Don't Get Your Panties in a Wad!

But we're fit to be tied by this line of t-shirts printed with Southern sayings. by Erin Z. Bass Susan Bashford and Karen Hall aren’t Southern. Susan is from Connecticut, and Karen is from Detroit, but they both married good ‘ole boys from North Carolina. It wasn’t long before the two women noticed their husbands speaking what sounded like a different language sometimes, especially Karen’s husband, Steve. But they just laughed and wondered what they’d gotten themselves into when hearing phrases like “Are you smellin’ what I’m cookin’” or “I’m a tie a knot in your hind end and hunt ya.’” What else could these Yankees do? It wasn’t until the women took a trip to Boston and saw a line of t-shirts printed with the city’s slang that they thought their husbands might be on to something. “We both called our husbands from the airport and said, ‘start talking,’” says Karen. A line of t-shirts called SweeTea was born in 2006, and Steve became the official lexicographer. Now, when he starts talking, the women start writing. First to make it onto a shirt was “Bless yer heart,” still a bestseller, and sayings like “Hissy Fit, ”Don’t Get Your Panties in a Wad,"