North Star Writers Group

A few of us graybeards were whiling away a rainy Saturday afternoon over our favorite drink (Geritol and Jack Daniels) when the subject of old sayings came up.

”What ever happened to all those goofy things people used to say when we were kids?” somebody wanted to know.

That, of course, got us to remembering, and before long memories were flying around the table. My family, I’m sure, had as many, probably more, of those sayings than most families.

My grandmother Odiel Dobbs was the queen of the one-liners. It was Grandma Dobbs who used to say “Hark!” whenever I was talking too loud while she was listening to her favorite soap opera on the behemoth Philco radio that dominated one corner of her living room. The trouble with Grandma Dobbs is she didn’t just say Hark! She would scream Hark! which always scared the daylights out of me.

My mother had her favorite sayings, too. If someone happened to be. . .um . . . financially unstable, Mom would say “He’s poor as a church mouse.” Or she’d remark “He doesn’t have two nickels to rub together.”

If I happened to leave the front door open in the dead of winter, she’d always ask “Hey, were you born in a barn?” which, of course, I wasn’t, because, when you come right down to it, very few people are born in barns.

To my knowledge, my Uncle Ken had only one favorite saying, but I always got a kick out of it. He said it when he was playing poker with other family members and the dealer would ask him if he wanted his last card up or down. Every time, Ken would reply “Down like a deep-sea diver.”

My Aunt Falma’s pet saying whenever she was surprised by something was “Land sakes!” I never understood that one, either.

Many other family sayings come back to me, too. If somebody wasn’t too smart, he (or she) was “Dumber than a box of nightcrawlers.”

There were sayings for many other things, too.

- Ugly: “He fell out of an ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.”
- Unpopular: “His mother had to tie a pork chop around his neck to get his dog to play with him.”
- Talkative: “Don’t ask him what time it is. He’ll tell you how to build a watch.”

- Nervous: “Like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rockin’ chairs.”
- Slowpoke: “Movin’ like a herd of turtles” or “slower than molasses in January.”

In my family, a heavy rain was a “gully washer,” a heavyweight man or woman was “as big as a barn,” an elderly person was “old as dirt”, a foul-natured chap was “cross as a bear” and during a heavy rainfall it was OK to observe “it’s raining cats and dogs.”

P.S. If you have some favorite old sayings, send them to me. My e-mail address is bbatz@DaytonDailyNews.com.

That said, I’m outta here like a bunny rabbit.

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This is Column # BB12. Request permission to publish here.