Think a good grill and a bottle of barbecue sauce make you ready for a South Carolina cookout? The sauce is probably the wrong color, and dinner might land on a sheet of newspaper before you ever find a plate. These are the cookout rules South Carolinians swear by that newcomers always break. 1. Call…
The plants that make it through a Florida July are the plants you stop fussing over. Overwater them in this kind of heat, and you rot the roots faster than the sun ever could. The tough survivors need a good start, then almost nothing. These are the low-maintenance plants built to handle a Florida summer….
A transplant from Denver slides onto a stool at a Cincinnati counter and orders a bowl of chili. What lands in front of them is a plate of spaghetti, buried under meat sauce and a pile of shredded cheddar. Welcome to Ohio. Some of what greets new arrivals wins them over fast, and some of…
Joe V’s regulars have a nickname, and they earned it: Smart Shoppers. H-E-B built the store for Houston shoppers who count every dollar. Customers who’ve walked its aisles since 2010 move through it completely differently than a first-timer. These are the Joe V’s Smart Shop habits that give away a longtime Texas shopper. 1. Paying…
On the sixth of January, a teenage boy waits on a boat in a Tarpon Springs bayou for a priest to throw a white cross into the cold water. When it hits, he dives, and a dozen other boys dive with him. Whoever surfaces with the cross gets a year of good luck, or so…
Air conditioning didn’t reach most Georgia homes until the 1960s. Families from Macon down to the Wiregrass country had a whole playbook for surviving July. These are the ways Georgia households handled a long, hot summer before electricity did the work. Houses Built for the Breeze The oldest Georgia farmhouses were designed around the heat,…
Georgia football fans do things on a fall Saturday that would earn you a strange look in most of the country. They mean every bit of it. Whole towns rearrange their weekends around customs older than the highways that lead into them. These are the Georgia football traditions that leave newcomers completely lost. 1. Between…
Ask any server working in Palm Beach, and they’ll tell you they can spot snowbirds from across the dining room. Every time. These are the things restaurant workers notice about snowbirds within five minutes. The Grouper Gets Cross-Examined Snowbirds don’t want to waste their money on low-quality food, and it shows the second a server…
How long do you figure it takes to stop looking like you just moved to North Carolina? Longer than you’d think. New neighbors unpack, learn the back roads, and still out themselves at the first dusting of snow. These are the everyday habits that mark a lifelong North Carolinian, and they trip up everyone who…
Think you can’t be fooled about junk food? Don’t bet your last Dorito on it. In honor of National Junk Food Day today, here’s a two truths and a lie game for you. Each round below serves up three statements, two of them true and one of them a lie. You tap the fake. How…
