A grandmother in Marietta tells her daughter’s fiance, freshly moved down from Michigan, to grab a toboggan before they head out to look at the lights. He glances around the garage for a sled. Meanwhile, she’s already got a knit cap pulled down over her ears. These are the Southern sayings Georgians have to explain…
Stafford County’s fair opens this Thursday, October 15, on a brand-new set of grounds off Poplar Road. It’s one of the last county fairs on Virginia’s 2026 calendar, but there’s still time to see what makes Virginia’s fairs different. These are the things that set a Virginia county fair apart. 1. Virginia Poultry Industry Center…
Greenwich’s Representative Town Meeting didn’t gavel out until half past midnight in January 2024, the night it voted 128 to 25 to put leaf-blower hours into law. That vote set a floor. Neighbors work out the rest, driveway to driveway. These are the unwritten rules about leaf-blowing hours in a Connecticut neighborhood. Note: Ordinance hours…
Veterinarians at Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Indiana, warn that salt and ice-melt chemicals stuck to a dog’s paws after a winter walk can injure the skin underneath. Skipping your dog’s paw wipe-down is one of many bad habits Hoosiers unknowingly have. These are the cold-weather grooming habits (and lack thereof) that veterinarians say do…
New York’s Division of Cemeteries says a family burial plot passes automatically to a person’s descendants, no will required, unless somebody wrote different instructions. Few people plan for the arguments that can follow. The same default rules show up across a family’s whole estate, in objects worth far less than the arguments they start. These…
A Pennsylvania grandmother calls the flight attendant on her daughter’s trip a “stewardess” and means it as a compliment. A grandfather still says a neighbor “gypped” him on a used mower and would be startled to learn where that word comes from. Neither of them is trying to offend anyone. These words were the ordinary…
You can grow up in Michigan, move away, and discover that a word you’ve used your whole life needs an explanation. The first blank stare feels like the other person’s problem. By the third one, you start wondering what else you’ve been saying that only makes sense back home. These are the things Michiganders say…
Before sunrise on Highway 182 outside New Iberia, a line of trucks stacked with cut sugarcane crawls toward the mill, and drivers already know to give it room. Fall arrives on a different schedule in Louisiana than the rest of the United States. These are the things Louisianans do every fall that out-of-staters never expect….
The Wisconsin Badgers and Minnesota Golden Gophers have played each other in football 135 times since 1890, the most of any two schools in the sport. Football is arguably the loudest fight among the two states. But Wisconsinites and Minnesotans have been arguing about certain other things for just as long. These are the arguments…
North Carolina runs 560 miles from Murphy in the mountains to Manteo on the coast. That’s a lot of ground. A kid growing up anywhere along it learns things the rest of the country doesn’t. These are the things only a North Carolina childhood teaches you. 1. Barbecue Line The state splits into two barbecue…
