Thanks to some Hatchy Milatchy research1, I stumbled across an amazing website (launched way back in 1995) called CoalRegion.com. It bills itself as "a collection of nostalgia and regionalisms from the Anthracite Coal Region of Pennsylvania. The region is made up of Schuylkill, Carbon, Lackawanna, Luzerne, Northumberland, and Columbia counties, and also the northernmost reaches of Dauphin county."
While it has a dandy collection of regional recipes and other groovy features, my favorite part of the website is the A-through-Z CoalSpeak dictionary. I wish someone would publish it in book form (and save me from printing it all out), because it's an invaluable cultural resource that deserves better than becoming a Lost Corner of the Internet.
One of the entries on CoalSpeak is for eggie bread: "bread dipped in egg, then fried, and served with syrup, powdered sugar, or salt and pepper, usually at breakfast. Known to the rest of the world as 'French toast'. 'Do youz want dippie eggs or eggie bread before I run ya over ta Mass?'"
I've been making French toast for my son for years. My memories of French toast date back to Webelos camping trips that Dad and I went on when we lived in Montoursville in the early 1980s. For breakfast, the Scout leaders would have a huge container of egg/milk batter and set up an assembly line to grill French toast for everyone. Great times.
And I did not know that eggie bread was another name for French toast.
As for dippy/dippie eggs, Joan has written often about them on the Only in York County blog, including in July 2007, October 2010 and in this post about Yorkisms. It's such a fun blog to wander through, and it's another thing that I wish would be saved in book form for posterity!
Here are a few of the other entries from CoalSpeak:
- my story: one's favorite soap opera.
- night fishin: from Sunbury ... Building fires at the Susquehanna River at night so you can fish for carp. The fishing area was first seeded with hard corn in the afternoon, then the hooks were baited with sweet corn upon returning at night. The two to three foot carp were taken home and buried in the garden for fertilizer.
- slidin' board: the children's park or playscape item that kids slide down. To the rest of the world, it's a slide. To the coal region, it's a slidin' board.
- tamayta or tamayda: tomato
- warsh, worsh: wash, usually the laundry. (I use "warsh" all the time!)
Footnote
1. See the posts "WNEP-TV staff from 1975, including Miss Judy" and "From the readers: Hatchy Milatchy, library tales, Maude Adams and more."
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