"shade-tree mechanic", not in (some) dictionaries

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 4:27 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>
> Emmylou Harris's new album "All I Intended To Be" contains a
> particularly fine song "Broken Down Man's Lament", which contains a
> line I was sure I was mishearing, but it turns out I wasn't:
>
> "I was a good shade-tree mechanic."
>
> More fully, the quatrain in question runs as follows, confirmed by
> both the enclosed lyrics and various web sites:
>
> ======================
> I was a good shade-tree mechanic
> So I sent myself to school
> They smoothed out my rough edges
> In my hand they put new tools
> ======================
>
> No help from the usual sources, but urbandictionary.com comes through nicely:
[snip]

Barry Popik has it on his site with citations back to 1942:

http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/texas/entry/shade_tree_mechanic/

In a 2005 thread here I noted some other variants, including "shade-tree
engineer" and "shade-tree philosopher".

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0506C&L=ads-l&P=15454


--Ben Zimmer

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