I've been outside a lot lately so the blog posts have dropped off a bit. Chatting with my neighbor, Al, (the neighborhood groundhog killer) made me laugh today. After a long, hot day outside, he went inside to wrinch off. (no... that's not a typo... wrinch.) This is the same neighbor who said that my mom probably sprang her wrist. "It's worse to sprang your wrist than it is to break it," he says. I agree.... I sprang my ankle falling off a dance floor long ago... It's a Western PA thing. He went on to tell me that his friend Abie went to the "Choir-practor" for his bad back.
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There is something so "home" about all this. It's how people talk here. The Pittsburghese site does include wrinch as a verb, but I haven't found sprang yet. Glancing over the list I found I could relate to so many of them. How many times were we told as kids to get out of the dirt because our good clothes would get "roont?"
-I still think Gall-avant is a word. I just haven't spelled it right. "Don't go gall-avantin' all over God's Creation. I want you home by dark," I'd hear all the time. It means to just ride around for no good reason. I do a lot less gall-avantin' now that gas is four bucks a gallon.
If we stayed close to home we were usually told to watch out for the jaggerbushes when we picked blackberries. I've just assumed everyone everywhere has jaggerbushes. If we did get scratched... every mom had "mecuro-chrome" to put on it.
And there were plenty of Studda-bubbas around back then. The word is derivative of a Polish name for "Old Woman." (Stara Baba) It congers up images of grandmothers in babooshkas with long house dresses and sensible shoes, 'worshing' porches, or hanging clothes on the line. Most of them had a "fridge-adaire" in the house, and grew "tuhmaytuhs" in the back yard.
And .... for as many times Mom said "your gonna drive me to Dixmont," (translation: You are making me crazy) it never happened. Dixmont was a state mental hospital. It's closed now, so these days she just says "you are going to drive me to an early grave."
1 comment:
This was a fun post. I've moved around quite a bit so I've had to strip out much of my western PA-isms. My ex- used to get disgusted when I'd say, "cake of soap." He humiliated it out of me. (I had no idea that was a weird thing to say.) And I learned over the years that it was better to just say "rubber bands" instead of "gum bands" because nobody has any clue what "gum bands" are. Same with "red up." I never say that anymore. Too many weird looks. Annnd I've finally learned to use the infinitive when grammatically required. Example: "The porch needs worshed" should actually be "The porch needs to be worshed." A cute one that just popped into my head: On the farm, we used to refer to crappy machinery or whatever as a "hunk-a-junk." I discovered a new one not long ago: A few years ago a friend told me I say "Whenever" too much. I still haven't quite figured out what is wrong with that. But he said I say it when I could just be saying "When." Example: "Whenever I do that, I get a headache." And he's saying it should just be: "When I do that, I get a headache." That may be the last remnant yet to be beaten out of me. (Oh and gallivant is a word!
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/gallivant)
Nice chatting with yinz.
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