Ignorance Stick Re: Rat-tail(ed) broom

[Dan Goodman]

Wilson Gray wrote:
> IAC, it looks roughly like an "ignorant stick" / "ignorance stick" -
> pushbroom - with the handle removed and a third or so of the bristles
> removed from the head, with the empty space carved, so to speak, into
> a handle.
>
> BTW, I once read somewhere - Mario Pei, yet again? - that "ignorant
> stick" originally referred to the spade as a tool of ditch-diggers.
>
See Damon Knight's sf story "Idiot Stick."
> But, IME, it was:
>
> "... pushing the ignorant stick ..."
>
> "What's that?"
>
> "Doing porter-work."
>
> --
> Dan Goodman
> "I have always depended on the kindness of stranglers."
> Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Expire
> Journal dsgood.dreamwidth.org (livejournal.com, insanejournal.com)
>

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