Posted on 09/21/2012 1:58:04 PM PDT by Pharmboy
I have always enjoyed hearing those funny and clever expressions handed down from grandmas and grandpas in the heartland. I grew up in the east, but went to school in the mid-west, and some of the guys I went to school with had some great ones.
I would love to hear some of yours.
I will start with a few that I heard years ago, and ask you folks to add your own favorites that you heard from friends and family.
My dad (NYC):
"Busier than a one-armed paper hanger."
From a buddy from Indiana:
"Well, he stands out like two turds in a pan of milk."
"She's crazier than a half-f***ed fox during the heat season."
From a guy from Georgia who lived down the hall [said about a woman who was not particularly attractive]:
She sure ain't nobody's pretty chile."
A woman from Maryland as she goes to answer the telelphone:
"What kind of fresh hell is this?"
Now you go...
What church did they go to?
Not to pry but just wondering about the tidy language.
I guess I never ever heard my grandparents swear though my daddy liked a good cussin’.
My mom-—and I guess her parents on occasion too-—would call us “little scheisters,” using the German for sh!+, and my mom would also say “you little pee-ought” which I deduced after she died, too late to ask her, probably stood for P.O.-—as in we had got her p.o.’d....
LOL, I've heard variations of that, too. Most ended with "... gave a mule" or "....gave a mosquito" or "...gave a sheep."
I guess those are all good stand-ins for Democrat! :-)
Feel like I’ve been shot at and missed, and sh&# at and hit.
This guy I know told his brother in law
“You’re just like a goose, you wake up in a whole new world every day”.
My Paternal G Grandfather was the Methodist Circuit Rider for a part of S.E. Georgia. In his later years he converted to a Southern Baptist. His Son, my Granddaddy was also a Southern Baptist. He attended Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville.
My Mother’s family were also Southern Baptist tho I think they were at first Pentecostal.
Cape Cod version: "Down the road a piece."
More from Back East:
(Stingy or thrifty person): "Tighter'n the paint on the wall."
(Too verbose): "He could talk the ears off a brass monkey."
(Old person): "He (she) was around when dirt was young."
Shoot we were all Lutheran which is about as bland as you can get but my dad’s side were full-blooded Danes and went to the Norwegian Lutheran Church in town (as close as they could get to Denmark, I guess) while my mom’s folks went to the German Lutheran Church out in the country.
My Danish paternal great-grandfather brought my grandpa and the rest of his family over but he was a constable and was killed on duty in the tiny little North Dakota town of Westhope.
My mom’s folks were immigrants before WWI and shed nearly all traces of their German heritage as the war approached, as you can well imagine.
We had Catholics in our little town but not many-—I mean you could count them on your hands and feet-—and they became doubly dubious after 1960 when the whole town (the Lutheran Republicans counted the ballots, after all) knew they had voted en masse for Kennedy.
Thanks for your posts tonight.
“It’s hotter in the country than it is in the summertime.”
That so much reminds me of my late great grand father.
“Do you live around here or do you ride a bicycle?”
Lower’n a snake in a wagon rut.
Hunker down like a jackass in a hailstorm.
Tighter’n a crab’s ass...and that’s water tight.
Quicker’n you can spit and holler howdy.
I’ll be no farther away than two hoots and half a holler.
hehe, That’s classic. I’m gonna use that one.
A couple people mention the “so poor you don’t have a pot to pee in” saying, and it has a kind of interesting story.
It comes from Old England, and the poorest people in town had to live near the leather works, which always stank, partly because they used urine to treat the leather and remove the hair, by soaking skins in pits filled with urine for days and days. The leather company would buy peoples urine, and they would send a man around once a week to collect it. If you were poor, you could sell your pee, but you needed to buy a pot big enough to store all that you’d produced all week... especially if you were a household.
So basically, being so poor you didn’t have a pot to pee in, meant that you lived in the nastiest part of town and were reduced selling your urine to survive, but you didn’t even have anything to store it in, in order to sell it in the first place.
My brother in law's mom, who is 90 something, will comment when she sees an ugly and/or old man with a younger, pretty girl friend :"Well, he's either got money or a wart !"
...busier than a one-legged man in a b*tt-kickin’ contest...
...darker than the inside of a cow...
My Danish grand father(central Wyoming c.1928) was excused from the dinner table by my grandmom when he described a local business man as "tighter than a fart in a pair of leather pants"
...couldn’t find his ass with both hands...
......and a map...
......and a head-start...
Two shakes of a lambs tail - meaning getting something done real fast.
I’ll knock you clear from here to tomorrow - threat from my mom.
Happy as a clam.
"ugly with a prior" [conviction for the same]
grandma was slow, but she was old. (updated to) grandma was slow, but she was dead
used for anything;
dumb as
smarter than
uglier than
slicker than
weaker than
stronger than...[do I have to say it?]
shit
All dressed up and no place to go
refugee from a bugs bunny cartoon (from the psychedelic 70's)
From a friend of mine in Arkansas “ Oh, that’s subtle alright. As subtle a sh!t on a wedding dress’’.
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