Lots of the people on the channel are huge Dolly Parton fans. Surely they have heard the first verse of My Tennessee Mountain Home. Sittin' on the front porch on a summer afternoon In a straightback chair on two legs, leans against the wall Watch the kids a' playin' with June bugs on a string And chase the glowin' fireflies when evenin' shadows fall My cousin could get one on a string but I never could. Our grandparents made sure to teach us to release them afterwards.
FYI that Walmart bag one is true. Technically I'm from the north but my mother does that bag trick all the time. When it comes to holding groceries they stink, but it's like you could fit a whole box of bag inside that one random bag you have in the pantry!!
Southerners waited until after the first frost to slaughter a hog. The cooler temperatures helped to preserve the meat. It required everyone helping and was a whole day long event. Perhaps at Thanksgiving there were more family members to help.
Slaughtered hogs every fall after the first cold spell. In the spring we had to cut the shoats....meaning to castrate them. A box cutter and a mason jar of iodine.
I am a fourth generation Texan and a second generation rare native Houstonian. I just spit up my tea when he was talking about "Homecoming Mums/Moms". As a long time florist,who would make huge Homecoming Mums during High School Football season, those kids are serious about their corsages. The longer the ribbons, the more cowbells, Mums circled with daisy or roses and don't forget the lights -- the better. We are talking hundreds of dollars for one corsage. Great job guys!
So true! As assistant Mgr of a craft store for several years,around homecoming week we worked like dogs making HUGE Mums just loaded down with ribbons, flowers. Trinkets, fancy ribbon strands- you name it! Some so big the girl has a hard time walking around with this huge status symbol!
I am an 8th generation Southerner. I'm married to a man from Chicago. The first Christmas here in the south, we were visiting my sister's house for Christmas dinner. On the drive home, there were two guys walking an emu with a paper sack on it's head down the street. Now, this being a small town - I knew who it was (one of my mom's neighbors in the country that had decided to raise emus and evidently one made a break for freedom) - but instead of telling this to my husband, I told him that it was the tradition in the south to walk an emu down the street on Christmas to ensure good luck. He bought it! LOL! I have yet to inform him it was a lie. (I hope he doesn't find my CZcams account! LOL!)
I'm surprised ya'll didn't go over putting lightning bugs in a jar with holes inn the lid of course or sitting outside watching and listening to the bug zapper.
I'm from a large extended family. We're droppin' like flies. I've riden home from funerals with cousins, aunts and uncles. The conversations home are hilarious as people discuss what they learned about the deceased relative and who was or wasn't at the funeral. I would love to see a skit of the aftermath of a southern funeral.
In South Louisiana a boucherie (hog butchering) takes place in the Fall. Every part of the hog is used and it is traditional to invite a crowd to help prepare and eat what is barbecued that day. Another tradition is a cochon de lait when a young pig is roasted over an open fire. I once asked a Cajun friend how long it took to roast a pig and he said “about 12 beers”.
That’s what my people did to it was always the fall and they put it hung it up on a pole between took like two trees you know and it was fairly close to the hall pan because nobody wanted to take that big old pig anywhere else kids were an allowed to watch but of course we did
I've been to several rural community pig pulls on Christmas holiday trips to visit relatives in South Carolina. I'm not sure where they actually roasted the hog, but it would be consumed in a smallish out building set aside for gatherings or perhaps repairing heavy equipment or cars.
Isn't Mary Patterson from Texas? Not sure what part she's from, but in east Texas there are DEFINITELY June bugs. Dumb little loud tanks of things that buzz into your house and scare the hell out of everyone.
I think, as with a lot of YT channels, the people who do them are more on the city slicker side. Even when it comes to "southerners". They should seek out a wider array of folks who might not otherwise ever even know what YT is.
I remember my Pops shooting mistletoe out of a tree when I was a kid growing up in rural southwest TN. It's much easier than trying to climb a tree for it! My husband used the same theory during an ice storm when a tree limb got very heavy and was laying on a power line in our backyard. After a couple of rounds from the 12 gauge, the limb was on the ground, and our power was back on!
This is true for northeast Louisiana too! Stick a knife in the ground to keep lightning from hitting your house Riding around looking at Christmas lights.
lol, yes! I use grocery bags for cleaning out the cat box but I have to dig through my bag of bags for Publix bags because the Walmart ones are full of holes.
There is an expression “cold enough to kill hogs in here”. The origin is slaughtering hogs for the winter on the farm. It might be around Thanksgiving. It depends on the arrival of cold weather.
I'm not from the South. Fall is butchering time, traditionally, for almost any large animal. We do it mid to late October. Professional butchers are so busy one has to schedule for a killing a month ahead
WE never did the hog thing, but some folks down the road did. Then they'd bury it in a pit and have pit barbeque Fri or Sat. And you did it out front 1) so you could sit in the chairs and watch folks passing and wave and 2) the back tended to have stuff in it, like forest.
Questioning y’all’s southern cards 🧐. Did the June bug thing every year. Yes, on the Walmart bags…Wife even knitted a fancy holder for ‘em. Hogs? Yes, but not in the front yard…out near the woodpile so it was easier to keep the old cast iron tub full of hot water for scalding…and so the cousins could keep the fire going under the huge cast iron kettle so granny could render lard (many a fight over hot fresh cracklins). Yes, used a pellet rifle to shoot mistletoe out of the trees. City southerners, apparently…
We have a lot of pictures of dead relatives in their coffins in our photo albums. We're from Ky. We also had our family reunions in the family cemetery, complete with the best food you ever had. It was called "graveyard cleaning day". After the cleaning, straightening tomb stones and mending the fences, we had a wonderful picnic right there.
What a wonderful way to celebrate the lives of our ancestors. When I lived in Colorado, everyone there was shocked about it. I guess it's a southern thing for the most part.@@Harley_Girl68
You must be Irish! My Mom's side is Irish and the yearly cemetery cleaning day included a lunch with the deceased relatives. My Mom and Aunt also have lunch in the cemetery every month or so with my grandparents, both of whom are permanent residents.
As a Texan I can testify that for some reason back in the mid ‘80’s ‘having the biggest mum at homecoming’ became it’s on thing, almost as it made you honorable mention for homecoming Queen.
Being a Texas gal myself and graduated in 1987, I remember this one girl who played the bass drum and wore her mom in the parade. The streamers were so long the trail behind her, and as she was walking down Main Street, she stepped on one of the streamers and started to roll over her drum four times before they finally got it to stop. To this day I can still picture in my mind her going over and over and over again and it has been almost 40 years.
My brother and I did the June bug thing with locusts (cicadas), they’re bigger and easier to tie a string to. I’m surprised no one mentioned having a watermelon seed spitting contest.
Yep. Did the June bug thing quite often. Never slaughtered any hogs myself, but knew people who did. Personally I was usually skinning and dressing a deer I'd killed that morning.
Same here with the deer. Season is just getting ramped up, everyone is off work for a few days and gathered around so there's help. So I can see the hog one making sense too.
First snow of the season in our house usually included my Mom making Snow Cream. She’d go outside with our largest stock pot and hand scoop the top layer of snow into the pot. She added sugar, milk/cream, a smidgen of salt and vanilla, stirred it up then stuck it in the fridge. For dessert that night, she’d bring the pot to the table with 4 tablespoons. It’s similar to a frozen icee but substituting cream for the fruit juice or more like a creamy Italian ice before that became a thing. It was absolutely delicious, but then she got a hand cranked ice cream maker that required blocks of salt to freeze and began experimenting with fruits and flavors. The process would take all day so…. that lasted about a month before we decided to leave it to the professionals at the grocery stores. I still miss the simplicity of snow cream though. -Southerners
We would make snow cream too, but never with the first snow. Gotta let that first one clean all the bad stuff out of the air, according to my dad. And we would usually just set the pot out in the yard or on top of the car to catch the snow. I put the pot out the first night of the Blizzard of '93... took me a while to find it the next morning since it was buried under 3 feet of snow. And yes, this WAS in the south, in NC.
I remember when our Government warned everyone to stop doing that because radioactive fallout from nuclear bomb testing in the Pacific was blowing over the whole USA.
@@suzannepatterson5548 That’s what my Mom always said too, but she always relented when we gave her the puppy eyes. It was the ‘cleanest’ she could find and wasn’t any dirtier than the water from the hose.
Being from Texas and seeing the mums when I was in school, I can vouch for this. You have the traditional mums, big/outrageous mums like totally covers the person's body, the really small ring mums that you have on your finger, mums that light up, mums that glow in the dark, etc. It becomes a competition. Oh, and most mums usually are not complete without a cowbell attached somewhere on the mum. Mums are also made by hand by the wearer or ordered with what you want from a variety of stores or a mum store (some places just do mums).
Hey y’all!!! I wanted to give my southern tip to anyone that’s interested!! It’s a GAMECHANGER!! So, on this episode y’all talked about keeping grocery bags (who doesn’t, right)!! So the tip is to use an empty tissue box. The cube ones work the best! Once the tissues are gone, use the empty Kleenex box and stuff it full of your grocery bags!! It holds like 50 bags, I swear!! Annnnd, it doesn’t take up much room under the sink. A bag of bags is huge, but the tissue box is small and you can stuff it full!!! Just a southern tip my momma taught me and thought I’d share!! 😎🥰 Try it and tell me what you think!!!! Love y’all It’s a Southern Thing!!
a Southern tradition I remember and still enjoy to this day is making cobbler with fresh blackberries picked from the wild bushes growing near the street in front of my house. Sometimes, we even had vanilla bean ice cream with it.
Oh I had some blackberry cobbler today that made me think about that. My dad had some wild blackberry bushes vines? growing next to his shop. We picked enough for my mom to make a blackberry cobbler and my grandmother to make a few. As I got older they were pretty much only enough blackberries for my dad to go pick and just beat. They got covered over by kudzu.
That sounds so good, but I know if I tried, the blackberries are being eaten before it would get to the kitchen. Wild blackberries are so delicious and way better than the store bought ones
When I was a deputy sheriff in NC, one of the local born and raised deputies thought he'd gross me out one November. As I was new I had to do the "ride along" with an experienced deputy. He said we were going to his cousin's house for a minute to check on something. This was the day before Thanksgiving in the early 90's. In the yard was a large tree with a 4000lb come-a-long chained to a large branch with a fairly good size hog suspended from it being bled out just prior to butchering it. Several of his cousins were there with the customary keg of beer and other assorted bottled holiday spirits as well as the creek lightning. He figured since I was from New Jersey I would be taken back by the "gore". He didn't know that I had already been part of this type of meat prep with moose in Alaska in a bus garage using the overhead crank for the shop there when I was in the Army in the late 70's early 80's. So this is a thing in the South, at least where I was.
