Back from Kentucky

Just got back from a quick trip to Kentucky, where heavy rains swelled the usually miled mannered creeks in Knott County.  This picture was taken in the outer reaches of Hindman, the county seat.  Troublesome Creek barely crept over its banks in a couple of places, so there was no flooding in town.  But it was up pretty good and moving fast, and continued to rise long after the rain stopped.  You wouldn't want to fall in.

The heavy rains in Kentucky were nothing compared to the winds & tornadoes in North Carolina, but by the time I got back all that was over with.  We live in the western part of the state, and while I understand it was very stormy here, the severe damage happened much further east.  We've had a series of quite violent storms this month, so far Valdese has been lucky.

My father, brother & I (in Kentucky) were sitting around talking about an elderly and "eccentric" neighbor, when my brother said "That old woman would irritate a rock". 

Friday night we were entertained by a vacuum cleaner salesmen I inadvertently let into my father's house.  It would require more explanation than anybody would care to read, but for some reason I thought they knew each other.   From him I picked up a little tidbit that the vacuum cleaner has "no cost, but there is a price".   I decided I'd remember that.

Pre-Christmas Kentucky Trip

Merry Christmas, everybody!

We took a quick pre-Christmas trip to Kentucky to see the folks. 

I took this picture from my brother's property.  My father lives in the house in the lower right corner.  My brother & father essentially share a drive way, and it is quite steep.

The small house just to the left is where my Grandparents spent their final years, after they sold their place on Montgomery Creek to one of their sons.  The house is currently owned by an uncle who has spent the last couple of years in a nursing home, so it has been unoccupied for awhile. 

A little further down the road & you can't quite see it because of the trees, my aunt has a large house.  She is elderly and someone stays with her all the time now.  I visited her while I was there, and she seems pretty weak, so I'm kind of worried  about her.  A first cousin & her family lives right next door, in a house my aunt & uncle used to live in before they built the "new" house. 

Across the small valley is what used to be the main road through Knott County - it runs along Troublesome Creek.  Around the curve of that road is Hindman Elementary school, where I went to first & second grade. Up on the hill across the road is a cemetery where my grandparents and some other relatives are buried.  Less than a mile down the road is the cemetery where my mother is buried.

I guess it's home.

Weekend Trip

Howdy from a relatively HUMID North Carolina, & the pun was indeed intended.  This is going to be a long, rambling post, with no particular purpose, so just know that going into it.  Won't hurt my feelings if you don't have the patience.

I took a quick trip to Kentucky last weekend, to visit my father, who is just shy of being in his mid-80s.  He'd spent Thursday night in the hospital, and when I showed up on Friday I could tell he wasn't feeling well.  I wasn't feeling well either, I'd managed to hurt my back somehow a couple of days earlier, and it was getting difficult for me to navigate on my own two feet.  By Saturday, my father was moving around a lot better than I was.

My father joined the Air Force when I was 7 years old.  Until that time I'd spent my entire life in Knott County, Kentucky - specifically Hindman and it's environs.  And I'm absolutely positive I sounded like it.  But in the summer, shortly before my 8th birthday, we packed up and headed out to Altus AFB in Oklahoma.  We said our goodbyes to grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins.   My mother was sad and excited at the same time, and I didn't have a clue.  Completely clueless.  Before the next school year started, I'd been to Oklahoma, out to Arizona, on to California then back to Oklahoma.  After Oklahoma, I'd find my self in Montana, Germany, & Colorado, then back to Kentucky for some college, then off again, all over creation for a long time.

Anyway, I remember driving down a dirt road from my Uncle's house, with him and my cousin standing there watching us leave.   The next time I'd see my cousin, who was also my best friend at the time, he would be dead.

Maybe if everybody examines their life, they can find a point where there is a dividing line.  Where things were one way before and another way after.  Or maybe most people cant.  But I can, and it is very stark, and very real, and I didn't realize it for years and years.  But looking out the back window of the car as we drove on that dirt road down the hill, seeing my uncle and cousin standing there looking quite sad as we left,  is the major dividing point in my life.  That exact moment.  Before that things were one way, after that things were another.

Actually, when we left, we were taking part in a large migration out of Eastern Kentucky.  The area had been losing population for years, and continued to lose for years afterwards.  We joined the herd.  Eventually the area lost it's congressional district, and was gerrymanded into a couple of others.

