The Corryer & "whole nine yards"?

[Stephen Goranson]

Barry,
Thanks for your research. Yet, in this case, do you think it's likely that he
mixed two memories; conflated, retrojected, or suchlike? After all, many
others have also asserted undocumented, different early times and places.
(I've made mistakes of anachronism.) As more searches, by experienced and
unexperienced searchers, turn up no documented pre-1960s nor early non-Vietnam-
related quotations, the more likely it becomes that Elaine Shepard's slang-
friendly book was close in time and place to the origin. Therefore, I consider
your earlier suggestion to try to locate a paper run such as the 1960s
Danang "White Elephant" a more likely suspect place to find the words, though
Pensacola papers, in the 1960s, have some prospect, too.

The McTavish jokes, in the versions I've seen, do not require use of "nine,"
nor possibly even "whole," maybe even "yards." One thing that was fairly new
in the sixties in Vietnam was a new sense of "yards" (Montagnards)--though
some dislike that usage; this could help explain how the original meaning was
largely, widely forgotten. And the relevant "nine" tribes for I Corps area was
published then and addressed to GIs there.
best,
Stephen Goranson



Quoting Bapopik at AOL.COM:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header

> I checked OCLC WorldCat and the publication we need to read for historical
> confirmation of "the whole nine yards" is:
> ...
> THE CORRYER
> Pensacola, Fla.: USNAAS Corry Field; United States; Florida; Escambia;
> Pensacola.
> Began in 1949?
> FL UNIV OF W FLORIDA  1953-1954, 1956-1967 FWA
> ...
> That's the only OCLC library that has it, but I'm sure that the base has a
> full run of its own publication.
[...]