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oxsan
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At The Doctor’s Office
All my life I have been blessed with a very stable temper and a wonderful loving concept of my fellow human beings. I hardly ever lose my temper. I try to be kind, considerate, faithful, true, just, and reverent but never accusatory or condescending to my fellow companions on this astral globe. But today I lost it------my temper that is. I had gone to the office of my cardiologist but not to meet with a physician. He had asked me to meet with a dietician who would go over my recent blood test when they had extracted about ½ gallon of blood from my emaciated body and to consult with this dietician as to the best improvements that could be made to my diet which would improve my blood chemistry. Even though I was meeting with the dietician from the Cardiovascular Laboratory I was told to come to my Cardiologist’s office and the dietician would meet with me there. My appointment was at 10.30 AM and by the clock on the cardiologists wall (carefully placed so that it was not visible from the patient’s waiting room) I arrived at 0957 hours.
Trouble started right away. The only communication between the waiting room and the office staff was a tiny window placed on the wall for the benefit of those six feet nine inches or taller to talk to the secretary. There was a man standing there and he was arguing about how much money he owed the doctor. He had a sheaf of checks, bills, and scraps of paper which he was going over one at a time with the little airheaded girl who between buffing her nails with an emery board would whine " I can only go by this statement." Having been to this office many times I recognized that the clerk was new. So I did a rude thing. After waiting ten minutes or so I entered the sacred confines of the clinic and turned to the much larger window inside where I could see everyone in the office including the three office personnel who were lounging against the file cabinet and sipping coffee. I brusquely summoned one of them over and said "I just want to sign in. " One of them asked my "Which Doctor do you wish to see?" "None of the above", I replied "I am just here to see a dietician from some laboratory". "Well we just work for the doctors. I don’t think that the dietician is here yet?" It was now 10:25AM. The coffee drinking secretary did reach over and get a form which listed several dozen disabilities and system conditions and asked me to check the ones from which I suffered. I told her that it was still the same as it had been when I was there three days ago and just to go by the one I had filled out then which was in my folder. Then she offered me a privacy statement and asked me to sign it. Since it was easier to sign the statement than it was to explain that I had signed one of those three days ago also I signed it. Then she said, "Please sit down in the lobby and I will see if the Dietician is here yet.
Now the lobby at the Cardiologists office has 17 chairs in it counting one bench with three butt depressions as three chairs. All of them were full and one waiting patient (or patient accompanyer) was leaning against the wall wi th his nose in a newspaper. The man who owed the money was still fighting the good fight at the patient’s check-in window. I was considering taking up smoking again and going out on the porch when in walked a living doll in the tightest slacks you ever saw and one inoperative button on the top of her blouse. I said that she walked in but really it was more like a dance. When she walked she rotated each foot slightly just as it struck the ground—probably an old Comanche trick to obliterate her tracks. As she came into the lobby she announced "Is Mr T--------- here?" I admitted to the charge and she said, "I know that I have an appointment with you at 10:30 dear man, but Mrs. W. here WAS first you know and we made a mistake and scheduled both of you for 10.30 . Now I am sure that you won’t mind waiting just a bit while I go over Mrs. W--------‘s lab report with her and then you and I can sit down and study your "Diet" and she made "diet" sound like something forbidden by the missionaries. By the way I had seen Mrs W. Come in after I arrived. The Dietician was about 22 I would estimate. She patted my arm., Before I could get my mouth closed and make a statement she had vanished into the white halls of the cardiac clinic. There was still no chair in the lobby. I tried the elevated hearth to the fireplace but the Gilbert Pit Limestone was too hard and sharp for me to sit on–even with a magazine under me. By this time two preschool kids were screaming at each other and chasing around the room. I assumed that their parent was inside. Certainly no one in the lobby looked young enough to have children that age-----or grandchildren either.
Finally about 11:30 little miss powderpuff came back and got me by the hand and led me back into A room where she went over my very detailed blood chemistry and then handed me a telephone number written on a piece of paper and said "When you get home call this number after a few days and ask for the Dietician and she will have a diet all laid out for you and some advice about what you should eat and what you should not".
"I thought that you were the----"
"The Dietician, Oh no. I am a "helper" for the man who owns the laboratory. The Dietician was all tied up this morning and just couldn’t get away to meet with you but we had fun didn’t we?"
Sara would not speak to me when I got home.
