Heard on The judges: "Ripping and running"

[Wilson Gray]

On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 7:27 PM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
> One of the hits that came up in GB was Collins Dictionary of Slang--for "rip
> and run", not for "ripping and running"--with the lemma (doing it from
> memory, I saved it on a different computer) suggesting "to move about
> aimlessly" or something like that. Seems to be a related meaning to "ripping
> and running" that you cited. A number of citations are clearly linked to
> Texas and Louisiana, although, of course, most are difficult to place from a
> GB snippet.
>

Well, I'm not surprised that I don't know _rip and run_. If it hadn't
been for the fact that my grandmother - don't know why it didn't get
passed down to my mother; well, Mom probably felt that it was
something that only old people would say; I hardly ever use any of the
stuff that my mother, in her turn, always said, like "bird's nest on
the ground," etc. - used to use "ripping and running," the 1973 book
of that title would have escaped my notice and, when I began to hear
it on The Judges, I'd have thought that it was a brand-new expression!

To paraphrase Foghorn Leghorn,

"We have the word _coincidence_ just for occasions like this."

--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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