(Meanwhile,) back at the ranch

[Barnhart]

Dear Jesse and anyone else who's a mind to know:

>From Ramon Adams, _Cowboy Lingo_.  Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1936, p 147

After talking about chuck wagons (also known as trail wagons),
chuck-boxes, and squirrel pans:

Back at the ranch one referred more or less elegantly to "breakfast,"
"dinner," and "supper," but when one hit off the day's work with all
outdoors for a dining room, and a sooty Dutch oven on a bed of embers
in place of a kitchen range, one became more or less of a savage, and
"grub-pile" seemed to fit better in one's rough, outdoor vocabulary.
Back at the ranch, too, the cook was likely to be more polite, and to
say, in announcing his readiness for a meal: "Sit in, gents, she's on,"
or, .....

Regards,
David Barnhart

David K. Barnhart, Editor
The Barnhart Dictionary Companion [quarterly]
barnhart at highlands.com
www.highlands.com/Lexik

"Necessity obliges us to neologize."
Thomas Jefferson-August 16, 1813