I’ll let my blood chemistry be the subject of a separate letter after I study it with Best and Taylor in hand and my Medical Dictionary on my knee. But it ain’t really bad.
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It is natural that cultures change and the everyday language of living changes with it. A friend recently sent me some things that he heard around the place when he was growing up and that he thinks are extinct or nearly so in our culture today. I have adopted all of the things that he listed and have added a few more that were maybe unique to my family history (but I don’t think they were). If you are under fifty I doubt that you have heard many of these things.
Be sure and fill the ice trays, the ladies are coming for a devotional this afternoon.
Watch for the postman this morning. I have a letter for Aunt Mary that I want her to get on the afternoon delivery. Get three cents from my purse to pay the postage.
Quit slamming that screen door when you go outside.
Be sure and pull the windows down before we leave. It looks like a shower is coming.
Don’t forget to wind the clock before you go to bed.
Be sure to wash your feet before you go to bed, they are dirty from you playing outside barefooted.
Be careful opening that fifty pound sugar sack. I intend to make underwear for the children with that sack.
Why can’t you remember to roll up your pants leg when you get on that bicycle. You have the leg so torn from getting it caught in the chain that I can hardly repair it.
Don’t you go outside with your good school clothes on!
Go comb your hair. It looks like the rats nested in it last night.
Be sure and pour the cream off the milk when you open the bottle.
Put the empty milk bottles on the front porch so Mr. __________ will know how much to leave today.
Put the ice card in the window turned for 50 pounds.
Take that empty soda pop bottle to the store with you so we won’t have to pay a deposit on a new one.
Put a dish towel over the cake so the flies won’t get on it.
Quit jumping on the floor! I have a cake in the oven and you are going to make it fall.
Let me know when the Fuller Brush Man or the Watkins Products man comes by. I need a few things from both of them.
You boys stay close by. The car may not start and I will need you to crank it.
There is a dollar in my purse, go by and get five gallons of gas with it when you go to town.
Open the back door and let us see if we can get a breeze blowing through here. It is getting hot !
You can walk to Aiken. It is only four miles.
If you pull that stunt again I am going to wear you out! (No empty threat)
Don’t lose that button. I’ll sew it back on in a minute.
Let me see your hands. Go back and wash under your neck. You have beads of sweat and dirt under there. You don’t sit to a meal with a dirty neck.
Get out from under that sewing machine. When you press it on that treadle you mess up the thread in the bobbin.
Don’t forget to wash the lamp chimneys then shine them with a piece of newspaper. Then fill up all the lamp bowls with coal oil and trim the wicks if they need it.
Here take this old Sears catalog with you to the privy. We are almost out of paper out there.
Put the butter in the well. On the north side remember.
Go out to the windmill and get me a big bucket of water so I can wash these dishes.
We are about to run out of soap and hog killing is at least two months away.
That dog is not coming in this house! I don’t care how cold it is outside dogs just don’t come in houses.
Soak your foot in this pan of coal oil so that bad cut won’t get infected.
You’ve got a splinter in that foot. We’ll; tie a piece of fat meat over that to draw it out.
Hush your mouth! You know better than to say words like that. If I hear it again I’ll wash your mouth out with lie soap.
No you can’t get a barber shop haircut. They cost a quarter now and that is too much!
You look a little piqued. Hear take this spoon full of Black Draught. It will help clean out your system.
If you get a spanking at school and I find out about it you will get another one when you get home.
If you get a fever keep your bowels open and drink lots of water.
Quit crossing your eyes. They might get hung up that way.
It is "Yes Sir" and "No Sir" to me young man and don’t you forget it again. And don’t say "huh" to me when I ask you a question.
While we are at Aunt Mary’s and Uncle John’s you kids eat at second table after the adults get through and I don’t want to hear any "I don’t like-----". You eat what is put on your plate and you eat it all and you don’t ask for more. Do you understand that?
Get your hat off that bed young man. Men never put there hat on a bed. Ladies do. Men don’t.
Hang that snake on a fence or it won’t die until sundown.
I want you boys to come turn the ice cream freezer. There is a church social tonight.
You kids stay away from that dead snake. Its mate may come to revenge its death.
Milk and fish at the same meal are poison.
No one leaves a meal at table without asking Father’s permission to leave.
Go put some gasoline in the washer. I have a world of laundry to do today.
You put on clean underwear before you go to town. You might be in a wreck.
We will see about getting you one next Saturday when Grandad goes to town.
