By DAN LANGFORD

My late father was a stickler about lawn maintenance, averring that nice folks kept nice yards.  His always looked like a golf course, and he’d comment scathingly about folks who allowed their yards to become unkempt.

I was reminded of one of his expressions the other day when I went to mow my maternal grandmother’s yard.  My uncle (her son) and I share that duty now that the house is vacant and she’s in a nursing home, and to say that it’s near the top of either of our priority lists would be an overstatement.  Thus, when I got to her house, I discovered that her grass was, as my dad would have said, nearly axle-deep to a ferris wheel.

I think that’s an expression of my late father’s own invention, but he was Southern, it’s descriptive, and seems to fit here.   With all the rain we’ve been having lately, be sure your yard doesn’t get in the same fix.

By DAN LANGFORD

Anybody out there have any idea where this phrase comes from?  It certainly sounds Southern, but I have no proof of its origin.  Under the assumption that it is a Southern phrase, though (and I feel half-way confident assuming this because I can’t imagine anyone from New Jersey using the phrase); I’d like to make it my topic for the week.

“I’ve known him since he was knee-high to a grasshopper.”

“I haven’t seen one of those since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.”

Such are the types of sentences in which one hears this colorful old phrase.  Sometimes I have heard “hoppergrass” used instead of “grasshopper,” but in my part of the world such usage is generally reserved for  folks with little standing in their communities.

Taken in the context of those illustrative sentences (and in any other context in which you’d be apt to hear the phrase), it rather obviously means “since I (or someone else) was quite young.”  A grasshopper’s knees are pretty low, and the phrase is just a colorful way of expressing the time when the subject of the conversation was basically a babe-in-arms.

That image brings me around to this coming Sunday, which is Mothers’ Day, for the arms most babes are in belong to their mothers.   Our mothers carried us before we were knee-high to a grasshopper, tended us long after we grew in grace and stature, and loved us even when we were at our most unlovely.   They eased our anxieties, bandaged our wounds, cheered our victories, and wiped our tears.  Let’s not just honor them on Sunday, but every day; for they’ve put up with us since we were born — before we were born — and if anyone has known us since we were knee-high to a grasshopper, it’s our moms.

Happy Mother’s Day.

By DAN LANGFORD

On this Monday after torrential rains and flooding in much of the country, it seems appropriate to trot out this old gem of presumably Southern origin.  I say “presumably” because I’ve no idea where the saying comes from, but can you imagine anyone from New York, New Jersey, or Chicago saying it?  I can’t.  The phrase is generally used to emphasize an affirmative answer to a pressing question, as in “Can you be here first thing Monday morning?”  One might reply, “I’ll be right here, th’Good Lord willin’ an’ th’creek don’t rise.”  The phrase has its other uses, too; most of which in my experience have been appended to discussions of fairly grand plans, as in “Inez an’ me are goin’ t’Itly next month, th’Good Lord willin’ an’ th’creek don’t rise.”

It’s possible that “Creek,” not “creek,” was intended when the phrase first originated.  Creek Indian uprisings were certainly a factor in my part of Georgia (I actually live on Chief McIntosh’s trail), what with McIntosh’s White Stick Creeks of Georgia at increasing odds with their Red Stick Creek counterparts across the way in Alabama in the 1810s and 1820s.  Who really knows?

Uprisings of Creeks are no longer a threat, but as we’ve seen this past week, upswells of creeks are as dangerous as ever.  I have an idea the funny old saying will last as long as creeks keep rising,  but certainly no longer than the Good Lord is willing.  In the mean time, keep your feet dry.

By DAN LANGFORD

My late aunt used to describe a general malaise — not quite sick, but not exactly well — as the “epizootic.”  This she pronounced just as it looks — “ep-uh-ZOO-dic” — rather than the more correct “ep-uh-zuh-WAT-ic.”  The word really means a disease that affects many different animals of the same species at the time, a sort of critter epidemic, but Auntie used it to describe what we today would call the “blahs.”  When she thought one of us had the epizootic, she’d recommend we be shot in the tail with hot fat, presumable to perk us up.  I’ve heard this saying in other families as well, and am curious as to how widespread its usage may have once been.  Now, everyone seems content to get the blahs from time to time, but they seemed a lot more interesting when they were called the epizootic, and Auntie was threatening a shot in the tail with hot grease.