Many of the pies handed down in South Carolina kitchens have never held a spoonful of sugar. Savory came first. Oysters, macaroni, and whatever the cook had left over on a Sunday all went into a pie pan, and South Carolinians have called the results pies ever since. These are the heirloom pies South Carolina…
Florida’s road signs have said “Beachline” along State Road 528 since July 2005. Hardly anyone driving to the beach that summer changed a word. Two decades later, “take the Bee Line” still comes out of older people’s mouths without a pause, along with a stack of other sentences that stopped being accurate years ago. These…
About 300 people live in Turkey, Texas, and every spring roughly 7,000 show up to dance in their streets. They’ve done it since 1971. In the towns worth the drive, the payoff is a fiddle contest or a bat flight, never a gift shop. These are the small towns Texans love, and those they don’t…
A Memphis rib joint hands you a rack with no sauce on it. You notice the same thing happens to locals at the next table over, and they never ask for a bottle. That’s on purpose. Dry ribs are one of many foods Tennesseans grew up on that confuse everyone else. 1. Meat and Three…
Leaving California looks great on a spreadsheet. You sign a smaller mortgage, the moving truck pulls out of the driveway, and the new garage fits two cars. Then it’s February, and the strawberries in the produce aisle taste like water. These are the things Californians miss most after they leave the Golden State. 1. Tacos…
A regular at Fort Lauderdale Beach walks straight to one patch of sand and sets up without a second look. A tourist a few feet away circles the same stretch three times, phone in hand, still picking a spot. These are the things Florida beachgoers do that instantly mark them as locals, not tourists. 1….
Think you know every lighthouse standing on the North Carolina coast? Even lifelong beach walkers get a few wrong. National Lighthouse Day falls on August 7, marking the 1789 act that first put America’s lighthouses under federal control, and here’s a two truths and a lie game to mark it. Each round below hands you…
Local boards run every liquor store in North Carolina, town by town and county by county, on hours they set themselves. Newcomers to the Tar Heel State pull on locked doors constantly. These are the habits that give away someone who grew up in North Carolina and someone who didn’t. 1. Ordering Slaw Without Asking…
Can you explain why a family stands on a California beach at midnight in August, waiting on fish? Locals can. They can also tell you why nobody lifts their feet walking into the water at Seal Beach. Every beach habit on this list has an explanation, and East Coast visitors rarely get past the first….
Readers of an Ohio newspaper once voted a deep-fried ball of sauerkraut their city’s official food. Akron, naturally. Foods like that never made it past the state line, so the names on a restaurant menu in Ohio stop visitors cold. These are the foods Ohioans grew up eating that the rest of America has never…
