9 Things South Carolinians Do That Baffle Everyone Who Moves In

You buy a house in South Carolina, and your neighbors start acting strange within a week.

They wave at your car from across three driveways, they hand you a paper cup of something salty and boiled, and they keep calling a Sprite a “Coke.”

You start to wonder if you missed an orientation.

These are the habits South Carolinians swear are perfectly normal, even when transplants can’t make sense of them.

Boiling Peanuts at the Gas Station

South Carolinians treat a roadside pot of boiled peanuts as a food group, and transplants have no idea what to make of it.

You pull off the highway for gas and walk out with a warm, dripping bag of soft green peanuts instead.

Newcomers expect a crunchy snack and bite into something salty and soft, like a bean that changed careers.

The state made boiled peanuts the official state snack back in 2006.

Every South Carolinian has a preferred stand, and they’ll drive past three closer ones to reach it.

Saying “Bless Your Heart”

South Carolinians can say “bless your heart” and mean a dozen different things, and outsiders catch few of them.

Sometimes it’s sweet, offered to a kid who scraped a knee.

Sometimes it’s a soft insult wearing a smile.

The tone carries the whole message, and a transplant who takes it at face value walks away thinking a South Carolinian just paid them a compliment.

They might have, or might not have.

Dancing the Carolina Shag

Ask a South Carolinian about the shag, and they don’t mean a haircut or a carpet.

The Carolina shag is a smooth, shuffling partner dance born on the sand near Myrtle Beach, and it became the official state dance in 1984.

It moves to beach music, a mellow rhythm and blues sound that has nothing to do with surfing.

Down at North Myrtle Beach, whole festivals still fill the clubs with couples gliding through the same six-count step their grandparents learned.

A transplant who wanders in expecting a beach party finds a dance floor that takes its footwork seriously.

Living for Friday Night Football

South Carolinians organize the whole fall around high school football, and newcomers underestimate how far that devotion runs.

Small towns empty out on a Friday night because everybody’s already at the stadium.

Then Saturday splits the state in two, with Clemson orange on one side and Gamecock garnet on the other.

A transplant who says something kind about both teams in one breath learns fast that South Carolinians pick a side and hold it for life.

Neutral is not a color you can wear here.

Waving From the Car

South Carolinians wave at passing cars on a back road, and transplants spend months convinced they know the driver.

You don’t.

The gesture is small, usually two fingers lifted off the top of the steering wheel, and it means nothing more than hello.

On a two-lane road out in the Lowcountry, a South Carolinian will wave at every car that passes, stranger or not.

Forget to wave back, and word somehow travels that the new folks are standoffish.

Calling Every Soft Drink a "Coke"

Order a "Coke" in South Carolina, and the next question stops transplants cold.

"What kind?"

Across much of South Carolina, "Coke" covers any fizzy drink, so a Coke might turn out to be a root beer, a Sprite or a grape soda.

Linguists have mapped this quirk across the South, and South Carolina sits deep in Coke country.

A newcomer who wanted actual Coca-Cola learns to say the brand by name or take their chances.

Putting Mustard on Barbecue

Barbecue in South Carolina comes slathered in a bright yellow mustard sauce, and transplants raised on ketchup-red sauce don't trust it at first.

The style goes by Carolina Gold, and it traces back to the German settlers who farmed the Midlands around Orangeburg in the 1700s.

They brought a taste for mustard, and it stuck to the pork.

Drive a stretch of U.S. 301 through the Midlands, and the mustard sauce shows up on plate after plate.

One tangy bite tends to win a newcomer over, and then they wonder why the rest of the country hides its pork under tomato.

Gathering for an Oyster Roast

When the weather cools, South Carolinians on the coast throw an oyster roast, and the setup puzzles anybody who expected a fancy raw bar.

Folks shovel local clusters of oysters over a hot steel sheet, cover them with a wet burlap sack, and let the steam do the work.

Everyone crowds around a plywood table with a shucking knife and a roll of paper towels.

A transplant expecting chairs and plates ends up standing shoulder to shoulder, prying open shells in the cold Lowcountry air.

The mess is half the point, and the crowd wouldn't have it any other way.

Throwing a Hurricane Party

A hurricane warning sends South Carolinians to the store, and transplants are stunned by what ends up in the cart.

Alongside the water and batteries go chips, cold cuts, and enough snacks for a small crowd.

Longtime residents along the coast, from Charleston up to the Grand Strand, have ridden out enough storms to make a ritual of it.

Neighbors gather, the grill comes out before the power goes, and folks trade storm stories while the wind picks up.

Nobody takes the danger lightly, but a South Carolinian would rather face a storm with company than sit alone watching the radar.