yankees
Safely arrived. You can tell when you’ve hit yankee country. When the gas stations stop calling it “soda” or “soft drink” and start calling it “pop”.
Update: The offending state was West Virginia. PA is worse. And Pittsburgh drivers suck. That is all.
November 21st, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Welcome to the neighborhood.
Remember: Don’t ask for grits at breakfast. You’ll confuse the heck out of the waitress.
November 21st, 2008 at 7:28 pm
That depends where you are. I grew up in Milwaukee (pretty damn far North), and it was always “soda” or (far less often) “soft drink.” Of course, most people I encounter in the South don’t call it “soda,” either: they call it “Coke,” irrespective of what it actually is.
And, on this count, the numbers don’t lie.
November 21st, 2008 at 8:27 pm
When I hear someone refer to it as something other than a “cold drank,” I know I’ve left the neighborhood.
November 21st, 2008 at 8:59 pm
yeah, say pop the right way. although, if it is not New York, you are still in the South.
Just found out it is customary to tip at Barbe-cutie.
November 21st, 2008 at 9:55 pm
dont ask for sweet tea… the crap they will hand you isnt really sweet… and im not sure it is tea either.
November 21st, 2008 at 10:19 pm
If calling soda “coke” is a Southern thing, I must be a Southerner myself. Then again, I do live a bit to the north of where I was before I came to the South…
November 21st, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Oh yeah, and where I come from, asking a waitress for “Sweet Tea” is a good way to get slapped for calling her “Sweetie” (unless, of course, she’s an Obama supporter, in which case she’ll bring you a nice, cold class of “tee hee”).
November 22nd, 2008 at 1:23 am
If you hear the word, Pop…Run Like Hell!…you are in Yankeeland and muchlly despised! Your life is in danger. They hate everyone…but each other most of all, and it comes from living so close together. “When you can hear your neighbor, “FART” it stinks!”
November 22nd, 2008 at 2:21 am
Those are Pittsburgh Yankees. Here we call it soda.
November 22nd, 2008 at 10:48 am
Those are Pittsburgh Yankees. Here we call it soda.
I was gonna say, we don’t call it pop here in northeast PA.
Oh, and here’s a map laying out pop vs soda vs coke,
http://popvssoda.com:2998/countystats/total-county.html
November 22nd, 2008 at 12:05 pm
I call it soda pop. What does that make me?
November 22nd, 2008 at 3:09 pm
IIRC, the transition from Soda to Pop occurs as you head west in NY, with Rochester being the eutectic point where it is called “Soda Pop.”
So, Chris, I guess it makes you a Rochestertonian.
November 22nd, 2008 at 4:47 pm
MAhole, born and raised. I’ve never called it anything other than “soda”…
November 22nd, 2008 at 5:30 pm
It’s always been pop, and it’s not just drivers, but all of Pittsburgh that sucks and not just because I’m from Cleveland.
November 22nd, 2008 at 9:52 pm
I grew up outside of Pittsburgh, and even sort of claimed it as home when in the Military, since no one ever heard of where I lived. But seriously, Pittsburgh stopped sucking! It is completely full of Suckage and now is expelling it outwards into Western PA in ever widening circles. It is exporting its assholes and politics into the red country surrounding that pestilence filled hellhole. The sooner the city and county surrounding it implodes and returns to farmland the better for everyone.
The Countryside up here is much nicer than any place I lived/visited in the south, and I only skipped one state – Mississippi. I only lost one thing in Dixie,my Damn-Yankee Ex Wife and you guys can keep her! I’ll take the rolling hills an hour north of the rusting buckle of the steel belt.
November 24th, 2008 at 8:22 am
To be fair, Pittsburgh doesn’t suck nearly as much as Filthadelphia, and Pittsburgh drivers aren’t nearly as bad as New Jersey drivers.
November 24th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Where in WV? In Northern WV, where I grew up it was about a 50/50 split between pop and soda. Down in the southern part of the state, folks call it pop. Those same folks will also likely shoot you for referring to them as yankees.
But I must agree with you about Pittsburgh drivers. Not the worst in the nation to be sure (have you driven in NJ?) One thing I’ve found driving in Pittsburgh is that to be safe, you have to learn to drive like they do. You are either one of them, or you are the enemy.
November 24th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Somebody actually mapped pop vs. soda:
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2008/08/18/308-the-pop-vs-soda-map/
November 24th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Uncle — I love your blog, but you shouldn’t lump folks in WVa. and Western Pa. in the same “yankee” category as the coastal yankees in Philly, NYC and Boston. I’m southern born, but spent most of my formative years in rural western Pa. They may say “pop,” but they’re cut from the same cloth as most southerners and cling to their guns just as tightly as their brethren south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
November 24th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Pop vs. soda? Hmm, in remote parts of Haywood County, NC, we can go you one better. Instead of pop or soda it is called dope. As in, you’uns wanna a RC dope and a Moonpie? I don’t know of any place else on Earth that calls it dope.
November 25th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Just as a word to the wise, if your Grandma tells you that taking a soda bath will ease your chicken pox and you dump all your Dad’s pop into the tub, you will get spanked, sick or not.
November 25th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
“I don’t know of any place else on Earth that calls it dope”
Henry County, Va, ‘cept you ask for a pack of Nabs.
November 26th, 2008 at 1:27 am
Old folks around here (Tuscaloosa County, AL) call it dope as well, and refer to delivery trucks as dope wagons. That said, only employees of Buffalo Rock (the local Pepsi franchisee) call it anything but Coke, or the more colorful Co-Cola variation one sees in Centerpoint.
November 26th, 2008 at 8:07 am
When I was a kid many many years ago in Knoxville TN. they (cokes) were refered to as a “DOPE’.