Southerners and Soft Drinks

November 17, 2025 ~ sanebishop ~ 6 Comments

Forget the rural-urban divide, college allegiances, or barbecue preferences, what splits North Carolinians into warring tribal camps has long been our tastes in carbonated sucrose. We have the mainstream, Coke versus Pepsi, divide, but two other soft drinks in North Carolina also have fervent followings: Cheerwine and Sundrop. The former was invented in North Carolina, in Salisbury, and the latter has been adopted as a native son, or native soda, and is certainly the soda of choice here in the foothills region. Some locals proselytize more than others. For instance, one farmer here often buys his temporary employees Sundrop. “When you buy Sundrop, excellent,” said a worker, who was from Mexico. “When I buy Sundrop, so-so.”

One thing that is somewhat confusing about the south is that coke can be both a specific and generic term. It could very well refer to a Coca-Cola, or it could refer to any Coca-Cola like alternative like Pepsi, or it could refer to any caffeinated and carbonated sugary beverage, like Sundrop or Cheerwine or Mountain Dew. Most likely, if someone tells you that they want a coke, they either want a Coca-Cola or, if that is not available, a Pepsi. But, if someone asks if you want a coke, they are likely using it in the general sense of any soft drink. If you respond “yes,” they will likely respond, “What kind?”

My wife’s grandpa, who died last year at the age of eighty four, always used the term dope as a generic term for soft drink. “Let me get a dope,” he would tell the waitress. The waitress, likely being born in a different millenia, would just smile nervously at him, as if he was senile. “He means a coke,” I would translate.

“Oh, ok, what kind?” she would ask, relieved.

“A Sundrop, if you have it,” he would say.

Apparently, dope was once the customary term for soft drink in western North Carolina. That usage, however, is becoming archaic, as evidenced by those puzzled looks on waitresses’ faces, and due to the fact that the people who used the term are dying off. My wife’s grandpa had an extra refrigerator in his utility room that he kept stocked with 2-liter bottles of Sundrop. He called it his “dope refrigerator.” He didn’t drink alcohol, but by golly he had a dope refrigerator, and he faithfully imbibed Sundrop till the day his very last days. Possibly, his heavy consumption of Sundrop over the years hastened his demise due to kidney failure. His doctor told him to “go easy on the stuff” but as far as I know that’s all he ever drank.

Before he died, my wife’s grandpa basically weaned our son, his great-grandson, on Sundrop. Thomas would toddle next door to visit, clamber up on a bar stool, and gulp down “tasty drink,” as he still calls it to this day. I’m not sure what the generic term for soft drink is in heaven, but hopefully some sort of tasty drink springs eternal there. Back here on earth, where time is limited, it’s likely less about what you drink or what you call it, but more about the time spent with the folks sipping dopes or cokes or tasty drinks. In his latter years, that’s something my wife’s grandpa seemed to know well–life is too short not to sit down and have a Sundrop with someone, even if it’s against the doctor’s orders.

Breakfast with Bees

March 16, 2023March 16, 2023 ~ sanebishop ~ 11 Comments

Once in a moment of inspiration, I decided to buy 32 apple trees. Talk about making work for yourself. Now, every winter, the trees need pruning to ensure a bountiful apple harvest for the gluttonous woodland creatures. Between the racoons, opossums, and deer, we probably salvage half a peck of apples for ourselves, enough for Natalie to make a delicious homemade apple crisp each year to remind me of the foolishness of my moment of inspiration.

“This better taste good,” she says, “how much did you spend on those apple trees again?”

I will be glad when the apple orchard turns seven years old; according to the IRS, I can then discard the receipts and all physical evidence of that moment of inspiration. Thereafter, I can plead amnesia when my wife asks me silly questions about costs.

The problem with apple trees is that they grow, which means the chore of pruning becomes substantially more labor and time-consuming each year, yet the actual return on investment usually remains the same–nothing. Some years it’s woodland creatures. Other years it’s late freezes or early springs. Unfortunately, some of our apple trees had already started blooming this year when winter finally decided to return this week. Not a pretty site. What was a beautiful apple tree white with blooms now looks like it decided to paint its petals black in goth attire. Thus, the woodland creatures might have to go on a diet this year.

And the weather is not only rough on blooms but the creatures that pollinate them. I got a call on Tuesday from a local farmer who said he had a big swarm of bees on a post in his shed. “Are you sure they’re honeybees,” I said, “cause it’s too cold for bees to be swarming?” Turns out he wasn’t kidding. Sure enough, there was a big swarm of bees on a post in his shed. Only problem was they swarmed on the Monday before the cold front blew through, then spent all night huddled and shivering on the post as temps got below freezing. By the time he called me on Tuesday, they seemed half dead and the ones that were alive were just barely moving.

Sometimes with cold bees, dead is “not quite dead yet.” They may look dead, but if you can get them back in a warm area they will miraculously buzz back to life. I brushed the bees off the post into a closed-up nuc box, took them home and put the box over a vent in our dining room. The next morning, I was eating breakfast with the sound of bees roaring. They were up and at ‘em early, ready to escape their nuc box and forage because it was 72 degrees in our house. Because the weather was calling for another night of below freezing temps, I kept them inside on Wednesday night and then put them in the bee yard today since it has warmed back up. I put a frame of eggs in there just in case the queen wasn’t among one of the resurrected bees.