Tomorrow is haying time. You boys will get up at 4 am eat breakfast at 4:30 and have teams harnessed to the pick-up rakes by 5:30 and will be in the field to follow the buck rakes by 6:00. So you had better get to sleep.
Don't ever let me hear you say that word again!
I have some more but you are probably already to sleep. You may assume from this list of things that my parents and grandparents and I were just naturally backward and stupid and uneducated. Such is not the case. Both of my parents had some college after graduating with honors from high school. My Dad was one of the most effective construction managers I ever knew. My mother taught Sunday school for twenty five years and was dearly beloved by her class. It was just a different world then and our minds were on different things.
Charles Turrentine
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This morning about eight thirty AM I took an untouched half of one of the best watermelons I ever tasted out to the chicken pen and set it down there for the chickens
to eat. I almost cried as they pounced on it and began as they always do by eating the seeds. I gave the watermelon to the chickens because my new sachrimeter that I just received had convinced me that I could no longer eat watermelon. Yesterday I ate a quarter of that melon and my blood sugar jumped from
136 mg/dl to 333 mg/dl and it has taken me until about right now to get the blood sugar back to a decent level. A few minutes ago it was back down to 116 mg/dl. So watermelon is not on my menu anymore. The real reason that tears came to my eyes however was not because I am to be deprived of watermelon from now until I die. I don't like that but I can live with it. The real reason is that the sight of watermelon brought to my mind my long gone maternal grandfather Walter Thomas Hamilton. He loved watermelon as no one else ever did and he could tell a good one and whether it was ripe at thirty paces.
My grandfather was a very poor man. He was a tenant farmer during the depression near the town of Plainview, Texas. He farmed 160 acres of good rich loam that was watered from the Ogallala aquifer that underlies most of the Texas Panhandle and was pumped up to the surface at the rate of 1200 gallons per minute and reached the surface at a constant 55 degrees Fahrenheit. Best water I ever tasted. The farm was owned by the Texas Land And Development Company who dictated what he should plant and who received as rent 3/5ths of the income from the farm produce he grew. TL&D also controlled how many acres he planted in what crop. Grandad grew cotton, sugar beets (for seed), alfalfa for hay, milo maize or kafir korn and maybe a little wheat or oats. He was allowed to have cattle, horses, hogs and chickens on the land and got to keep all the increase from these animals. But when all was said and done the 2/5th share of the money crops that he sold was all of the money that he got out of the farm and it went to reduce the debt incurred in buying seed, diesel oil to run the irrigation well and the necessities of life such as clothes. So Grandad throughout the year had to watch every penny. Gasoline was 13 cents per gallon and on Saturday morning Grandad would buy one gallon at the station in Aiken. That would get his car to Plainview and back and the family to church at Aiken on Sunday and Wednesday nights. I'll bet that old car never had a full tank in its life
Each Saturday morning Grandad would take about forty dozen eggs into town and about six to eight gallons of pure Jersey cream. He would sell the eggs to several grocery stores in town. I don't know what he received for them but I would guess that ten or twelve cents per dozen would have been tops and the cream he sold at the creamery for some small amount of money. It was this weekly income from eggs and cream that Grandad lived on and supported his family of wife, daughter, son , and me part of the year and that after paying his tithe of ten percent to the church. It was not an easy life. Prior to coming to town he had carefully studied the ads from the grocery stores in town and knew just where the prices were lowest. He was certainly not an impulse buyer. He did not believe that store bought bread or breakfast cereal was fit to eat nor did he ever buy meat other than bacon, and salt pork. He bought flour, coffee, tea, salt, pepper, sugar and meal. Just about everything else we ate had to come from the garden or the barn.
Grandad loved watermelon above all things. It was very rare however for him to buy one. He simply did not have the money. I paid five dollars and ninety eight cents for that melon I fed to the chickens this morning and I bet Grandad would have considered that price sinful. It was very seldom that he ever bought one but when he did I would be willing to wager that he never paid more than about fifty cents for a big melon and I think that he would have considered that extravagant.
So when I gave the watermelon to the chickens I thought long and hard about Walter Thomas Hamilton. When we were hoeing the cotton together he would tell me how beautiful the plains were where he lived and how happy he was to be a farmer. He taught me more about life than he knew. Among other things he taught me to lie on top of the barn and make images of the gulf clouds floating high above. He was a grand man.
love
dad, grandad, ami
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I have been reading a book called "Comanches" by T. R. Fehrenbach and like everything else I have ever read by this author I am utterly fascinated by it.
