Whole Nine Yards 1966; statement of Murphy's Law 1957 (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Jonathan Lighter]

Just discovered that the late Gordon Cooper wrote (with his co-author) as
follows:

2000 Gordon Cooper & Bruce B. Henderson _Leap of Faith_ (rpt. N.Y.:
HarperTorch, 2002) 260: We sat alone in his office, and I told him the "
whole six yards," as we used to say in Oklahoma, where fertilizer trucks
carried six cubic yards of material.

Cooper (1927-2004) spent his early childhood in Shawnee, Okla.  By 2000 he
and Henderson had to be familiar with the "nine yards" version.

I can't find another exx. anywhere of "the whole six yards."

JL


On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 11:58 AM, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC <
Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL>
> Subject:      Whole Nine Yards 1966; statement of Murphy's Law 1957
>              (UNCLASSIFIED)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> Caveats: NONE
>
> If these relatively early citations have previously been reported on the
> list, I can't find them.
>
> Wings of the Tiger; a novel.
> Author: Carl Krueger
> Publisher: New York, F. Fell [1966] p. 279 [Vietnam fiction]
>
> "I personally recommended you for these decorations.  I know you rate
> them.  I don't do these things lightly.  You went the whole nine yards."
>
>
> "The House That Stores the Sun," Richard F. Dempewolff, Popular
> Mechanics, Oct 1957
> P 278 col 2
> " "You approach a project like this," says Pelletier, "with the
> reseracher's maxim in mind:  'If anything can possibly go wrong -- it
> will." "
>
> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> Caveats: NONE
>
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