Growing up a city boy, buying a rural(ish) property in a small town has been a learning experience.
Take the well, for instance. When I learned our house had a well, I was super excited. I envisioned tossing coins down there and making wishes, hauling buckets of water up by hand, the whole works. At the least, I imagined we’d have a quaint, cool-looking wooden structure straight out of the English countryside. When Justin the Realtor met us for that initial showing, I scouted the grounds in search of one of these.
“Hey, where’s the well?” I asked JTR when I was unable to find anything remotely resembling this on the property.
“Right there,” he said.
“Right where?” I asked, still confused.
“Next to the tree in the front yard.”
I thought the old chap had gone daffy ‘cuz there was nothing there. The fact that I mentally referred to him as an old chap is further proof that I still had an English garden on the brain. He then pointed out an object protruding from the ground that most certainly was not a well.
Only, it is a well. Talk about a major disappointment. When I told Tara I thought all wells looked like storybook wishing wells, she laughed and laughed.
And laughed some more for good measure.
Boy, do I feel dumb. But I really, truly, honestly believed the first photo is what a well looked like. “Country people” may have a reputation for being hicks, but they’d laugh all the way to the outhouse if they heard this city slicker talk about his vision of a well.
Don’t even get me started on the septic “tank.”
House in the sticks aside, just moving to the Midwest has been eye-opening. There’s an entire vernacular exclusive to Wisconsin (and maybe a few neighboring regions). I’ve already mentioned that cornhole is called bags here. “Ope!” and “Geez Louise” are common phrases I’ve adopted into my everyday speech. And this morning, my friend Chris reminded me of yet another. He sent me the following clip.
“Is this true?” he asked. “WTF is a bubbler. It doesn’t bubble!”
I couldn’t help but laugh even as I assured Chris that, yes, Sconnies do call water fountains (or drinking fountains) bubblers. Other popular Wisconsin lingo includes:
- Stop-and-go lights (traffic lights).
- “Cripes” (a polite way to swear; substitute for “Christ!” or “shit”).
- Up Nort’ (refers to northern Wisconsin, though it’s more a state of mind than a physical location).
- “Uff-dah!” (catchall term for joy, frustration, exhaustion, or pretty much any other emotion).
- FIB (disparaging term for a resident of the state below us; f&ck!ng Illinois b@st*rd if I must spell it out for you).
- Yooper (less-disparaging term for a resident of the state above us, i.e., the Upper Peninsula of Michigan).
- “Real quick” (not a unit of measurement for time, but a way to ask for a favor, e.g., “Lemme squeeze past ya real quick” or “Could ya stop at the store real quick on the way home?”).
- Brats (don’t confuse with a snotty little kid; in this case, it’s bratwursts—one of the three major Wisconsin food groups, alongside cheese and alcohol. Nobody uses the whole word).
- “Ya know” (use to start and end thoughts, and really draw out the knoooow).
Then there are pronunciations to master. True Wisconsinites pronounce “bag” like “bagel” and “milk” like “melk.” That last is a particularly important distinction given that we’re the Dairy State. Oh, and it’s not Wis-con-sin, unless you’re not from Wisconsin, in which case it’s totally Wis-con-sin. Here, it’s wuh-Scahnsin.
Whew! That’s a lot to keep track of. Give me a couple three years and I might start sounding like I’m from around des parts, ya know?
What colloquialisms are common where you live? Give me a sentence from your area that I might not be familiar with, and I’ll try to guess what it means.
Mark My Words 
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