strong like ball

[Wilson Gray]

Great story, dInIs! Fortunately for me - there are several people whose
necks I'd love to snap, but I've never killed any animal bigger than a
mouse - my branch of the family had moved to St. Louis before the time
of that particular rite of passage arrived.

-Wilson

On Mar 3, 2005, at 2:39 PM, Dennis R. Preston wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Dennis R. Preston" <preston at MSU.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: strong like ball
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> We had chickens, and this twist of the wrist was a coming of age
> phenomenon for me. The first time I was sent out to do the deed
> (which I had observed many times), a breaking rather than a parting
> of the neck resulted, so that the poor critter could no longer hold
> its head up, but it did indeed run around the yard, like a chicken
> with its head a-danglin rather than like one with its head cut off. I
> caught it and took my little hatchet to it.
>
> I was later successful with this flick of the wrist and sent many
> birds to the big coop in the sky.
>
> dInIs
>
>
>> At 11:09 PM 3/2/2005, you wrote:
>>> My grandmother used both "greedy-gut" and "glutton" with wild
>>> abandon.
>>> However, I don't recall that she ever said just plain "gut(s)." She
>>> used "insides" for chickens or named the individual parts thereof,
>>> when
>>> asked. Since we had our own chickens, I saw my grandfather kill a
>>> chicken by literally wringing its neck. He picked up the chicken by
>>> its
>>> head, made a particular movement with his wrist, and the chicken's
>>> head
>>> remained in his hand and its body fell to the ground, where it ran
>>> around like a chicken with its head cut or, rather, torn off.
>>>
>>> So, I've seen a literal slap on the wrist, a neck literally wrung,
>>> and
>>> a chicken literally running around with its head torn off.
>>
>> I have too--in fact, my mother did the chicken-neck wringing so that
>> we
>> could have "chicken every Sunday."
>>
>>> I've just heard a character on CSI: NY say for[beid] for "forbade."
>>> O,
>>> tempora! O, mores!
>>>
>>> -Wilson
>>
>> I hear this all the time--no biggie.  But re. an earlier thread,
>> today, on
>> our local radio, I heard a student announcer say "... the 10 million
>> dollar
>> jackpot drawling...."  She was obviously reading a script, so the
>> intrusive
>> /l/ intrudes even in spite of print.  Not uncommon in southern Ohio.
>