I know some of you expect hard-hitting political commentary when reading a newspaper column. Well, not today. There are no elections any time soon, and we could all use a break.
Often, I’ll say something my elders used to say, and my young co-workers will look at me like I’m older than dirt (“long in the tooth”). I said I was “tickled to death” about something, and they were bewildered.
Before my wife Cindy moved south from Pennsylvania, her only exposure to Southern talk came from songs on the radio, like Tony Joe White’s “Polk Salad Annie.”
She loved it, but she had no idea what he was saying. When Tony Joe sang, “She’d pick her a mess of polk salad, and carry it home in a tow sack,” Cindy was stumped. “What’s a mess?” “That’s a lot,” I would reply. “Okay,” she said, “Then what’s a tow sack?” I’d respond, “That’s a big ol’ burlap bag.” Of course, she would follow up. “What’s burlap?” I’d say, “Those are the bags full of arsh (Irish) taters.” She would roll her eyes and say, “I’ll never learn Southern.” Almost forty years later, she’s still trying.
As for my younger friends, “Crack the window” means one thing to me, but something totally different to them. Same with “cut off the lights,” or “crank up the car.”
Those of us who grew up with rotary phones, long cords, and party lines get laughed at when we say we’re going to “dial a number.” Imagine trying to explain a collect call, a phone booth, or long distance.
Now when we gas up the car, we give it very little thought. Remember when we had to make a choice at the “fillin’ station?” Would it be “ragular” gas, as everyone pronounced it, or that overpriced “high test?”
Today’s kids are growing up without important meteorological knowledge. During the next heavy rain, who’s going to tell them whether it’s a frog strangler, a toad choker, or a gully washer?
These days, kids act up on the school bus. That didn’t happen when I was growing up. Mr. Dewey Cooper was my bus driver, and when a kid got out of line, Mr. Dewey would glare into the rear-view mirror, and say, “Boy, if you don’t sit down, I’ll bend you over my checkered apron.” We never actually saw that apron, but we lived in fear that we would. At least he didn’t say the scariest phrase of all, which was often uttered by our parents: “Go cut me a switch,” which was usually followed by, “Not that one. Find a bigger one!”
I enjoy talking to Southern friends who are a few years older. They take me back home just by telling a story. If you’re from up North, I’ll provide a little translation.
“See that girl there, she sure favors (resembles) her granny, don’t she? Well, anyways, her daddy is as lazy as a sack of taters. His mama would try to get some work out of him, but he’d just lay around, dead as a door nail, saying he was just plum give out (tired). Well, that would get his mama’s dander up. By cracky, one day she threw a hissy fit. She said, ‘Son, the way you act just flies all over me! You are no count. You act like you’re above your raisin’. You ain’t got the brains God gave a goose! We must have picked up the wrong young’un in the hospital because you don’t take after any of us. You’re lower than a caterpillar’s belly in quicksand, and if you don’t quit lollygaggin’ and start shakin’ a leg, we’ll go round and round (fight), and I’ll knock that head of yours all cattywampus (askew). Now put that in your pipe and smoke it!”
Well, it that don’t shake the dust off your rafters, I don’t know what will.
I guess when I use one of those words or phrases from my childhood, and end up explaining it to the younger folks, that’s my way of keeping my parents and grandparents alive. They’re really always with us, aren’t they? And they always will be.
