Buy the farm

[neil]

Ooops! Obviously misheard/misremembered by yours truly...

--Neil Crawford


> From: George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
> Reply-To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2007 20:45:01 -0500
> To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Subject: Re: Buy the farm
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Buy the farm
>
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>
> This tune is also on a 4-CD box-set from Proper, Bud Powell, Tempus Fugue-It,
> on CD #1, Blue Garden Blues, track 4, recorded January 4, 1944.
>
> Unfortunately, what I hear is:
> Some will take the factory/That won't do no harm/Got to do some war work,
> baby/ Guess I'll take the farm.
> I don't know no aircraft,/I just play a horn/Got to do some war work, baby/
> Guess I'll take the farm.
> Since we've got to work or fight ***
>
> If I recall, the last time we discussed this expression, there was a
> disposition to accept an explanation that the phrase was originated by test
> pilots, who were thinking that when a test pilot crashed, the occupant of the
> land his plane hit got a settlement that enabled him to buy it, or pay off the
> mortgage.  The pilot was thus buying the farm for someone else.
> This doesn't seem a likely story to me.  I connect it with the dream of all
> men doing a dangerous job, whether test pilots or librarians -- well, maybe
> not librarians -- "I'm not going to do this much longer, you know.  In a year
> or so I'm going to go back home, buy a farm and settle down."  When he crashes
> his plane, his comrades say, "Well, old Joe finally bought the farm."
>
> Speaking of test pilots and librarians, I have retired from the proving-ground
> for mediocrity where I have been employed these last few decades, so you-uns
> will not in the future be seeing messages from me describing strange and
> border-line useless books as "available at better libraries everywhere", which
> has always signified, "available at Bobst Library, because I ordered it".
>
> GAT
> George A. Thompson
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ.
> Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: neil <neil at TYPOG.CO.UK>
> Date: Monday, November 12, 2007 9:56 am
> Subject: Buy the farm
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
>
>> I note that RHDAS gives a date of 1954 for 'buy the farm' with the
>> sense of
>> 'to die'.
>>
>> I was listening to 'Early Bud Powell 1944-1946' at the weekend in Somerset.
>> The fourth track, by Cootie Williams Sextet, recorded on 4 January
>> 1944, is
>> titled 'Gotta Do Some War Work'.
>>
>> The refrain makes mention of "buy the farm".
>>
>> If anyone's interested I could transcribe the words, next time I'm in
>> the
>> country...
>>
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>
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