Fehrenbach paints a very detailed picture of the Comanche and points out that they were part of the Shoshone group of Amerindians but that they were very different indeed from other Indians in America and even very different from others in the Shoshone linguistic group. The Comanche referred to themselves as "the Nermenuh" which in their language means "The People".
We really shouldn't be too surprised that the Comanche are so different from the Apache, the Navajo, the Arapahoe or any of the other Amerindians. I think that Fehrenbach may well have coined the expression "Amerindian". I use it in lieu of "Native American" because the American Indians were very definitely not "native" to America. They came from Asia just as Ponce de Leon came from Europe. There are about 140 different linguistic stocks among the Amerindians that have no common root word for water, mother, father, sun or moon. Compare that to Europe where all of the European languages (with the possible exception of Finnish-Magyar) are derived from the basic Indo-European root stock and there are a flood of cognates from language to language. The European invaders had a hard time defining the "natural behavior" of the Amerindian and never fully realized that among the Indians what was "natural" was only within the confines of one tribe or possibly even one small group
I was very interested in what Fehrenbach had to say about the religion and the spiritual beliefs of the Nermenuh. The cosmic view of the Comanche did not seek to connect cause and effect in their lives but rather believed that their lives were controlled and manipulated by magic and by the powers of certain natural forces which were without form or substance and which were never personified as dieties. The Nermenuh were not given to empirical thinking. Some of the other tribes which had developed a primitive agriculture or a very restrictive gathering mode did indeed envision a set of deities in their religious thinking. Not so the Comanche. The typical Comanche was a great individualist and it is very likely that the religious views and dependencies of the Comanche varied greatly from group to group and even within the same family group.
The Nermenuh were also very secretive about their beliefs and believed that the efficacy of their "medicine" or powers derived from some natural force might well be eliminated or dimmed if discussed with or viewed by another. The Comanche did not have a coherent religion. They believed that many things in their surroundings had "powers" or "forces" that they might share in if they could just learn how to persuade the Sun, the Moon, the Buffalo or some other natural force to share a portion of their power. A totem or symbol of this power was then placed in their "Medicine pouch" around their neck and shared with nobody. But they did not believe that the sun was a god, nor the buffalo, nor the wolf. They were just creatures with power that they shared with certain human individuals when properly approached
With the Europeans that they began to meet in the 1500s they shared two and only two religous beliefs:
1. They believed in a life after death open to all ages and sexes. They referred to it as a Happy Hunting Ground. It was a place of abundant game and fruit and
was peopled only by the people they knew on earth and was never too hot or too cold and was eternal in nature. A Comanche did not have to be good or hold any beliefs to go there. The Nermenuh believed that death equalized all people. There were a few but very few exceptions. Persons scalped after death would not go there, persons dying of strangulation were forbidden entry and there were some Comanche who believed that persons who died after dark might not find their way to the Happy Hunting Ground.
2. The second belief that the Comanche shared with the invading Europeans was in the existence of a past flood that had covered the world. This belief is almost universal in some form among all of the Amerindians.
But the Comanche belief system conceived of no god or gods. To the Comanche the world was ful of forces and powers and even spirits but these forces, powers and spirits were not gods and they were not considered to be "beings". The buffalo was known to have great strength and endurance and if a Comanche warrior desired these attributes it was wise for him to study the ways of the buffalo and associate himself with them and see if he could derive some way to get one of them to share their power with him so that he would have "buffalo medicine" but he knew all along that the buffalo was just a buffalo---it was not a god. The sun was another source of power but never a diety. The owl was a malignant force and had a power to cause death or injury to humans but it was not a supernatural force it was just a natural force. The Nermenuh could pray to the Eagle pleading for a portion of its great strength or acute vision and on certain occasions the eagle might allow a feather to drop in the path of the warrior signifying a gift of "Eagle medicine" but there was nothing supernatural about it to the Comanche. Some of the other tribes did deify Father-Sun, Mother-Earth and Mother-Moon but not the Comanche.
The Comanche saw the world as random and without directed order and he believed it created purely by some magic which they did not understand or even care about very much. There was in the tribe no group dogma, no ritual. Each Comanche addressed himself to the taking of power from the "forces of nature" and learning how to address requests to these forces in his own way and for his own benefit. He considered his successes and failures to be his own secrets and no one elses' business. The first Europeans to reach the Comanche reported that they were Godless but failed to report that they were godless.