Before:  I was very young.  I was part of a large extended family - I still don't really know how many first cousins I have, but it's a lot.  A large segment of them were my age, and we played and played and played.  I had aunts and uncles who I thought were all grown up, but in reality they were kids, teenagers.    In a place like Knott County, if a grown up didn't know you, they'd always ask "Whose yore Daddy?", I'd tell them, and suddenly it was like I was a member of the family, because everybody knew either my father's family or my mother's, in most cases both.   I felt very secure, no reason not to.

After:   I didn't belong anywhere, and the longer it went on, the less I belonged, even in Knott County.  The natural shyness (or bashfulness as they were more likely to say) I exhibited before, became much more pronounce after.

I had my first brush with death when I was 5 years old and my great-granfather died.  I'm going to date myself a little here - this was a man who was born in 1860, and lived long enough to pretty much scare me to death.  It was the mustache more than anything - it was a long, thick, 19th century mustache.   He was a lawyer, had at one time been the county attorney, and always wore a suit.  He was very stern, or at least seemed so to me. He scared me to death, and when he died just short of his 99th birthday, I didnt understand why people were upset.  I didnt understand why they were digging a hole to put grandpa in.  I didn't know what death was.

My next brush with death came about 3 years later,  when we were in Oklahoma.  It was the May after we'd left Kentucky, and one evening my mother got a call from her brother, who tearfully told her that my cousin, his nephew, had drowned.   I heard the words but they didn't sink in - nobody said dead.  I was in 8 year old complete denial, surely it was possible for someone to drown and not be dead.  My father was at work, either my mom or my brother called him, I'm not sure, and within a couple of hours we were on our way to Kentucky.

My cousin drowned in Troublesome Creek, a body of water that is 99 miles long and flows into the Kentucky River I believe.  Most of the year, it is probably ankle deep in the area where he drowned - but in the spring it can get very high, and can be very dangerous.  They were visiting his uncle who ran a service station across the road.  It took me decades before I realized the terror of that afternoon and early evening.  My cousin must have felt terror, pain and absolute panic in those moments before died, struggling, but not able to get his head above water.   His parents, ready to leave, couldn't find him, probably at first felt irritation.  As time when on they started feeling panic too, I'm sure.  They probably checked the houses up the hollow behind the service station to see if he was playing up there.  And as time went on and as it began to get later, the horror of that flooding creek must have become more and more of a reality.  At some point I'm sure the police were called, at some point they dragged the bottom of the creek (I don't know if these were people trained, or just local people volunteering to try to find him), and at some point they found his body.  His parents, who went for a visit with a very active and intelligent 7 year old son, went home childless.  I don't know how they dealt with it.

I'm not just throwing "intelligent" around, either.  In one of the country's poorest counties, my cousin's parents had advanced degrees in education from the University of Kentucky.  My cousin was learning to draw and paint, and I have a feeling could read well above his grade level.  Anyway.

No one knows what happened, no one saw it.  But my cousin was dead.  And I was in complete denial about it all.  But how does an 8 year old deal with a 7 year old's death?  Probably by being in denial.

Later that summer, after school was out in Oklahoma, my parents decided it would be a good idea for me to learn to swim, and signed me up for lessons at the town swimming pool.  It was very reasonable, except I was terrified.  I had (and I guess still have) an unreasonable terror of being in water over my head.  The instructors, who were nice people but were probably only high school students, could not do a thing with me.  I thought they hated me, but on the last day (about 5 days or so after I started), they sat down with me and talked to me,  said things to make me laugh, gave me some chocolate cake, and talked to my mother and that was the end of the swimming lessons.  It took me decades to link my cousin's drowning with the terror I felt in that swimming pool. At the time I didn't make the connection.

Decades after my cousin's death, I have not forgotten.  He was less than a year younger than me, and I wonder what his life would be like.

Knott County has changed a lot in the decades since my father joined the Air Force.   I mean the topography.  A lot of the mountain tops have been blown off for strip mining (or surface mining as the operators prefer to call it).  I think there is probably flat land now all the way from Hindman to Hazard and beyond in both directions, and Knott County & Perry County have no business having that much flat land in them.  But that's the way it is.  Strip mining pays well, but it's a hard, dangerous business, both for the people and for the land. 

Go to google & type in Knott County Kentucky, then look at a satellite image of it.  You'll see a lot of green rugged looking terrain, but you'll also see a lot of gray (or light brown) patches.  Those patches are mountain tops that no longer exist.  They are mountains that have been flattened, valleys that have been filled in, creeks that have been buried, and on and on. Every one of those mountain tops had a name. The operators will tell you that it's a good thing, that when the mining operations are over, there's land available for economic activity that didn't exist before.  And they aren't wrong.  But I can't help it - it's very ugly, and I don't like it, and it's a very high price to pay.

