# Help me tell Kentucky and Tennessee apart **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [October 11, 2009, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-tell-kentucky-and-tennessee-apart/513385 "2009-10-11T05:15:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![hellpaso](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ecae2f/32.png) [@hellpaso](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hellpaso)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2009, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-tell-kentucky-and-tennessee-apart/513385/41 "2009-10-15T13:41:47Z")
> [@missred](#): > > Kentucky: basketball country > > Tennessee: football country > > (Go Vols! 😃 ) _East_ Tennessee: football _West_ Tennessee: basketball;) ---
**Author:** ![diku](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4af34b/32.png) [@diku](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/diku)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2009, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-tell-kentucky-and-tennessee-apart/513385/42 "2009-10-15T13:45:52Z")
> [@missred](#): > > Kentucky: basketball country > > Tennessee: football country > > (Go Vols! 😃 ) Exactly what I was going to say, having lived in Lexington for 15 years and now Nashville for 12. Kentucky is racing horses, basketball, bourbon, Goetta, burgoo, and mutton barbecue. Tennessee is walking horses, football, Tennessee Whiskey, souse, hot fried chicken, and pulled pork barbecue. All bets are off when you get to Northern Kentucky though (lived there 10 years as well). ---
**Author:** ![Ellen\_Cherry](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellen_cherry/32/3600_2.png) [@Ellen\_Cherry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellen_Cherry)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2009, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-tell-kentucky-and-tennessee-apart/513385/43 "2009-10-17T12:30:55Z")
Well, diku you’re going to have to include goetta in your Northern Kentucky “all bets are off” section. I’ve lived here all my life and only heard about it a few years ago. It’s certainly not something typical of the state. Burgoo isn’t even all that common, but most people have at least heard of it. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2009, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-tell-kentucky-and-tennessee-apart/513385/44 "2009-10-22T06:06:48Z")
> [@Equipoise](#): > > When I was a kid and we had to identify states by their shape on a map, I memorized that Kentucky butted up against Ohio, Indiana and Illinois (ok, and a tiny bit of Missouri and WV too) and Tennessee was underneath Kentucky. \ Huh. All I did was recognize that Kentucky looks like a fried chicken leg. It was even orange on the map. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2009, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-tell-kentucky-and-tennessee-apart/513385/45 "2009-10-22T06:27:54Z")
Kentucky is where they marry their cousins, and Tennessee is where they have yet to develop opposable thumbs? It’s always easy to remember Kentucky is on top, because it was a Border State, while Tennessee was in the Confederacy and so farther south. _WKRP in Cincinnati_ taught us that the city is on the Kentucky border, so that further reinforces the “northernness” of that state. Is there a different mindset in Kentucky, it having remained in the Union while Tennessee seceded? Or was it just another slave state, albeit one that just happened not secede? ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2009, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-tell-kentucky-and-tennessee-apart/513385/46 "2009-10-22T15:21:30Z")
In Tennessee, the grass is green. 🙂 Both states fall naturally into three regions: East, Central, and West. Eastern Kentucky is where the West Virginians point while saying, "That’s where the _real_ hillbillies live. Central Kentucky is Horse Country – the whole Derby mystique, Kentucky Colonels, mint julep, the sort of place where you know your horse’s ancestry back more generations than most people know their own. They tend to look down on East and West Kentucky, considering themselves the _"real_ Kentuckians. (They may have a point.) Western Kentucky is a region with an identity crisis – it wants desperately to be a part of _something_: the South, the Midwest, somewhere, but it doesn’t really fit with any of them. It’s extremely proud of “the Land Between the Lakes”, a section of the state that lies between the dammed-up Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, which is admittedly pretty country but overpromoted to an extent not otherwise heard outside a carnival midway barker’s spiel. Eastern Tennesse is … weird. It’s hill-and-river-valley country, and Southern, but was pro-Union in the heart of the Confederacy during the Civil War, and still has a “we’re gonna defy the stereotypes” attitude. Central Tennessee is … Country. With a capital C. Nashville. Small towns that are the world headquarters of church denominations you’ve never heard of. Places where the major industry is building coffins. And mixed in with all it, a “live and let live” attitude that doesn’t demand you conform to anything but showing the same respect for others’ eccentricities back to them in excange for them respecting yours. Western Tennesee … well, it’s North Mississippi. Complete with attitudes and Delta blues music. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2009, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-tell-kentucky-and-tennessee-apart/513385/47 "2009-10-23T19:24:00Z")
> [@LouisB](#): > > Bug Tussle is in Texas although I forget the name of the nearest metropolis. In times past, a huge chili cook-off was held in Bug Tussle but I think the place lost out to some place that had more amenities—indoor plumbing, hot and cold running water, air conditioning, things like that. > So where’s Hooterville? Bug Tussle is the cross roads of East Farm to Market Road with State Route 34, [here](http://maps.google.com/maps?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hl=en&tab=wl). It’s southeast of Denison, due south of the Lyndon B. Johnson National Grassland. ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2009, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-tell-kentucky-and-tennessee-apart/513385/48 "2009-10-24T00:18:01Z")
Tennessee is flat on top and bottom, Kentucky is only flat on the bottom. ---
**Author:** ![outlierrn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/outlierrn/32/3005_2.png) [@outlierrn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/outlierrn)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2009, 7:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-tell-kentucky-and-tennessee-apart/513385/49 "2009-10-24T07:32:10Z")
You take a K and an E, an N and a T, a U and a CKY, that spells Kentucky, and it means paradise. You take a chicken and you kill, you put it in the skillet, you fry it up golden brown, that’s southern cookin’, and it sure is nice. ETA, no really, that’s a song. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2009, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-tell-kentucky-and-tennessee-apart/513385/50 "2009-10-24T20:05:15Z")
> [@tdn](#): > > …New Hampshire is fairly conservative. Vermont is very liberal… New Hampshire has the cheapest booze in New England; it’s legal to walk around naked in Vermont. ---
**Author:** ![Leiko](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Leiko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leiko)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2009, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-tell-kentucky-and-tennessee-apart/513385/51 "2009-10-24T22:17:57Z")
> [@NajaNivea](#): > > Washington has raspberries, apples, onions, Seattle, and sales tax. > Oregon has blackberries, beer, pot, coffee, rain, and hippies. > We both have volcanoes. You shouldn’t use hippies as a distinguishing factor- between the Evergreen State College (Go Geoducks!) and Western Washington University (specifically, Fairhaven College), Washington has plenty of hippies both old and young. Also, rain? I think Oregon gets worse wind than Washington, but the rain is about the same. I prefer to remember that Washington has mint and Oregon has roses. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-tell-kentucky-and-tennessee-apart/513385.md?page=2)