Saying What We Mean

Traveling with friends from the 4 corners of our great land often leads to comments about life in my part of the world. Funny, all the other parts of the country treat us (southerners) like we live in another country. Didn't they fight a war 150 years ago or something like that, ensuring that the South stayed in the Union? But I digress.

These conversations eventually come 'round to things we say. I don't think twice about the sayings I grew up hearing. Some call them 'colorful', I say they just spell out what we are trying to say . . . albeit usually in a colorful way. Here are some that come to mind (and may as well been spoken in Greek and written in Cyrillic to my friends from the rest of the country.)

• 'Forty Going North'  
• 'That Dog won't hunt' 
• 'Nobody'll ever notice it on a galloping horse' 
•  'Two bricks shy of a load', 'Their elevator doesn't go to the top floor.' 'She's not the brightest bulb on the tree'. '2 sandwiches short of a picnic' 
• 'Good thing he had that one at home' 
• 'He ain't got no pot to pea in'
• 'He couldn't hit the broad side of a barn'
• 'She's about as useful as buttons on a dishrag'
• 'That ain't worth the powder to blow it to Hell'
• 'Well butter my butt and call me a biscuit'
• 'Cute as a speckled pup in a red wagon'
• 'Snow ball's chance in Hell'
• 'Argue with a fence post'
• 'A bit light in his loafers'
• 'Got the short end of the stick"
• 'Like a stuck pig'
• 'Bump on a log'
• 'In a coon's age'
• 'Chew'n the fat'
• 'Well, I do declare'
• 'Like white on rice'
• 'He gets a burr in his saddle.'
• 'Got her knickers in a knot.'
• 'Why that egg sucking dog'
• 'Lawd, people will be able to see to Christmas!'
• 'She's as lost as last year's easter egg'
• "I swan, you all musta pissed God off somehow"
• 'We're off like a herd of turtles.'
• 'He hasn't got the sense God gave a goose'
• 'Hotter than blue blazes.'
• Bless your pea pickin' little heart!
• 'Barking up the wrong tree.

But the my favorite is 'Hissy Fit'. Who knew we had the corner on that market? My daddy used to say, 'That lasted about as long as Pat stayed in the Navy'. I never quite figured out where that one came from.

And, that's all she wrote.

Mamie, Fode, and Southernisms

Speaking of "southernisms", to further show the differences between my Granny, known as Mamie aka Mary Margaret and her sister (my "Aunty" Fode aka Flora Katherine)  they tended to use different southern terms.

I can remember hearing my proper Granny saying things like, "He's too big for his britches" or calling a young person a "whippersnapper". She would be "gettn' ready" to go the store. "Once in a blue moon" she would have a "tip or two" with my Daddy after supper. And, she always wanted us to get our "picture made" in our "Sunday go to meeting clothes."

My Aunty, on the other hand, was a little more colorful to say the least - much to her sister's dismay. Someone poor "didn't have a pot to pee in". When my Granny commented that they had raised the drinking age from 18 to 21, Aunty's comment was that "the world was going to Hell in a hand basket." Where my Granny would refer to someone in the community as to having "passed away". Aunty would tell us, he was "as dead as a door nail."

Then there were the subjects Granny wouldn't touch. When it was revealed (in the 70's) that the daughter of some friends of the family was pregnant at the time of her wedding. Granny was gracious and in her proper way, just didn't acknowledge that small issue. (In her mind, like many southern ladies of her time, if you didn't talk about it - it didn't exist.) Aunty just laughed (as she took a long drag off her ever present Salem cigarette), "Well they ate dessert before they said grace."