So anyway, I visited my father, visited my cousin's mother (his father died 2 years ago), visited my brother, and some more cousins.  Everbody's doing fine, just a little older than they used to be.

Religious Freedom

I recently read a pamphlet from 1961 called "Meet The Mennonites".   It gave a short history of the church, and the various sects in and around Southeastern Pennsylvania.  I learned a few things, so I count the the reading as a success.  One of the things I learned was that the Amish are actually a Mennonite sect, born from a schism within the church in Europe in the 1690s.    They brought their differences to the New World.

There seem to be division upon division within the church.  Some Mennonites are conservative to the point that you'd think they were Amish - apparently one of the main differences being that Mennonites have a meeting house, while Amish hold services in the various member's homes.   Other Mennonites are quite mainstream, driving cars, having professional jobs and so on.

But this was the neat thing, that people here take for granted.  There were all kinds of divisions within the church, with people breaking away from a larger group and forming their own congregations.  While their may have been animosity among the people involved, officially no one cared.  It was their right.  No state police, no federal entity of any kind interfered.   Religious persecution in Europe had existed for centuries, but in the United States religious freedom was guaranteed. 

My father's parents attended a Mennonite Church in Knott County, Kentucky.  Granny would put on a prayer cap, and I remember a lot of people in dark pants and white shirts, no neck-ties.  I seem to remember men & women sitting on opposite sides of the building, but I'm not sure. 

My mother's parents were Baptists, but with a minor adjustment, they could have easily been Old Order Mennonites.  Grandma, especially, was very religious.  They were farmers, maintaining fairly large fields by Eastern Kentucky standards.  Grandpa plowed with a mule.  They kept farm animals - mules, cows, pigs & chickens, and that provided a lot of protien for them. They did not own a car, a tractor or anything like that.  I remember watching Grandma make soap - she deemed it to dangerous and me to young to help, so I just watched from a safe distance.  They did not have indoor plumbing.  But, they had electricity, a telephone, (no TV), and a gas powered lawnmower.  So just get rid of the electicity, telephone & lawn mower, put a prayer cap on Grandma, teach them German, and there you go.

It's interesting.  A little history I did not know.

My Favorite Reunion Picture

We took lots of pictures at the reunion we had last weekend.  This is one of my favorites.

A Sunday Afternoon.

Last weekend we took a quick trip to Kentucky, to my family reunion, but this post is not about that.  

We got back in the mid-afternoon - one of the good things about the trip to/from Western North Carolina to Eastern Kentucky being that it's not really all that far.  Far enough to get you tired, but not far enough to kill you.  So we were tired.

As a result of the fatique, we decided to go to one of Valdese's finer eating establishments, McDonald's, and grab a bite.  This is what this post is about.  The 3 odd things that happened while grabbing a bite at McDonald's.

I don't really like to talk to people that much, so I hung back while Patti Anne placed the orders. I did get the cups and get the drinks while we were waiting for the food (I'm partial to the Number 4, btw, 'cause I don't really like cheese, and it's the one thing you get get without cheese), and this is where the first odd thing happened.  I got the ice & drinks for both of us, but I could not get the lids, straws & napkins because apparently another customer had decided to take up residence in that area.  I watched with amazement and curiosity as he took an unbelievably long time fiddling around with everything.   Looking at the straws, puttering around with various size plastic lids, and I'm not sure what else.  So I waited.  When he finally was done, another customer who had been getting some drinks moved right in, so I had to wait for that person.  But this person took the normal amount of time, then I was able to get my lids, straws and napkins. There is a rythm of getting stuff done at McDonald's - everybody has been there so often they know what it is.  Mr. Orange tank top and blue shorts (you know who you are) upset that rythm. He was completely out of sync.  The anti-Justin Timberlake. 

This leads to the 2nd odd thing.   I now have gotten all the stuff I need to have a satisfying soft drink experience at McDonald's, and I turn around but my way is blocked by 3 older people who seem to think they're standing in their own kitchen.  I looked over at Patti Anne, she looked at me, so near, yet so far.   They were standing there looking at the menu discussing what it was they wanted, trying to decide.   I never understand that.  The thing about McDonald's is that they pretty much have whatever they had yesterday, or last week, or last year.  It doesn't change very much, that's the whole idea.  McDonald's invented this stuff, they're pretty good at it.  There's no need to stand around taking up all the available space scratching your balls trying to figure out what's good.  It's the same as it ever was.  Several people just barged through them, but they were elderly, I couldn't bring myself to.  I just waited until they finally realized that nothing had changed since the last time they were here and they moved up to the counter & ordered.  

