Yes!. And the oriental rugs were pulled up in the summertime and straw rugs
put down. Linen slipcovers (usually white linen, maybe piped in another
color) were put on the upholstered pieces of furniture...I suppose to
protect the upholstery from our sweaty little bodies as there was no air
conditioning....just electric fans all over the place. We lived on the James
River so the myth went that there was always a breeze off the water but
that's not true. It's just muggy and hotter than ever. My brothers and I
went barefoot all summer long, spending 10 hours days swimming and sailing
and crabbing in the river....at the end of the summer when we went to pull
out our Weejuns to go back to school, they were green from mold.
I remember visiting my sweet Aunt Virginia in Varina (I was 8 years old) and
I exclaimed, "Darn it!"
Well, she nearly fell out and scolded me and let me know that that was
totally unacceptable. I replied, "Auntie, if you think that is bad you
should hear my daddy. He says G-d damn it when he's in his office!"
Ah. Smithfield ham. If anyone would like my dear, sweet, now gone, mother's
"receipt" for ham biscuits, let me know and I'll proudly share it. Her
mother was a Sykes from Smithfield (whose mother was a Rawls from there) so
they KNEW how to make a ham biscuit!
Deane Mills
York County
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sunshine49" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2007 9:59 AM
Subject: Re: Speech patterns
> When I was a kid- pre air conditioning- we had summer curtains and
> winter curtains, a summer and a winter rug, all designed to keep the
> house cooler or warmer, as the case may be. Popular culture today is
> a bit hard for me to understand, because when I was a kid the word
> "heck" was considered too strong or dirty for children to say. I once
> got bit on a finger by our parakeet and blurted out that it hurt like
> heck. My mother was shocked. And we 3 kids were only rarely allowed
> to drink Cokes [and never coffee], Mama said we already had too much
> energy, we didn't need the caffeine. To drink some Coke- usually on
> summer vacation to the beach- was a rare treat. I guess the caffeine
> in sweet iced tea in the summer didn't factor into that equation. But
> the big treat was at Christmas, paper thin slices of real Smithfield
> ham. People who only eat those rubbery, wet hams don't know what they
> are missing.
>
> Nancy
>
> -------
> I was never lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.
>
> --Daniel Boone
>
>
>
> On Jan 7, 2007, at 5:07 PM, Clara Callahan wrote:
>
>> Overdressed or inappropriately dressed. I still cannot wear white
>> shoes before Memorial Day or after Labor Day. I haven't met many
>> yankees who even know what I'm talking about when I try to explain
>> it just ain't kosher (except for Winter White and I cannot bring
>> myself to wear that, either). The old ways are disappearing fast.
>>
>> [log in to unmask] wrote: Something that always amused me was
>> the way Oldtimers, and I mean "literate"
>> ones; educated ones.... fine ladies and gentlemen, even, would say
>> "Don't"
>> when the sentence they were using called for "Doesn't".
>> For instance, "She don't know...."; "He don't care...."
>> And those same people also would not hesitate to say "Ain't".
>> To our over-educated ears that may seem like an abomination but I'm
>> talking
>> about people who truly knew better, who were very, very well
>> educated (some
>> had even gone off to some fine Yankee schools so we KNOW they were
>> better
>> educated:) but they persisted in using idioms and figures of speech
>> that
>> broke all the rules of usage. Now, they didn't WRITE that way and
>> when they
>> were in a more formal, social setting they didn't always talk like
>> that, but
>> amongst themselves they did.
>> I've thought about this a lot and I've decided that it has a bit to
>> do with
>> the old-timey way of thinking in which it was really, really bad
>> taste to
>> try to speak, act, behave, conduct oneself as though one was, somehow,
>> "better" than others; or better educated; or knew more; or had been
>> to more
>> places or seen more of the world.
>> That attitude which is fading fast also reflected itself in the
>> notion that
>> the very worst thing a person could ever do was to show up
>> overdressed for
>> the occasion. It could be a mortifying experience for someone to
>> arrive at a
>> function overdressed. Far better to be way under-dressed than
>> overdressed
>> which could be perceived as showing off one's finery or, God
>> forbid! drawing
>> attention to oneself.
>> I'm not all THAT old (I'm in my 50's) but I can well recall that
>> attitude of
>> trying to be understated in the way one dressed and lived. The
>> theory of
>> Conspicuous Consumption began to rear its hideous head in the
>> 1980's at
>> which time we Americans latched onto it and have never let go, in my
>> opinion.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Diane Ethridge"
>> To:
>> Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2007 11:28 AM
>> Subject: Speech patterns
>>
>>
>> My ex in-laws were from E. AL with their grandparents from SC & one
>> generation earlier, VA. They often used terms of speech & words
>> that were a
>> complete mystery to me. I'm born & bred in TX, not exactly Boston in
>> speech patterns, but had never heard some of the strange (to me)
>> words used
>> by those folks. They would say, "I was daresent" to go/do/whatever,
>> which
>> I assumed was a form of "dared not" or another one was that
>> something wasn't
>> "approcrut" (appropriate). I would become so interested in
>> listening to
>> their strange form of speaking, that I would lose track of the subject
>> matter.
>>
>> Diane in TX
>>
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