Dogcatcher elections (1906); Fired With Enthusiasm (1932?); Chile con carne

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DOGCATCHER ELECTIONS

   You used to hear this phrase all the time.  However, it seems to have
disappeared, with most of the dogcatchers.  Trent Lott's star has fallen so
fast, for example, that he "couldn't get elected dog-catcher."
   I didn't see it in the RHHDAS or in William Safire's POLITICAL DICTIONARY.
 It's not in the CASSELL DICTIONARY OF SLANG.
   I think it did start with the below-mentioned candidate.  I haven't
checked the WASHINGTON POST.


   10 October 1906, NEW YORK TIMES, pg. 2:
      _Hearst in California._
   "Hearst couldn't be elected dog catcher in any part of my State," declared
State Treasurer Truman Reeves of California yesterday to Mayor McClellan, on
whom he paid a social call.

   1 April 1968, NEW YORK TIMES, pg. 28:
   Of the President (LBJ--ed.), she said, "I think he saw the opposition
growing so great that he couldn't run for dog catcher and would rather go
down in history as having done his best than be defeated in November."

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FIRED WITH ENTHUSIASM

   Not to be confused with CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM, the HBO show by Larry David,
a co-creator of SEINFELD.   Perhaps Fred Shapiro has some thoughts on the
purported Vince Lombardi coinage.


   7 September 1970, NEW YORK TIMES, "Lombardi Without Tears" by Robert
Lipsyte, pg. 24:
   WIth the same personality and a lesser intelligence, Lombardi would never
have been able to tell men that they had better be "fired with enthusiasm or
you'll be fired with enthusiasm."

   16 September 1932, NEW YORK TIMES< pg. 16:
   Eugene Savage, mural painter, said that if the student going to the
American Academy in Rome "was not fired with enthusiasm, he should be fired
by the director."

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CHILE CON CARNE

   Supposedly, the first "chile con carne" citation is 1857.  Supposedly,
it's an American dish.  John Mariani's encyclopedia includes that famous
quotation that chile con carne is "a detestable food with a false Mexican
title which is sold in the United States from Texas to New York."
   So what do you make of this, which I came across today?


MEMOIRS OF THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION
by William Davis Robinson
Philadelphia: Lydia R. Bailey, printer
1820

Pg. 71:  ..."the end justifies the means."

Pg. 84:  ..._rancho_*...
*_Rancho_ signifies a farm...

Pg. 150:  ..._chile_ (capsicum_)...
Pg. 150:  For all culinary purposes, this vegetable is as essential to the
Mexican, as salt is to the European, and indeed more so, because a Mexican
would rather go without bread, than lack chile with his meat.

(Yes, no "chile con carne," but "chile with his meat" is close--ed.)

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BORDELAISE SAUCE (continued)

   I added the WIlliam Makepeace Thackeray citation for "escargot," but left
off that he has one for "Bordelaise sauce" as well.  It's on LITERATURE
ONLINE and another database (MOA-Mich. books?).
   William Makepeace Thackeray, THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP ON HIS WAY THROUGH
THE WORLD (1860; NY: Harper Brothers, 1862), pg. 144:  "Aren't you tired of
truffles and ecrevisses a la Bordelaise;..."

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PORTOBELLO MUSHROOMS

   The NEW YORK TIMES article is 23 October 1985, pg. C1, "Growing U.S. Taste
for Mushrooms."