Sometimes, when driving, I listen to a learn-to-speak-French CD, one of those language programs where you repeat phrases spoken in French. One of the phrases is “Je ne parle pas anglais, je parle American” (“I don’t speak English, I speak American.”)
I smile every time I hear it, for it’s certainly true. And then there is the matter of we in the South with our own lingua franca.
The other day Eddie Johnson and I were riding toward Noxubee — Eddie helps me with various outdoor projects, and he often says things in surprising ways.
To whit: “Have you seen Tom lately, Eddie?”
“Yeah, I saw him the other night in his get-up clothes.”
“Get-up clothes?”
“Yeah, he was all pimped out.”
“Tom was pimped out?”
“Yea, he was sniffed out, I tell you.”
All that is to say Tom was nicely turned out, well dressed.
While I’m no linguist, it’s difficult to imagine a language capable of, or subjected to, more contortions than ours.
My over-the-fence neighbor, Sharon Garrigan, a retired speech therapist, agrees. Sharon thinks we should credit our melting-pot heritage for the richness of our speech.
Back in June, I made a pilgrimage to Ackerman to the home of Darnell Fulgham to take his picture for Catfish Alley. Darnell lives in Fulgham’s Holler, which does not appear on any map. His emailed directions took me on 82 west to the Natchez Trace, south to Highway 9, then several miles back east toward Ackerman, “which included a climb up Man’s Hill (also unnoted on map) … to a driveway on the right.” He mentions a beige wood-frame house and “then a couple hundred yards, a wobble box on your left.”
… You’ll probably be greeted by a black dog or two, T-Bone and Black Dog, or a black and white dog with short legs, Porter. And we’ll be waiting just beyond.”
What the heck is a “wobble box,” I wondered. A couple hundred yards after the beige house, I found out. Standing in front of a house trailer was a woman in a pink T-shirt; she waved and smiled as I passed on the way to my appointment with T-Bone, Black Dog and Porter … and Darnell and his lovely wife Florence.
If you’re in Ackerman and you happen to be entering Pap’s, the renown catfish house (“Where everybody is special and Jesus Christ is Lord.”), expect to be asked by Cherrie Salley, its famously friendly proprietor, “Will you be ordering from the menu or grazing in the pasture?” Grazing from the pasture refers to eating from the buffet, which depending on Cherrie’s mood, could also be “eating from the trough.”
At Pap’s they put a pitcher of iced tea on your table. Before doing so, though, Cherrie will ask, “leaded or unleaded?”
And if the food was good at Pap’s or anywhere else, Eddie would say about the cook, “Man she really put her foot in it.”
Early one morning last week, I happened to be in the yard pulling weeds when Sharon happened by walking Traveler, her Chinese crested powder puff (dog). The conversation turned to bugs; as it turns out chiggers have been a bane for Sharon this summer.
“I told someone the other day, I’m not a chick magnet; I’m a chigger magnet,” she said.
Dispatch pre-press supervisor Tina Perry remembers her mother, Lucille Woolbright, saying, “Well I swanny” as an exclamation. And if you were acting like a jerk, Mama Woolbright would say, “You big ol’ stand up in the corner.” A case where the crime may wear the name of its retribution.
Allen Taylor, father-in-law of Dispatch graphic artist Jackie Taylor, is fond of saying, “That’s their polywad.” Translation: That’s their business, not yours.
I asked Eddie if he had other sayings. He thought for a moment — these expressions naturally occurring in the course of conversation are not always easily called up.
He thought of two: One applies to a person of impeccable character: “If that person tells you there’s snuff under the wing of a chicken, you can believe it.”
And another, one that is unfathomable, “a rosetta man.”
“Lot of times older guys when they had girlfriends all over town, we used to call them rosetta men,” said Eddie. “They used to call my brother that. He used to have a woman in all these little towns around here. He was a player.”
And, no doubt, he was all sniffed out when he went a-calling.
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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