I've never seen anyone butcher a hog . Tennessee all my life. Another Jersey boy story: my future BIL had just begun dating my sis, he was from NJ and worked here as an engineer. Back then, virtually every engineer or engineering student drove a Camaro. BIL was no different and his was in need of parts so he could work on it. Sis and I talked him into calling our Dad, a Highway Patrol Trooper, and asking him where to get parts. We couldn't hear Dad's answer but BIL couldn't get off the phone fast enough and when he did he burst into laughter and cried tears as he exclaimed, "God, I am soooooooo living in the South! Your Dad told me to go to 'Moon's Junkyard' and ask for Cooter!" Then I remembered I'd been there, gave him directions and promised him 'Cooter' would not dissappoint!
Depends on the location and the people to be honest. I've personally never had to witness someone butchering a hog here in eastern NC. First time seeing one was a documentary in college of a family all the way in the sticks of the mountains. The documentary also showcased them drinking snake venom in a church, which is a different can of worms. However Pig Pickin' and depending on the location, pork barbecue are still very much relevant. I know of a restaurant that had their own shed to butcher them for their own barbecue. Would have to get the hog to point B somehow. However most folks don't make it a public display, especially in front of their yards.
From West Virginia, yes we learned from our grandparents how to tie a string on a June bug and let it fly around in a circle while you have the other end of the string. If you were really careful you could let it go without messing it up. A lot of guys were named June bug
My dad took me mistletoe "hunting" when I was a kid a couple times. You take a 12 gauge and when you find a bunch of mistletoe you take a shot. It can knock enough down for you to hang up.
Mistletoe is a parasite that only grows on the dead parts of Oak trees. The white berries are poisonous. Makes me wonder who came up with the tradition of kissing underneath a poisonous parasitic plant? What the heck is that about? Doesn't sound very romantic to me. Hey baby, let's go roll around in the poison oak, that sounds like about as much fun.
Can confirm the mistletoe thing. My dad’s work colleague owned a Christmas tree farm in Lacey’s Spring, AL and every year when we’d go to cut down our tree, there’d be neighborhood boys at the entrance of the farm with their BB guns selling mistletoe they’d shot out of the trees. They’d tie a red ribbon around it and charge you $5. I bet those kids made bank.
Hi Claire....I remember the tree farm from when I lived in Huntsville. Drove thru Laceys Springs nearly every weekend to WALKER COUNTY Y'ALL and shot.mistletoe out of the tops of oak trees. It doesn't grow in pines....
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Blue-Gray college football game at Christmas. My uncles would eat Christmas dinner on tv trays in the living room screaming at the television while the rest of us were at the tables in the dining room (adults) and kitchen (kids) trying to talk loud enough to hear one another over the collective noise. My grandmother's house was always full on Christmas... She had seven living children and 22 grandchildren.
That is a Texas thing, not a Southern thing. I'm Southern and not from Texas, and I know everyone in Virginia and North Carolina (or where I lived, anyway) just did regular pretty corsages. Right after I moved down here, though, my nephew (hub's sister's child) showed me the corsage he'd bought and I was just appalled because I thought he'd just made a tacky choice and it looked like what they throw on horses in the winner's circle! I mean, it's not just a corsage, it's literally like this HUGE thing with mutliple HUGE pompom mums and ribbons that look like first place ribbons printed with the school logo and such, and god only knows what (his had some kind of twinkling light thing on it, even) that goes from the shoulder down to wherever! I was trying so hard to be tactful and not hurt his feelings. But no, my SIL told me, it was expected. *smh*
I'm from Louisiana and moved to Texas and when I found out about it I was confused at first, but then I saw them and thought it was a good tradition. But some of them go a little overboard.
When I was attending high school football games in Illinois in the late 1960's "football" mums were always sold at football games by the pep club. We had fancy roses or orchids for the homecoming dances.
Idk about June bugs but we definitely tied strings around bumble bees and flew them around. Gotta get the white faced Ines because they don't sting like the other ones! South Mississippi checking in.
I’m not a southerner, but the coffin thing cracked me up. My aunt came to America from Italy for her brothers funeral and his friends were taking pictures of his (closed) coffin and she said “WHY ARE PEOPLE TAKING PICTURES OF MY BROTHERS COFFIN!” And we got the giggles throughout the entire service. Fun memory on a sad day.
Actually, the Color is called haint blue and you will paint the inside ceiling of the porch because it looks like the sky to wasps and bees (they won’t build a nest there).
@@williamsstephens it is a whole cottage industry. Michael's makes a killing during Homecoming season. I have known a number of women who make them to sell.
Ryan states that 'Homecoming Mom's are a different breed of Mother', and he's sooo right, (even though it was Mum's). There are some Mom's that just live their teen years vicariously through their children and if that Mom was the Homecoming Queen... watch out, her stage-mom button was just pushed and she will do anything to get her daughter to become Homecoming Queen also. Would really love to hear the rest of his thoughts on 'Homecoming Mom's'.
Mums, as in chrysanthemums. Once upon a time you got a real mum or two for Homecoming, but apparently they're not gaudy enough. Now the girls' Homecoming mums are artificial, humongous, and have multiple ribbon streamers with football trinkets tied into them. The streamers can drag all the way to the ground. As you might imagine it has become competitive --- who can wear the biggest, gaudiest mum to Homecoming?
The thing is there are now two or maybe even three different types of Southerners. You have the ones that live in the big cities who are not country at all. And then you have the ones that live in the smaller towns that are “sort of country”. Then you have the ones that live way out in the country that are “deliverance country”! And I guess for a fourth type you would have Southerners that are northern transplants. They’re only usually accepted after about 25 years down here.
We’ve had very colorful funeral experiences in our family. A favorite is from my great granny, Georgie Lou’s funeral. They dressed her in a padded bra as part her burial attire, and we all took turns feeling her up. Flat chested and a fan of camisoles only, she had sprouted torpedoes for her journey into the great beyond. 😂
Can I just add some real southern traditions from someone born and raised in AL/MS: Going to see the hot air balloons in Montgomery every year, going to see the Nutcracker for Christmas at the local ballet academy or Fox theatre, in whatever Southern state you're in going to see lights at Christmas (usually Bellingrath, Calloway, Dollywood, Branson), attending a Mardi Gras parade (there's one in every southern state now) and eating king cake, missing work or school for the first day of deer season, having your college team assigned to you at birth, celebrating summer by going to U-Pick'em farms to shove as many vegetables in a bucket that you can to bring home and can, rounding up the kids to go blackberry picking on the side of the road, attending the annual family crawfish boil, making Gumbo the first chilly day of October, and last there's always the traditional week to the beach or lake in the summer. These are traditions, because they're done annually and throughout the generations...just sayin.
Granny got run over by a reindeer, her ‘birthday’ was everyone finding out what she left them….led to a fight….and to grannys funeral. Its obvious ya’ll 😂❤️
I have heard of get togethers where people would slaughter hogs. The local farm families spend the whole day working together to provide enough meat to get them all through the winter.
@@HappyLife693 its because the whole family was already there and you got time for the turkey to cook so it was a matter of convenience more than anything.
As a child of the '70's, we absolutely did the June bug string thing. I now know that they were Japanese beetles. Also shooting mistletoe out of tress is very common. It's in the tree year round but only easily visible when the leaf canopy drops for winter. Shooting it with a.22 rifle is the easiest way to harvest it.
Japanese beetles and June bugs aren't the same thing, although they look similar. Japanese beetles are considerably smaller than June bugs and cause massive damage to plants. They also last in large numbers all summer. June bugs are harmless, as far as I'm aware, and after their first flush around May (or June, if you live in colder climes), they mostly disappear and you hardly ever see another one for the rest of summer. We didn't get Japanese beetles in Tennessee until the very early 90's. I remember when they first came like locusts and stripped my grandmother's rose bushes bare. Homer did some research and found Japanese beetle traps and put those up. I checked them every day and reported back when the bags were full. They had to change the bags twice a week to start. The next year wasn't quite as bad, and the year after that was tolerable. We must have killed out all the beetles in the neighborhood and got the population down to under the plague rating.
The mistletoe thing, my husband, me, and our children used to do that every year.. My husband would shoot it out, and me and the kids would run and pick it up, and put it in a trash bag.. then we'd take it home and decorate the house with it... Since the kids grew up, this is something we don't do anymore... but we look back on it with fondness, cause it was something fun we did as a family.
As a Mississippian the only one I knew anything about was the Walmart sacks. And those are used to send food home for guests and family. Granny is always sending something home with you!
I tried the June bug thing, but it's kind of hard so I quit. I have a HUGE bag of Walmart bags in the laundry room. They do come in handy. And yes, I have shot mistletoe out of a tree with a pellet gun. Mistletoe always grows WAY up at the top of the tallest trees.
That is untrue, there was Mistletoe growing on a Maple tree in my Dad’s yard in South Florida, and it grew low enough for me to pick off of it. And in case you may think I don’t know my trees, I was on the Dendrology team in FFA.
Never tried the June bug thing even though we had plenty around growing up. Do have a bag full of Publix plastic bags as those things seem to multiply on their own. Never tried shooting down the mistletoe though I did think about it growing up.
Yes, we have a shopping bag collection (not Walmart, Kroger and Meijer; we're transplanted from the South), but every few weeks we take them to one of our local thrift shops. They use donated bags instead of buying them.
I'm a doctor and wanted to comment on the organ meat reference. Some people do it to increase their vitamin A intake, but it can be dangerous. No more than 1 serving of liver per week, for example. Better off sticking to regular prenatal vitamins.
Pre-natal vitamins are easier to swallow. Liver…ick! I’m a city kid, born and raised, who kept Walmart bags in…a Walmart bag. Had cousins in Georgia who would prep the Turkey in the car port.
Yeah, liver went from the list of good food ( high in vitamins and iron) to the list of bad food very quickly once we started paying attention to cholesterol.
True about to much liberty being harmful, but I've heard that vitamins can be hard on the stomach. I suspect liver might be easier and better (within moderation) Also some food researchers say that this Western reliance in muscle meat is un-environmental and uneconomical
Southerner is a loose term I no southerners who lived in the city all their life don't know anything about hogs and cows slaughtering hogs it's a country thing we slaughtered ours in the pasture so the other animals can see country folk don't want to stop the rain because they got a vegetable garden and country kids play in the rain not like
OMG, Homecoming mums! I lived in Texas during middle school and was introduced to the mums. When I moved to Florida for high school, it was definitely not a thing. Such a fun memory. Oh Texas, I do love you.
