More Belt Regions

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

We talked a couple of weeks ago about the Smile Belt, which is a region of the United States

That’s defined if you go down one coast and across the bottom and up the other coast.

And marketers talk about marketing to the Smile Belt, the fast-growing regions of the U.S.

And we asked what other belts there are in the country besides the Bible Belt and the Pine Belt.

And we heard from Wendy Sterling in Pennsylvania who points out that in Pennsylvania they have the potato belt because there are a lot of potatoes grown in Pennsylvania.

I did not know that.

And, in fact, it’s sometimes called the potato chip belt because there are a lot of snack foods produced in Pennsylvania.

I think I knew that.

Bags of potato chips will often say that they were made in Pennsylvania.

In Pennsylvania.

Yeah.

In fact, sometimes they call that part of Pennsylvania the snack belt.

We heard from Carolyn in Brattleboro, Vermont.

She says people from up in northern Vermont call us the banana belt because to them we’re so much warmer.

Is it really that different?

You know, apparently it is.

And what’s interesting is we also heard from Howard in Fairbanks, Alaska, who said that the same thing happens there,

That they frequently refer to the area south of the Alaska Range, that is Anchorage in that area, as the banana belt because it’s warmer there.

Just enough warmer.

Yeah.

Wow.

They go there on holiday in their shorts and flip flops.

Right.

Right, like all those people from Oklahoma who come here to—

You’ve got to find that one week between the snow and the bugs, right?

Yeah, yeah, the banana belt.

That’s cool.

Well, we know there are a lot more belts where you come from and not onion belts like Grandpa Simpson used to wear.

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