Language meanings

codgerbill said:

Were we just fat, dumb, and happy?

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Yeah, wasn't that a great life?  Though washing the hands before eating and after using the bathroom was a given, we all somehow survived the unsterilized counter tops, much used hand towels, etc., etc.  Maybe that's why there's so many strange? childhood "illnesses" now that weren't heard of in our day.  People just aren't eating enough bad microorganisms to build up the immunities.  Another wonder is that we ever survived the then "normal" childhood diseases when there were no vaccinations for them, though I do know of someone who died from the high fever from one of them, and another family friend (12 y.o.) who died of a ruptured appendix back then in the ancient days before penicillin.  Maybe there are some out there that don't understand this nostalgia and my problem with the language meaning  [to get back on subject]  ;D ;D

Daisy

Yeah, wasn't that a great life?  Though washing the hands before eating and after using the bathroom was a given, we all somehow survived the unsterilized counter tops, much used hand towels, etc., etc.  Maybe that's why there's so many strange? childhood "illnesses" now that weren't heard of in our day.

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Consider the ones which were heard of in our (or at least in my) day:  polio, diphtheria, typhoid, measles, rubella, whooping cough, scarlet fever, dysentery, tuberculosis, and bacterial pneumonia.  I can remember:  quarantine signs on houses;  women who wore wigs because of typhoid fever;  pools and parks being closed for polio epidemics;  iron lungs; spending a week in bed in a darkened room because of red measles; appendectomies as on of the most common operations; catching a case of flu every year.

I do not have much nostolgia for those Good Old Days.

 

Carl L said:

Consider the ones which were heard of in our (or at least in my) day:  polio, diphtheria, typhoid, measles, rubella, whooping cough, scarlet fever, dysentery, tuberculosis, and bacterial pneumonia.  I can remember:  quarantine signs on houses;  women who wore wigs because of typhoid fever;  pools and parks being closed for polio epidemics;  iron lungs; spending a week in bed in a darkened room because of red measles; appendectomies as on of the most common operations; catching a case of flu every year.

I do not have much nostolgia for those Good Old Days.

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Of course those were terrible things, but I still am very happy to have grown up in those "perilous" times vs growing up since the 80's.  I had much more freedom and life was good.  Perhaps I have a different outlook, since I'm a survivor of those times and not one of its victims.  But then again, I did not have to live with the black plague in my neighborhood, watching and waiting for Indians to attack, having horrible weather to wipe out the food we'd planted to take us through the next winter, snow so deep the wood pile buried so we could not get to it for heat, so yes, I had it good!

Daisy

Quick back to the military.
So short I have to look up to see down.
Have to stand on a dime to see over a nickel
2 days and a wake up


Yhr picture of the boot with a helmet over it, hand sticking out with placard, 'Short'

mypursuit said:

      Speaking of soy Sauce.  While eating dinner at work one night a coworker asked me to pass the Where's Your Sister Sauce.  He was pointing at the Worcestershire Sauce!

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Back in the sixties, Godfrey Cambridge told a funny story about a slave who was freed in the south. The first thing he did was go to a nice restaurant and order a big juicy steak.  The waiter brought the steak and a bottle of what, up until then, had always been known simply as "black sauce."  The slave asked the waiter, "Wha's dish here sauce?" Hence we have Worcestershire sauce.

My family is from the South and we called a chest of drawers (aka a dresser)..."chester drawers".

We also used "down the road a piece"  for how long it took to get some place. 

Marsha~

If I'm dumber than a box of rocks, is that less dumb than dumber than a bag of hammers?
Some days I feel more the rock variety. Other days its the hammers.......

I remember my father-in-law, a former military guy used to say, "It was cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey". Years later I learned that a brass monkey was a brass plate with indentations used on military ships to keep cannon balls from rolling around on the deck. When the temperature dropped too low, the indentions on the monkey would shrink and the cannon balls would come off the plate. Back then I thought it meant something quite different.

