Sayins'may be better than resolutions
2009. I continue the thoughts begun last week about axioms or sayins' from the country that just might help your life be a bit better for the new year if you just practice them.
One of the axioms that you best not ignore is "never kick a fresh cow pie on a hot day." I am a hillbilly who grew up on a farm in the past century and an everyday concern was cutting my foot. To you who are still learning that meant that you had stepped in some cow or other kind of manure and it was on your shoe. If you happen to encounter some fresh cow manure let it alone or it will get all over you. The same adage applies to sleeping dogs. Leave them alone. Don't make problems worse by aggravating the issue or the people involved.
Many times I heard Highland Township people say, "It didn't mount to a hill of beans." In other words it wasn't worth much. Typically when planting beans we would put two or three beans in a hill and that truly didn't have much value.
Have you ever been truly hungry? I have never missed much more than one or two meals in succession. However, if a person would say, "I am so hungry I could eat the sound end of a north bound skunk" he is hungry. I have never been that hungry.
Last August BW and I went to the State Fair with friends. We walked, talked and ate our way across the fairgrounds and back. We sat on a bench sharing a bushel basket full of those deep fat fried swirly, coiled, spiral of potatoes sliced paper thin in a rope-like Christmas Tree decorative garland. Jim, a Tennessee Hillbilly said, "Hey howdy, my dogs are a barkin'." He meant that his feet were tired. Pay attention to your dogs.
About two weeks ago Old Man Winter played a dirty trick on us and opened the portal to the arctic and cold air slammed its way into Hoosier Land. The mercury in our thermometer plunged like a rock flung into a water-filled limestone quarry. I don't know if it was responding to the coldness or just trying to go south to avoid it. Of course Randy Ollis on Channel 8 TV and every other media weather person looked directly into the camera and cautioned everyone to bundle up when going out because it was going to be brutally cold. Down home they used to say that it was, "colder than a well digger's lunch around a country schoolhouse in February." (I cleaned that up a little bit.) Another sayin' was, "Colder than a dog's nose on the back of your bare leg in late August." That is cold. When it is that cold, stay inside.
When some people worried or were anxious about some possible future event they would say, "I am as nervous as the last rooster on Sunday morning with the preacher coming for dinner." He may have a reason for worry but most things people worry about never happen.
Happy New Year.
Larry grew up north of Calvertville on a farm, and graduated from Worthington High School. He lives in Plainfield and can be reached at Goosecrick@aol.com or (317) 839-7656. Write him at Larry Vandeventer, 6860 Sunrise Drive, Plainfield, Ind., 46168.
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