If you’ll stay with me until I finish this blog, it will contain an option some of you have asked about.
My speculation, which has no basis in any scholarly research, thinks the similes my mother quoted were Appalachian, descended from an English ancestry. In Mama’s generation the similes remained but few people knew their explanation. She had learned them from her grandmother. By this time, when I repeat them to my grandchildren, the simile itself is strange. So first let me help you with some of these.
Simile: “As tight as Dick’s hatband”
Question: “How tight was it?”
Answer: “So tight it burst.”
Simile: “As thick as Carter’s oats”
Question: “How thick were they?”
Answer: “So thick you couldn’t stack them on the ground they grew on.”
Simile: “Not as long as Jack stayed in the Army”
Question: “How long did he stay?”
Answer: “Not long enough to get his uniform.”
Another saying from this heritage is not a simile, but one that Mama often used in her effort to keep us humble. When we seemed to take more than our share of credit for a group accomplishment, she would say, “Yes, we killed a bar’. Pa shot it.”
This is where I finally get to the opportunity. Over the years that I have done this “Readin’, Ritin’, but Not Much ‘Rithmetic” blog, I have been asked how one could get a notification that a new one was posted. Up until the remodeling of the website, that was not possible, and I have just encouraged people to friend me on Facebook and remember that I post on Mondays and Fridays. That is still an option. However, with the changes that seem to have Facebook picking and choosing what they will show, “we” added a feature in our renovation at the very bottom of each blog so readers may request notification by email when there is a new post. And lest I claim credit not due to me, Megan did it.