"lobster back", puzzling meaning

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:12 AM -0400 8/23/08, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>At 8/22/2008 11:58 PM, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>>
>>>I forgot to mention an interesting quotation revealed by Google
>>>Books, with a possibly different sense:
>>>
>>>1847, in Historical Collections of Ohio: Containing a Collection of
>>>the Most ... by Henry Howe - Ohio - 1847 - 581 pages, Page 254 "If
>>>any traveller, in passing through Ohio, should chance to see a large
>>>number of " lobster back" people on the farms, or about the village
>>>taverns, ...".
>>The reference is to people wearing a certain red flannel garment: looks
>>like it probably just means "[people] dressed in red" or so.
>>
>>http://books.google.com/books?id=ri8WAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA254&dq=%22lobster+back+people%22&lr=&num=100&as_brr=0#PPA254,M1
>
>Thanks, Doug -- I didn't have the perseverance to look further.  But
>I only wear red flannel in bed.
>
Then there are those who *eat* it, qua red flannel hash.  (Not
inedible with enough tabasco or the equivalent thereto.)

LH

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