Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(orig. US) constr. with the, the world beyond the big cities, esp. small towns and hamlets, thus attrib.

1905		N. Davis Northerner 78: Billy is a cane-brake nigger; he’ll take to the sticks like a duck to water when he’s scared – won’t you, Will-Henry?
1914		R. Lardner You Know Me Al (1984) 37: He says Well you better want to or I will have to ship you back to the sticks.
1922		M.E. Smith Adventures of a Boomer Op. 28: He looked like he lived so far back in the sticks, that owls roosted with his chickens.
1937		J. Curtis You’re in the Racket, Too 42: One week raising hell here in the Smoke and then off to the sticks for a happy married life.
1949		L. Hughes Tambourines to Glory I vi: Did you ever dig the ‘New York Blues’? I guess not, down in the sticks where you’ve been.
1950		S.J. Baker in Sun. Herald (Sydney) 8 June 9/4: Among American borrowings recorded in Detective Doyle's list are: [...] ‘stiff,’ a corpse; ‘spring,’ to bail out; ‘snow,’ cocaine; ‘sticks,’ country districts.
1953		Mad mag. Aug.–Sept. 13: Me just country boy from sticks.
1959		F. Norman Fings II i: Don’t come crawlin’ back to me when yer find yer’ve got ter do some ’ard graft out in the sticks.
1961		T. Taylor Baron’s Court All Change (2011) 33: ‘Middlesex.’ ‘Oh fuck, that’s worse than the sticks. You have my sympathy’.
1963		G. Lambert Inside Daisy Clover (1966) 248: Would you say I’m being relegated to the Sticks?
1975		E. Torres Carlito’s Way 45: Ask some young blood from the sticks who goes upstate.
1983		J. Byrell (con. 1959) Up the Cross 23: Old Jim had left the sticks to get away from something or other.
1984		C. White Life and Times of Little Richard 83: He was the city cat and I was the southern boy up from the sticks.
1989		H. Rawson Dict. of Invective (1991) 56: The sticks (also stick country, stickdom and, in the case of a particular town, Stickville).
1993		Tarantino & Avery Pulp Fiction [film script] 142: Sorry guys, move out of the sticks.
1996		J. Byrell Lairs, Urgers & Coat-Tuggers 312: [E]very fat old Canterbury member’s doddy missus wanted to meet and congratulate the yobbo from the sticks.
1999		Indep. on Sun. Rev. 20 June 30: Lonely woman, out in the sticks somewhere.
2000		N. Griffiths Grits 25: It’s a fuckin palace, bettered only by thuh way-out-in-thuh sticks ones [i.e. dole offices] in thuh Scottish Highlands.
2008		D.R. Pollock ‘Blessed’ in Knockemstiff 172: I was [...] breaking into mom-and-pop groceries out in the sticks.
2010		K. Richards Life 93: I knew nothing. I’d just come in from the sticks.
2013		F. Bill Donnybrook [ebook] ‘Where you say we’s going?’ ‘The sticks down in Orange County’ [ibid.] ‘[Y]ou get lost in the sticks, the sticks people ain’t none too fond of giving your kind directions’.