Mojos are round. Jojos are wedges. Biiig difference! /s
My wife’s from Seattle. It took almost a decade of living in Southern Wisconsin before she asked “I keep hearing about ‘Up North’… where exactly is it?”
"Well, first off, it’s ‘Up Nort’ dere, ya hey’…"
And there is no accepted cut off point. Maybe north of Wausau or The Dells if you’re a Flatlander From Chicagah. But once you get ‘a ways up by Minocqua’, and start seeing fir trees and clear lakes, that’s when you start to relax.
And that’s the key. If you’re not relaxed, you’re not there yet. When you’re sitting on the porch of a cabin, staring at a lake… or on a boat (with a cooler, very important), with nothing you have to do, then you’re truly Up North.
I just want to make a nerdy comment that I misread this thread title as “Regular expressions you didn’t always realize were not widespread”. Hm, maybe the {m,n} notation in Perl…? Tried to use that in vi and it totally did not work.
When I first relocated back here, I kept hearing about “Dead Man’s Curve” on traffic reports. It was a good ten years before I figured out exactly where it is.
I first heard of tater tot casserole from Duggar forums (or more specifically anti-Duggar forums), and it always sounded disGUSTing. I haven’t changed my mind. Probably because I grew up relatively poor, and we subsisted on a lot of similar casseroles, and they have bad connotations for me.
i live at the most northern point of la county and to get to the more populated parts you “go down below” to get to LA proper then orange county etc. … and i use the expression to go anywhere south of where i currently am… like when i lived in Indiana id say “lets go down below to Kentucky and visit relatives” If you didn’t know where I’ve lived most of my life id get strange looks …
Another one is at schools in my area there’s a dish that’s made by taking out a6- 8 Oz bag of corn chips turning and slitting on its side and emptying half the bag out then you layer rice and chili on the chips in the bag and then put the chips you took out on top
Said dish is called “pepper bellies” because the off brand of corn chips supposedly were shaped like bells …Little did i know what that meant everywhere else in the country…
I tink Shawano’s a good marker for da start of “up nort dere” myself. Da trees is a lot differnt from around Trivers or Fondy
Two Rivers and Fond du lac for those unfamiliar with ‘sconsin.
For me, having grown up in Green Bay, that’s around my mental dividing line for “up nort” versus not, too. Shawano is almost exactly as far north as Wausau, and my mental map is anything nort (sorry, north 
) of that line gets more woodsy, and more lake-y.
Speaking of Wisconsin, grade school friends and I were exploring in the woods there and came across an old baseball diamond. Overgrown, with faded paint on the outfield fence “billboards”… and a drinking fountain, where the water came straight up out of a sphere and spilled back on itself. I’d never seen anything like that before and I remember shouting “You guys! Look! This is why they call them bubblers!”
Here it is in action … And outside the State Capitol.
…
Friends of my parents went to the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. It was hot and humid and the soda pop stands had long lines, so they asked a security guard if there were any bubblers. He replied “Down past that souvenir stand take a right into the Progress building should be near the restrooms and how are things in Milwaukee?”
And elsewhere it means ???
Ref Jojos, I often encounter breaded french fries these days. It’s unclear whether it’s wheat flour breading or potato starch breading or what. Disgusting in any case.
Cut up the potatoes. pan fry or deep fry or bake or roast. Slather with spices and salt, plus maybe butter or grease to help the toppings stick. Eat. All else is heresy.
I was informed pepper bellies was an old racist term for italians and Hispanic peoples
I think tonic is on the verge of dying out in favor of soda. I’ve never met anyone who was born as late as 1940 who uses tonic.
So “tonic” isn’t always tonic water?
I do hope that wouldn’t make ordering a drink with tonic confusing…
“Excuse me, I ordered a gin and tonic…but never mind. Come to think it, this gin & grape nehi is lovely!”
Only when you’re talking to 80 and 90 year olds from Massachusetts. Literally everyone I’ve ever heard refer to soda as tonic is currently between the ages of 80 and dead.
I’ve had something similar happen with “soda.” Ordered a “scotch and soda” and got Scotch with 7-Up as the mixer. (Should be soda water, for those unfamiliar.)
Just…wow. A scotch and soda is so common that it’s almost hard to believe. Except for neat or on the rocks, it’s probably the pairing I’ve heard the most. Like a gin and tonic, or a rum and coke… “Oh, sorry, I just assumed you meant rum and cocaine.”
Years ago, on a cold night, I once asked for hot buttered rum in a bar. The bartender gave me an entirely blank look. I said something like ‘OK, whatever hot rum drink you’ve got.’
Some time later he brought me a drink. It was approximately room temperature, maybe a bit colder. It had rum in it – and hot pepper.
(It was awful.)
That’s one of those drinks I’ve heard of, but I couldn’t for the life of me tell you what goes into it beyond butter and rum. (And I would not expect the vast majority of bars to have butter on hand, or possibly even a way to warm up your drink.) I just know it’s somewhere on those fall/winter-time alcoholic drinks like tom and jerries. I mean, I wouldn’t give you rum and hot pepper, sure, but I’d probably give you a quizzical look if it’s not the type of bar that would serve warm or buttered drinks.
Yeah, I saw the recipe online somewhere over the holiday season, and after reading what was involved said “yeah, no, pass”. It’s a bit of a project (the recipe below says “easy to make”, but that’s relative) and I’m guessing one of those drinks that would get you a head shake and an eyeroll in a bar, like ordering a freshly-mixed eggnog or sangria. The rum and hot pepper may have been sarcasm on the part of the bartender 