ST LOUIS- Anyone in St. Louis knows you don't want anyone to think you're a "hoosier". A well-known put down and derogatory term used to describe someone who looks like a country bumpkin, backwoods "hick", or even worse. A mullet hairstyle and jean shorts ("jorts") come to mind.
And yet, in Indiana, a "hoosier" is the official state mascot. A source of pride! The title for the best basketball movie ever made!
So how has the meaning of "hoosier" come to mean two different things in two midwestern states?
"It goes back to the 1930's and union struggles," explains Dr. Avis Meyer, longtime journalism professor at Saint Louis University.
Long ago a friend of Dr. Meyer's, who worked for years at Anheuser-Busch, told him the brewery hired non-union workers from Indiana during a labor strike at AB.
"So 'hoosier' came to mean a country bumpkin who screwed up your job," Dr. Meyer added.
The unions at that time were very strong in St. Louis and in Illinois, so it's believed the brewery had to import workers from Indiana.
A similar phenomenon is said to have happened at the now closed Chrysler plant in Fenton, Missouri.
After a Chrysler plant shut down in Indiana, many of the Indiana car makers relocated to Fenton, which at that time was considered the extreme "boonies" of the St. Louis area.
And, as you might suspect, some locals in our area didn't exactly roll out the red carpet for the newcomers from Indiana with decent paying jobs at the Chrysler plant.
It's possible the new hires from Indiana looked slightly different than their St. Louis cohorts (we couldn't find any file photos of mullets or jorts at the Chrysler plant in 1960's).
So, once again, explains local historian and author Dr. John Oldani, people who looked a little "rustic" or "country" eventually were referred to as "hoosiers".
Whether or not they came from Indiana or had anything to do with the Chrysler plant.
A spokesperson for Chrysler said they do not have any records from the 1950's, 60's, and 70's to back up theories of a mass exodus of Indiana workers moving here.
"I remember it well," said Al Casey at the Fenton Historical Society. Casey worked at the Chrysler plant in the 1970's and recalls a steady influx of new Chrysler workers from "the Hoosier state".
Casey, however, does not remember anyone derisively referring to the newcomers as "hoosiers".
However the word came to be a slur in St. Louis, this much is true.
Here in St. Louis, no one wants to be called a "hoosier".
Full disclosure: during my college years at Saint Louis University in the 1990's, I occasionally rocked a hairstyle that friends said looked a little "hoosier". Not full-out mullet. But dangerously close. You be the judge (photo circa 1991).
So how do the real "Hoosiers", the proud folks in Indiana, feel about St. Louis co-opting their state mascot as a cutting put-down here in St. Louis?
"I don't want to speak for all Hoosiers," said Mark Land, a spokesperson for Indiana University. "But I can say that we don't offend easily and that although the origin of the term is murky, people from Indiana take pride in being known for ourHoosier hospitality and warmth."
"You should hear what we call people from Missouri around these parts," Land jokes (jokes!).
Scroll through our "Stl hoosier" gallery to view locals who proudly identify as hoosiers:
Are you now or have you ever been what people in St. Louis would refer to as a "hoosier"?
If so, email me ( pmcgonigle@ksdk.com )a picture (with your permission to use it) and if there's time, I'll put together the ultimate "hoosier" picture gallery.
You could also send it to me on Facebook.
Please don't send pics of Bobby Knight or Jimmy Chitwood--we're looking for real St. Louis "hoosiers".
