Double Talk was the Dialect of the 1930s to 1940s in the Rural South

Language of the day changes so gradually and subtly that we often don;t notice it until one day it just seems to jump out at you. Dialet often changed within relatively short distances. The dialecy in upper South Carolina where I spent my early years was very different from the mountain dialect in Western North Carolina where we moved when I was five or six years old. This was a distance of only about 50 miles "as the crow flies".

The "Thermal Belt" of Upper South Carolina occurs where the Piedmont foot hills bump up into the mountains of the Blue Ridge Range near the Continental Divide. When warm air to the south reaches the mountains, it stalls, causing this phenomenon which extends the growing season by several weeks.

Where watermelons and peaches thrived in the Piedmont, apples and tobacco were more common in the mountains. When the climate changed, so did the dialect.

When I was "coming along" in what was dubbed "The Great Depression", people talked and moved at a different pace. They used many double word expressions. I have used quotation marks to emphasize these. If you were going to pay a debt in cash instead of barter, you'd say, "He paid me in "cash money." If someone brought you a load of wood, it was a "wagon load", "truck load" or "wheelbarrow load".

You would pay a "store bill" or a "due bill", You would buy a "milk cow." On a farm, each stage of aging a product might have several names for products from a single crop. We cut the "corn tops" off the "corn stalks" above the ears. We stacked thm in "corn shocks" to cure in the field. We then pulled the "corn fodder" from the ears down to the ground, tied the bundles and stored them in the barn for "cow feed roughage" to use in winter. When the weather was cool and the corn ears had cured in the field, we harvested the ears by the "wagon load", and put them in the "corn crib". We young folks learned a new "double talk" word when we did the chore of carrying "corn tops" and "corn fodder" from the field to the barn. It was called a "Pack Saddle" which is a pesky, fuzzy little caterpillar that would get down your shirt collar and sting the fire out of you!

All farmers and most country people raised pigs to have "hog meat" for the "winter time". Many products came from butchered hogs. When the weather cooled and it was "hog killin' time", we had "cracklin' bread", "souse meat","hog jawl" and sometimes, "chit'lins". Of course, everyone raised a "kitchen garden" to have "Irish Potatoes", string beans", cow peas" and mustard greens" to stretch out a meal.

We had "hen eggs"," fritters", (pancakes) and "mo'lasses" to tide us through the morning. There was "home churned butter" with the little crown stamped on top by the butter mold to slather on "biscuit bread" or "corn bread", and "stew beef" on Sunday if we were lucky. In summer, a slice of fresh tomato in the biscuits made that morning made a great afternoon snack. Remember, a lot of folks had no refrigeration and meat had to be eaten right away. Many people had an ice box and a man would come by in the ice truck and sell you a big square chunk of ice."Dried apples" hung from rafters to make winter desserts.

People were encouraged to make the "kitchen Gardens" as pledge of patriotism during times of war and to tide us through the hard times when "cash money" was hard to come by. Country folks often tried to make work into fun by sharing the building of a barn, by having "a barn raisin' " or a "corn shuckin' " to make a hard job less tedious. Neighbors would help neighbors, it was the way things were done. At a "corn shuckin", a bottle of wine mght be hidden near the bottom to entice quick work. Sometimes, the neighbors who were invited to the "corn shuckin'" might find several ears of "Indian corn" near the bottom of the stack. The boys that found one of these ears of corn got to kiss the girl of their choice. The loosers might mumble, "You can't kiss all the girls." Corn shuckin' and hog killin time made for an innocent, yet exciting time for young people to get together.

Clothes and tools often had "double talk" names as well. Do you remember "overhauls" (overalls), "Sunday shoes","work shoes" (brogans) and "high heel" Sunday shoes for women to wear with their "Sunday go to meertin" attire? The boys my age had "barlow knives and "pocket watches". We bought "penny candy" such as a "Guess What? which was two peices of taffy wrapped in waxed paper with a "Made in Japan" toy for only a penny. Not bad!

Even tobacco had many diferent names. There was "chew tobaccer", "pouch tobacco" and "tailor made" cigarettes, which were greatly superior to the poor quality "Hoover Dust" most of us had to settle for. Sometimes men would find ways to obtain some "drinkin' likker" or make their own. We had water pumps that brough water from the well, sometimes even to the kitchen sink if we were lucky. I recall kitchen sinks with pumps that brough water right into the house! The bathroom was called an "outhouse". Only a few people had a radio, which was alright because electricty hadn't made it to the rural areas anyway.

It seems everyday terms required extra descriptives. You may be "Poor as Job's turkey", or "poor as a whipoorwill". You might be called "city folk" or "country folk". Girls wore "hair ribbons, carried "pocket books" and wore "dress up clothes" to social events.

When it rained at night, it was called "A poor man's rain" because the farmer could get out and work the next day without getting soaked. We didn't have much "cash money" but always "made do." You could buy a box of stick matches for a nickel and they would last six months. A gallon of kerosene for your oil lamp cost about fifteen cents and lasted two months. Many people would barter for goods and services. A few stores would give trusted neighbors a "line of credit", but most would not. One sign I remember seeing on a store front said, "In God we trust, all others pay cash."

Older men spent a lot of time sitting around the country store, telling tales and spreading the latest "news".If you told an older gentleman something and he didn't answer, you'd presume he didn't hear you and repeat it. To shut you up, he might say, "I ain't disputin' ye."

A "country mile" was considered longer than a city mile. Many people had to walk to work or to a store to catch a ride. They often said they had to walk a "fur piece" to get somewhere.

Cool was described as "Cool as a cucumber." If you were slow, you were, "Slow as a snail". If something was a bit too small it might be described as "tight as Dick's hatband." If you were considered stingy, someone might remark that "you wouldn't pay a nickel to see an ant eat a bale of hay."

If anyone put you down because you couldn't do any better, you could say, "Po' folks have po' way." We defended our limited variety of foods by saying, "We have beans and 'taters one day and 'taters and beans the next!" I once heard a teacher fuss at a messy student, "Were you raised in a barn?" The boy grinned and answered, "A peice of one".

By the time I spend a rainy day recalling those simple times when I was young, it puts me in a nostalgic mood, "Pass them 'Cat's head biscuits, please!"