I can't believe I used the phrase "scratching your balls".  That's not like me.  I think I used it just to do something unexpected.

The third odd thing was really kind of nice.  Patti Anne volunteered to get refills after I asked her to, because I wanted a refill, but I didn't think I could brave the drink machines again.   While I'm waiting, a little boy, maybe 8 years old, comes out of the bathroom and as he walks past me he stops and says, "That's a very nice shirt you have on".   I was caught completely off guard.  So I said, "Why, thank you, that's a nice shirt you have on too".  And I wasn't just saying that, it was.  It was a yellow t-shirt with a very cool design on it.  The little boy said, "Thank you, my Daddy made it for me."  And he was off.  It left me with a smile.

Spring Time in Kentucky

I took a weekend trip back to my tribal home in eastern Kentucky - my father has been ill and I thought I'd run down and pay a visit.  The picture above is somewhere in Tennessee, I believe just before Kingsport.  I had stopped to fill up the car & stretch my legs (mostly to stretch) and figured I needed to take some sort of odd picture to post in this here blog.

In Kentucky, the redbuds are in full bloom.  The dogwoods are just starting, and many of the trees do not yet have leaves.  Springtime there is about 3 weeks to a month behind springtime here in North Carolina.  I find stuff like that interesting.

Here's something else I find interesing - the perceived length of daylight.  Kentucky and North Carolina are in the same time zone.  Kentucky is further west and further north.  Just based on east/west, the sun should set later in Kentucky than in NC, but NC should get more morning sun. However, there is the north/south issue, and at some point there is more sunlight in the nothern lattitudes than in the Southern - both morning and night.  When I was in Germany, I thought some days in the late sring would never end.   Also, in the part of eastern Kentucky I was going to, you have a lot of hills - a road, a creek and steep hills is much of what Knott County is.  That artificially makes the sun appear to set earlier than it otherwise would.

So, how do they know?

The House On Montgomery Creek, Knott County, Kentucky

           Pictures of my grandparents place - my mother's parents.  My grandpa's name was Noah (pronounced No-ee), my grandma's Lurainne (pronounced Lou-rainy).  Her friends called her "Rainy" sometimes.
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The b&w & color photo of the house were taken from slightly different positions, and perhaps 20 years apart.  I took the color pictures as a teenager, I don't know who took the b&w one.  The scene is very similar.  In the color pictures, the corn, the corn my grandparents grew, (among a thousand other things) is much higher.   I learned early that it didn't pay to run through a corn field on a hot day.  The stalks are sharp.  They cut.  The sweat stings.  It hurts.  Don't do it.
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In the third picture there is a road, a creek, and a bridge.   The road came down the hill from the main road, which was something less than a two lane county road which can seem pretty precarious at times, especially when you're used to modern roads.  This main road is located behind the 'photographer' (me).  The dirt road that went past my grandparents just went up into the hollow, back into the hills, to other houses.    The creek is the famous Montgomery Creek. The bridge was built by my grandfather.  During the spring rains, it floods, and I have seen water rushing down the creek lapping at the bottom of that bridge.  It's unbelievable.   The people on the bridges are part of my family.
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The last picture is the road heading by my grandparents place, going back into the hills.  There is also a footpath next to it - not everybody had a car.  I don't think my grandparents ever owned an automobile.  To the right is the house, then a little behind that is the coal house, and the smoke house.  When I was young, the house was heated with coal fire places - I still have a fondness for that smell.   And I was always amazed at how you could be very warm on the side facing the fire, and cold as ice on the side away from the fire.   Anyway, they literally kept tons of coal, very abundant back there in Eastern Kentucky.
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There was no indoor plumbing either, and I thought nothing of it.  I've been in my share of outhouses.  On hot summer days, I'd check the area to make sure there were no snakes curled up in a corner somewhere.  I just did my best to ignore the flying stinging insects, hoping what the older people said was true, if you don't bother them they won't bother you.  I had my doubts. In the winter I didnt worry so much, cause the snakes went away.
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The place was located in what was known as "bottom land" - land that was more or less level, near the creek.  It was the best type of land to have.   I spent a fair amount of time there as a child.

