usernametaken
Well-known member
I'm afraid we still use several of the phrases mentioned here....I remember moving from my home county in TN to one in middle TN and yellow became yeller, and they were down in the holler, holler being a term I was totally unfamiliar with. I thought they were playing a joke on me with the yeller but they were not. Gas did not come to the house through a pipe, another rude awakening, I had to pay for all the gas at once in the propane tank. Boy was I naive then and broke after buying all that propane. And I had thought Appalachia was in East TN. I never thought to ask how deep the well was either, but found out soon enough that it was only 16 feet deep and hog killing was in Nov.
I always thought my dad was a gentleman ( and still do) but I thought he never said a cuss word until my brothers informed me he just didn't say cuss words in front of the female gender, that he could cuss as well as anyone.
He loved the words Nincompoop though, and Bat Brain and Bird Brain, which he would gleefully use when someone cut in front of the car and almost caused a wreck. Then he got to roll down his window and holler those words, while we hunkered down in the back in fear of his violent word attack . :lol:
Those almost wrecks must have always been someone else's fault, although when he taught me to drive he carefully explained ( as I did to my son) just how far OVER the speed limit you could get by with and not get a ticket. He also explained that sometimes you had to just put the pedal all the way to the floor to blow out the carburator.
I never could figure out this one - he said Missoura instead of Missouri and he was from Missouri. Huh ? Also said Haviee instead of Hawaii, where he spent time in WWII.
Then there was " that dog won't hunt " which is still a favorite of mine. And this one, I believe he may have originated " educated beyond their intelligence " which was generally used in context with reference the east coast intelligentsia and/or the Ivy League. The eastern references also went along with the phrase egghead a lot. ( no offense intended to those in the east.)
He could not understand why we thought wearing Levi's was the greatest thing in the world. Blue jeans, specifically overhauls, were something shameful to him. It finally told me it was because during the depression that is the only thing they had to wear, with newspaper wrapped around their body underneath them to stay warm in the winter. That was after they shipped an entire load of eggs by train from their chicken farm to St. Louis and received a bill back where they didn't even bring enough to pay the freight.
So forever after in his adult life, he worked in Khaki pants and got grease all over them, after work, making my mom crazy.
He could be an enteraining dad. We sure do miss him.
