7 Things Alabamians Grew Up Hearing From Their Grandparents

When your grandparents told you to put your shoes on outside, they had a reason: hookworm.

Many of the things Alabamians grew up hearing came from real history in the state.

Here’s what Alabamians grew up hearing from their grandparents, and the history behind it.

Note: This is general information, not legal advice. Laws are subject to change.

1. Eggs and Baskets

Enterprise built a monument to a bug, and it makes the point of an old grandparent warning about eggs and baskets.

The boll weevil reached the region in 1915 as a cotton pest from Mexico.

Farmers in the region turned to other crops, including corn and peanuts.

Enterprise put up a monument to the insect in 1919.

The monument stands in the historic town square of Enterprise, a center of the state’s peanut industry in Coffee County.

The monument honors the pest’s role in saving the region’s economy.

If a grandparent ever warned you not to rely on one crop, one customer or one paycheck, you don’t have to take their word for it.

2. Shoes on Outside

Hookworm is one health reason behind a grandparent’s order to put your shoes on outside.

Hookworm enters the body through the skin.

Hookworm commonly spreads when you walk contaminated soil.

A 2017 study of 55 stool samples from Lowndes County found hookworm in 19.

Blood loss from hookworm leads to anemia and fatigue.

The infections were tied to poor sanitation in rural Alabama.

Next time you pull on boots before heading out to your garden, you’re following advice with a long history.

3. Keeping the Land

Some grandparents keep telling their families to hold on to the land.

Alabama passed its Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act in 2014 to protect the rights of heirs when a landowner dies without a will.

The law’s protections are meant to make sure all heirs receive a fair share if the property is sold.

If you and your cousins inherit a grandparent’s land without a will, that 2014 law covers what happens if a sale lands in court.

4. Looking Before You Sit

A grandparent’s warning to look before you sit in the grass may come down to fire ants.

Red imported fire ants reached Mobile from South America by accident around the 1930s.

Red imported fire ants have since spread across more than 260 million acres in nine southeastern states.

A quick look before you sit down is a habit worth keeping.

5. Using Every Scrap

If a grandparent ever told you to waste nothing, Gee's Bend shows how far that rule can go.

Gee's Bend is a community in northern Wilcox County.

Generations of women in Gee's Bend have made quilts from humble materials like worn-out denim, old bed sheets and feed sacks.

In 2002, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston put the quilts on display in an exhibition.

6. Casting Your Vote

Selma, where the 1965 march began, gives a grandparent's push to vote extra weight.

On March 7, 1965, some 600 marchers set out from Selma.

State troopers and local volunteer officers attacked the marchers with nightsticks and tear gas on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

When the march set out again on March 21, about 3,200 people walked 12 miles a day toward Montgomery and slept in fields.

The march ended in Montgomery on March 25, when Martin Luther King Jr. addressed a crowd of 25,000 at the capitol.

The march helped push Congress toward the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

If an older relative ever told you people marched so you could vote, this is the history behind that advice.

7. Handshake Deals

If a grandparent told you a handshake is as good as a contract, Alabama law only partly agrees.

Alabama's statute of frauds says certain agreements are void unless they're in writing and signed.

That list covers land sales, promises to cover somebody else's debt and deals that run longer than a year, so you'll want those on paper.

If you rent for a year or less, your lease falls outside the land-sale rule.

The Long Hookworm Fight

If you heard the shoe warning from a grandparent, you were hearing part of a long hookworm fight.

In 1909, John D. Rockefeller Sr. gave $1 million to start a commission aimed at ending hookworm in the South.

The commission's survey of 12 Alabama counties found an average infection rate of 57 percent in children, ranging from 15 percent to 94 percent.

It funded treatment for more than 13,000 people in 17 Alabama counties, and many of those infected were cured.

The effort lasted five years, and hookworm continued in some areas.