Carolina Hats

Carolinians share a pantry of touchstones that nobody else claims. Cheerwine was created in 1917 in Salisbury, North Carolina, by the family-run Peeler company and is sold almost only in the Carolinas. Duke's Mayo came out of Greenville, South Carolina, has no sugar in it, and did not get a mascot, Tubby, until its 105th year. Boiled peanuts are South Carolina's official state snack and a Lowcountry staple. Barbecue splits the region: Eastern North Carolina cooks the whole hog with a vinegar-pepper sauce, Lexington adds ketchup, and South Carolina goes mustard, the Carolina Gold sauce with German immigrant roots. Bojangles relaunched its brand with Dale Earnhardt Jr. voicing "It's Bo Time," and the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk in 1903, which is why North Carolina can call itself First in Flight. These Carolina hats run on that shared vocabulary: the bare CAROLINA and TAR HEEL badges, the food and drink flags, OBX and LOWCOUNTRY for the two coasts, a mustard-barbecue birthright, and one line for the snow run, where shoppers say the essentials are bread and milk and a forecast inch is plenty. BBQ Pitmaster Hats covers the hobby of smoking meat; this page is regional pride and self-mockery instead, worn by people who have a strong opinion about the sauce. Every design is custom embroidered on an unstructured dad hat, for a native, a transplant, or whoever got the Cheerwine habit.