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

[Laurence Horn]

At 4:56 PM -0500 2/24/09, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>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

I obviously had plumb forgot that thread, and hadn't checked Barry's
site.  Is the idea that you're doing the car-repair, or engineering,
or philosophizing in the comfort of your old shade-tree?  Since there
seem to be no dictionary entries, it's hard to get a bead on the
etymology.  Or, for that matter, the relevant isogloss--it is really
localized to Texan and points west, or found elsewhere in the south?
We need to get us some shade-tree mechanics in Connecticut!

LH

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