I was told that a "brass Monkey" was the three brass balls that hung at a pawn shop.....but then again my dad was always trying to pull the wool over my eyes.

Marsha/CA said:

My family is from the South and we called a chest of drawers (aka a dresser)..."chester drawers".

We also used "down the road a piece"  for how long it took to get some place. 

Marsha~

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Well.. I grew up in the south of Michigan (Tekonsha, yes it's a township/village in Michigan where they make brake controllers) and that's what I call a dresser too.

For Carl....  The xxyl I dated (That's a Amateur Radio Code. She is a widow, YL is a young lady, not yet married,, XYL, same lady after wedding,  XXYL her husband died so she is now an EX-XYL)  Was a polio victim fairlly recently from what I can gather.  She spoke of how she could not longer dance due to the damage.

Marsha/CA said:

We also used "down the road a piece"  for how long it took to get some place. 

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Never heard it in referencing time.  To us it was a somewhat unspecified distance.  But, it had to be over a 1/4 of a mile because anything less was "a half a quarter".

I have enjoyed this post.  Now let me add a little:

I am originally from California and for sure knew what "In high cotton" referred to.  I got a kick out of the references to "my friend didn't know, but he is from California."  I take that to imply that people from California don't know about cotton.  That may be true of the city slickers but did you know that:

"California's cotton is mostly grown in seven counties within the San Joaquin Valley, though Imperial Valley and Palo Verde Valley also have acres planted. In the 1990s cotton was also planted in the Sacramento Valley. California is the largest producer of Pima cotton in the U.S. The California cotton industry provides more than 20,000 jobs in the state and generates revenues in excess of $3.5 billion annually."

Did you know there is a Bluegrass song titled "California Cotton Fields."  It's an old bluegrass song.  Some of the words are: "California Cotton fields...Where labor towns were filled with great men with broken dreams....California cotton fields...As close to wealth as Daddy ever came.

There is no real hard answer to the expression "The Whole Nine Yards."  That has been researched to death by many researchers.  There are many theories but no proof.  The researches agree that it is a numerical slippage from an older expression "The whole six yards."  Just like the slippage from "Cloud 7 to Cloud 9"  However, there is no proof whatsoever as to it's origin or meaning other than you received or gave everything.

Does the phrase derive from the length of ammunition belts in World War II aircraft? The contents of a standard concrete mixer? The amount of beer a British naval recruit was obligated to drink? Yardage in football? The length of fabric in a Scottish kilt (or sari, or kimono, or burial shroud)?  Nobody really knows.

....and that's the whole shebang....Ooops, there's another one.............

How about the old expression "I'll be there with bells on" anybody heard or know where that came from......I do.

I have California Cotton Fields in my iPod, great song.  My understanding of high cotton was not having to stoop to pick.  ???  Close?  Or just that there is more cotton per plant? 

My surprise was the cotton and citrus in southern AZ.  Had no idea, never came up anywhere, so just unlearned facts, till I drove south on 95 to Yuma.

Yes, not having to stoop to pick is the point.  High cotton is easier and faster to pick and can be brought to market quickly.  However, over the years the expression "In High Cotton" has been generalized to mean 'doing well, or being successful."  Many people don't know that California was and is a major cotton grower. During the Great depression many men and families migrated to California to work in the cotton fields.  I was raised in California but migrated to the east in 1980.  As a kid in the west I heard the expression "In High Cotton" often.  I think the expression started in the south and migrated west.   

Billy can break a crowbar in a sandbox, his momma seems to be fixin' to pitch a fit all the time because of it.

Billy

driftless shifter said:

Billy can break a crowbar in a sandbox, his momma seems to be fixin' to pitch a fit all the time because of it.
Billy

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Rumor has it that he could also "screw up a bowling ball, with a polishing rag".

I was once pulled from a baseball game when the coach declared that I had "screwed up second base so bad that no-one could play it."

You could put him in a locked room with 3 steel balls and he'll lose one, break one and eat the third.

Ken