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You know you’re a Rhode Islander when:
1. You really believed that being the home to “The World’s Largest Shore Dinner Hall” gave the state international prestige.
2. Your father was considered to have a “travelling job” if you lived in Pawtucket and he worked in a factory in East Providence.
3. You spent hours debating whether WPRO or WICE was the better station. If you liked WICE, your favorite expression was “PRO rots”.
4. A gourmet seafood dinner was a bowl of steamers, a “stuffie” and “bake stuff shrimp” at Mama Spumonis.
5. You never understood the odd looks you got when you ordered a meatball grinder and a coffee cabinet at the airport in Atlanta.
6. “Please?” is a question, not a polite request.
7. You know deep in your heart that the PC Friars would’ve whipped the butt of that Walton Gang from UCLA in the NCAAs, if only Marvin didn’t tear his knee up in the semis against Memphis State.
8. The seminal historical event in your life was the Blizzard of ’78.
9. You walk into a black tie affair filled with Hollywood celebs and all living ex-Presidents, and the first words you say to your spouse or date are, “Look, there’s Salty Brine!!”
10. You know there’s a place called Chepachet in your state, but you’ve never been there and only marginally know that it’s “up north somewhere”. See also, Little Compton. Except you know that’s somewhere south.
11. There’s only one beach in the Ocean State worth talking about, and that’s Scahbro. Only tourists from Connecticut and western Mass go to Misquamicut.
12. You’ve drunk 3 Awful-Awfuls just to get the 4th one for free.
13. You know deep inside that if Salty was ever on a private jet with the Pope and the President, and it crashed, the next day’s headline in the Journal would read, “SALTY BRINE, TWO OTHERS PERISH IN PLANE CRASH”
14. You remember leaving a Reds’ hockey game at the old Auditorium with your eyes smarting from the cloud of smoke that obscured the ice from the cheap seats by the start of the third period.
15. Christmas meant going to the old Sears on North Main Street just to see the electric train display.
16. Your Easter clothes always came from Shartenberg’s or The Outlet. Boys sometimes got their suits at Saltzman’s.
17. You lost your cherry in the back seat of dad’s 75 Monte Carlo at the Rustic Drive-In.
18. Thanksgiving high school football games. East Providence vs. LaSalle, Cranston East vs. Cranston West, Pilgrim vs. Vets, St Ray’s vs. Tolman, Cumberland vs. Lincoln, etc. How your team did affected the taste of the turkey.
19. When a tourist asked you where a water fountain was, you directed them to Kennedy Plaza or Slater Park.
20. You remember the FEI Club and Busty Russell. As well as the El Morocco.
21. You still are shocked when you learn that Baskin-Robbins doesn’t sell coffee ice cream.
22. You know how to play Hi-Lo-Jack.
23. Your choice of what 6 PM news broadcast to watch turns on who the weather forecaster is.
24. You know the historical significance of Joe Garrahy’s flannel shirt.
25. You think that New Yorkers actually eat orange hot dogs with ground hamburger on top.
26. “Hi Neighbor, Have a ‘Gansett”.
27. No matter how good the game you were playing as a kid was, you had to be home by 5 to watch Salty Brine’s Shack.
28. Your parents booked a hotel room after a wedding in South Kingstown so they didn’t have to drive “all that way” back to Providence—or even Warwick.
29. Your idea of a mixed marriage is when you wed someone from a different parish.
30. You actually wonder why no one from the Pawtucket Times has ever been considered for a Pulitzer Prize.
31. You’ve heard Salty say “No school, Foster-Glouster” at least 1,000 times in your life.
32. The only trucks and heavy equipment you ever saw doing a highway project were from Campanella and Cardi.
33. You know someone whose distant cousin once actually voted Republican. And that was for Chaffee.
34. You’re convinced that the greatest political orator in recorded human history was John O. Pastore.
35. You know that no big-time sports announcer ever called a game as well as George Patrick Duffy or Chris Clark.
36. You bought your suits from Monticello’s as an adult because that was where Ernie D shopped.
37. Your mother still has pictures of JFK and Pope John XXIII on the mantle.
38. You’d actually consider flying in from Alaska to attend your 8th grade class reunion.
39. You’re considered to be a cosmopolitan man of the world because you know how to get to Fenway Park by car.
40. You fail to see the humor in Don Bosquet’s cartoons.
41. You vote for a convicted felon for your mayor because you really believe that “he never stopped caring about Providence”.
42. You know that the greatest event of the 20th century wasn’t landing on the moon, it was the opening of Foxwoods.
43. You buy 5 loaves of bread and 3 gallons of milk, and top off the tank with $2.75 worth of gas the second one little snowflake falls from the sky.
44. You never realized that no one west of New London, or north of Foxboro, had any idea of who Salty Brine is.
45. Your feelings about Bucky Dent depend on whether you live north or south of Providence, and also on whether your last name ends in a vowel.
46. “You can have all those smarty-pants on the Weather Channel, give me Art Lake anytime”.
47. A big part of your life vanished the day they sold Crescent Park.
48. If you live in certain areas of Providence, or in Lincoln, North Providence or Johnston, you remove your hat whenever Sinatra singing “My Way” comes on the radio.
49. You get that smug satisfaction that having a 3 day weekend in August gives you, especially when you know that no one anywhere else celebrates that holiday.
50. When you finally move into that dream house in South County, your mom in Cranston still calls and asks if you and the entire brood want to come up and stay there, “just in case”, anytime they forecast more than a dusting of snow.
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