9 Signs You Grew Up in Ohio, No Matter Where You Live Now

Ohio flies the only state flag in the country that isn’t a rectangle, and state law spells out how to fold it.

Growing up around that kind of state pride leaves marks.

These are the signs you grew up in Ohio, no matter where you live now.

1. Answering O-H Without Thinking

Somebody shouts O-H across a gate at Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta, and a person raised in Ohio shouts I-O back before they even realize it.

It’s automatic.

The habit comes out of Ohio State football, where the marching band plays “Hang On Sloopy” at the end of the third quarter and a hundred thousand people spell the state with their arms.

Lawmakers made that song the state’s official rock song in 1985, twenty years after the McCoys, a band discovered playing club dates in Dayton, took it to number one.

Three chords and an arm routine that sets for life.

2. It’s Pop, Not Soda

You order a pop in Dallas, get a beat of silence, and then get corrected by somebody who calls every flavor a coke.

You don’t care.

Ohio sits in the middle of pop country, and the survey numbers speak volumes.

Of more than 23,000 responses collected from the state by a long-running mapping project, 82.89% said pop.

Soda scraped 13%.

The word gets ingrained young, at church picnics and in a grandparent’s garage refrigerator, and it outlasts every address that comes after.

3. Pulling Onto the Berm

The rest of the country calls that strip beside the highway a shoulder.

In Ohio, it’s the berm.

Dictionary.com still tags that meaning of the word as chiefly Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, which is a small club to belong to.

A driver’s ed teacher in Toledo said it.

A parent said it every time a tire went soft on US 33.

Use it in Georgia, and you’ll get a blank look because out there a berm is a mound of dirt behind a strip mall.

Nobody there says it.

4. You Still Make Buckeyes

Every December, a kitchen somewhere turns out trays of peanut butter fudge balls dipped in chocolate, with a bare circle left showing on top.

Those are buckeyes, shaped to match the nut of Ohio’s state tree.

You still make a batch in Raleigh, and a tin goes out to a cousin who claims she doesn’t want any.

The version in a store doesn’t count.

It’s homemade or nothing.

The candy is newer than people assume.

A Columbus newspaper reporter named Gail Tabor is widely credited with it, after a 1964 batch came out of the chocolate with a circle of peanut butter showing and her husband said it looked like a buckeye.

5. Every Other Park Feels Small

Grow up a couple of hours from Sandusky, and every other amusement park has a lot to live up to.

Cedar Point runs 18 roller coasters on a strip of land jutting into Lake Erie, including Top Thrill 2, promoted as the tallest and fastest in North America.

Corkscrew, the first coaster in the world with three inversions, turns 50 this year.

An Ohio transplant walks into a park in another state, counts the coasters, and says nothing out loud.

Six of them?

You were spoiled at nine years old, and there’s no fixing it now.

6. Defending the Wright Brothers

North Carolina plates say "First in Flight."

Ohio plates say "Birthplace of Aviation," and every kid raised in the state learns why: Orville and Wilbur built the machine in a Dayton bike shop and hauled it to Kitty Hawk for the wind.

Ohio put that slogan on its plates in the 1990s, and the two states have traded shots ever since.

Ohio handed over ammunition in 2021, unveiling a plate with the Wright Flyer flying backward.

North Carolina's transportation department piled on within hours, posting that they wouldn't know because they weren't there.

Brutal.

Somebody who left Dayton in 1994 will still run that whole timeline at a cookout in Charlotte, dates included.

7. Ordering Chili by Number

Ask for a three-way at a lunch counter in Seattle, and you'll get a look.

In Ohio it means spaghetti, cinnamon-spiced chili, and a fist of shredded cheddar, no explanation needed.

Four-way adds onions or beans. Five-way brings both.

Nobody else orders that way.

Macedonian immigrants opened the first parlor in Cincinnati in 1922, and greater Cincinnati now supports around 250 chili parlors.

The code spreads up I-71 and I-75 to the rest of the state, and cans of the stuff end up in a cupboard in Boise once somebody moves.

A transplant from Ohio will defend that plate against any other state's favorite dish.

8. Your Flag Isn't a Rectangle

Line up all 50 flags in a hotel lobby in Nevada, and somebody from Ohio finds theirs in about a second.

They look for the point.

Ohio law calls for a flag that's burgee-shaped, a swallowtail with a wedge cut out of the flying end, and no other state flies anything but a rectangle.

Kids from Ohio grow up folding it, too, and state law spells out how: 17 folds, and two people to do it right.

A Boy Scout from Junction City worked the method out for his Eagle project. The governor signed it in 2005.

Seventeen folds for the 17 stars, and 17 stars because Ohio came into the Union seventeenth.

9. You Won't Say Michigan

Woody Hayes coached Ohio State for 28 seasons and refused to say the name of the school up north.

He hung the nickname that team up north on the rivalry instead, and decades later, Buckeye players still tell reporters they won't say that M word.

The series goes back to 1897.

It never wore off.

Many Ohioans haul that habit across the country, where it turns into a small loyalty test at a Thanksgiving table in Nashville or San Diego.

Somebody wears the wrong shade of blue, and you notice before you've said hello.

Test City, USA

Companies have spent decades using Columbus to try out products before the rest of the country sees them.

Restaurant chains test sandwiches there, and grocery chains have piloted fuel and rewards programs there before rolling them out nationally.

The reason is arithmetic.

The city's blend of incomes, ages, and education lines up with the country as a whole better than almost anywhere.

More than 50 college campuses keep the crowd young.

The rankings have shifted since the 1990s; Columbus no longer tops every list of test markets.

The habit stuck, though.

If a sandwich you loved in high school disappeared two years later and never came back, that's the reason.

Where the Pick-Up Window Started

Two chains that show up at interstate exits all over the country got their start in Ohio.

Forrest and Leroy Raffel opened the first Arby's in Boardman in 1964, with a menu of roast beef sandwiches, potato chips, and a drink.

Three items.

The name is the brothers' initials read out loud, R and B, and not the fancier roast beef story everybody assumes.

Dave Thomas opened the first Wendy's on East Broad Street in Columbus in November 1969.

He named it after his young daughter.

A year later, he added the Pick-Up Window, which the company calls the first modern drive-thru. Customers needed instructions on how to talk into a speaker.

Can you picture that nowadays?