“Booger Branch Holler”

“Are they speaking English?” asked Caroline.

Caroline is from Texas and she and my daughter Hannah went to a local Halloween display presented one night at “Denver Downs Farm”, where they were thoroughly entertained in the cornfield maze, the scary elevator ride, and petting both calves and small goats.  Hannah even reported the sighting of a donkey or two on the backside and “many, many cows”.  Denver Downs has hit upon a gold mine every Halloween, entertaining the whole community and our children.  Apparently, parents and children pay “big money” to be frightened “at least a little bit” on Halloween.

Caroline’s question (albeit spoken in hushed voice) occurred when according to Hannah she was listening to local folks speak in “the Picken’s County accent.”  Now as everyone from the southern parts and the northern parts knows, there is a distinctive difference in the way people talk in various regions of the county.  Our area, which includes Pickens, Oconee, Anderson, Greenville and Spartanburg counties is no different.  However, even among our local counties, those of us who live and work in Pickens County have developed our own special dialect.  The closer one gets to the Appalachian Mountains the more distinctive the accent becomes, I suppose, as there is less cross fertilization of local expressions when some stay longer up in the hills and don’t come down as much, except perhaps to buy groceries at the local Walmart, see the doctor for various ailments, and go to Denver Downs farm to be frightened on Halloween.

Caroline, being from Austin, Texas, which my daughter informs me “is a very large city, Daddy” has her own accent of course, but obviously more cultured and a little closer to the King’s English which is spoken by persons educated in the finer points of the English language.  Grammar is important in Austin, as well as not slurring words for an extra syllable just to make a point of emphasis.  My grandmother Johnsie, who taught third and fourth grade for 45 years also was schooled in the fine art of proper grammar, and thought one of her primary roles in this life was “to produce well rounded children, not heathens”.  It was a great sin for her if children used words like “can’t”, “ain’t” and God forbid, “I won’t do it!”  If you have ever seen a Bantam rooster go after another rooster, you have some idea what my grandmother’s glare did to small children who had the audacity to use such tainted words, not fit for the English language!

Caroline’s question, “Are they speaking English?” occurred according to Hannah when she overheard some good folks from Pickens County.  Hannah says the expression on her face when she heard their accent and attempted to decipher their words went beyond incredulity and surprise, even into awestruck as if a new language had been born suddenly in her presence into the world for the first time ever!  “Are they speaking English?”  Yes, of course they were, but a dialect of the English language unheard outside of Pickens County and Booger Branch Holler Road.

Now if you ask me if Booger Branch Holler is a real place, I will tell you, ‘Yes absolutely!”  And if you don’t believe me, look up the road sign in Pickens County, South Carolina.  It is a real place, with real Picken’s County people who live on Booger Branch Holler Road.  I only use this one road as an example of Pickens County.  In Anderson County we have Slab town, Level Land, and other such places like that, which are very close to Dacusville, Powdersville and Easley, all names of places if you can tell me how such names originated, I will declare you a better man than I.

My wife grew up in York County, her home directly across from Possum Holler, which makes sense to me as to its name, but I have yet to figure out Moonville’s original name in Greenville County, although I myself grew up in a small town called Bowling Green, which is near Clover, Bethany and Bethel, which took its name apparently from Bowling Green, Kentucky when a horse trader from there came and settled but no one could pronounce his name, so every said, “If you want a good horse, go over and see the man from Bowling Green” and the name stuck after a little while.  Otherwise, my home town would  certainly been called “Cotton as far at the eye can see”, or perhaps Dulinville, after my grandmother’s brother, who owned the largest farming enterprise, Dulin’s Cotton Gin & Farm.

But I digress.  If you come to visit us in Booger Branch Holler, I am sure you will find the people there speak just as good English as anyone else in the great state of South Carolina.  And, you will be forced to admit we come up with very creative names for our communities, nothing boring like New York and San Francisco or Kansas City, Kansas.  What kind of imagination does it take to come up with a name like that?  Not very much, I say.  But to come up with a name like “Booger Branch Holler”, or “Possom Trot”, ‘Slabtown”,  or “Moonville”, now that takes more than a little imagination!

Those of us who live in or near Pickens County, South Carolina may not come down out of the hills very often, but when we do, at least we have something important to say.  Now as to whether anyone from Austin, Texas or other parts unknown can actually understand us—well that’s a topic for another day, but we are speaking English, damn good English, which we all understand very well.  But and if you do not know what we are saying, well that’s okay too.  We have our own special expressions which may not make much sense outside of Booger Branch Holler, but God help us, they mean a whole lot to us all!

Tall Tales and Taller Tall Tales.