Weekend in the Country

Last weekend I visited a good friend in North Carolina. It was a very pleasant trip, and I got a little dose of some country living. Actually it wasn’t much different than life in the Chicago suburbs except there were hills, and you have to drive at least a half hour to get anywhere good. My final evening was spent at a true blue country farm located in the middle of nowhere, complete with goats and barn cats and crops and even a scarecrow! It was fabulous.

Anyway, there were a couple of enjoyable observations from my time there. First, the accents weren’t too bad, though they were definitely pretty strong. Incidentally, the most hilarious accents belonged to two young girls I spent some time with; ages 3 and 6 I think. They managed to turn most one syllable words into two syllable words with ease. For example, “off” was “ow-off,” “dog” was “dow-og,” “where” was “way-ere,” etc … It was quite impressive really—I’ve never heard such interesting speech come out of such small people.

The other very important thing I learned is that a barbecue in Chicago is different than a barbecue in NC. Actually, it’s not “a barbecue” there, it’s just “barbecue.” Barbecue consists of barbecue pork only, topped with this weird tomato-based coleslaw on a bun. It was quite delicious except for the coleslaw which I’m never a fan of.