Only in your state has identified 19 things that make it obvious to outsiders you are from Virginia.  Below are some my favorites and some of the most obvious.
Don’t ask a Virginian where she’s from unless you want a long, detailed, explanation. We’re not just from Virginia, but we’re from Tidewater, Southside, DC suburbs (NOVA) or western Virginia (not to be confused with West Virginia.
Grits are always appropriate for breakfast but shrimp and grits for dinner are delicious.
When we say “the river”, “the lake” or “the beach”, everyone knows which one we’re referring too and “the beach” is always Virginia Beach.
We are excessively proud of our colleges, with good reason, we have great colleges and universities in Virginia. We also have some great rivalries. And vanity plates, lots of vanity plates.
We can spot a deer from 100 yards, even if we can’t always avoid the suicide bambies who run in front of our cars.
Whitetail deer jumping a fence into a roadway.
Do not ask us about the Civil War. We will give you far more information that you ever wanted to know.
Monograms. We would prefer they were on everything, purses, jewelry, clothes, and walls. Heck, my license plate is monogrammed.
Road construction. We can handle it. We’ve had to, our entire lives.
Virginians are very friendly and welcoming (except for parts of NOVA).
Read here for all 19 ways to spot a Virginian.
15 comments
Bi polar people
Pimping Civil wars trails makes millions in tourism. Then want to destroy the heritage go figure
Many have formal education no common sense
What to be Californian Gerry Brown
Government
Anything beyond Fredericksburg is
Is Virginia. NOVA high end third world
The only state that approves rubberneck driving
Most VIRGINIA drivers speed up when you put a turn signal on. Have no idea why. You use a turn signal Maryland
Close 2nd.
State police block traffic for miles on hot summer days when they could have used the extreme right lane.
Friendly?
get a grip
Nova?
The new New delhi
ANOTHER:
Long ago I was on an early morning departure from Anchorage (Alaska) back to Virginia through Seattle. Something in the delicious Japanese dinner the night before the flight was – ultimately – nasty because about 3AM I was in the throes of vomiting food poisoning. But I have the resolve that all rural Virginians have to ‘make it through’ (even if you have to cut off a limb, or throw up your guts, sell the prize bull, etc). I was able to hold my tummy together to get through security, board and get to Seattle just in time to throw up about 10 times, and then hold it together again to board the plane for home. After we took off I found my ‘sick bag’ and asked, with many apologies, the stranger lady seated next to me if I might ‘borrow’ her sick bag (another Virginia thing? : may I ‘borrow’ your sick bag? as if she’d want it back?). After using both of them the stranger lady asked, ‘are you from Virginia?’ … I said yes, and she said ‘I thought so by how graciously you did that’ (meaning getting ‘sick’ in both bags and then quietly walking back to dispose of them without asking the steward to do). Is that a Virginia thing?
I love my biscuits and gravy.
Jimmy Dean sausage because of the herbs and spices, but you will need a roll of Jesse Jones for a good amont of grease.
Brown the flower good (got to have a brown shade) and it better be fork gravy not spoon gravy.
FYI:
Charlie Daniels is in Danville on Fri. Oct 20th
Yes, of course FORK gravy …. but you can also try spicing a vegan alternative to make the gravy, if not every time, how about every other time? … and save the taxpayers, and others paying health insurance premiums, some money by avoiding a multitude of cardiovascular, diabetic, cancer and other costly health disasters. Ain’t it?
I’ll have to try and figure out some alternatives now that I’m older.
Where missin the beans & cornbread on the list.
Well, YES! homemade – not canned – pinto beans, and cornbread, was among our FAVORITE country suppers! We salted it too much but that is easily adapted recipe. YUM. AND …. no costly!
Sd you forgot to call everyone outside of NoVa a racist
ACTUALLY, we rural Virginians have come to realize that most urban Virginians (not all, but most) intentionally ‘racialize’ rural – and especially rural working class – Virginia, by stereotyping, belittling and dehumanizing us as ‘rednecks’, dull/slow, uneducated, ‘trailer/White/etc trash’, etc. We have typically found that so-called Democrats are the most aggressive and punishing ‘racializers’ but so-called Republicans are apt at it, too.
It’s “white privilege” to have grandaddy bust his but in a coal mine end up with black lung along with hip replacements to make enough to buy some property to mountainous for anything else but to raise steer.
To have a gravity flow spring, root cellar for grannies canin
and potatoes, yes the bag of beans on the wood stove.
To have a party line.
To have them pass down the values of hard work helping your neighbors without being asked.
To have food or bring for when a loved one is lost, to a reef on the door.
To go trout fishin with a cane pole and get mad when you end up with a horny head (chub) on your line.
You might just pick up on what part or Virginia we are from when you see the worn pleat down the front of our pair of Wranglers.
I truly have been blessed to have lived of base at NAS Oceana as a small child , I remember Blue Angeles and Neptune Festival the to have daddy bring me home to be raised where he and his brothers were raised.
I expect many don’t understand why are shoes are orange. It is from the Iron in the soil. They never will understand us nor why there is nothing to do. It is because we had everything and could not want for more.
One day I will get home to
Carroll County, Va . God’s Country!
Thank you for your lovely expression of ‘at home-ness’ in rural Virginia. As the Hebrew Scriptures – and other literatures, including Southern traditions of story telling, Mountain songs, etc – related, being ‘at home in the world’ – in the place God created or brought you to be – your ‘Promised Land’ – is close to being ‘at home with God’.
We are so Blessed from the beautiful scenery and cool streams to the Chesapeake then the hospitality of the folks, wow . There is no pace I would rather be than Virginia.
Sadly, my family got here, in the Shenandoah Valley, nearly 300 years ago and the ancient ‘meeting house/fort’ is still standing near the Shenandoah River. But it has become SO VERY expensive to live here we must move in our retirement. We are looking at Wisconsin. We believe that even in the next 15-25 years, should we live that long in retirement, there were be so many problems in Virginia, from devastating coastal storms and aftermath, growing violence and aftermath, perhaps growing period of drought or floods, continuing and increasing income gaps between the working class and the money class, etc … that we do not want to face all that in our older age.