10 Things North Carolina Grandparents Do That Baffle Their Kids

Some habits are difficult to explain to anyone who didn’t grow up with them.

For many North Carolina grandparents, local traditions and long-held loyalties remain part of everyday life. Their grown kids, however, don’t always see what the fuss is about.

Here are 10 things North Carolina grandparents do that continue to baffle their kids.

1. Cleaning the Family Cemetery

Decoration Day claims a Saturday from North Carolina grandparents nearly every summer for a chore their grown kids have never once volunteered to help with: Weeding, mowing, and decorating the family cemetery plot.

The custom has stayed alive across the Upland South, from North Carolina’s mountains west to the Ozarks.

Some families even mound fresh dirt over the graves before setting out flowers.

Their kids offer to send flowers instead, and their parents tell them it doesn’t get them out of helping.

Nobody hires this out.

2. Showing Up for Dinner on the Grounds

A North Carolina grandparent’s whole Sunday still bends around one meal: Dinner on the grounds.

Churches across the state have held a homecoming Sunday since colonial times, when the whole congregation hauls covered dishes out to tables set up on the lawn.

Most North Carolina church homecomings land in late August or early September, and churches like First Baptist in Greensboro still follow the sermon with dinner on the grounds, exactly like they did generations ago.

The tables fill with fried chicken, banana pudding, and someone’s famous deviled eggs.

Grown kids who don’t attend anymore can’t fathom losing a Sunday to two casseroles for a meal eaten outside on a folding table.

No invitation needed.

3. Refusing to Cross the Barbecue Line

Two barbecue camps split North Carolina grandparents long before their kids were born, and many have never crossed the line since.

Eastern-style joins whole hog with a thin vinegar-and-pepper sauce, while Lexington’s dip stirs in a little ketchup for sweetness.

Their grown kids still don’t get why a plate of pork is worth an argument at Thanksgiving.

Ask a Lexington loyalist to eat at an Eastern joint, and watch the fork stop halfway to the plate.

It’s not pickiness.

It’s principle.

4. Still Calling It the Wachovia

More than a decade after the Wachovia name disappeared, North Carolina grandparents still walk into a Wells Fargo branch and ask for the Wachovia teller.

Every Wachovia branch in the state took down its sign and put up Wells Fargo’s by late 2011.

Grown kids correct them every visit, and it never sticks.

Fifteen years hasn’t changed that.

5. Buying Only North Carolina Furniture

For North Carolina grandparents, a couch has to come from somewhere in the state, usually within an hour of High Point or Hickory.

The Piedmont has been known as the country’s furniture capital for generations, filled with factories and family-run shops that still build pieces by hand.

Their kids order a bookshelf online in ten minutes and can’t understand why their parents would drive forty-five minutes to a factory outlet just to pick out the wood in person.

Flat-pack and “assembly required” are fighting words.

Solid wood only.

6. Driving Hours to Shag Dance

Two hours down the road is nothing to North Carolina grandparents chasing something their kids have never heard of: A shag dance.

The Carolina Shag became the state’s official popular dance back in 2005, built on the beach music their generation grew up dancing to at the coast.

Cold weather doesn’t cancel it.

Clubs still fill up on weeknights.

Some plan whole weekends around it, chasing beach music festivals up and down the Carolina coast.

Their grown kids can’t picture their parents cutting up a dance floor in matching outfits on a Tuesday.

7. Marking December for the Candle Tea

One date owns a North Carolina grandparent’s December calendar: The Old Salem Candle Tea in Winston-Salem.

The Moravian tradition has run for nearly a century, filling a historic hall with beeswax candles, coffee, and Moravian sugar cake.

It’s not optional.

Grandparents pull their grown kids along anyway, candle in hand.

The kids spend the whole evening wondering how a cup of coffee and a slice of cake turned into a whole family event.

8. Rearranging the Week for Duke

A hair appointment, a doctor’s visit, even a Sunday dinner will move before North Carolina grandparents miss a Duke-Carolina game.

The rivalry has run since 1920, and the two campuses sit about ten miles apart on what everyone still calls Tobacco Road.

Colors matter in that house on game day.

Same drill every tip-off.

Their kids call to chat, and their parents tell them to call back after the final buzzer.

9. Stopping for the Hot Light

A Krispy Kreme's red Hot Light is enough to pull North Carolina grandparents off the road, no matter where they're headed.

Krispy Kreme opened its first shop in Winston-Salem in 1937, and the Hot Now light has meant the same thing there ever since: Doughnuts, right now, off the line.

No exceptions.

Their grown kids have learned that a lit sign outranks a schedule, a gas gauge, or anywhere else they were supposed to be.

Many of us love a good Krispy Kreme doughnut, of course.

But Krispy Kreme isn't as special as it used to be. You can eat a hot glazed doughnut in over 40 states these days.

10. Correcting Anyone Who Credits Ohio

Interrupting a conversation, a movie, or a stranger in line is fair game for North Carolina grandparents when the subject is who flew first.

Every single time.

North Carolina put "First in Flight" on its license plates in 1982, marking the actual spot at Kill Devil Hills, a few miles from Kitty Hawk, where the Wright brothers flew on December 17, 1903.

Ohio built its own plate around the brothers' hometown instead, and the two states have argued about it for decades.

Their kids have learned not to say Ohio's version out loud.