Local color
On Saturday, my sister and I pulled off the interstate at the junction for the highway that would take us to the beach, and we immediately realized we were in the town of Stereotype, NC. A sign that was stapled to a telephone pole advertised Big Men's Clothing up to size 85. There was a huge warehouse store whose exterior paint job was just spelling out the goods they sold: CIGARETTES! GUNS! DOLLS!(??), and there was a special advertisement banner that said, "DOLLAR DUZ IT", whatever that means.
We went into a convenience store where a handwritten sign on the front door said, "Restrooms are for customers only. Please be a customer." I wasn't sure whether to take this as a hospitable gesture, a polite threat, or an incomplete sentence.
There was another handwritten sign on the men's room door that said, "If door is locked, restroom is occupied," which seems pretty obvious to me, but maybe locking restrooms are a recent social breakthrough in this town. What's weird is that this was written out with quote marks around it, as though it was a oft-used saying from a famous local ("Well, it's like ol' Billy Sideshow used to say...").
The door was unlocked, so I went in (so while I can't vouch for the actual saying, I can tell you that the inverse is true), and found the funniest bit of writing that I'd seen in this town: the one single piece of graffiti on the men's room wall said, "Rednecks go home." And I could only think, "Dude, they ARE home."
5 comments:
Just so visitors from DC Blogs think wrong of me...my family's from North Carolina and I grew up there and in Texas. I love NC and am sure will end up there again one day. It's just that, since moving to DC, I've become a little more sensitive to the true side of some of the stereotypes.
In sum: don't think I don't love North Carolina.
why does Reid hate NC so much?
btw, I looked for Stereotype, NC on the map, and I couldn't find it, methinks you are making this whole NC thing up.
Look harder, Doug. It's there. It's part of the "Tri-some" area of eastern NC, made up of the three towns of Stereotype, Earnhardtboro and Mulleton.
If you love NC so much, why don't you marry it?
Reid can't marry North Carolina. They're not related.
Reid, if your "Geographical 'Tri-some'" meets up with Doug’s "Geological three-some" [circa May 30, 2006], do we end up with some kind of abnormal incestuous geographilogical sextet? Is there such a thing as a normal incestuous geographilogical sextet?
The signs around here (here being New Zealand) are a bit weird as well. For one thing, the few remaining Christians in New Zealand have consolidated their efforts around a common cause: speeding. No kidding. There are signs on all the roads with crosses on them and messages such as, “The faster you go, the bigger the mess” and “The quick are the dead.” I LOVE these signs.
The rest really need to be seen - and I have some pictures I’ll post soon - but there was one in Dunedin that boasted “Fairies, Wizards and Gifts”.
“I really need to go buys some new gifts. My old ones are getting a little thread-bare.”
“Well, I need to get a couple of fairies and look at the new crop of wizards. Let’s go to…”
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