"Pull 'er up a tad, please, mister," said the nonchalant teen-ager pumping gas in a Union 76 service station off Interstate 75 near Vienna, Ga.
"What'd you say, son?" asked the driver with Pennsylvania plates.
"Pull 'er up a tad."
"Pull 'er what?"
"Would you please move your car closer to the pump?"
The Pennsylvania driver laughed, moved his car closer and thereby ended another skirmish in the word between the states. Along the interstates, and more often away from them, old Southern expressions like "a tad"an indefinable little bitsurvive.
For the moment at least, the South continues to cherish its language. In the South, as in...
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