This isn't southern tradition, but just a weird thing my Kentucky family did: Having cranberry sauce every Thanksgiving, even though no one in our family ate it. No one even touched it. It was just plopped on a decorative plate and put on the table. One year I asked why we have it and my aunt replied, "Because it's Thanksgiving. Everyone has cranberry sauce on their tables today."
Haha, my family did the same thing, by the end we got so lazy with it that my grandmother and mother didn't even mix it up anymore so it set there in the shape of the outline of the can, and unless someone had a friend or date over it just got thrown away still in that same shape of the outline of the can.
I am originally from Kentucky but, I’ve lived in North Carolina for over 30 years. If people are using cranberry sauce from a can, they’re doing it wrong. My mother made cranberry sauce from scratch. Take a bag of cranberries and an orange with the peel; grind it up in a food processor. Put all of that in a saucepan and cook it with a little cornstarch, sugar, vanilla, and pecans.
I'm from TN, & Homecoming Mums are not just in TX. Y'all must've never seen an AL, Vols, Ole Miss, etc Homecoming game! Everyone dressed up & ALL the young ladies have the huge mum corsages. Back home in Clarksville, back in the 70s, I started a new tradition when I was working at a local jewelers. I made corsages with double ribbon, in both the school colors... purple & gold, gold & green, etc. I made them huge like a mum & separated the ribbon like when you do a package. I put long trailing ribbon on them. They took off like wildfire. My boss was upset because of so much ribbon, but we charged $35 each, so he was home after hearing that.
When you said Walker County, I FELL OVER LAUGHING! I KNOW WHERE YOUR TALKING ABOUT!!!🤣🤣🤣 BEEN THROUGH THERE! I was terrified! Also regarding bugs and strings... I witnessed several back woods idiots tie strings to an old time broom bristle and shove the bristle up the bugs butt, then watch the bug fly hysterically trying to get the broom bristle out. The mean boys did that in elementary school and bet on whose bug flew the highest, hardest and above all else, made the most noise. We girls thought it was idiotic, mean and gross. We were ladies and ladies don't do that kind of gross mess!
The butcher hogs on Thanksgiving is a part of Appalachian tradition. It was one of the few days that the fathers would be off. If you read the foxfire books you will understand more.
I always associate ham with thanksgiving, never turkey. Or rather, I did growing up. Also, y’all need a spin-off channel for more specific, regional groups of southerners, cause North Carolina and Kentucky and east TN…not even remotely similar to Texas or Louisiana.
Oh yes, the Foxfire books. I only have 2 and am looking for the rest of the set. So much knowledge lost to time. We always did our hog butchering in the fall when it was cold enough for hanging. But we are northern Appalachia, not southern.
We did tie a string around June bugs, but around the middle of their body and they did fly. A June bug is approximately 1 to 1 1/2 inches long and brown to red in color, although I remember them as being larger. Being from South Carolina and raised in the country we came up with odd things to play with. Lol.
Virginia native here, Regarding the string on the leg of a june bug: no (giant peach beetle: yes) you tie it on a leg and watch it fly around in a big circle for about 10 minutes then let it go so it doesn't die.
I knew most of them. Have participated in most of them. The family fight one, yep, been there done that. June bug, Mistletoe, killing a hog - was after the first frost (don't ask me why), being served liver & onions because we needed to "build our blood", I don't eat liver or any organ meat now. I have a collection of grocery bags that I use for lots of stuff. I nest them to use on the bathroom trash can so I only need to remove the full bag and only add new bags when I remove the last one. For June bugs, we used sewing thread. Pre made a loop to slip onto the leg.
killing hogs after a hard freeze kept the meat cold until you could get the butchering done. Then the meat went into the smokehouse (Except for the portions used immediately) We often had pork loin roast for Thanksgiving because some nice person gave one to us.
Cow bingo. Take a football field, paint squares on it with numbers, sell the spots, then let the cows roam the field. Anytime a cow did it's #2 business, you win a prize. It's something we did in Michigan, but it sounds Southern.
I lived in Virginia until I was 8 and then we moved to Florida. Watching these videos makes me realize how in some ways I am not Southern like I thought and in other ways I am Southern like I didn’t think.
My friends did the June bug thing when I was little. I always thought it was mean. Also, the organ meats during pregnancy was back in the dark ages when that was the only way to get iron and avoid anemia. Now we have prenatal vitamins.
I don’t think they were just a Texas thing. We had them in Alabama. Massive yellow ones with tiny footballs or your school’s initial glued in the middle. Fond memories of those.
my mum made a bag out of an old tea towel she sewed up the long side and put elastic at the top and bottom so it was like a tube then - we used this to store our plastic bags - we would pull one bag out at a time from the time - I lived in Australia, but was originally from Scotland so I am not sure if this is an Australian thing also or Scottish - but we reused a lot of stuff to save money.
No better southern tradition then going snipe hunting! with your older cousin's showing you just how to call them in with a snipe call, you know it'll come out sounding like a bird / rabid raccoon chatter priceless memories in the woods at night
@@nanoflower1 I know some places consider Late Fall "Hog Killing Season" because it is cold enough to butcher and process a hog without it immediately spoiling. This is also why Late fall is when a lot of BBQ competitions were held.
@@jonjohns8145 Oh I agree that in places where it can be counted on to get down near freezing that it is perfect weather for butchering a hog. I'm just so used to the weather in Georgia where it's just as likely to be in the 80s at Thanksgiving that it is unlikely for anyone to plan their butchering around that. Instead they just work quickly with the butchering and draining of the hog so they can get it cooking.
@@jonjohns8145 the locals in my part of Kentucky (on the state line just north of Nashville) generally killed hogs sometime between Halloween and Christmas. Usually it was after a period of hard freezes. I don't know where the actual killing/butchering took place, but the giant cast iron kettle came out. A fire was built under it and it was used for rendering lard. Little bits of crunchy stuff floated to the top and skimmed off to use in dodger bread. (cornbread) . A large hog can produce a LOT of lard!
I'm from north-central Arkansas and some of the traditions I recall are 1. Tying a string to a June bug's leg. I haven't seen a real June bug in decades, though. They are shiny green beetles, very distinctive. Pesticides have almost wiped them out in certain places. 2. Hog-killin' in December, but not part of a holiday. My dad believed everything in the Farmer's Almanac (he was born in 1907 and the Almanac and The Bible were all he needed to get by) and when the Almanac indicated it was time to butcher a hog that's what we did. 3. We never saved the first snow for sunburns. As a kid, (I'm 58 years old now) we got more snow in the winters here than we do now. Sometimes two or three substantial snowfalls a year. Snow ice cream was a big deal but we weren't allowed to make it from the first snow of the year because it was believed that atmospheric nuclear bomb testing contaminated the first snow but subsequent ones were "safe". 4. Walmart (or any store's plastic bags) stored in a single Walmart Bag of Holding which held nigh an infinite number of wadded up bags. 5. Washing and ironing aluminum foil (tin-fol) to use again. My parents were survivors of the Great Depression and by God you saved everything. Bacon grease, foil, bread ties (I have NO idea why), Mason jars, and a host of other objects that we'd never used but had "just in case". 6. Frog hunting, but not strictly by the rules. Most wildlife and hunting information dictated you could only hunt frogs using a gig (a pole with a two or three tined fork on the end) to stab the frog and drop into a rough cloth bag called a "tow sack". We used a .22 rifle and a flashlight. I'd hold the light and when we saw a frog's eyes' reflection my dad would shoot it and then we'd drop it into the tow sack to clean and fry frog legs later. There are more, but I'll stop here. I love your videos and always get a laugh out of them because yes, they are often so true.
im SO glad you added bread ties honestly. i always seem to find so many of them in my moms house for literally no reason, and sometimes in the oddest of places its hilarious. ive always wondered why but never really asked, so thank you for this.
@@Laughingwithtravii You are quite welcome! Growing up in rural Arkansas with older parents and being around their siblings was always a surprise of some sort just waiting to be discovered!
I grew up in Northeast Texas and I remember all these things except why we didn’t eat the first snow. I just knew we didn’t eat it. We still have a ton of June bugs here but I know the green ones your talking about. We still have those as well as the brown ones. My parents were born in the 30’s so we pretty much kept those traditions of my grandparents. Bread ties, rubber bands, paper and plastic sacks were all kept! I enjoyed reading your comment!
@@Laughingwithtravii bread ties are good for tying up loose cords, stringing up bean or pea vines or tomatoes...you can use them just about on anything that you would need to tie up. My Great Aunt and Uncle would always wash and save aluminum foil and freezer bags.
First of all y'all do realize the panhandle gets alot of snow each year. It's like a whole different country up there. I grew up in Dallas and back in the late 70s we had snow 3 days in a row...But, as mama always said you don't eat the first snow because it's clearing out all the crap in the air. But the second snow she would make ice cream with it. Also, mama would save all the little toys out of the cereal boxes and when we were 'good' she would give us one as a reward. Bless her heart!
I’m from CA, but we’ve lived in NC for a total of 17 years. One daughter went to Lejeune HS in Camp Lejeune and Homecoming mums were a big deal! It was kind of fun. I love North Carolina for a lot of reasons, one being how friendly people are. I also like the terms of endearment!
When we were going through my grandmother's old photos, we came across some unexpected "open casket" pics (not selfies, though). I liken it to a holdover from the Victorian memento mori tradition, especially in the early 20th century when not everyone had a camera or photos of their loved ones when they were alive.
Yeah. Back in the day the luxuries we take for granted (like 9 million photos of yourself) were not common. If people had even a handful of photos, they were doing well. A funeral was like a "last chance" sort of thing to get one to remember them.
I didn't know where this custom came from... but my family does this AND we also cut a piece of or lock of hair from fresh day old babies and the dead. Soon as the day they cross over. That's if the baby has hair and if uncle Joe had any when he goes . Lol
I have never been to a celebration where people argued. We are just so happy to see each other, that we make plans to get together that we make up celebrations.
Yep, from the south, and have tied sewing thread to a June bugs leg several times... just good kid fun, like catching fire flies and keeping them in a jar. Maybe the June bug thing is more of a Kentucky/Tennessee thing. Lived in Florida, Alabama, and Texas and don't recall the June bug deal there.
I think the snow thing is just to give kids a reason to stash some snow in the freezer. I quit eating liver after my cholesterol went up. It is very high in cholesterol
Yes, to the bag o' bags--walmart, target or food city. Yes, to shooting mistletoe out of a tree--I haven't done it, but someone did that for me and brought me the mistletoe. Yes, funeral photo. Mom made me take coffin pics of Grandma and it really creeped me out! Great video!
