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

[Bill Palmer]

What is the issue?  The widespread use of the phrase?

I have lived all over the US, and, in one circumstance or another, have
heard the term very often.

Bill Palmer

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stephen Goranson" <goranson at DUKE.EDU>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2009 6:07 AM
Subject: Re: "shade-tree mechanic", not in (some) dictionaries


> ---------------------- Information from the mail
> header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Stephen Goranson <goranson at DUKE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "shade-tree mechanic", not in (some) dictionaries
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Quoting Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>:
>
>> 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
>
> The Cambridge MA Car Talk guys (at least one of them) on NPR used the
> term.
>
> Stephen
>>
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>>
>
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