"Larrapin" and Other Down-Home Expressions

My dad passed away back in 1999, about four years before my oldest grandson was born. For a long time, I resented the fact that he never got to know any of my grandsons and they would never know him. 

There were lots of things about Dad that made him memorable.  When I was a boy, he sometimes seemed larger than life to me, with his army uniform and forceful personality.  I have written before  about some of his verbal eccentricities, and foremost among those were his folksy expressions.  Some of these originated in his native east Texas, and I remember some of the my older relatives using similar sayings. He had also picked up other expressions during his years in the Army.  Soldiers often have an interesting way of talking, and sometimes "interesting" means not appropriate for polite conversation.   A few of his family-friendly expressions are still common among the Fouse clan.

If something was really tasty, even better than delicious, Dad would say that it was "larrapin'."   This was from Texas, and is common to the southern US.   If there was something that he didn't like, he would add it to his list of top things he hated, and then recite the whole list, "hot tea, cold coffee, wet toilet paper, second lieutenants, and  (whatever the new thing was).  This was clearly an Army saying, and I heard him say him it a thousand times, always followed by his hardy laugh.  

Many of his sayings from Texas stemmed from his rural roots, and some of those didn't mean much to a kid who had never lived on a farm.  For example, if someone had got a really lucky break, when

good fortune came to that person though no effort or skill on their part, he would say, "Even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then."

This one originated from the fact that hungry pigs will dig in the dirt with their noses looking for food, such as roots, insects, and also acorns.  Since I never lived on a farm, I did not know this about hogs until Dad explained the meaning behind the blind hog adage.  That was just one of the old sayings about hogs that Dad used. 

A few months back, our oldest grandson Corban was at our house right before supper time.  Dana asked him what they were having at their house to eat that night.  He replied, "Dad said we're just going to root-hog tonight."  Without knowing it, Corban was quoting his great-grandfather, whom he has never known. 

When I was a boy, if no one was going to cook the evening meal, Dad would say, "OK, everybody it's root, hog, or die around here tonight."  Again, this goes back to pigs digging in the dirt to find food, as my father explained it to me. So on those nights, we knew we were on our own for supper. Peanut butter sandwiches or leftovers were on the menu, and we could serve ourselves or go hungry. 

When my son (Corban's dad) and daughter were kids, I used the same expression to tell them to fend for themselves.  When my son grew up, he said it to his kids in the same circumstances. Now my grandson, three generations removed from our rural roots, uses a piece of it ("root-hog") as a verb for what he does when the kitchen is closed.  

It reminds me of a story I heard once about a woman who cooked pot-roast in a unique way.  She would cut the roast in half and cook each half in a separate small pan. When her friend asked her why, she explained that that was how her mother had always done it.  The friend still wondered why, so the woman called her mother and asked her.  Her mother told her (for the first time) that it was because she had never had a pan big enough for the whole roast. 

When Corban said he was going to root-hog, I laughed out loud.  A piece of my dad was being expressed by my grandson, who never knew his great-grandfather, but carries some of his genes, and sometimes says things he used to say.  So, although my grandsons never knew my dad, they know their parents, and they know me.  We all knew Dad and were shaped by who he was and the things he said. 

How much of what do, think, and say is impacted by those who came before us, whether we knew them or not, without our even knowing it?

My great-grandparents, Jim and Martha Lake, and family, circa 1902