My funny Texas Mum story is that when I was working in Italy, I told them about this tradition, and they were horrified. Mums are what you bring to a funeral, so it came across as this macabre way of threatening someone. So you guys might get your favorite traditions and run them past a group of foreigners and see what they think.
I live in WV. My mom had a flower shop when I was a kid and homecoming mums were a huge thing. There were little nets (think tiny hair nets) that we put on the mums to keep the petals from shattering off. We got small football charms to add to the bow which was made with ribbon in the high schools colors. The girls wore them as a corsage. My mom said when she was a child she took sewing thread and tied it on the leg of lightning bugs.
I definitely tied strings to June bugs as a child. It's like having a "sentient" balloon. A little off the subject, I've also always loved the expression: "like a chicken on a June bug".
i was a child in the 50's-60's, the june bug thing was something we did all the time, and it was lot of fun 🙂 liver (which i hate) is good for you, and probably other organs
I've heard of the mistletoe and June bug ones but have never done them. When I think of southern traditions, I think of collecting spring dandelion greens and poke greens to eat, putting flowers on the graves of all departed relatives on Memorial day, and sitting on the front porch to wave at every person who drives by.
8:50 🌨 This practice/tradition comes from southern/appalachian folk magic. (collecting the first snow to use later on sunburns, comes from traditional southern folk medicine; the snow functions as a cold compress) 😊 - when they said "keeping it cold" ... they probably meant _keeping it frozen._
*~[ An example of a faith healing prayer **_(Christian)_** to soothe a sunburn with snow ]~* _"Two angels came down from the north; one named Fire, the other Frost;_ _Frost said to Fire go away, go away; in the name of Jesus go away."_
Definitely the Wal-Mart bags. And she's right about modern Wal-Mart bags being nearly useless. Dollar General bags are much better. And you can see one at a thousand yards. Yes, I've seen pictures of people in coffins and I've seen the pictures actually being taken at funerals. Weird. Not in my family. I'm surprised you didn't mention collecting lightning bugs in a jar.
Mistletoe thing is 💯! My brothers did this. We had homecoming mums in our small town in AL with our School initial on them from a pipe cleaner 😂 I hate the funeral pictures! Oh my gosh I have seen pics from old of family who are “clearly departed”
Texas girl here. Was in high school in the 70s. Our mums were manageable then (barely). You could still use pins to attach them to your dress (or t-shirt because we wore them to school on Homecoming Friday). Even the ones with three grapefruit-sized mums and forty streamers trailing all the way to the floor, with all the little dangly footballs and mascots and whatever other bits, could be pinned to the clothing, if you anchored the pins in your bra strap. Nowadays they've just lost all sense of sanity. The mums have to be hung around the girl's neck with a stout cord, they cover the whole front of the poor girl (and hide the dress! I mean, why have a nice homecoming dance dress if you can't even see the darn thing?), and you just about have to have a pickup truck going alongside you to help hold the thing up. I blame Instagram.
Oh yeah. I made one for a niece, and it was a WHOLE HAT, with a massive train of junk draggin' along behind. We thought it was funny. Everyone loved it.
@@dougpettey7144 Probably. Marie Antoinette started the massive wig thing in the French court of the time, which we all know about. It got to EXTREME extremes, SHE started losing her hair because of anchoring those edifices to her scalp, so she stood on the brakes. She got her hair cut short and styled, and *boom*, EVERYONE was jumpin' on the "chic simplicity" train. (Musta made the wig makers pretty sad.)
My mother did the June bug thing. I’m 59 and I squish them. My thing (late 60’s, 70’s) was catching Lightning Bugs and putting them in jars! 😂 But you had to release them when your mother/grandmother made you come in because the 11:00 news was coming on! (Summertime)
Oh please! I'm born and raised in Alabama and we definitely had Homecoming Mums. They would shape pipe cleaners the school colors into the initials of your high school and glue them onto the mums 🙄🤣
We had the mums like you describe, too, in Arkansas. The Texas mums are huge with ribbons all the way to your knees. We have spent a small fortune on them.
(South Texas here) The last several homecoming mums, I had to help add led lights to it. In addition to glitter and rhinestones. Little cowbells… if Joann’s fabric made a mini kitchen sink… you’d see a mum out there with it tied to it somehow!😁
We homecoming mums in Oklahoma too. It is highly controversial as to if we are southern, and while southeastern Oklahoma may not be the deep south, but culturally we have a lot more in common with southerners than the midwest.
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Ah. There's my answer!
If youve never tied a string to a June bug or a yellow faced carpenter bee, you ain't from Alabama.
Lots of the people on the channel are huge Dolly Parton fans.
Surely they have heard the first verse of My Tennessee Mountain Home.
Sittin' on the front porch on a summer afternoon
In a straightback chair on two legs, leans against the wall
Watch the kids a' playin' with June bugs on a string
And chase the glowin' fireflies when evenin' shadows fall
My cousin could get one on a string but I never could. Our grandparents made sure to teach us to release them afterwards.
June bug toys, been a New York hour since I played with one of those.
FYI that Walmart bag one is true. Technically I'm from the north but my mother does that bag trick all the time. When it comes to holding groceries they stink, but it's like you could fit a whole box of bag inside that one random bag you have in the pantry!!
To be fair, before prenatal vitamins, mothers would end up craving things like liver because of their changing nutrient needs.
I knew someone that craved like laundry starch.
@@robinsmith5442 That's called Pica
Especially liver for iron.
@@antonetteallen2194 Even crunching ice is considered Pica. I do that when my iron is low.
Especially IRON!!!
when Ryan said "oh, you had friends growing up" I felt that on a spiritual level
Southerners waited until after the first frost to slaughter a hog. The cooler temperatures helped to preserve the meat. It required everyone helping and was a whole day long event. Perhaps at Thanksgiving there were more family members to help.
Slaughtered hogs every fall after the first cold spell. In the spring we had to cut the shoats....meaning to castrate them. A box cutter and a mason jar of iodine.
You know when you started out in the front yard everybody gets the memo come over to help in a minute! The old version of Snapchat
Same with a Deer 👍 my family always got together to butcher and wrap the meat. Everyone hunted together and split up the kill.
We always did that on Thanksgiving and went to the cannery the next day.
Yep! Once it was cold enough insects didn’t fly. We hung them from boom pole of the tractor lol
I am a fourth generation Texan and a second generation rare native Houstonian. I just spit up my tea when he was talking about "Homecoming Mums/Moms". As a long time florist,who would make huge Homecoming Mums during High School Football season, those kids are serious about their corsages. The longer the ribbons, the more cowbells, Mums circled with daisy or roses and don't forget the lights -- the better. We are talking hundreds of dollars for one corsage. Great job guys!
So true! As assistant Mgr of a craft store for several years,around homecoming week we worked like dogs making HUGE Mums just loaded down with ribbons, flowers. Trinkets, fancy ribbon strands- you name it! Some so big the girl has a hard time walking around with this huge status symbol!
Fortunately, the huge mums was before my time - but I also grew up in Houston.
I am an 8th generation Southerner. I'm married to a man from Chicago. The first Christmas here in the south, we were visiting my sister's house for Christmas dinner. On the drive home, there were two guys walking an emu with a paper sack on it's head down the street. Now, this being a small town - I knew who it was (one of my mom's neighbors in the country that had decided to raise emus and evidently one made a break for freedom) - but instead of telling this to my husband, I told him that it was the tradition in the south to walk an emu down the street on Christmas to ensure good luck. He bought it! LOL! I have yet to inform him it was a lie. (I hope he doesn't find my CZcams account! LOL!)
😂😂😂
That is hilarious! I love it so much!
I finally found your account...
Omg this is so great, wait sister have yall gone north for Christmas and he tell this story to his family? 🤣🤣
Hilarious. We definitely would be friends! 💛
I'm surprised ya'll didn't go over putting lightning bugs in a jar with holes inn the lid of course or sitting outside watching and listening to the bug zapper.
This is a Yankee thing too…
I loved watching the bug zapper as a kid. It's like a mini firework show! Not Southern
@@teresasevy1563 yes, june bugs would make the nice big zaps. and I am Texan.
Or pulling their “light” off and wearing it like a ring…
Done that
I'm from a large extended family. We're droppin' like flies. I've riden home from funerals with cousins, aunts and uncles. The conversations home are hilarious as people discuss what they learned about the deceased relative and who was or wasn't at the funeral. I would love to see a skit of the aftermath of a southern funeral.
In South Louisiana a boucherie (hog butchering) takes place in the Fall. Every part of the hog is used and it is traditional to invite a crowd to help prepare and eat what is barbecued that day. Another tradition is a cochon de lait when a young pig is roasted over an open fire. I once asked a Cajun friend how long it took to roast a pig and he said “about 12 beers”.
That’s what my people did to it was always the fall and they put it hung it up on a pole between took like two trees you know and it was fairly close to the hall pan because nobody wanted to take that big old pig anywhere else kids were an allowed to watch but of course we did
We cook one overnight in the ground using hot rocks hickory an apple wood that's eatin
Yessss we call it a pigpickin we’re having one for my uncle’s 50th birthday this year
I've been to several rural community pig pulls on Christmas holiday trips to visit relatives in South Carolina. I'm not sure where they actually roasted the hog, but it would be consumed in a smallish out building set aside for gatherings or perhaps repairing heavy equipment or cars.
More than ever I’m questioning if these guys are actually Southern!😂 Seriously, how can you not know what a June bug is.
Isn't Mary Patterson from Texas? Not sure what part she's from, but in east Texas there are DEFINITELY June bugs. Dumb little loud tanks of things that buzz into your house and scare the hell out of everyone.
@@eyes_espresso4803 Yeah, they are pretty big almost as big as the mosquitoes in SE Texas.
I think, as with a lot of YT channels, the people who do them are more on the city slicker side. Even when it comes to "southerners". They should seek out a wider array of folks who might not otherwise ever even know what YT is.
Maybe they don’t call them Junebugs
Yeah they definitely not southern like they claim.
My grandparents used to tie a string to June bugs' legs for us too! Hillbilly kites!
Hillbilly kites 😆
😂😂😂
I remember my Pops shooting mistletoe out of a tree when I was a kid growing up in rural southwest TN. It's much easier than trying to climb a tree for it! My husband used the same theory during an ice storm when a tree limb got very heavy and was laying on a power line in our backyard. After a couple of rounds from the 12 gauge, the limb was on the ground, and our power was back on!
A 12 gauge is the tool of choice for many special occasions.
This is true for northeast Louisiana too!
Stick a knife in the ground to keep lightning from hitting your house
Riding around looking at Christmas lights.
Shooting the mistletoe is definitely a thing.
lol, yes! I use grocery bags for cleaning out the cat box but I have to dig through my bag of bags for Publix bags because the Walmart ones are full of holes.
