"Madder than a peach orchard boar" (Molly Ivins)

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

I thought the next HDAS would have it. It's in DARE, but not OED.
...
...
...
_http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/texas/entry/crazy_as_a_peach_orchard_boar
_madder_than_a_peach_orchard_boar/_ 
(http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/texas/entry/crazy_as_a_peach_orchard_boar_madder_than_a_peach_orchard_boar/) 
...
 
“Crazy as a peach orchard boar” ("Madder than a peach orchard  boar")
 
"Crazy as a peach orchard boar” (also “madder than a peach orchard boar") is 
 a Southern expression used in Texas and elsewhere. Its exact origin and 
meaning  remains unknown, but a peach orchard boar (or peach orchard pig) 
allegedly shows  wild and unrestrained behavior. The term “peach orchard boar” also 
means sexual  excess. 

Texas writer Molly Ivins (1944-2007) used the term in her work.  


_NEH  Proposal, June 2005_ 
(http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:JORB_ZntC7kJ:echo.gmu.edu/workshops/june2005/presentations/grants/NEHSample.pdf+"Peach+orch
ard+boar"+and+ivins&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=3&ie=UTF-8)  
Project Title: Do You Speak American?  
Institution: Capital of Texas Public Telecommunications Council 
Project  Director: Susan Mills 
Grant Program: Humanities Projects in Media 
Grant  Type: Digital Production, GN-30099-02 
Pg. 49: 
Next we go to the floor of  the Texas legislature in Austin. Here we join 
political commentator Molly Ivins,  who has called the legislature “the finest 
free entertainment in Texas.” She is  sitting in the gallery watching the day’s 
proceedings. She calls our attention  to what she calls the “highly flavored”
 language, the argot of Texas political  debate. As we listen, a person is 
described as “crazy as a peach orchard boar.”  When a normally indolent 
colleague is suddenly invigorated, a fellow member asks  “who put Tabasco sauce in 
his oatmeal?” A homely man is described this way:  “He’s so ugly that when he 
was a little boy his mamma had to tie a pork chop  around his neck before the 
dog would play with him.” Ivins’s final example is  the classic explanation 
for why a legislator will never vote against a lobbyist  who helped elect him: “
You dance with them what brung you.” 

Ivins  comments on the speeches given by particular male representatives, 
who, she  says, have intensified their Texas style—pronunciation and idiom—as a 
signal  that they are true Texas men. Ivins provides us with an amusing blow 
by blow  analysis of their linguistic strategies. We then follow a group of 
legislators  to their favorite drinking spot. A barmaid asks the men what they 
are drinking  and then chats with them in an exaggerated, charming country style 
that displays  an equally adept linguistic strategy. 

_Fort Worth (TX)  Star-Telegam_ 
(http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/16592346.htm)  
Posted on Wed, Jan. 31, 2007 
That was just Molly  bein’ Molly 
BY ANTHONY ZURCHER 
Creators Syndicate 
Molly Ivins is  gone, and her words will never grace these pages again — for 
this, we will  mourn. But Molly wasn’t the type of woman who would want us to 
grieve. More  likely, she’d say something like, “Hang in there, keep fightin’ 
for freedom,  raise more hell, and don’t forget to laugh, too.” 

If there was one thing  Molly wanted us to understand, it’s that the world of 
politics is absurd. We  can’t cry, so we might as well laugh. And in case we 
ever forgot, Molly would  remind us several times a week in her own unique 
style. 

Shortly after  becoming editor of her syndicated column, I learned that one 
of my most  important jobs was to tell her newspaper clients that, yes, Molly 
meant to write  it that way. 

We called her linguistic peculiarities “Molly-isms.”  Administration 
officials were “Bushies”; government was in fact spelled  “guvment”; business was “
bidness.” And if someone was “madder than a peach  orchard boar,” well, he 
was quite mad indeed. 

(Dictionary of American  Regional English) 
peach-orchard boar 
also peach-orchard  pig, ~ borer: Used in var. proverbial comparisons, usu. 
referring to  wild or unrestrained behavior; see quots. [In ref to the practice 
of pasturing  hogs in peach orchards to eat the windfalls] scattered, but esp 
Sth, S Midl  

[1885 Century Illustr. Mag. 29-681 cTN, An’ don’t stan’ ther’  a-gawpin’ 
like a runt pig in er peach orchard.] 
[1953 Randolph-Wilson  Down in Holler 108 Ozarks, A candidate for COngress 
once said that his  opponent, a handsome fellow and popular wit hthe ladies, was 
“wild as a boar in  a peach orchard."] 
1967 DARE Tape WA30, [FW:] Can you tell me how  hungry you were before you 
started eating? [Inf:] You mean tonight? Hungrier  than a peach orchard boar. 
1986 DARE File, Crazier than a peach  orchard boar. 
1992 Houston Chron. (TX) 5 Apr sec G1,  Crazy:...Nuttier than a peach orchard 
pig. 

