nine 'yards notes

[Stephen Goranson]

Quoting Sam Clements <SClements at NEO.RR.COM>:

> 13 Nov 1967 _Pacific Stars and Stripes_  pg 11?
>
> "Spec. 4 Robert G. Helton, 64th Quartermaster Bin.--"Ann
> Margaret---all the way.  She's got everything going for her.  She
> dances, sings, acts---the whole nine yards."

This is good additional Vietnam-related American speech data to work with. He
tells why she is his favorite actress. Because she's got everything: she
dances, sings, acts. Please note that dancing, singing, and acting are
different things, though all useful for an actress. Earlier, in the book that
includes visits to and photographs of Montagnards, we had the
different-but-related things in service provided by a barber (haircut, shave,
massage). And we have Mercy Belle's many beds, many loctions or positions or
sexual favors or whatever she offered. We have, in Strawberry Soldier (written
by a Special Forces vet who worked with Montagnards) uniform decorations,
multicolored array. We have housekeepers for GIs that perform a list of
services. There is a pattern here, These are related but non-identical things
('yards). Plus, the list isn't always or even usually discretely nine of these
things; that part got lost early.

Therefore, it becomes exceedingly improbable, vanishlingly small in liklihood,
that 9 units of the exact same thing are involved in this phrase. For example,
not nine 36-inch unit yards. Some things (yards) that comprises a set, an
array, the full or whole compliment. This arose circa 1966, probably
explicitly
in 1966. Robert L. Mole wrote of and named and described for GIs nine related
but not identical Montagnard tribes in I Corps area, in 1966. To get them all
as allies would be to achieve the full cohort of allies there, the full/whole
nine yards.

Those who might await, say, a citation of "the whole nine 'gnards" may well be
asking too much before considering the remarkable confluence of the
already-available evidence of this phrase including the odd and ephemeral
usage--but in the precise time, place, and population of origin--of calling
some groups of people yards, the claimed political incorrectness (see the
interned Vietnam Study Group "Great Montagnard Debate") of which may
additionally help explain how the origin soon became forgotten.

best,
Stephen Goranson
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson

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