That's why you double bag those crappy Wal-Mart bags :)
There is an expression “cold enough to kill hogs in here”. The origin is slaughtering hogs for the winter on the farm. It might be around Thanksgiving. It depends on the arrival of cold weather.
I'm not from the South. Fall is butchering time, traditionally, for almost any large animal. We do it mid to late October. Professional butchers are so busy one has to schedule for a killing a month ahead
European here, but, yes November is the month for a-making pork.
We would butcher hogs after the first frost, which for Georgia was normally around the end of October
WE never did the hog thing, but some folks down the road did. Then they'd bury it in a pit and have pit barbeque Fri or Sat. And you did it out front 1) so you could sit in the chairs and watch folks passing and wave and 2) the back tended to have stuff in it, like forest.
also, more people to help
Questioning y’all’s southern cards 🧐. Did the June bug thing every year.
Yes, on the Walmart bags…Wife even knitted a fancy holder for ‘em.
Hogs? Yes, but not in the front yard…out near the woodpile so it was easier to keep the old cast iron tub full of hot water for scalding…and so the cousins could keep the fire going under the huge cast iron kettle so granny could render lard (many a fight over hot fresh cracklins).
Yes, used a pellet rifle to shoot mistletoe out of the trees.
City southerners, apparently…
City southerner! That.. yes.
I know right ? Butchering hogs was a family affair with meat shared and put in smoke houses , delicious ribs for all too.
rural southerner hear...like an hour from the interstate rural. no ..never butchered a hog.
actually never did any of those things...again..very rural.
didn't have hogs but chickens were slaughtered and prepped on covered, screened back porch the day before use in meal.... usually gumbo
We have a lot of pictures of dead relatives in their coffins in our photo albums. We're from Ky. We also had our family reunions in the family cemetery, complete with the best food you ever had. It was called "graveyard cleaning day". After the cleaning, straightening tomb stones and mending the fences, we had a wonderful picnic right there.
That wasn’t uncommon! We did ours on Mother’s Day. Everyone brought a covered dish.
What a wonderful way to celebrate the lives of our ancestors. When I lived in Colorado, everyone there was shocked about it. I guess it's a southern thing for the most part.@@Harley_Girl68
You must be Irish! My Mom's side is Irish and the yearly cemetery cleaning day included a lunch with the deceased relatives. My Mom and Aunt also have lunch in the cemetery every month or so with my grandparents, both of whom are permanent residents.
I am Irish. Clan Oliver.@@Cara-39
As a Texan I can testify that for some reason back in the mid ‘80’s ‘having the biggest mum at homecoming’ became it’s on thing, almost as it made you honorable mention for homecoming Queen.
Being a Texas gal myself and graduated in 1987, I remember this one girl who played the bass drum and wore her mom in the parade. The streamers were so long the trail behind her, and as she was walking down Main Street, she stepped on one of the streamers and started to roll over her drum four times before they finally got it to stop. To this day I can still picture in my mind her going over and over and over again and it has been almost 40 years.
Were in Ohio but we wore mums for homecoming too. I mean they were doing that way back in the 1960s when I was in jr high. Still do.
My brother and I did the June bug thing with locusts (cicadas), they’re bigger and easier to tie a string to. I’m surprised no one mentioned having a watermelon seed spitting contest.
We took the rines and cut out false teeth to put in our mouths and grin like cousin Clemb Bobs!!
locusts and cicadas are not the same, Google it!
I did... very different things with a watermelon. To the watermelon actually.
Yes!! And then having accidental watermelon patches the next year.
@@LunarLocust TMI.
Yep. Did the June bug thing quite often. Never slaughtered any hogs myself, but knew people who did. Personally I was usually skinning and dressing a deer I'd killed that morning.
So true, men in my family always hit the woods on Thanksgiving morning deer hunting.
we used cicadas instead
Thanksgiving cause all the family was there to help and was no back yard, it was chicken coop, jag lot or garden
Same here with the deer. Season is just getting ramped up, everyone is off work for a few days and gathered around so there's help. So I can see the hog one making sense too.
Yep, deer hunting.
First snow of the season in our house usually included my Mom making Snow Cream.
She’d go outside with our largest stock pot and hand scoop the top layer of snow into the pot.
She added sugar, milk/cream, a smidgen of salt and vanilla, stirred it up then stuck it in the fridge.
For dessert that night, she’d bring the pot to the table with 4 tablespoons.
It’s similar to a frozen icee but substituting cream for the fruit juice or more like a creamy Italian ice before that became a thing.
It was absolutely delicious, but then she got a hand cranked ice cream maker that required blocks of salt to freeze and began experimenting with fruits and flavors.
The process would take all day so…. that lasted about a month before we decided to leave it to the professionals at the grocery stores.
I still miss the simplicity of snow cream though.
-Southerners
We would make snow cream too, but never with the first snow. Gotta let that first one clean all the bad stuff out of the air, according to my dad. And we would usually just set the pot out in the yard or on top of the car to catch the snow. I put the pot out the first night of the Blizzard of '93... took me a while to find it the next morning since it was buried under 3 feet of snow. And yes, this WAS in the south, in NC.
I remember when our Government warned everyone to stop doing that because radioactive fallout from nuclear bomb testing in the Pacific was blowing over the whole USA.
I still make snow cream. But not the first snowfall. It’s dirty
@@suzannepatterson5548 That’s what my Mom always said too, but she always relented when we gave her the puppy eyes. It was the ‘cleanest’ she could find and wasn’t any dirtier than the water from the hose.
@@truthunfiltered314 Must be a Carolina thang. Mama put her double boiler on the roof of the car overnight too.
Being from Texas and seeing the mums when I was in school, I can vouch for this. You have the traditional mums, big/outrageous mums like totally covers the person's body, the really small ring mums that you have on your finger, mums that light up, mums that glow in the dark, etc. It becomes a competition. Oh, and most mums usually are not complete without a cowbell attached somewhere on the mum. Mums are also made by hand by the wearer or ordered with what you want from a variety of stores or a mum store (some places just do mums).
I didn’t know this was only a Texas thing. I just assumed it was everywhere because no one questioned the mums when I was in high school.
Hey y’all!!! I wanted to give my southern tip to anyone that’s interested!! It’s a GAMECHANGER!! So, on this episode y’all talked about keeping grocery bags (who doesn’t, right)!! So the tip is to use an empty tissue box. The cube ones work the best! Once the tissues are gone, use the empty Kleenex box and stuff it full of your grocery bags!! It holds like 50 bags, I swear!! Annnnd, it doesn’t take up much room under the sink. A bag of bags is huge, but the tissue box is small and you can stuff it full!!! Just a southern tip my momma taught me and thought I’d share!! 😎🥰 Try it and tell me what you think!!!! Love y’all It’s a Southern Thing!!
Thank you for this
From one southern mama to another ❤
@@jaquishacalixte Of course! Glad to help a neighbor out! Anytime! 🫂
Wow!!! This has been a game changer! Thank you for this!!!
I bought s decorative tissue box holder and put it in the bathrooms to use for bathroom trash.
Awesome idea, thank you!kleenex box-thanks to your mom!
a Southern tradition I remember and still enjoy to this day is making cobbler with fresh blackberries picked from the wild bushes growing near the street in front of my house. Sometimes, we even had vanilla bean ice cream with it.
To this day I still make blueberry and blackberry moonshine brady every spring. I get alot more use out of that than a cobbler.
😂Yankees make blueberry cobbler as well
Oh I had some blackberry cobbler today that made me think about that. My dad had some wild blackberry bushes vines? growing next to his shop. We picked enough for my mom to make a blackberry cobbler and my grandmother to make a few. As I got older they were pretty much only enough blackberries for my dad to go pick and just beat. They got covered over by kudzu.
That sounds so good, but I know if I tried, the blackberries are being eaten before it would get to the kitchen.
Wild blackberries are so delicious and way better than the store bought ones
When I was a deputy sheriff in NC, one of the local born and raised deputies thought he'd gross me out one November. As I was new I had to do the "ride along" with an experienced deputy. He said we were going to his cousin's house for a minute to check on something. This was the day before Thanksgiving in the early 90's. In the yard was a large tree with a 4000lb come-a-long chained to a large branch with a fairly good size hog suspended from it being bled out just prior to butchering it. Several of his cousins were there with the customary keg of beer and other assorted bottled holiday spirits as well as the creek lightning. He figured since I was from New Jersey I would be taken back by the "gore". He didn't know that I had already been part of this type of meat prep with moose in Alaska in a bus garage using the overhead crank for the shop there when I was in the Army in the late 70's early 80's. So this is a thing in the South, at least where I was.
I've never seen anyone butcher a hog . Tennessee all my life.
Another Jersey boy story: my future BIL had just begun dating my sis, he was from NJ and worked here as an engineer. Back then, virtually every engineer or engineering student drove a Camaro. BIL was no different and his was in need of parts so he could work on it. Sis and I talked him into calling our Dad, a Highway Patrol Trooper, and asking him where to get parts. We couldn't hear Dad's answer but BIL couldn't get off the phone fast enough and when he did he burst into laughter and cried tears as he exclaimed, "God, I am soooooooo living in the South! Your Dad told me to go to 'Moon's Junkyard' and ask for Cooter!" Then I remembered I'd been there, gave him directions and promised him 'Cooter' would not dissappoint!
Depends on the location and the people to be honest. I've personally never had to witness someone butchering a hog here in eastern NC. First time seeing one was a documentary in college of a family all the way in the sticks of the mountains. The documentary also showcased them drinking snake venom in a church, which is a different can of worms.
However Pig Pickin' and depending on the location, pork barbecue are still very much relevant. I know of a restaurant that had their own shed to butcher them for their own barbecue. Would have to get the hog to point B somehow. However most folks don't make it a public display, especially in front of their yards.
Awesome! This is how I grew up! Also butchered our own cows and had a smoke house to cure the meat
Im from NC
From West Virginia, yes we learned from our grandparents how to tie a string on a June bug and let it fly around in a circle while you have the other end of the string. If you were really careful you could let it go without messing it up. A lot of guys were named June bug
My dad took me mistletoe "hunting" when I was a kid a couple times. You take a 12 gauge and when you find a bunch of mistletoe you take a shot. It can knock enough down for you to hang up.
Brats climbing a tree. Or just get off when cutting fire wood.
Mistletoe is a parasite that only grows on the dead parts of Oak trees. The white berries are poisonous. Makes me wonder who came up with the tradition of kissing underneath a poisonous parasitic plant? What the heck is that about? Doesn't sound very romantic to me. Hey baby, let's go roll around in the poison oak, that sounds like about as much fun.
