Well into the 1980s, Pennsylvania teachers could paddle a smart-mouthed kid without so much as a warning. State law didn’t ban the practice for decades, so Pennsylvania kids learned early to watch what they said in class. These are the back-to-school rules Pennsylvania kids in the ’70s and ’80s followed without question, corporal punishment included….
A basic will in North Carolina costs anywhere from $0 for a handwritten document to $1,000 or more when an attorney drafts it. It rises past $2,500 once a trust joins the plan. Which price you pay comes down to how you make the will, not how much you own. North Carolina lets you skip…
North Carolina’s flat income tax rate dropped to 3.99% this year, and it’ll drop even lower in the coming years. Your 401(k) and IRA withdrawals don’t get a cut of that discount. Many workers in their 50s assume the state treats every kind of retirement money the same way. These are some of the retirement…
The stools at Skeeter’s in Wytheville have held Virginians since 1925. The chili recipe hasn’t budged in all that time. The rest of the menu, at lunch counters and diners from the coast to the coalfields, has emptied out around it. These are the diner foods Virginians still love, even though many of the diners…
Surveyor Andrew Ellicott drove a stone into the ground in 1799 to settle, for good, exactly where Alabama ends and Florida begins. It didn’t work. Alabama and Florida have kept arguing about that line, and plenty else, ever since. These are the fights that stone never settled. 1. Flora-Bama The Flora-Bama’s official address puts it…
Nearly half of American kids walked or biked to school on their own in 1969. By 2009, that number had fallen to just 13 percent. Letting kids roam the neighborhood alone was just the start for Virginia’s grandparent generation. These are the things grandparents did that their now-grown kids would never allow their sons and…
Texas is widely credited with inventing the drive-in restaurant and the carhop, then it spent the next century letting most of them close. Dallas, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio all built their own version of the roadside diner. Almost none of the originals are still standing today. These are the diner foods and experiences that…
A Texas renter pays rent two days late, and the landlord tacks on a fee that isn’t tied to anything written in the lease. That’s not allowed. State law only lets a late fee apply once rent is two full days late, and only when the lease spells out the exact amount in writing. These…
Does Lidl have a senior discount? No, not in Virginia or anywhere else it operates in the United States. No set percentage, no special day, no card to swipe for it. That puts Lidl in the same boat as most grocers Virginians already shop every week. The savings still show up. They just don’t come…
A roadside marker outside Hampton stood for two decades before a Hampton History Museum researcher proved part of it wrong. Nobody had flagged it before her. It wasn’t until 2015 that the Department of Historic Resources swapped in a corrected marker. These are the Virginia roadside markers the state had to rewrite to get its…
