I grew up in Carbondale, Illinois. For those who don’t know, it’s basically on the southernmost tip of Illinois and is closer to Kentucky than St. Louis. When I was 15, I moved to Waterloo, Illinois: literally thirty minutes away from St. Louis, or, as we like to say it: “just over the river”. Now, from the title, you probably weren’t expecting these different towns to be in the same state, because they wouldn’t really be that different, would they? Wrong! While Waterloo is most prominently influenced by St. Louis culture, Carbondale actually has some strong southern roots that have (and still do) influence the way I talk and just what I’m used to. And, in seeing just how different these two towns—in the same state, only two+ hours away from each other—are, I’ve realized just how different every part of the Midwest is, and how beautiful it is to live in a place influenced by every region of the country.

1. In the St. Louis area (and pretty much any “northern” area, apparently), a barbecue means anything cooked on the grill.

So, when we moved up to Waterloo, at the end of the summer, saw lots of signs all over about different “barbecues” being held to fundraise different groups. Wanting to help out our new town and get our hands on some delicious “barbecue”, we showed up to one of these events only to be severely disappointed that all they had were brats and hotdogs. Oh, that kind of barbecue. You see, down in Carbondale, we called that a cook-out. Because barbecue meant pulled pork. And seeing hot dogs when you expect pulled pork is one of the most disappointing feelings I have ever known.

I found out recently on an episode of Man vs. Food that there is a regional difference between this vocabulary, which is basically what I just described. In the north, a barbecue is cooking on the grill, whereas in the south it means pulled pork. And what do we (in the south) call a barbecue? A cook-out.

2. In the St. Louis area, backwoods country folk are called “Hoosiers”.

So, this was a weird one for me. In Carbondale, the word “Hoosier” was hardly in our vocabulary unless, for some reason, we were talking about Indiana college sports. In the St. Louis area, though, that term is apparently an insult to people that I had always heard as “hillbillies”, “hicks”, or “rednecks”. In my opinion the closest term to “Hoosier” is “hick”, because people aren’t generally proud to be a “hick”, just as, from what I’ve seen, people don’t seem all that proud to be a “Hoosier”. However, many people take on terms like “redneck” and “hillbilly” with good ol’ southern pride.

3. (Some) people in the St. Louis area refer to the game in the picture below as “Corn Hole”.

My whole life, this game had always been called “bean bag toss”, because that is exactly what it is. I’d seen on many Buzzfeed articles and the like, though, that, “in the Midwest”, it is called corn hole. Not everyone in the Midwest calls this corn hole! Not even everyone in one area calls it corn hole, because I know people born and raised in the St. Louis area who refer to it as “bean bag toss”. This is basically the whole soda/coke/pop debate, because you hear all three in the Midwest and you hear “corn hole”, “bean bag toss”, and “that one game with the board with the hole” in the Midwest.

4. St Louisans have an accent and so do Southern Illinoisans.

Just as there is not one way to name the game above, there is not one “Midwestern” accent. (And it’s also kind of infuriating when every impersonation of a “Midwestern” accent is a Chicago accent. We’re not all from Chicago!) The most damning evidence of a St. Louis accent is the swapping of the –or sound to an –ar sound, especially if they say something like, “you take farty-far’ or ‘Farest Park’.

Now, a Southern Illinois accent is a bit harder to describe. First of all, we tend to put inflection on the second word of a phrase rather than the first: think Taco Bell or green beans. As far as southern-southern Illinois (Carbondale and the surrounding areas), there are a lot of people (not all) that have a southern twang to their voice. It’s not a drawl by any means but it’s a definite twang that shows up on a word-by-word basis.

5. Southern Illinoisans know more about “farming” equipment than St. Louisans.

This is obviously a general statement, because I am not attesting to knowing more than a St. Louis farmer, but I do more than my St. Louis friends. Also, this is just an Illinois thing in general because Illinois has a lot of farms. And, we used to use the equipment recreationally and not for their intended purposes. For example, I had friends with mules and gators that we piled on and rode around his property on—and that was a good Friday night in my opinion. Fast forward to living in the St. Louis area and I have to google “mules” and “gators” (with the attached “not the animal”) to bring up a picture to show my friends who had no idea what I was talking about.

Also, apparently Rural King isn’t a thing in Missouri. It’s called Buchheit there. Now, Waterloo has it’s own Rural King, but if you get any closer to the city (i.e. “over the river”), those city folks won’t have even heard of it.

6. Private schools are a big thing around St. Louis.

So, where I grew up it was very difficult to find a private high school with more than ten students, and private middle/elementary schools were only in about every three to four towns. In St. Louis, they’re everywhere, and every one has a reputation (as does every public high school). Now, I went to a private school in Waterloo, so it did not have a St. Louis reputation to go with it, but it did make me wonder why the heck they didn’t have these “down south” (aka southern-southern Illinois). However, until moving to the St. Louis Area and attending one, I never even considered the idea of choosing a school. So really, it was kind of a “you can’t miss what you never had” situation. And, at least in Carbondale, you didn’t have a reputation based on the high school you went to, because it was the only one available to you.

The list could continue forever, as I learn something new about the differences between where I grew up and where I live now just about everyday. All in all, living in these two different towns has given me an appreciation for the Midwest and my “southern” roots that I’d never had until I moved. So, the takeaway from all of this: the Midwest is not a homogenous mixture; every region, even every town is different from the next and they all take influences from different regions of the United States and make them their own.