"lobster back", puzzling meaning

[Joel S. Berson]

At 8/23/2008 09:54 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>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

I always knew those Ohioans were sloppy eaters.

Joel

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