East Tennessee Fire

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Deedee from East Tennessee.

Hey, Deedee, welcome to the show.

How can we help?

Well, I moved here from Florida about 13 years ago, and I live in East Tennessee, which is a beautiful area, and it is considered Appalachia.

And one of the first things I noticed here was the very different dialect they have here.

Yep.

I wanted to relate a funny story. This happened to me when I first moved here before I really got a hang of the dialect.

I have a neighbor who has grandchildren, and I just ran into her one day, and I was passing the time, and I asked her how her family was doing, and how are the kids, how are the grandkids, and she said, well, the grandchildren were sick.

They don’t say ill here, but if you’re ill here, that means you’re upset, you’re angry, you’re cross. You have an attitude problem.

But she said her grandkids were sick.

And I said, well, I’m sorry to hear it. And I said, what’s going on with them? I’m a nurse, of course, I have to know.

And she said, well, they got sick at the fire.

And I went, they got sick at the fire? What fire? I didn’t know we’d had a fire.

She said, well, yeah, we had a fire in Greenville, you know, last week.

And I went, well, I did not see anything in the paper. I didn’t hear about it on the radio.

Well, she said, well, yeah, it was in the paper. She said, it’s been on the radio and there’s signs all over town.

And I gave it a minute, and I thought about it, and I thought, oh, the county fair had come to town. There were signs all over town.

They got sick at the fire. They got sick at the fire. All that greasy food.

This is wonderful. F-A-I-R, fire.

So, yeah, the tilt-a-whirl and the hot dogs, sick at the fire.

And it wasn’t just me, because there was another time, and I’ll make it brief, but I had some friends up from Florida. It was the year they had the three hurricanes in a row.

And when the third hurricane looked like it was going to hit central Florida, I had a couple call up saying, we’ve had enough, can we come up for a visit?

And I said, sure. So they loaded up their horses and dogs and came up for it.

I had to go to work, but they were at the house. And that morning my neighbor pulled up to the back of the house, knocked on the door, and he asked for me.

And they said, no, she’s gone to work. Can we help you?

And he said, well, I just thought Jens would like some pyre.

And Becky said, pyres? And he said, well, yeah. I’ve got more than enough. They’re laying all over the ground.

And she said, well, I don’t know. She was completely confused. She said, well, what’s a pyre?

And he said, well, you know, a pyre. He said, well, come look in the truck.

So they walked out to his truck, and there he had buckets of pears in the back of the truck.

And she said, oh, pears! Oh, pears!

Anyway, it’s a different language here, and it’s delightful and plain, and it’s beautiful. And I love it, and I learn something new with it all the time.

That’s wonderful. I love your response. That is the only healthy response.

When you hear language, it’s a little different than yours.

Yeah, just embrace it.

Thank you so much for sharing the stories, DeeDee. This is wonderful. This is exactly the kind of stuff that we’re here for.

Thank you for sharing.

All right. Thank you for your time. Take care now.

Thanks, Katie. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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