_Google  Books_ 
(http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC00319462&id=-aYaAAAAMAAJ&q="peach+orchard+boar"&dq="peach+orchard+boar"&ie=ISO-8859-1&pgis=1)  
American Thesaurus of Slang 
by Lester V. Berrey and  Melvin van den Bark 
New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company 
1953 
(first  edition 1942) 
Pg. 167 ("crazy"): 
...full of hops, full of nuts, full of  nuts as a fruit cake, -a 
peach-orchard boar… 

_Google  Books_ 
(http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC00190977&id=A4sPAAAAMAAJ&q="peach+orchard+boar"&dq="peach+orchard+boar"&ie=ISO-8859-1&pgis=1)  
This Is Chicago: An Anthology 
by Albert Halper 
New  York: Henry Holt and Company 
1952 
Pg. 39: 
“You think I’m full of  nuts as a peach-orchard boar, don’t you? Crazy as 
hell, ain’t I?” 

_Google  Books_ 
(http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0820320293&id=5YfeZSBjLJkC&pg=PA96&lpg=PA96&ots=Z_vdgWSWVH&dq="peach+orchard+boar"&ie=ISO-8859-1&sig=
_ErgGxdU5XuzYZ6gtzas6uqKols)  
You All Spoken Here 
by Roy Wilder, Jr. 
New York:  Viking Penguin 
1984 
Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press 
1998  
Pg. 96: 
Wild as a peach-orchard boar: A randy buck; sexually  passionate and 
unrestrained. 

Lost is the derivation of the term, known  at least from Virginia to the 
Ozarks. Perhaps it comes for a boar’s belly ache  after loading up on green peaches
—seed and all. Or from the natural mating  manner of a boar roaming in a 
peach orchard. Whatever… 

General Dan E.  Sickles of the Union Army became known in the Civil War as “
the hero of the  peach orchard.” He was known, too, as a randy buck. Any 
connection with “wild as  a peach orchard boar” may be coincidental. Sickles won 
his hero’s laurels at  Gettysburg when, holding the III Corps salient in Sherfy’
s peach orchard, his  troops stood up to Longstreet’s heavy artillery fire 
and infantry assaults  before being driven out of the orchard and the adjacent 
wheat field on the  second day of battle. Sickles won laurels of another sort 
of service in assorted  boudoirs; age did not limit his interest in women, for 
when he attended a  Gettysburg reunion in 1913, he was accompanied by a young 
lady identified as an  “attendant.” 

Peach-orchard crazy: Passionate; lascivious.   

_Google  Books_ 
(http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0292771185&id=EV0ghE-L5IcC&pg=PA238&lpg=PA238&dq="peach+orchard+boar"&ie=ISO-8859-1&sig=wD6f2ttY8xZx-
TtZeDCE7JowKz8)  
Once Upon a Time in Texas: 
A Liberal in the Lone  Star State 
by David Richards 
Austin, TX: University of Texas Press  
2002 
Pg. 238: 
These firms were merrily billing away for endless  depositions about the 
state of mind of Howard Hughes, who everyone knew was as  crazy as a peach orchard 
boar. 

5 November 1958, Reno (NV) Evening  Gazette, pg. 26, col. 1: 
He has more guts than a peach orchard boar.  

16 January 1969, Las Cruces (NM) Sun-News, pg. 13, col. 2:  
One would, no doubt, figure Haskins to heat up early for a team with a 14-0  
record but when a long-time rivalry is involved, against a school only 45 
miles  down the freeway, things possibly could become wilder than a peach orchard 
boar.  

17 November 1976, Northwest Arkansas Times (Fayetteville, Ark.),  pg. 24, 
col. 1: 
“Wild as a peach orchard boar” is an old Southern expression  for a man 
intent on having his way with the ladies. It is definitely not the  type of 
subject to bring up in polite company, according to a new book called  “You All 
Spoken Here.” The book was written by Roy Wilder, a sometime  newspaperman and ad 
writer from Raleigh, N.C. 

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org