An Old Service Station in Knott County

My uncle ran a service station here for a while back in the 1960s, and lived in the back.  I can remember playing there, and I think quite a lot of characters from the area (its surprising how many people live in the middle of nowhere) hung out there.  It was a good source of illegal fireworks around Christmas time.
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Later it became the Hindman Monument Company, even though it is several miles out of town.   They made headstones for graves & other cemetery related stuff.
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Now I just think its abandoned.

Another blurb on English

Thank you Ms. Orange for your comment on my previous post. I suggest everyone take a look at her (I'm assuming you're a her) site: http://blog.orangederange.com/. I like it.


Anyway, people in the Southern and Central Appalachians in the USA were fairly isolated for a couple of centuries or so. Major river systems passed them by, there were no major roads thru the area until the mid-20th century, and not that many then. I think trains showed up in the early 20th century. So, I think a lot of the language spoken there was to a certain extent, frozen in time. I'm sure it changed over time, but perhaps not as quickly or in the same way. I understood it, though I didnt really speak it that much. My major hold over is I'm constantly saying "I reckon", instead of something like "I guess", or "I think so", but I think that's all over the South, not just the Appalachians. Oh, and of course you all (y'all), tho I always am refering to more than one when I use it, tho it's not always evident.


I think things really started changing with WWII, when hundreds of thousands of people were drafted or joined the military, and traveled to the corners of the earth. What an experience (terrifying or otherwise) that must have been. And then, they started building roads. Here's an example: Highway 80 is now a 4 lane road that running through Knott County Kentucky. When I was growing up, it was a twisty turny mountain highway. Well the twisty turny highway still exists, but its now called 550. When I was growing up, my father's parents house was quite aways off anything like a main road. The road to their place was dirt & creek, and if the creek was up, you didnt get there. The family cemetery was way up on a hill, and I remember walking up a foot path to get there. Well, the "new" highway 80 fixed all that. Where my grandparents lived no longer exists - they piled about 40 feet of dirt on it. A 4 lane road pretty much destroyed their property. The family cemetery that you had to take a foot path to get to & was way up a hill is now right next to a busy highway. Well, it makes a difference - things can happen now that never could before, and the region is more prosperous and is one step closer to being like the rest of the country. The isolation that used to exist really, for the most part, doesnt any more.

Unless you look for it. Get off the main road, and you can find yourself in another world. Its just that the main road isnt so far away anymore.

Anyway, back to language. I read Huckleberry Finn at age 11. I had no trouble understanding the language, and I didnt realize anyone else would. That book is written in 7 different dialects I think, of a section of Missouri in the 1840's or 1850's, from the highest to the lowest echelons of small town society at the time. I understood it all, and didnt think a thing of it. I didnt realize that some people found it almost like a foreign language. My son, who grew up in Maryland, struggled with it. Even if I had not used the language myself, or hadnt really heard it used, I knew what it meant - I don't know how, I just did. When Huck says, "I aint got no truck with no hounds", I knew, at age 11, exactly what he meant. It took me years before I realized that many people had no clue that all he's saying, in a colorful and round about way, is that he likes dogs. They didnt realize all the meanings "truck" can have. And that has to be because of where I grew up, and listening to the older people talk.

I am not any kind of expert in languages, shoot, I took a history of the language course in my senior year of college and it "liked to kilt me". This is just my observations and thoughts.

Thursday English Lesson: How Smart Are You?

Ok, this is my second, possibly last eastern Kentucky English lesson.

Smart can mean many things, and is used many ways. Also, "Right" can be used many ways.

Smart can mean someone who knows a lot, either about a particular subject, or in general. Right can mean opposite or wrong. Or opposite of left (English is like that).

However back home they are both intensifiers, and have other meanings. If a person steps on a rusty nail, he may say something like "Oh, that smarts". In this instant smart is used to describe pain. If it smarts, it hurts, take my word for it. Later on when when the doctor asks him how bad it feels, he may say, "Well, it hurts right smart", and the doctor would know exactly what he meant. If something hurts right smart, it hurts, again, take my word for it.

Smart can also means other things.

That boy runs right smart. Most likely the speaker is saying that boy runs alot, not that he runs well. I can't ever remember that exact sentence tho. How about, "That boy plays the banjer right smart". Ok, now you have to be careful, cause most likely it means he plays the banjo a lot, but it could also mean that he's good at it. Altho if they wanted to say he was good at it, most likely they'd say, "That boy's a good hand at banjerin' ". Or a right good hand.

I like language a lot. And I like this older usage of words - but its going away. I remember the old folks, the people who were born in the late 19th century, and are all dead and gone now. Those folks had a way with words. The "old-timey" ways are gone.