@@harrystokes1412 Maybe you better not let the kids climb up there when it's mistletoe hunting season; sounds dangerous, there might be hunters out.
Yep, that is how I have heard people do it, shoot it down.
@@recoveringsoul755 it's a Witch thing, for real, just like Hollywood is named after the tree that the wood for a witch's wand is mad from.
Can confirm the mistletoe thing. My dad’s work colleague owned a Christmas tree farm in Lacey’s Spring, AL and every year when we’d go to cut down our tree, there’d be neighborhood boys at the entrance of the farm with their BB guns selling mistletoe they’d shot out of the trees. They’d tie a red ribbon around it and charge you $5. I bet those kids made bank.
Hi Claire....I remember the tree farm from when I lived in Huntsville. Drove thru Laceys Springs nearly every weekend to WALKER COUNTY Y'ALL and shot.mistletoe out of the tops of oak trees. It doesn't grow in pines....
This is brilliant. I remember my dad climbing a 2 story tree and my mom praying he wouldn't fall out
I died at "isn't this some Walker County stuff?" because that place is the origin of all things weird.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Blue-Gray college football game at Christmas. My uncles would eat Christmas dinner on tv trays in the living room screaming at the television while the rest of us were at the tables in the dining room (adults) and kitchen (kids) trying to talk loud enough to hear one another over the collective noise. My grandmother's house was always full on Christmas... She had seven living children and 22 grandchildren.
We normally used sewing thread for the June bugs because it is light.
We used to wear the June bugs out! We made the bugs fly until they couldn't fly anymore!
My brother and I would catch em and let them loose in our bedrooms
I'm from Texas and I remember being so shocked when I found out not everyone does homecoming mums!! 🤣
That is a Texas thing, not a Southern thing. I'm Southern and not from Texas, and I know everyone in Virginia and North Carolina (or where I lived, anyway) just did regular pretty corsages. Right after I moved down here, though, my nephew (hub's sister's child) showed me the corsage he'd bought and I was just appalled because I thought he'd just made a tacky choice and it looked like what they throw on horses in the winner's circle! I mean, it's not just a corsage, it's literally like this HUGE thing with mutliple HUGE pompom mums and ribbons that look like first place ribbons printed with the school logo and such, and god only knows what (his had some kind of twinkling light thing on it, even) that goes from the shoulder down to wherever! I was trying so hard to be tactful and not hurt his feelings. But no, my SIL told me, it was expected. *smh*
We do that in oklahoma
I'm from Louisiana and moved to Texas and when I found out about it I was confused at first, but then I saw them and thought it was a good tradition. But some of them go a little overboard.
When I was attending high school football games in Illinois in the late 1960's "football" mums were always sold at football games by the pep club. We had fancy roses or orchids for the homecoming dances.
Damn didn't know everyone did this.
Idk about June bugs but we definitely tied strings around bumble bees and flew them around. Gotta get the white faced Ines because they don't sting like the other ones! South Mississippi checking in.
I’m not a southerner, but the coffin thing cracked me up. My aunt came to America from Italy for her brothers funeral and his friends were taking pictures of his (closed) coffin and she said “WHY ARE PEOPLE TAKING PICTURES OF MY BROTHERS COFFIN!” And we got the giggles throughout the entire service. Fun memory on a sad day.
an interesting Southern Tradition, paint the ceiling of the porch light blue. It is supposed to keep away ghosts. It is called haint paint.
I saw this in older towns in Mississippi!
It's because the spirits can't cross water.
Actually, the Color is called haint blue and you will paint the inside ceiling of the porch because it looks like the sky to wasps and bees (they won’t build a nest there).
I saw some haint blue on the way to a ren faire
Haint blue? I love it! I’m painting mine.
I actually think Ryan was on the right track with the "Homecoming Moms"!
lol I want to hear the rest of that!
Who do you think engineers those things?
@@williamsstephens it is a whole cottage industry. Michael's makes a killing during Homecoming season. I have known a number of women who make them to sell.
Ryan states that 'Homecoming Mom's are a different breed of Mother', and he's sooo right, (even though it was Mum's). There are some Mom's that just live their teen years vicariously through their children and if that Mom was the Homecoming Queen... watch out, her stage-mom button was just pushed and she will do anything to get her daughter to become Homecoming Queen also. Would really love to hear the rest of his thoughts on 'Homecoming Mom's'.
Mums, as in chrysanthemums. Once upon a time you got a real mum or two for Homecoming, but apparently they're not gaudy enough. Now the girls' Homecoming mums are artificial, humongous, and have multiple ribbon streamers with football trinkets tied into them. The streamers can drag all the way to the ground. As you might imagine it has become competitive --- who can wear the biggest, gaudiest mum to Homecoming?
The thing is there are now two or maybe even three different types of Southerners. You have the ones that live in the big cities who are not country at all. And then you have the ones that live in the smaller towns that are “sort of country”. Then you have the ones that live way out in the country that are “deliverance country”! And I guess for a fourth type you would have Southerners that are northern transplants. They’re only usually accepted after about 25 years down here.
We’ve had very colorful funeral experiences in our family. A favorite is from my great granny, Georgie Lou’s funeral. They dressed her in a padded bra as part her burial attire, and we all took turns feeling her up. Flat chested and a fan of camisoles only, she had sprouted torpedoes for her journey into the great beyond. 😂
LMAO!
Did she just say its a Walker County thang? Quit hatin on Walker County!
Can I just add some real southern traditions from someone born and raised in AL/MS: Going to see the hot air balloons in Montgomery every year, going to see the Nutcracker for Christmas at the local ballet academy or Fox theatre, in whatever Southern state you're in going to see lights at Christmas (usually Bellingrath, Calloway, Dollywood, Branson), attending a Mardi Gras parade (there's one in every southern state now) and eating king cake, missing work or school for the first day of deer season, having your college team assigned to you at birth, celebrating summer by going to U-Pick'em farms to shove as many vegetables in a bucket that you can to bring home and can, rounding up the kids to go blackberry picking on the side of the road, attending the annual family crawfish boil, making Gumbo the first chilly day of October, and last there's always the traditional week to the beach or lake in the summer. These are traditions, because they're done annually and throughout the generations...just sayin.
Having a fish fry
100% fact and eating greens and black eyed peas on New Year's Day 😊
And don't forget that bonfire while Lynyrd Skynyrd is blasting
Modern Southern city folk traditions.
@@roserollins9800 Got one tomorrow after church.
Granny got run over by a reindeer, her ‘birthday’ was everyone finding out what she left them….led to a fight….and to grannys funeral. Its obvious ya’ll 😂❤️
I adore the "oh, you had friends growing up!"
As a southerner I can safely say that a certain someone ain’t southern if she doesn’t know what a June Bug is. REVOKE!
She might have lived in the city
Ok as a Southern, I think we should get to rename them! In the south they show up way before June. By June, it's already too hot.
I have heard of get togethers where people would slaughter hogs. The local farm families spend the whole day working together to provide enough meat to get them all through the winter.
It's the front yard and Thanksgiving day thing that seems particularly peculiar.
I have family whole still do this. And on Thanksgiving, too. 😄
My papaw did this too. We would all get together when he'd slaughter it and he would distribute the meat throughout the family.
@@HappyLife693 its because the whole family was already there and you got time for the turkey to cook so it was a matter of convenience more than anything.
@@gregorybower2759 I guessed that. But explain front yard. :-D
As a child of the '70's, we absolutely did the June bug string thing. I now know that they were Japanese beetles. Also shooting mistletoe out of tress is very common. It's in the tree year round but only easily visible when the leaf canopy drops for winter. Shooting it with a.22 rifle is the easiest way to harvest it.
Japanese beetles and June bugs aren't the same thing, although they look similar. Japanese beetles are considerably smaller than June bugs and cause massive damage to plants. They also last in large numbers all summer. June bugs are harmless, as far as I'm aware, and after their first flush around May (or June, if you live in colder climes), they mostly disappear and you hardly ever see another one for the rest of summer.
We didn't get Japanese beetles in Tennessee until the very early 90's. I remember when they first came like locusts and stripped my grandmother's rose bushes bare. Homer did some research and found Japanese beetle traps and put those up. I checked them every day and reported back when the bags were full. They had to change the bags twice a week to start. The next year wasn't quite as bad, and the year after that was tolerable. We must have killed out all the beetles in the neighborhood and got the population down to under the plague rating.
That's how my grandpa did it!
June bugs are emerald green. Japanese beetles are brown. June bugs are fruit eaters. You see them around blackberries and peach trees.
Hey, we were poor and didn't have many toys!
@@kerim.peardon5551
Thank you
The mistletoe thing, my husband, me, and our children used to do that every year.. My husband would shoot it out, and me and the kids would run and pick it up, and put it in a trash bag.. then we'd take it home and decorate the house with it... Since the kids grew up, this is something we don't do anymore... but we look back on it with fondness, cause it was something fun we did as a family.
As a Mississippian the only one I knew anything about was the Walmart sacks. And those are used to send food home for guests and family. Granny is always sending something home with you!
We did use to butcher hogs on thanksgiving. Because it was more than a one day process and we had multiple days off.
I tried the June bug thing, but it's kind of hard so I quit. I have a HUGE bag of Walmart bags in the laundry room. They do come in handy. And yes, I have shot mistletoe out of a tree with a pellet gun. Mistletoe always grows WAY up at the top of the tallest trees.
Mistletoe is a parasite that only grows on the dead parts of Oak trees. Lots of it here in CA
That is untrue, there was Mistletoe growing on a Maple tree in my Dad’s yard in South Florida, and it grew low enough for me to pick off of it. And in case you may think I don’t know my trees, I was on the Dendrology team in FFA.
@@shannonvans when we collected it to raise money for boy scouts that's what I was told, and everytime I've seen it, it's been in oak tress
Never tried the June bug thing even though we had plenty around growing up. Do have a bag full of Publix plastic bags as those things seem to multiply on their own. Never tried shooting down the mistletoe though I did think about it growing up.
My mom used to send my older brother up a tree to get mistletoe.
At family and church events, jello with fruit in it. Usually brought by the non-cooking folks. Oh, with marshmallows!
The plastic bags inside of bags is also done up here in Michigan. Definitely not just a southern thing
Here in GA I do have bags under the sink, what would I do for bathroom garbage can liners , lol ?
I've done it all my life. I'm French. It's a worldwide phenomenon (the only thing changing would be the store name, but that's it)
Yes, we have a shopping bag collection (not Walmart, Kroger and Meijer; we're transplanted from the South), but every few weeks we take them to one of our local thrift shops. They use donated bags instead of buying them.
