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A
few years ago, I made a talk to a group in Fort
Worth. When I finished, an obviously educated lady of some means chastised
me for repeating a series of good ol’ boy expressions used in East
Texas.
“Don’t you think,” she began, “that using those expressions
destroys the integrity of the English language?”
She may have a point,
but the last time I looked, there wasn’t an organized movement by East Texans
to bring political correctness to the way they talk., Instead, the good ol’ boy
expressions and idioms for which we are famous seem to be proliferating and keeping
pace with today’s times.
The other day, for example, I heard a business
owner describe a stern and uncompromising manager this way: “He’ll stare down
a computer.” In my days, it went this way: “He’ll stare down a mule.”
While
most of our sayings are being updated every day, most of them are the products
of rural folks who were forced to rely on their country experiences to emphasize
a point in conversations.
Consider these examples:
“She has as much use for that as a hog needs pockets.”
”I had a piece of pie as big as the baby’s high chair.”
“He’s smiling like a mule eating briars.”
A
lot of word-stingy editors I’ve known will never accept this theory, but there
are a lot of expressions which make more sense than single words. Such as: Angry:
“He’s hotter than a pot of collards. Big:
“She’s a well-watered woman.” Foolish:
“He buys crutches for lame ducks.” Amazement:
“Great gobs of galloping goose grease.”
Ugly is described by East Texans
in more ways that I can count. Here are some samples:
She’s so ugly she could snag lightning. He
has a head like a stomped ‘possum. He
looks like the dogs have kept him under the house.
Never marry an ugly girl; she’s hard to get shed of.
Bob
Bowman's East Texas
November 21, 2010Column.
A weekly column syndicated in 109 East Texas newspapers |
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