12 Things Ohioans Are Tired of Explaining to Everyone Who Moves In

Ohioans have three hometowns to defend at once, and getting the order wrong is a rookie mistake.

Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati sit almost evenly spaced along Interstate 71. Every local picks a side.

Lump them together as “the city,” and a native corrects you before you finish the sentence.

These are the things Ohioans are tired of explaining to everyone who moves in.

1. Pop, Not Soda

Ohioans order a pop at a cookout, never a soda, and definitely not a coke unless a real Coca-Cola shows up.

Ohio sits squarely in pop territory, the word most of the Midwest reaches for on any carbonated drink.

Everyone agrees on that.

Head south into Kentucky, and coke turns into the catchall word for anything fizzy, but Ohioans never picked up that habit.

Ask for a coke at an Ohio diner, and the server asks back what kind.

Pop is the answer, every time, no matter what’s in the can.

2. Cedar Point or Kings Island, Never Both

Every Ohio kid grows up loyal to one amusement park, and switching sides isn’t an option.

Cedar Point in Sandusky calls itself the Roller Coaster Capital of the World and backs it up with 18 roller coasters, more than almost any park in the country.

That claim holds up.

Northern Ohio kids grew up on Cedar Point’s wooden coasters and the view of Lake Erie from the top of the first drop.

Southern Ohio kids grew up on Kings Island’s log flume outside Cincinnati, and neither camp budges.

Bring up the other park, and the argument starts on the spot.

3. Chili Means Spaghetti

Order a three-way in Cincinnati, and the chili never touches a pinto bean or a tortilla chip.

Newcomers ask anyway.

Cincinnati chili goes over a plate of spaghetti, piled with shredded cheddar, and the tradition traces back to Empress Chili, opened by Greek immigrants in 1922.

A three-way means spaghetti, chili, and cheese.

Add onions for a four-way or beans for a five-way, and the order still confuses newcomers standing at the counter.

Skyline and Gold Star both grew out of that same recipe, and Ohioans pick a side there too.

In Cincinnati, chili is a noodle dish, not a bowl.

4. Which of the 3 C’s Are You From

Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati sit spaced almost evenly along Interstate 71, and every Ohioan claims a favorite among the three.

Columbus passed the other two years ago and now counts more than 930,000 residents, the biggest city in the state.

Cleveland keeps its lakefront identity, and Cincinnati keeps its river-town pace, and neither wants to be mistaken for the other.

Call your hometown the only city that matters in Ohio, and watch the room go stiff.

Wrong move.

Picking a favorite among the three C’s starts more arguments at Ohio dinner tables than politics ever does.

5. Buckeyes on the Field, No Exceptions

Ohio State football runs the fall calendar, and a Saturday without the game on somewhere is rare.

Script Ohio, the marching band’s signature formation, has spelled out the state’s name at halftime since 1936, with a senior sousaphone player earning the honor of dotting the i.

That’s not handed out.

Ohioans talk all day about the Buckeyes and change the subject fast when the rivalry up north comes up.

Longtime coach Woody Hayes refused to say Michigan’s name, calling it only team up north instead, and the habit outlived him.

Say the actual name at a tailgate, and somebody will wince.

6. Buckeyes Aren’t Food

Ohio’s state tree gave the state its nickname, but the actual buckeye nut belongs on the ground, not on a plate.

The seeds carry toxic compounds that upset the stomach and worse in people and livestock who eat enough of them raw.

Not food.

The candy version, a ball of peanut butter dipped in chocolate to look like the nut, showed up decades later and stuck around every holiday table.

Ohioans pass the candy around by the plateful every fall and steer kids clear of the actual buckeyes underfoot.

Two things share the name, and only the candy belongs in your mouth.

7. Graeter's or You're Wrong

Ohioans measure other ice cream against one brand, and it usually comes up short.

Graeter's has hand-crafted its ice cream in small French Pots since 1870, a process most other ice cream makers gave up decades ago.

The chocolate chips aren't chips at all.

Workers pour liquid chocolate straight into the freezing ice cream and let a blade shatter it, leaving chunks instead of uniform bits.

That's the whole trick.

Move to Ohio, ask for a scoop of black raspberry chip, and the loyalty makes sense by the second bite.

8. Flag With a Notch Cut Out

Every other state flies a plain rectangle, and Ohio never bothered.

Ohio's flag is the only non-rectangular flag in the country, a swallow-tailed burgee designed in 1901 for the Pan-American Exposition.

It's on purpose.

The 17 stars mark Ohio's place as the 17th state, and the red and white stripes stand for the state's roads and waterways.

Ohioans grew up saluting a shape no other classroom in the country uses.

Explaining the notch to a new neighbor gets old fast.

9. Twenty Extra Inches of Snow

Winter in Ohio depends entirely on which side of the state you're standing on.

Cleveland's own coastline barely gets hit, but towns a few miles inland, like Chardon, sit inside the primary snow belt, where lake-effect storms dump far more snow every winter.

Not the same winter.

Cold air crosses the open water of Lake Erie, picks up moisture, and drops it once it reaches higher ground east of the city.

Drive south past Columbus on the same day, and the roads might be dry.

Ohioans pack a different set of tires depending on which county they call home.

10. Towns That Don't Say What They Look Like

Ohio borrowed dozens of town names from world capitals, and Ohioans pronounce every one of them differently.

Lima goes by LY-muh, not the way Peru says its capital, and Versailles comes out ver-SAYLZ instead of the French city's pronunciation.

Locals like it that way.

Cairo is KAIR-oh, Milan is MY-lun, and Bellefontaine drops half its letters into bell-FOUN-tun.

New neighbors read the sign, say it the obvious way, and the next person they meet corrects them.

Ohioans stopped being surprised by the mix-up decades ago.

11. Summer That Sticks to You

The same thick air that sits over the Ohio River settles across southern Ohio each summer.

Cincinnati's July heat index routinely reaches the 90s, with humidity doing most of the work to make it feel worse than the thermometer says.

You feel it instantly.

The Ohio River Valley traps that moisture close to the ground, the same way it traps fog over the water on early mornings.

Newcomers from drier states step outside in July and understand the humidity complaints by the end of the first week.

Ohioans just call it summer and keep a second shirt in the car.

12. Birthplace of Aviation, Technically

Ohio license plates have carried the words Birthplace of Aviation for years, and out-of-state drivers ask about it at nearly every gas station stop.

Orville and Wilbur Wright grew up in Dayton and built their first flying machines there, but the actual first flight happened on the beach at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903.

That detail gets left out.

North Carolina put "First in Flight" on its own plates instead, and Ohioans and North Carolinians have argued over the wording for decades.