“We don’t care how you did it up North”
“I don’t care how you did it up North” is a popular Southern saying that has been printed on bumper stickers, T-shirts and posters. Southerners have been resentful of people leaving failed states in the North, only to have these newcomers lecture their new neighbors.
“I Don’t Give A Damn How You Did It Up North!” was on Florida bumper stickers in 1982. “We Don’t Care How You Did It Up North” was on Texas bumper stickers in 1984.
Google News Archive
21 August 1982, Ocala (FL) Star-Banner, “Letters To Editor: Resent Criticism,” pg. 4A, col. 5:
Just recently I saw a bumper sticker on a pick-up which stated: “I Don’t Give A Damn How You Did It Up North!” This is my feeling completely as I resent northerners moving south and then criticizing our way of doing things.
(...)
Mrs. A.L.
Google News Archive
17 September 1982, Ocala (FL) Star-Banner, “Letters To Editor: We’re All Free,” pg. 4A, col. 5:
Most of us learn by watching or listening; yet some people place signs on their cars, (I don’t give a damn how you did it up North).
(...)
Francis Scott
19 August 1984, Washington (DC) Post, “‘Big D’ Walks Tall: Crosscurrents of a Most Un-Texan City” by Paul Taylor, pg. A12, col. 1:
You see it on bumper stickers everywhere: “U.S. Out of Texas”; “Texas/Secede”; “We Don’t Care How You Did It Up North”; “Keep Texas Beautiful/Put a Yankee on a Bus” and so forth.
Google News Archive
22 February 1987, The Ledger (Lakeland, FL), “Responding to tourists takes some careful thought” by Bill Blair, pg. 1B, col. 3:
“We Don’t Give A Damn How You Did It Up North, reads a second (bumper sticker—ed.).
Google News Archive
29 May 1991, The Ledger (Lakeland, FL), “Letters,” pg. 10A, col. 5:
Could a yankee fix it?
In regards to the $14 million repair job needed on the new Polk County Courthouse, perhaps its time to change that bumper sticker, “We don’t care how you did it up north,” which I see around here, to “Tell us how you did it up north.”
H. F. Curth
Lake Wales
Google Books
Moving To A Small Town:
A Guidebook To Moving From Urban To Rural America
By Wanda Urbanska and Frank Levering
New York, NY: Fireside
1996
Pg. 281:
Jim Van Zandt says the attitude in Santa Rosa Beach toward know-it-all outsiders is best summed up by “a standard bumper sticker that says: ‘We Don’t Care How You Did It Up North.’”
Google Books
Vengeance:
A Lew Fonesca Mystery
By Stuart M. Kaminsky
New York, NY: A Forge Book
1999
Pg. 1:
Their pickup trucks proudly bear decals of the Confederate flag and bumper sticks with comments like WE DON’T GIVE A SHIT HOW YOU DID IT UP NORTH and YOU CAN HAVE MY WIFE BEFORE I’LL GIVE UP MY GUN.
Google Books
Dive Training: The New Divers Magazine
Volume 9, Issues 1-6
1999
Pg. 8:
I’m from the South — home of the full-sized pickup with gun racks and NRA logos visible in the back window, and a “We Don’t Care How You Do It Up North” sticker on the rear bumper.
Google Books
The Wall Street Journal. Complete Retirement Guidebook:
How to Plan It, Live and Enjoy It
By Glenn Ruffenach and Kelly Greene
New York, NY: Crown Publishing Group
2007
Pg. ?:
Consider, for instance, this bumper sticker seen in Florida: “We don’t care how you did it up North.”
Google Books
Redneck Nation:
How the South Really Won the War
By Michael Graham
New York, NY: Hachette Book Group
2009
Pg. ?:
And then there’s the ever-popular WE DON’T CARE HOW YOU DID IT UP NORTH.
This is demonstrably untrue. We Southerners don’t just care about how you do things up North, we’re obsessed with it.
YouTube
We Don’t Care How You Do It Up North
Casey Abrams - Topic
Published on Aug 26, 2015
Provided to YouTube by CDBaby