Shit/Shoot fire and save the matches (1961)

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AND SAVE THE MATCHES--96 Google hits, 94 Google Groups hits

   The CASSELL DICTIONARY OF SLANG has "_shitefire_ n. (17C) a braggart, a boaster (lit. trans. of CACAFUEGO)."  No mention of matches.
   Walker Percy's THE MOVIEGOER is 1962, with a copyright of 1961.


(GOOGLE GROUPS)
Re: More dialect
My mother always said "Shit fire ...and save the matches". A painful
expression! Her father, who from what I can barely remember ...
alt.appalachian - Oct 4, 1993 by DBEAM at wvnvm.wvnet.edu - View Thread (9 articles)

Re: Heroes
... them). You mean it is *legal* for him to own .50 caliber tripod mounted
type machine guns? Cacafuego and save the matches! Chris ...
alt.callahans - Apr 9, 1993 by HC61000 - View Thread (92 articles)


(WWW.NEWSPAPERARCHIVE.COM)
Nothing?


(FACTIVA)(Scroll to bottom--ed.)
Tuna-ites dive into Fiesta
Diane Holloway
1,083 words
25 April 1993
Austin American-Statesman
FINAL
7

The residents of Greater Tuna, Texas running wild through a grocery store - now there's an advertising concept that deserves to become a reality!

Indeed, a couple of cross-dressing Austinites have taken over prime-time television, adding much-needed chuckles to the otherwise dreary prime-time programs.

The Houston-based Fiesta chain has taken advantage of Tuna-ites in a big way. More than a dozen different spots were filmed in New York featuring the popular characters created and performed by Joe Sears and Jaston Williams in the play Greater Tuna. The ads, in a weird and wonderful way, trumpet the arrival of Fiesta stores in the Austin area.

The spots feature Tuna's finest - the Tastee Kreme girls, Inita Goodwin and Helen Bedd; "smut snatchers" Vera Carp and Bertha Bumiller; chatty Aunt Pearl; and radio disc jockeys Arles and Thurston. The ads are so funny you don't realize you're being sold a bag of groceries.

"Do you boil it, fry it or stab it?" Vera wonders, peering into a bag of just-bought goodies.

"What is it?" asks Bertha, taking a peek herself.

"I don't know, but they sell it," Vera retorts.

In the same ad, Bertha brags that she's "saved enough money to get my hair done."

Fans of Greater Tuna have been delighted to see their favorite characters pop up, however briefly, several times a night. And Sears and Williams, who don't normally do commercials, have been delighted by their experience with Fiesta.

"They turned the camera on and let us play with the groceries," Sears said in a phone interview from Fort Worth, where he and Williams are starring in the play The Foreigner. "The Fiesta people approached us through our agents at the William Morris Agency in New York and made a very tempting offer.

"We made the stipulation that if we did it, it had to be with our brand of humor. They gave us a blanket to do anything we wanted to do, so Jaston started writing these loony ideas. They loved it from the beginning. Most of them were scripted, but there are 10-second drop-ins that were just improvisation. `I don't know, but they sell it' - that was an improv line."

Sears said his favorite spot is one Williams does as Vera.

"She says, `Spit fire and save the matches! There's nothin' that makes me madder than a secret I don't know about!' I laughed and laughed when I saw him do that," Sears said.


(FACTIVA)
FROM CULLALOE TO CULLOWHEE.
By Tom Hubbard.
2,173 words
13 June 1998
The Herald
31
(...)
I gave a hoot of chauvinistic delight when one of my students, Gina Broadway, traced her ancestry back to Fife. Ferociously anti-redneck and with a passion for archaeology, Gina is at the centre of a spirited group which hangs out in the library cafe. Raunchy, intellectual, they offer a refreshing alternative to the prevailing campus culture of competing pieties and anxious grade-chasing. Indeed Gina and her entourage have reversed our roles and made me their student of Appalachian phrase-making: "If God's willin' and the creek don't rise"; "Shit fire and save the matches"; "You're a stoopid man if you piss off a Southern woman of Scottish descent." I wouldn't dare.


(AMAZON.COM)
Season of the Machete by James Patterson (Author) (Mass Market Paperback)
 • Excerpt from page 52 "... sleep, maybe. Shit fire and save matches. Skip eatin' dinners altogether. Cut ..."

(AMAZON.COM)
Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas by James Patterson, Andrew Gross (Hardcover - July 2001)
 • Excerpt from page 31 "... a look. Shi ire and save matches. The right wheel was as ..."

(AMAZON.COM)
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy (Author) (Paperback)
 • Excerpt from page 147 "... chep. Chep. Silence. "Shtfire and save matches." Not ten feet below, two ..."

(AMAZON.COM)
Straight Life: The Story of Art Pepper by Art Pepper, Laurie Pepper (Paperback - April 1994)
 • Excerpt from page 91 "... "Tarnation!" and "Shit fire and save matches!" Hahahaha! Art is sensitive even ..."