River City Blog

I moved to Evansville in June of 1986 having spent most of my formative years in England. You would think that since we speak “English” over here that there wouldn’t be much of a language barrier. Over the years I have encountered several oddities.

One of the first things that quickly struck me as odd was the ongoing “war on drugs”. There’s all this rhetoric about, don’t do drugs, and drugs are illegal. Then you drive down almost any street in the city and they have drug stores. What’s that about? Having ventured into Osco Drug (just out of curiosity) I discovered that the drugs were well concealed. Oh sure they had medicine, pharmaceutical products, batteries, film and even toys. But no drugs. You probably need to know a secret knock or code word of some kind to be allowed into the room where they sell the drugs. I bought a pack of chewing gum and headed for the exit. As I left the checkout counter the young lady behind the counter said, “Come back”. I didn’t know what she could possibly want, but I returned anyway. The ensuing conversation was most confusing. I later learned that, “what’s up?” Has absolutely nothing to do with the sky or anything else that may in fact be “up”.

I endured much ridicule about the way I would say banana, tomato and garage. Only to later find that you all park in your driveway and drive on a parkway. In a restaurant you ask for your check not your bill. Yet you could still pay with a check that is also called a check. And exactly where did you come up with kati-corner?

I also had to learn new sports and a whole new sports vocabulary. I grew up playing soccer, we call it football. The game you call football has dozens of players on each team with only one “kicker” and the game rarely involves kicking the ball. I played and watched cricket. Okay, I’ll admit cricket is strange and entirely tedious. But baseball, well that’s not exactly fast paced either. Here’s a game where the pitcher throws the ball to the batter who swings and misses and that’s a strike! So what do you call it if he hits the ball? Then the pitcher gets tired after throwing the ball for half a dozen innings, they bring in a replacement who has been warming up for a while in the “bullpen”. Oddly enough this new pitcher gets to come onto the field of play and practice for a while, everyone else has to stand around and watch. I have never seen anything like this in any other sport anywhere!