I'm not sure why they even make small trash bags cause who doesn't use those as trash liners
@@freethebirds3578 It has never occurred to me to offer my Meijer bags to thrift shops! That's a great idea.
I'm a doctor and wanted to comment on the organ meat reference. Some people do it to increase their vitamin A intake, but it can be dangerous. No more than 1 serving of liver per week, for example. Better off sticking to regular prenatal vitamins.
Pre-natal vitamins are easier to swallow. Liver…ick!
I’m a city kid, born and raised, who kept Walmart bags in…a Walmart bag.
Had cousins in Georgia who would prep the Turkey in the car port.
Yeah, liver went from the list of good food ( high in vitamins and iron) to the list of bad food very quickly once we started paying attention to cholesterol.
True about to much liberty being harmful, but I've heard that vitamins can be hard on the stomach.
I suspect liver might be easier and better (within moderation)
Also some food researchers say that this Western reliance in muscle meat is un-environmental and uneconomical
And some scientists think we've judged cholesterol wrong for decades now-we should be looking at our carb intake more closely
Southerner is a loose term I no southerners who lived in the city all their life don't know anything about hogs and cows slaughtering hogs it's a country thing we slaughtered ours in the pasture so the other animals can see country folk don't want to stop the rain because they got a vegetable garden and country kids play in the rain not like
Y’all aren’t as southern as I thought..bless your hearts.
OMG, Homecoming mums! I lived in Texas during middle school and was introduced to the mums. When I moved to Florida for high school, it was definitely not a thing. Such a fun memory. Oh Texas, I do love you.
Dolly Parton even sings about "june bugs on a string" in her song Tennessee Mountain Home.
That's true!! I'd forgotten about that.
And Weird Al Yankovic mentions selfies with the corpse at a funeral in his song, Tacky.
This isn't southern tradition, but just a weird thing my Kentucky family did: Having cranberry sauce every Thanksgiving, even though no one in our family ate it. No one even touched it. It was just plopped on a decorative plate and put on the table. One year I asked why we have it and my aunt replied, "Because it's Thanksgiving. Everyone has cranberry sauce on their tables today."
Man invite me and I’ll eat it :/ Cranberry sauce is one of the best parts of Thanksgiving. Heck I was eating it out of a can earlier today
Got to have cranberry sauce with Chicken and Dressing! (Dressing is made with day old CORNBREAD! Stuffing is made with White Bread!!)
Haha, my family did the same thing, by the end we got so lazy with it that my grandmother and mother didn't even mix it up anymore so it set there in the shape of the outline of the can, and unless someone had a friend or date over it just got thrown away still in that same shape of the outline of the can.
I am originally from Kentucky but, I’ve lived in North Carolina for over 30 years. If people are using cranberry sauce from a can, they’re doing it wrong. My mother made cranberry sauce from scratch. Take a bag of cranberries and an orange with the peel; grind it up in a food processor. Put all of that in a saucepan and cook it with a little cornstarch, sugar, vanilla, and pecans.
@@chrish931 God same, just plop it out on a plate in the shape of the can, if they wanted to be fancy they might slice it a few times, lol
I'm from TN, & Homecoming Mums are not just in TX. Y'all must've never seen an AL, Vols, Ole Miss, etc Homecoming game! Everyone dressed up & ALL the young ladies have the huge mum corsages. Back home in Clarksville, back in the 70s, I started a new tradition when I was working at a local jewelers. I made corsages with double ribbon, in both the school colors... purple & gold, gold & green, etc. I made them huge like a mum & separated the ribbon like when you do a package. I put long trailing ribbon on them. They took off like wildfire. My boss was upset because of so much ribbon, but we charged $35 each, so he was home after hearing that.
When you said Walker County, I FELL OVER LAUGHING! I KNOW WHERE YOUR TALKING ABOUT!!!🤣🤣🤣 BEEN THROUGH THERE! I was terrified! Also regarding bugs and strings... I witnessed several back woods idiots tie strings to an old time broom bristle and shove the bristle up the bugs butt, then watch the bug fly hysterically trying to get the broom bristle out. The mean boys did that in elementary school and bet on whose bug flew the highest, hardest and above all else, made the most noise. We girls thought it was idiotic, mean and gross. We were ladies and ladies don't do that kind of gross mess!
In my experience, the best family fights are at christenings and funerals.
The butcher hogs on Thanksgiving is a part of Appalachian tradition. It was one of the few days that the fathers would be off. If you read the foxfire books you will understand more.
I always associate ham with thanksgiving, never turkey. Or rather, I did growing up. Also, y’all need a spin-off channel for more specific, regional groups of southerners, cause North Carolina and Kentucky and east TN…not even remotely similar to Texas or Louisiana.
@@Miss_Camel A wider array of folks would definitely be nice. Seek out some people who may not otherwise ever see YT.
@@Miss_Camel yup. I'm from east tn.
@@rythania7686 girl same. I need a “Bless your rank” with him trying every single taffy flavor from gatlinburg. 😂
Oh yes, the Foxfire books. I only have 2 and am looking for the rest of the set. So much knowledge lost to time. We always did our hog butchering in the fall when it was cold enough for hanging. But we are northern Appalachia, not southern.
We did tie a string around June bugs, but around the middle of their body and they did fly. A June bug is approximately 1 to 1 1/2 inches long and brown to red in color, although I remember them as being larger. Being from South Carolina and raised in the country we came up with odd things to play with. Lol.
Virginia native here,
Regarding the string on the leg of a june bug: no (giant peach beetle: yes) you tie it on a leg and watch it fly around in a big circle for about 10 minutes then let it go so it doesn't die.
I knew most of them. Have participated in most of them. The family fight one, yep, been there done that. June bug, Mistletoe, killing a hog - was after the first frost (don't ask me why), being served liver & onions because we needed to "build our blood", I don't eat liver or any organ meat now. I have a collection of grocery bags that I use for lots of stuff. I nest them to use on the bathroom trash can so I only need to remove the full bag and only add new bags when I remove the last one. For June bugs, we used sewing thread. Pre made a loop to slip onto the leg.
killing hogs after a hard freeze kept the meat cold until you could get the butchering done. Then the meat went into the smokehouse (Except for the portions used immediately) We often had pork loin roast for Thanksgiving because some nice person gave one to us.
@@clairewood7416 that makes sense. I remember going with my Papaw to the smoke house and he would cut meat from salt cured hams hanging there.
Cow bingo. Take a football field, paint squares on it with numbers, sell the spots, then let the cows roam the field.
Anytime a cow did it's #2 business, you win a prize. It's something we did in Michigan, but it sounds Southern.
Have "chip" throwing contests here. Find the perfect cow-made disc at just the right petrification and toss it like a frisbee.
I lived in Virginia until I was 8 and then we moved to Florida. Watching these videos makes me realize how in some ways I am not Southern like I thought and in other ways I am Southern like I didn’t think.
Definitely shooting mistletoe out of trees!!! 😂
Homecoming mums in South Louisiana!
My friends did the June bug thing when I was little. I always thought it was mean. Also, the organ meats during pregnancy was back in the dark ages when that was the only way to get iron and avoid anemia. Now we have prenatal vitamins.
I totally thought the Homecoming Mums were a regular high school thing. I didn’t realize they were just a Texas thing until years after graduating
I don’t think they were just a Texas thing. We had them in Alabama. Massive yellow ones with tiny footballs or your school’s initial glued in the middle. Fond memories of those.
@@prilknight Alabama here and I remembers Mums too, they were/are a tradition.
Had them in Kentucky
I heard of Oklahoma doing it too
We had them in NC so I don't think it's a Texas thing only.
my mum made a bag out of an old tea towel she sewed up the long side and put elastic at the top and bottom so it was like a tube then - we used this to store our plastic bags - we would pull one bag out at a time from the time - I lived in Australia, but was originally from Scotland so I am not sure if this is an Australian thing also or Scottish - but we reused a lot of stuff to save money.
No better southern tradition then going snipe hunting! with your older cousin's showing you just how to call them in with a snipe call, you know it'll come out sounding like a bird / rabid raccoon chatter priceless memories in the woods at night
Only question about the hog slaughtering was whether Thanksgiving was cold enough. Always did ours in February.
While my family didn't do it I knew of others that did. Temperature was never really an issue because it never got cold enough for it to matter.
@@nanoflower1 I know some places consider Late Fall "Hog Killing Season" because it is cold enough to butcher and process a hog without it immediately spoiling. This is also why Late fall is when a lot of BBQ competitions were held.
Dad grew up in central Texas and always referred to the 1st cold snap as hog killing weather. The old farm didn’t have electricity until the ‘50’s.
@@jonjohns8145 Oh I agree that in places where it can be counted on to get down near freezing that it is perfect weather for butchering a hog. I'm just so used to the weather in Georgia where it's just as likely to be in the 80s at Thanksgiving that it is unlikely for anyone to plan their butchering around that. Instead they just work quickly with the butchering and draining of the hog so they can get it cooking.
@@jonjohns8145 the locals in my part of Kentucky (on the state line just north of Nashville) generally killed hogs sometime between Halloween and Christmas. Usually it was after a period of hard freezes. I don't know where the actual killing/butchering took place, but the giant cast iron kettle came out. A fire was built under it and it was used for rendering lard. Little bits of crunchy stuff floated to the top and skimmed off to use in dodger bread. (cornbread) . A large hog can produce a LOT of lard!
I'm from north-central Arkansas and some of the traditions I recall are
1. Tying a string to a June bug's leg. I haven't seen a real June bug in decades, though. They are shiny green beetles, very distinctive. Pesticides have almost wiped them out in certain places.
2. Hog-killin' in December, but not part of a holiday. My dad believed everything in the Farmer's Almanac (he was born in 1907 and the Almanac and The Bible were all he needed to get by) and when the Almanac indicated it was time to butcher a hog that's what we did.
3. We never saved the first snow for sunburns. As a kid, (I'm 58 years old now) we got more snow in the winters here than we do now. Sometimes two or three substantial snowfalls a year. Snow ice cream was a big deal but we weren't allowed to make it from the first snow of the year because it was believed that atmospheric nuclear bomb testing contaminated the first snow but subsequent ones were "safe".
4. Walmart (or any store's plastic bags) stored in a single Walmart Bag of Holding which held nigh an infinite number of wadded up bags.
5. Washing and ironing aluminum foil (tin-fol) to use again. My parents were survivors of the Great Depression and by God you saved everything. Bacon grease, foil, bread ties (I have NO idea why), Mason jars, and a host of other objects that we'd never used but had "just in case".
