"Whole nine yards" : some negative evidence [addendum]

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>Anyway, do you Doug, or anyone else have a speculation on whether Ms.
>Shepard picked up the phrase from some of the pilots she was living with at
>the time in Vietnam, or could she have picked it up from her earlier
>association with the military?

The way it appears in "Doom Pussy" it was a pet expression of a particular
USAF navigator nicknamed Smash. That does not exclude the possibility that
it was also used by others, but it is not just used right and left by
various characters as if it were standard English. It appears once in
Smash's quoted speech, once in a passage like "what Smash would call the
whole nine yards", once in the voice of the author ("the full nine yards")
referring to a haircut with the trimmings ... which in the same episode
Smash was getting (and then Smash says some tonsorial thing or other is the
"ninth yard" [apparently "finishing touch"]). The book is semifictional, I
believe, but Smash can be identified readily enough.

Smash is deceased. Some of his colleagues from the time confirm that he did
use that expression a lot; I did not get any definite information from them
as to whether they did or didn't hear it earlier (at least one said he
couldn't remember, it seems like it's been around forever, but maybe it
could have come from Smash). I'm not sure how popular that book was among
USAF personnel when it was new: is it possible that this book itself was
important in popularizing the phrase within the USAF ... and/or outside?

-- Doug Wilson