Jeff from Memphis, Tennessee, grew up in the coalfields of Southeastern Kentucky, where his coal-miner father raised green beans. When those beans couldn’t always be canned or frozen, the family threaded the full pods onto string, hung them in the...
George from Maple Grove, Minnesota, was driving through West Virginia and stopped at Grandview outside Beckley. The view of the New River Gorge was indeed so grand that he texted a picture to friends and family with the message, What a gorgeous view...
Rob and Andrea in Wilmington, Delaware, ask about a word they associate with southern West Virginia. It’s a word for something you “put on” bad behavior to shut it down, and it sounds like it’d be spelled something like quieenus. Their word is...
Thomas from Huntsville, Alabama, was baffled when his Ohio-born fiancée told him she was going to sweep the house, then proceeded to use a vacuum cleaner. Is she the only person who calls a vacuum cleaner a sweeper? This is part of a complete...
Homer in Kingsport, Tennessee, says that when Homer came in after curfew, his dad would say, “You guys have been out swarping, haven’t you?” Swarping is related to a variety of dialect terms in Scotland and Northern England that...
The phrase I’ll be a John Brown or I’ll be John Browned means “I’ll be damned” or “I’ll be hanged.” It’s a reference to the militant abolitionist John Brown, who in 1859 led 21 men on a raid of...