6. Frog hunting, but not strictly by the rules. Most wildlife and hunting information dictated you could only hunt frogs using a gig (a pole with a two or three tined fork on the end) to stab the frog and drop into a rough cloth bag called a "tow sack". We used a .22 rifle and a flashlight. I'd hold the light and when we saw a frog's eyes' reflection my dad would shoot it and then we'd drop it into the tow sack to clean and fry frog legs later.
There are more, but I'll stop here. I love your videos and always get a laugh out of them because yes, they are often so true.
im SO glad you added bread ties honestly. i always seem to find so many of them in my moms house for literally no reason, and sometimes in the oddest of places its hilarious. ive always wondered why but never really asked, so thank you for this.
@@Laughingwithtravii You are quite welcome! Growing up in rural Arkansas with older parents and being around their siblings was always a surprise of some sort just waiting to be discovered!
I grew up in Northeast Texas and I remember all these things except why we didn’t eat the first snow. I just knew we didn’t eat it. We still have a ton of June bugs here but I know the green ones your talking about. We still have those as well as the brown ones. My parents were born in the 30’s so we pretty much kept those traditions of my grandparents. Bread ties, rubber bands, paper and plastic sacks were all kept!
I enjoyed reading your comment!
@@marblecitymysteries354 Thank you!
@@Laughingwithtravii bread ties are good for tying up loose cords, stringing up bean or pea vines or tomatoes...you can use them just about on anything that you would need to tie up. My Great Aunt and Uncle would always wash and save aluminum foil and freezer bags.
First of all y'all do realize the panhandle gets alot of snow each year. It's like a whole different country up there. I grew up in Dallas and back in the late 70s we had snow 3 days in a row...But, as mama always said you don't eat the first snow because it's clearing out all the crap in the air. But the second snow she would make ice cream with it. Also, mama would save all the little toys out of the cereal boxes and when we were 'good' she would give us one as a reward. Bless her heart!
I’m from CA, but we’ve lived in NC for a total of 17 years. One daughter went to Lejeune HS in Camp Lejeune and Homecoming mums were a big deal! It was kind of fun. I love North Carolina for a lot of reasons, one being how friendly people are. I also like the terms of endearment!
We spent hours in the pasture looking for June bugs, then tying thread around their legs and making them fly. Awesome fun for country kids.
They're over plentiful in NC in July.
When we were going through my grandmother's old photos, we came across some unexpected "open casket" pics (not selfies, though). I liken it to a holdover from the Victorian memento mori tradition, especially in the early 20th century when not everyone had a camera or photos of their loved ones when they were alive.
Yeah. Back in the day the luxuries we take for granted (like 9 million photos of yourself) were not common. If people had even a handful of photos, they were doing well. A funeral was like a "last chance" sort of thing to get one to remember them.
That kind of creeped me out. I kept picturing a cartel/mafia member letting their boss know they got the guy. Maybe I watch too many movies though…
I didn't know where this custom came from...
but my family does this AND
we also cut a piece of or lock of hair from fresh day old babies and the dead. Soon as the day they cross over. That's if the baby has hair and if uncle Joe had any when he goes . Lol
I have never been to a celebration where people argued. We are just so happy to see each other, that we make plans to get together that we make up celebrations.
Yep, from the south, and have tied sewing thread to a June bugs leg several times... just good kid fun, like catching fire flies and keeping them in a jar. Maybe the June bug thing is more of a Kentucky/Tennessee thing. Lived in Florida, Alabama, and Texas and don't recall the June bug deal there.
Ryan I'm right there with you about the Texas Homecoming moms!!! They're are special breed for sure!!!
🤣😂
🙄🤔🤭😲😃😄😆😂🤣😜
Hahaha Ryan wants us to forget about that
Texan here and yeah, you are right.
Organ meats are extremely healthy. The knife in the ground is hoodoo/folk magic. I would assume the snow one is too, but I'm not familiar with it.
I think the snow thing is just to give kids a reason to stash some snow in the freezer. I quit eating liver after my cholesterol went up. It is very high in cholesterol
We get multiple snows in the mountains of NC! I love y'all, you crack me up!
Yes, to the bag o' bags--walmart, target or food city. Yes, to shooting mistletoe out of a tree--I haven't done it, but someone did that for me and brought me the mistletoe. Yes, funeral photo. Mom made me take coffin pics of Grandma and it really creeped me out! Great video!
Coffin pics were common in my family. It never bothered me, and l still have some copies
My funny Texas Mum story is that when I was working in Italy, I told them about this tradition, and they were horrified. Mums are what you bring to a funeral, so it came across as this macabre way of threatening someone. So you guys might get your favorite traditions and run them past a group of foreigners and see what they think.
Doesnt even need to be outside of the states....any northerner will look at you the same way. They have no clue. It's definitely a Texas thing.
I live in WV. My mom had a flower shop when I was a kid and homecoming mums were a huge thing. There were little nets (think tiny hair nets) that we put on the mums to keep the petals from shattering off. We got small football charms to add to the bow which was made with ribbon in the high schools colors. The girls wore them as a corsage.
My mom said when she was a child she took sewing thread and tied it on the leg of lightning bugs.
I definitely tied strings to June bugs as a child. It's like having a "sentient" balloon. A little off the subject, I've also always loved the expression: "like a chicken on a June bug".
"Please cut this out"
I'm absolutely WHEEZING with laughter
i was a child in the 50's-60's, the june bug thing was something we did all the time, and it was lot of fun 🙂
liver (which i hate) is good for you, and probably other organs
I've heard of the mistletoe and June bug ones but have never done them. When I think of southern traditions, I think of collecting spring dandelion greens and poke greens to eat, putting flowers on the graves of all departed relatives on Memorial day, and sitting on the front porch to wave at every person who drives by.
My grandma still eats poke salad to this day.
Here in our area people put flowers on graves on Good Friday. But it is a tradition that is quickly going away.
Sticking a knife in the ground sounds like some old Cajun wive's tale. The older folks were very superstitious lol
8:50 🌨
This practice/tradition comes from southern/appalachian folk magic.
(collecting the first snow to use later on sunburns, comes from traditional southern folk medicine; the snow functions as a cold compress)
😊 - when they said "keeping it cold" ... they probably meant _keeping it frozen._
*~[ An example of a faith healing prayer **_(Christian)_** to soothe a sunburn with snow ]~*
_"Two angels came down from the north; one named Fire, the other Frost;_
_Frost said to Fire go away, go away; in the name of Jesus go away."_
Definitely the Wal-Mart bags. And she's right about modern Wal-Mart bags being nearly useless. Dollar General bags are much better. And you can see one at a thousand yards. Yes, I've seen pictures of people in coffins and I've seen the pictures actually being taken at funerals. Weird. Not in my family. I'm surprised you didn't mention collecting lightning bugs in a jar.
If WalMart bags got any thinner they would be one-sided. They learned it from Kroger, I think.
@@robrobinson8597 And they're usually torn at the bottom....
My friend said he can tell my Yankee butt was commenting about the "fire flies". The other night at dusk the other night.... heeheehee
Yes, catching lightning bugs in a jar is done in the north to lol.
The blue "cold item" bags they have are better, but they're still quite thin
Mistletoe thing is 💯! My brothers did this. We had homecoming mums in our small town in AL with our School initial on them from a pipe cleaner 😂 I hate the funeral pictures! Oh my gosh I have seen pics from old of family who are “clearly departed”
I asked my Aunts not to photograph Mom in her coffin ,but in a weird nerdy way I almost wish they had.
I love your profile name! It makes feel right at home. :-D
@@HappyLife693 thanks! Honey is what my Grand son calls me 💙🍯
Born in SW Oklahoma, Im 73 and yes I have heard of tying a string around a June bug and letting it fly around. From my Grand parents.
Yes! We stuff walmart bags and other bags. We used to do it under the sink, but now we have a cabinet where we stuff them now.
Hogs on Thanksgiving is an East Tennessee Tradition. I finally convinced everyone to wait until Black Friday so we could get out of shopping.
Texas girl here. Was in high school in the 70s. Our mums were manageable then (barely). You could still use pins to attach them to your dress (or t-shirt because we wore them to school on Homecoming Friday). Even the ones with three grapefruit-sized mums and forty streamers trailing all the way to the floor, with all the little dangly footballs and mascots and whatever other bits, could be pinned to the clothing, if you anchored the pins in your bra strap.
Nowadays they've just lost all sense of sanity. The mums have to be hung around the girl's neck with a stout cord, they cover the whole front of the poor girl (and hide the dress! I mean, why have a nice homecoming dance dress if you can't even see the darn thing?), and you just about have to have a pickup truck going alongside you to help hold the thing up.
I blame Instagram.
😂😂😂
Yes, ma'am, today's homecoming mums are downright tacky. That trend is gonna' collapse in on itself pretty soon, though. Just watch.
Oh yeah. I made one for a niece, and it was a WHOLE HAT, with a massive train of junk draggin' along behind. We thought it was funny. Everyone loved it.
@@dougpettey7144 Probably. Marie Antoinette started the massive wig thing in the French court of the time, which we all know about.
It got to EXTREME extremes, SHE started losing her hair because of anchoring those edifices to her scalp, so she stood on the brakes.
She got her hair cut short and styled, and *boom*, EVERYONE was jumpin' on the "chic simplicity" train. (Musta made the wig makers pretty sad.)
Flying June bugs was the best thing ever! Sometimes, I would save mine for the next day. P.S. My neighbor used arrows to get mistletoe down.
My mother did the June bug thing. I’m 59 and I squish them. My thing (late 60’s, 70’s) was catching Lightning Bugs and putting them in jars! 😂 But you had to release them when your mother/grandmother made you come in because the 11:00 news was coming on! (Summertime)
PS
June Bug = Japanese Beetles
I'm from Oklahoma, we did Homecoming Mums. I tripped on mine, and it was almost six feet long and I'm barely 5'2". Let's say my dad went overboard.
😆😆❤️
Oh please! I'm born and raised in Alabama and we definitely had Homecoming Mums. They would shape pipe cleaners the school colors into the initials of your high school and glue them onto the mums 🙄🤣
We had the mums like you describe, too, in Arkansas. The Texas mums are huge with ribbons all the way to your knees. We have spent a small fortune on them.
Not quite a Texas mum LOL
(South Texas here) The last several homecoming mums, I had to help add led lights to it. In addition to glitter and rhinestones. Little cowbells… if Joann’s fabric made a mini kitchen sink… you’d see a mum out there with it tied to it somehow!😁
Tradition of summer Sunday church picnic, taking turns cranking the handle on the old fashioned ice cream maker
We homecoming mums in Oklahoma too. It is highly controversial as to if we are southern, and while southeastern Oklahoma may not be the deep south, but culturally we have a lot more in common with southerners than the midwest.