Ever heard (pronounced heered back home) anyone use the world holp? Its an old way of saying help, and I'm pretty sure old Will Shakespeare himself used it. So did my Grandpa, I heard it.

So, who cares? Language changes, and to wish for the older way of speaking, is to wish for times that are gone. It gets no one anywhere, once times are gone, they're gone. But I like it just the same. Just aint gonna fret about it.

An English Lesson - Aint, Haint, Haunt & Aunt.

Ok here is a little lesson in English, as it is spoken (so I believe) in Eastern Kentucky, where I was born and raised for awhile. It's very similar here in North Carolina, but a bit different.

Anyway, the lesson today concerns 4 words used back home - 3 are very common, one seems to be less common than it used to. This lesson concerns their pronunciation and usage.

Aint

Aint is a great word, I don't know its history, but I know it's quite old. It will never go away, no matter how much teachers and people who make up grammar rules want it to. I suppose it's a contraction. Back home, it seems to be used interchangeably with "is not". It aint mine. It shore aint yores. Very, very common.

(Just as an aside, I lived many years in the Baltimore, MD area. I heard 'aint' used there, by the city dwellers, in a way someone in Eastern Kentucky would have never used it, to my knowledge. I head people say things like "I aint did that", or "I aint said that". So they've taken a word that most educated people think is grammatically incorrect, and made it more so. More power to them, English is a living language, let it live, I say).

Haint

I hear haint a lot back home, and from what I could tell, its interchangeable with "aint". It haint mine. It shore haint yores. I personally never used the word, so maybe I missed the finer nuances. (Another aside. Someone back home who says haint, is quite likely to say hit instead of it. So the sentence becomes, "Hit haint mine, hit shore haint yores"). The thing about 'hit' though, is it can have the standard meaning, to strike something, or any other standard meaning hit may have, as well as being a different way of pronouncing 'it'. So you have to pay attention, and know the context.

Haunt

Ok, first pronunciation: It sounds exactly like haint, which rhymes with aint. Second, usage. It's a noun, not a verb, and it means a ghost. To haunt, is something else entirely, but a haunt (remember to pronounce it haint) can scare the crap out of you. There's a line in an old song "aint no haunt gonna scare me off". Or is it haint no haunt?

Aunt

Last but not least, Aunt. This is the person married to your uncle. But, it is pronounced "aint". Sounds exactly like aint, not ant, or heaven help me, ahnt.

That's it. Just remember, all these words rhyme with can't (pronounced caint), and you may be able to understand things a little bit better in a place like Knott County, Kentucky.

Ok, lesson over.

But here's something interesting (to me). I was in the Army at one time, stationed in Germany. I managed to stay there 4 years, when when I got out, I took a European Out, and set out for England, Scotland and Ireland. I had never been there, thought it possible I many never be there again, and I was going to enjoy it and see what I could see. I pretty much stayed there till the money ran out (just over a month), then got my government paid ticket home changed to leave from London instead of Munich, and all was right with the world. Here was the neat thing - I was in a country that spoke English (instead of German), but much of the time I'd have a hard time following what was being said. Accent, Dialect, Regionalisms, non-standard usage, all combined against me. Frequently my brain would be a syllable or two behind and I'd get lost. On the flip side, very few people had any problem understanding me, maybe because I spoke a little slower on average than they did (its a south of the Ohio River thing). Anyway it was great fun, I loved it, but eventually had to come home and face realities.

Years and years later, I find myself in line at a Roy Roger's Restaurant at Baltimore/Washington International Airport, in Maryland. Roy Rogers, for those who don't know, is a fast food place selling chicken, biscuits, burgers etc. Just ahead of me is this older gentleman who is British, nicely dressed, and seemed to speak a standard form of English (i.e., I could understand him). His turn came to order, and he ordered the two piece meal. The response he got from the gal behind the counter was straight from the streets of Baltimore: "We outta biscuit". He had no clue what she said - seeing it written it's easy, but hearing it, the way it was said, words run together, non-essential words left out, no plural, must have sounded very strange to him. She repeated: "We outta biscuit". Now biscuit means different things in England & America, but that's neither here nor there. This man did not understand. She repeated it a third time, a little louder: "We outta biscuit". Finally she realized, and said it with perfect grammar, though she had to think about it: "We don't have any biscuits". The neat thing is, I don't even think something like "we outta biscuit" qualifies as a dialect. Dont know, that's a later thought. Anyways, I smiled. I knew what the pore ol' feller was going through.