North Star Writers Group

The older I get, the more often I notice my mother’s favorite sayings are creeping into my vocabulary. Mom had a saying for darned near everything back when I was a kid growing up in Flint, Michigan in the 1940s.

People who had little money weren’t financially stressed, they were – as my mother often put it - “poor as church mice,” or, “they didn’t have two dimes to rub together.”

By the same token, those at the opposite end of the financial spectrum weren’t rich, but “well-heeled,” or “living high on the hog.”

Yes, Mom had a slew of sayings. . .

Whenever I’d leave a door open in the winter, she’d shout “Were you born in a barn?”
And if Mom ran into somebody who didn’t move very fast, she’d say they were “slow as molasses in January.”

You name it, my mother had a saying for it. Quite a few involved animals. They included:
- Quick as a fox. (Note: Not to be confused with “sly as a fox.”)
- Fat as a pig.
- Slick as an eel.
- Big as a horse. (Note: The word “horse” was interchangeable with “barn” and “cow.”)
- Happy as a lark.
- Quick as a bunny.
- Mad as a wet hen. (Example: “When Aunt Hilda found out Uncle Joe had three beers at the family reunion she was mad as a wet hen.”)
- Sick as a dog.
- Purring like a kitten. (Example: “That gol’ darn engine was sounding pretty bad, but then I made some adjustments to the carburetor and now she’s purring like a kitten.”)
- Stubborn as a mule.

Others had absolutely nothing to do with animals. Like:
- Hot as a firecracker.
- Dumb as a rock.
- Dumb as a brick.
- Hard as a rock.
- Hard as a brick.
- Ugly as sin.
- Cold as an iceberg.
- Tall as a tree.
- Cute as a button. (Example: “Why that baby of yours is just as cute as a button.”)
- Skinny as a rail.
- Black as pitch.
- Pale as a ghost.

- Old as dirt.

And, if I happened to ask for an advance on my weekly allowance – I think I received 50 cents every seven days – she’d ask, “Do you think money grows on trees?”

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