So far, they seem to be flying and doing good–just no thanks to the weather!

The New Trash Kingpin?

February 23, 2023February 23, 2023 ~ sanebishop ~ 5 Comments

In a momentous occasion, Natalie and I cleaned out the barn. This was the first barn clean out since Thomas was born, which meant the barn had accumulated two years worth of detritus. Alas, if only I could accumulate wealth as fast as I could accumulate junk, then I could afford to keep my junk by building another barn to store it in. But the dream of another barn is silly daydreaming. In fact, I was given an ultimatum to either channel my inner Marie Kondo, or else my wife was going to spark her own joy by banishing me to our barn until it was cleaned out.

We took four pickup truck loads of trash to the dump. To be honest, I’m not sure my nerves could have taken any more trips to the dump that day. Usually, there is only one old man guarding access to the compactor, but on the one day we decide to clean out the barn, they just happened to have two old men trash inspectors on duty, each sitting in a lawn chair, each poking at stuff in the compactor with long poles, and each hitting the big red compactor button every so often–yep, definitely a two man job.

I have learned from experience that old men trash inspectors don’t play. They can make your life a living hell, mainly by declaring your load to be demolition materials, which means you then have to journey thirty minutes to landfill and pay five dollars to dispose of your trash. And whatever you do, don’t dare try to sneak a paint can into the extractor by hiding it in a trash bag. Old men trash inspectors can smell a paint can from a mile away.

Our county recently imposed a new ordinance that requires everybody who lives in the county to put a green sticker on the upper left corner of their windshield. In my opinion, this green sticker is more important than my social security number. The green sticker signifies that I’m a genuine county resident, and thus I have the right to dispose of my junk in the county’s trash facilities. Apparently, outsiders from South Carolina had been smuggling their trash across the state line and thus clogging up our compactors with their rubbish.

If I ever decide to turn to a life of crime, I think I will start by counterfeiting green stickers to sell to South Carolinians. From what I can surmise, there is too much competition already in drugs and guns, but I bet the cartels haven’t thought about all the money they could make from interstate rubbish smuggling. I would say that farming could be my front for laundering all my green sticker proceeds, but I doubt that would work given my track record. In fact, nobody in their right mind would ever believe that I could run a highly profitable farm.

The Antagonistic Relationship Between Extraterrestrial Shapeshifters and Cows

February 2, 2023February 2, 2023 ~ sanebishop ~ 7 Comments

I was recently expanding my knowledge by watching an educational TV program in which men of science investigate extraterrestrial activity at a farm called “Skinwalker Ranch.” The series starts off with the men of science standing around a dead cow in a pasture, and one man of science states authoritatively, “This isn’t normal. It’s hard to kill a cow.” The other men of science agree, which is why my wife has very little respect for men or science.

Notably, she points out there are no women of science involved in this investigation, which is a good point but easily explained: Likely women of science are too busy trying to cure cancer or other human ailments and not prioritizing what really matters, like whether extraterrestrials are visiting earth and tormenting our cows.

Apparently, the reason the ranch is called “Skinwalker Ranch” is because the aliens beamed themselves down to earth, where they then use shapeshifting abilities to change skins and impersonate humans, meaning they’re hiding in plain sight and then sneaking off to kill cows in their down time. Of course, the men of science have some alternative hypotheses for the cow deaths, including radiation from UFO spaceships, laser beams from UFO spaceships, and one admittedly outlandish theory that the cow deaths are terrestrial in origin and caused by a yet-to-be discovered cryptozoological species living in a nearby desert cave.

Speaking of cryptozoological species, the head of security for the investigative team is named “Dragon.” Dragon’s job is to carry big guns everywhere to protect the men of science from the aliens with radioactive laser beams. Dragon takes his job seriously, and on one occasion he gets spooked and shoots a tree, believing it to be an alien shapeshifted into vegetative form, but after closer inspection it was just a tree.

As you can imagine, this show is not only educational but quite entertaining, and frankly it’s not something you’d expect to see on the stuffy ole History Channel. In recent years the History Channel has really upped its historical game with all the focus on ancient aliens, who are much more interesting than their ancient human counterparts who sat around all day chipping away at stones and grunting. Recently, I’ve been trying to better myself by watching more mentally enriching TV like historical alien programming instead of mind-numbing TV like cable news, which spends too much talking about pointless politics and very little time on issues that are important to everyday Americans, like mysterious alien cattle mutilations.

After about fifteen minutes of watching “Skinwalker Ranch,” I experienced some paranormal activity of my own when the remote mysteriously disappeared and the TV suddenly switched to HGTV. My first thought was to blame my wife–but then I remembered the simplest solution is the most likely, meaning either interference from an extraterrestrial laser beam or my wife is an extraterrestrial shapeshifter.