Lebofsky lexicon

[Wilson Gray]

On May 2, 2005, at 1:16 PM, Mark A. Mandel wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Mark A. Mandel" <mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Lebofsky lexicon
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>
> Barry quotes:
>>>>>>
> Pg. ?: Close the stable or the horse'll get out, who died--your flag
> is at
> half-mast, your lunch box is open, flies cause disease--keep yours
> closed,
> what do birds do?-- your fly is open.
>  <<<<<
>
> The only one of these I've ever heard is the "flag" one. I'll add:
>         "X. Y. Z.: EXamine Your Zipper"
>
> -- Mark
> [This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]
>

 From those late, lamented days of the button fly, I remember:

It's N o'clock in Petersville, where N is the number of loose buttons.

The barn[sic] door's open and the horse is running out.

I don't know why we said "barn" and not "stable," since horses,
horse-drawn wagons, and stables for horses all were still commonplace
in my childhood, but there were no barns. In St. Louis, horses had to
be shod with rubber horseshoes, so as to ease the noise pollution
caused by hundreds of thousands of clippity-clops a day on the paved
streets.

-Wilson Gray