I heard them called gum bands, in my lifetime, too. In fact, we chewed the thicker rubber bands when little...why? I don't know :o) Maybe because we heard them called gum bands? I've heard the word "Smearcase" too, but the word I remembered hearing would have been spelled "Schmearcase"...then again, it was never the name Smith, but "Schmitt". I never knew what was being talked about in the case of "smearcase". So that was cottage cheese!!! Thanks Don! Don wrote: I can remember when I was a kid churning our own butter from milk straight from the cow, and Mom taking the leftover juice and making buttermilk and "smearcase" I didn't realize until I looked it up that smearcase was PA Dutch. We had some cottage cheese at the church last Friday for our food distribution, and when I called it smearcase, everybody looked rather strange at me, and didn't seem to understand what I was talking about. Now and then I call rubber bands "gum bands", and didn't realize that seems to be unique to PA as well.