Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2019 17:16:37 -0400
From: “N.A. Booko”
Subject: ‘Eating Rotten Cucumbers . . .’
When I was a child growing up on (no, not Walton’s Mountain) the Mill Hill In in Biscoe (Montgomery Co.) in the 1940s, we had next to nothing material-wise. Money was scarce- But we kids made the most of everything. Everything included left-overs. Believe it or not, we even re-cycled adult’s profane and nasty words, later paying dearly for it.
I was never much to ‘cuss’ someone ‘out’- but some first cousins were masters at belting out sizzling hot “Ah, hell that’s a damned
lie”- “S.O.B” was sometimes just as common as ‘hey- how you?’. Some of it scorched my ears, because we never heard such animated and colorful language in our home. My Aunt often told folk’s in anger- ‘You kiss my foot’.- Nearby neighbors got more dramatic with the kissing curse.
We kids had certain phrases and words to fit certain situations- For instance, a very large marble was ‘a big shooter.’ A quilt on the front porch for summertime sleeping was ‘a pallet.’- We were never permitted games that used dice. They were not allowed in the house. ‘No Gambling Cards!” Those common playing cards- you know- Hearts, spades, etc. were never allowed and decades later, I still don’t know how to play cards or the value of those symbols.
When a fellow playmate was bragging just a wee bit too much, he could be brought down to size if you blurted out “Yeah, you gonna do great wonders and eat rotten cucumbers”- And if you really wanted extra jest to that, add “and fall back in ’em”.
N.A.
N.A. Booko lives and writes in Chatham County since 1972