipe."
...instead of being on your "tippy-toes", your on your "dew-claws"
...Canadian Lord Calvert's and a bottle of "Squirt" was an essential on any fishin trip
...wind chimes or bottles in the trees around the house kept the "buggars" away
...no matter who you were, the redbugs would bite you ANYWAY
...a good dose of BlackDraught cured ANYTHING
...there is no in-between .....either you love em or you hate em
...words like tater, purty, hope(instead of help), and " your not as big as Friday Fart" are common. (By the way does any one know just how big a Friday Fart is??)
...you love your momma and daddy Always

Submitted by Kaye W Carter carterkw@bellsouth.net

...after 41 one years of being married to then same woman born in Ohio as the
Yankee wife,.you teach the Yankee woman to love any kind of greens swimming in grease
and salt, boiled peanuts, fried or smoked mullet and swamp cabbage.
...you describe a woman wearing a tight pair of pants as" looking like two
polecats fightin in a croker sack"
...your daughter goes away to college and gets embarrassed because she has to
explain what she means when she says she is going to change to her. britches.
...the Yankee woman refers to you as that cracker or swamp rat
...your grandchildren refer to you as the Yankee granny

Submitted by Norita Shepherd Moss (The Yankee granny) Noritamoss@aol.com

...you hate gnats
...you loved to pick wild plums and blackberries
...your Aunt had a big porch swing and rocking chairs and potted
geraniums on the front porch
...at least one relative had a house with a tin roof
...family reunions meant cars parked in the yard, fried chicken, caramel
cake, lemon cheese cake, potato salad, sliced tomatoes, 3-bean salad,
cole slaw, cooked pork covered with black pepper, sliced ham, chicken
and dumplings, fried corn bread, fried okra, fried corn and you ate it
ALL
...somebody in the family lived on a highway and never locked their
doors at night, but left them open so you could get in when you came to
visit after bedtime
...you loved Burma Shave signs
...you know how to say pecans
...you LOVED Stuckey's
...you've seen a barn with "See Rock City" painted on the roof
...you have ever seen food cooked on a wood stove
...you knew better than to let the screen door slam behind you
...you loved to see the red, orange and purple Nehi drinks in ice
...you have ever seen a salt lick for sale
...you have ever been in a country store with Little Miss Sunbeam on the
screen door with someone outside selling a little brown bag of boiled
peanuts and couldn't resist buying them
...you have ever chewed sugar cane and liked it
...you have ever eaten sorghum syrup and liked it
...you have ever eaten so many hush puppies you thought you'd pop
...cabbage, fried cornbread and buttermilk constitute a meal for you
...you love boiled okra on top of field peas
...you are starving after reading the above and wishing Mother had left
detailed instructions for every blessed thing she ever cooked (and all
her sisters too)
...your mother (or father) had at least 9 sisters and brothers
...you know a South Georgia accent when you hear it anywhere in the
world
...you know where Valdosta is
...you're uncomfortable when you see Spanish Moss in a dried
arrangement. Too many memories of chiggers
...oak trees hanging with moss stir fond memories
...you've been to the Farmer's Market at night and shelled peas all day
...peach cobbler was your favorite dessert, blackberry cobbler was a fast second
...making homemade icecream was a regular thing and you had to turn the
crank while everyone else sat around and talked
...you stayed awake as long as you could just to hear all the family
lore talked about at a reunion
...you had kissin cousins
...shoes are for the birds
...your mother could make your clothes without a pattern
...you had to pick the switch you were to get switched with
...you like to eat ice
...I'm making you homesick

Submitted by Al Anderer al@mgdcare.com