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My grand-dad used to say "Faster than a turpentined cat!" once in a while.
When I asked him what that meant, he explained that feral cats could become a problem on a farm when there were too many of them. The cats were all mousers, but when there were too many, they would eat eggs, piglets, or anything else they could catch.
So a kid's job would be netting the cats, and then swab their butts with a rag saturated in turpentine on a stick. The turpentine burned them, and they would run away in pain and never come back. It was a safer way of getting rid of them than shooting them with a slingshot, but that was used too.
He said that some farmers would snare feral cats, which strangled them, and then would hang the bodies on the fence line. The carcasses would keep foxes and badgers out, he said. They also snared crows and hung them on the top wire of a fence to keep the crows out of a field.
The times were definitely more cruel to animals 100 years ago than they are today.
A couple of tame farm cats were treasured as vermin killers, but as often as not, a farmer would kill any cat that came on a place and would keep a terrier around the yards to kill the vermin, the foxes, badgers, skunks, and any other wildlife that came in for some easy pickings.
Any house cat that got too lazy to do its job got turpentined. Or worse. The dogs were never allowed in the house at all.
I say pocketbook. It annoys me that all people don't.
A "purse" is technically a "ladies wallet"
Now many people just say "wallet" like it's gender neutral. Or they say that it's a men's wallet, or that it's a ladies wallet. But ladies don't actually have wallets unless they are storing their money in something that was made for and marketed towards men. Men's wallets usually don't have "change purses". Women's do. Purse is short for change purse. When a person calls a pocketbook a purse and it's a bag and not a "wallet" they are referring to the item incorrectly.
Now bags, there are all kinds of bags.
And there are many types of bags that fall into the pocketbook category.
It drives me up the wall when people refer to all pocketbooks as handbags.
Because hand bags are clutches or bags with small handles that you carry with your hands.
People call shoulder bags (bags that are meant to be carried on your shoulder) handbags, when they are not hand bags they are shoulder bags.
At the end of the day hand bags, shoulder bags, cross body, etc. are all pocketbooks so it's correct to call them that.
If more people just said "pocketbook" they wouldn't look stupid for calling their cross body bag a purse (which is a wallet) or their shoulder bag a hand bag, etc.
Sorry, I just had to go off on that because people calling different types of bags the wrong thing is one of my biggest pet peeves. And trillions of people do it. You even did it with "purse"
So your grandmother was right to call certain types of bags pocketbooks.
I like your grandmother.
Last edited by Summer Rose; 06-18-2018 at 11:55 PM..
My grand-dad used to say "Faster than a turpentined cat!" once in a while.
When I asked him what that meant, he explained that feral cats could become a problem on a farm when there were too many of them. The cats were all mousers, but when there were too many, they would eat eggs, piglets, or anything else they could catch.
So a kid's job would be netting the cats, and then swab their butts with a rag saturated in turpentine on a stick. The turpentine burned them, and they would run away in pain and never come back. It was a safer way of getting rid of them than shooting them with a slingshot, but that was used too.
He said that some farmers would snare feral cats, which strangled them, and then would hang the bodies on the fence line. The carcasses would keep foxes and badgers out, he said. They also snared crows and hung them on the top wire of a fence to keep the crows out of a field.
The times were definitely more cruel to animals 100 years ago than they are today.
A couple of tame farm cats were treasured as vermin killers, but as often as not, a farmer would kill any cat that came on a place and would keep a terrier around the yards to kill the vermin, the foxes, badgers, skunks, and any other wildlife that came in for some easy pickings.
Any house cat that got too lazy to do its job got turpentined. Or worse. The dogs were never allowed in the house at all.
I met a weirdo guy from Deleware that turpentined a cat for similar reasons. He told the story like it was a completely normal thing to do. So sadly people still do that.
Last edited by Summer Rose; 06-19-2018 at 12:07 AM..
Referring to ZZ Top's song "Sharp Dressed Man," my mom once called it "that 'Snappy Dresser' song."
How about "dapper"? A few years ago, I saw a well dressed man at a train station, waiting for the 8:05 to Greensboro. Three piece hounds-tooth suit, well shined shoes (the ones with the design on the top, what were they called?) and a cool hat. Only thing missing was an umbrella or a cane.
Anyway, he definitely looked mighty dapper.
ETA- wingtip shoes. They were so cool.
Last edited by LilyMae521; 06-19-2018 at 05:06 AM..
How about "dapper"? A few years ago, I saw a well dressed man at a train station, waiting for the 8:05 to Greensboro. Three piece hounds-tooth suit, well shined shoes (the ones with the design on the top, what were they called?) and a cool hat. Only thing missing was an umbrella or a cane.
Anyway, he definitely looked mighty dapper.
ETA- wingtip shoes. They were so cool.
Might they have been "spectator" shoes? All spectators are wingtips, but not all wingtips are spectators. ;-)
Many years ago, I knew somebody who claimed to have gotten an autograph from Mae West. He stated that he handed the aging star an 8x11 inch piece of paper, and she proceeded to ink her name near one of the corners of the paper. She then tore the small portion of the paper bearing her signature from the sheet, and handed him that fragment of paper while purring, "Waste not, want not".
Apocryphal?
I have no idea whether his story was true or not, but it was an entertaining little tale at the time.
Starstruck coat-check girl, accepting Mae West's fur coat: Goodness, Look at those diamonds!
Starstruck coat-check girl, accepting Mae West's fur coat: Goodness, Look at those diamonds!
Mae West: Goodness had nothing to do with it.
LOVED her and her movies!
She was my idol because I could never be like her in real life!
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