I had to learn a new language again, it’s called NASCAR, and it has changed over the years although the King Richard is still the king, although he is not racing. NASCAR has new names and words that are old names and words, just new. I had to pick up Robeson County slang again. “Onced” and “twiced” after 35 years are still one words. In other places in the world, we use a shopping cart not a buggy.
“Jaw-P means, “Did y’all go to the bathroom,” and “Fixinto” is still one word. People really grow and eat Okra, usually for dinner or supper because there is still no lunch and catfish is the other white meat! Did y’all “jeet”, which is an actually a phrase meaning, “Did you eat?” And since we start drinking tea when we are two, it is appropriate for all meals. We sure do like a little tea with our sugar. We have only five spices in St. Pauls, Salt, Pepper, Texas Pete, Tabasco and Ketchup.
We never wear a watch cause it don’t matter what time it is. You work until done or it’s just plain too dark to see. And we never, never, but never push buttons, we mash them. Everybody knows what a DAWG is, even if ya’ll not from Georgia or have never been thar. The distance to Georgia cannot be measured in minutes so not many of us can go there.
The local papers devote very little to national and international news but devote 6 pages to local gossip columns and 2 pages are dedicated to high school football. The opening day of deer season is a state holiday and everything closes including the snail mail office. Going to Wal-Mart is a sport known as “Walmartin” or off to “Wally World.”
All festivals across this state are named for fruit, vegetables, grain, insects or some poor animal. And all the seasons are known as almost summer, summer, still summer and Christmas
North Carolina is really a world of its own. I was looking at some land that a friend of mine owns in a remote mountainous area in western North Carolina, when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced toward us out of a cloud of dust.
The driver, a middle aged man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leaned out the window and asked, “If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?” Bill looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, “Sure, Why not?”
The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.
The Gentleman then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Washington DC. Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored…
He then accesses an MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response. Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer, turns to us and says, “You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.” “That’s right answered, Bill, Well, I guess you can take one of my calves.”
He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on with amusement as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car. Then Bill says to the gentleman, “Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?” The gentleman thinks about it for a second and then says, “Okay, why not?”
You’re my Senator from Washington, says Bud. “Wow! That’s correct,” says the congressman “but how did you guess that?” “No guessing required,” answered Bill.
“You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer that I already knew, to a question I never asked. You used millions of dollars worth of equipment trying to show me how much smarter than me you are.
“And you don’t know a thing about how working people make a living - or about cows, for that matter. This is a herd of horses. Now give me back my dog.”
To all my friends here, and those who wish they were here in the Great State of North Carolina, I have learned everything backwards and forwards which means I know everything now.
PS. As Will Rogers once said, “There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.”
Post a Comment
