Wilson hangs up the jockey strap

[Wilson Gray]

I give. No one one uses Saint Louis's "do [someone] _some_ solid,"
anymore, if anyone ever did use it, outside of Nellyville. The clear
winner, by a knockout, is "do [someone] _a_ solid."

"_Some solid_" exists only in my memory  and, hopefully, in that of
other senior-citizen Saint Louisans, despite the fact that, given
that, "solid" equals "good," doing someone "a solid" is like doing
someone "a good."

Well, at least, the negative works the same way for everyone: "I can't
do you no solid" (I think).

In like manner, Saint Louis's "give me some slack'' has fallen before
the far-more-widespread "cut me ..."

OTOH, "hang up the jockey strap" ("give up one's effort to make the
team," in those days) > "hang up the jock strap" > "hang up the jock"
> "hang it up," before I ever lived outside of Saint Louis.

-Wilson
--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain

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