reach for the sky

[Jonathan Lighter]

A Long Island mom on CNN tells her college-bound daughter to "reach for the
sky."

Now, in my day, that imperative would have been appropriate only if mom had
been beandishing a six-shooter, maybe two, but in man's intervening march
from savagery to civilization the phrase has become mainly inspirational.

A GB check reveals three basic usages: applied by gunslingers in horse
opera, descriptive of things like plants and flames, and
aspirational/inspirational. OED itemizes the former only.

Early exx. of the latter:

1929 _Commoneal_ IX  544 [not verified in print]: Shall he take a small and
sure profit, or reach for the sky?

1935 _Scribner's Mag._ (XCVII) 116 [not verified in print]: If so, Christian
missions can at least comfort themselves with the thought that once, through
their agency, Christianity was powerful enough to inspire slaves to reach
for the sky. And that is no mean feat.

The phrase probably got a boost through the title of Paul Brickhill's 1954
bestseller _Reach for the Sky_, about Douglas Bader, who became a fighter
ace in the RAF despite having lost both legs in a prewar plane crash. I feel
certain that the self-help phrase has skyrocketed since the '70s. GB doesn't
offers relatively few before Brickhill.

This significantly antedates the OED in the six-shooter context. (OED does
poorly on the synonymous, monosyllabic "Reach!"):

1910 William MacLeod Raine _A Texas Ranger_  (N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap, 1911)
154: "Now, reach for the sky, and prompt, too." ...The deputy disarmed his
captive.

After Zane Grey, William MacLeod Raine was probably the most successful of
the pre-1920 authors of pulp westerns. He was an Oberlin graduate.

JL
--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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