"A hard road to hoe"

[Mark Mandel]

On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 12:24 AM, Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Speak for yourself, m a m.  I earned spending money in my preteens
> working on truck farms south of Detroit back in the early fifties.
> And we younger kids usually got the harder rows to hoe. I couldn't
> figure out why my older brother and his buddies always finished
> quicker.  We picked berries, too, for six cents a quart.

I AM speaking for myself, Herb:

wilson:
> >>Â  Ordinary people, not just we
> >> my-god-how-can-you-possibly-fxck-up-a-millenia-old-cliche types, are
> >> going nuts over this one.

mark (emph. added)
> > **most of us** are at least a couple of generations removed from hoeing rows ...

And therefore most of the people who hear "hard row to hoe" have no
idea what it's about, and eggcorn it into "hard road". I know the
expression myself only through reading and glottomania rather than
personal or legacy experience.

Mark

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