I have written the above from the masculine viewpoint. This is no accident. Women were not considered to be interested in religion by the Comanche nor were they allowed to seek their share of powers until after the menopause. After the menopause several women became famous Comanmche shamans but most did not live that long.
And that is more or less what I learned about Comanche religion today instead of washing clothes and mowing grass.
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Just a note to catch everyone up with what is going on in my world these days
The Brazos River is still a little above mean conservation level- and I understand that the four flood relief gates are still open on Possum Kingdom Dam. The water got up pretty high about a week or so ago and I got a call from the County Judge stating that I was in a "mandatory evacuation area" and for me to get the heck out of here. I did not argue with the judge who I think was a member of the County Commissioner's Court and are thus entitled to be called judges but I had no intention of leaving this farm at that time. I merely told the Judge "Yessir, No sir or No excuse Sir" like you are supposed to do with judges. I walked down toward the river and sure enough the water was out of the primary banks and was lapping at the foundations of the houses and mobile homes down on the other side of the road behind my house. I have seen the water that high here several times and I just didn't consider my residence in danger. Frank called somebody and learned that the last flood relief gate would be opened that night and got worried about me and came out from Dallas and spent the night. I convinced him that the house here was in no danger and he went back to Dallas the next morning.
Rain has been outrageous here. It rained 9 inches in one day. It rained every day for a week. It was PLUMB wet here.As a consequence of the rain we have been unable to get in the garden and keep it weeded. Johnson grass is head high over most of the garden. We mulched mightily around the tomatos and peppers and cucumbers with rotted cedar bark mulch (all garden "we's" really mean Frank who does all the work while I complain about the mud he tracks in the house ). Actually I have gotten used to the mud and don't complain about it any more I am responsible for technical research and supervision. Canning the product is my task also. We had a veritable forest of cabbage and I have made large quantities of chow chow. I also have several kinds of pickles making and have canned about thirty pints of tomatos--excellent for winter soups and pasta sauce. Frank shredded up a five gallon crock of cabbage to make sauerkraut but we don't know whether it "Made" or not. This is his second year to try for sauerkraut and last year he did not succeed. We are both afraid to taste it for fear we will die a horrible death. The beet crop this year was spectacular also and I made lots of beet sweet pickles..I think that we were too late planting the blackeyed peas They made fine bushes but few peas (Dad used to say that one could grow blackeyes out in the pavement of Sandra Street. Perhaps that is where we should plant them. So the unusual werather has made the garden a mixed bag this year. Some good some bad.
Thank all of you who called about me during the flood times.
Pam and Pat came up over the 4th and spent a few nights here. I played dominoes with Pat and won a game (there is no need to discuss the seven that he won). My one winning game was probably the result of him throwing it. He is a fantastic card and domino player. On our tour of the US trips Naoma and I used to play as 42 partners against Aunt Christine and mother. They were a pretty tough team to beat too. Cathy is one of those people too. I don't believe that I have ever won a game of cards against Cathy even when I taught her the game.
I am reading now a book called "Shakespear's Language " and enjoying it mightily. It is authored by Frank Dermode. Dermode points out in the book the fact that an enormous number of words in our current English dictionaries had their origin in Shakesperean plays. Dermode calls attention to a speech by the Roman Marcus in "Titus Andronicus" (A play that I have not read by the way but must remedy) . Marcus meets his niece Lavinia exiting the forest with blood gushing from her mouth because her tongue had been cut out and from her wrists because her hands had cut off. Now I have not been to medical school but I would guess that five minutes in this condition would be death for Lavinia due to loss of blood. She has also been brutally raped. So what does Marcus do? Apply tourniquets? Seek out the pressure points? Nope! He spends three minutes. He tells her that he should blind her father so he will not have to suffer seeing her in this condition. He reminds her that she can no longer play the lute because she has no hands. He asks her why she does not speak to him. It is a weird scene and evidently modern directors have generally cut it entirely or greatly shortened it. Buried in the speech is a line:
If I do dream, would all my wealth wake me!
If I do wake some planet strike me down.
The word "planet" seems strangely out of place there. People don't get hit by planets. Besides I am not sure that the term was even applied to astronomical bodies in 1594 A.D. when "Titus Andronicus" was probably written (I use "A.D." there just to annoy the PC types who want me to use "C.E."). At any rate Dermode spends about half a chapter proving that "planet" in this application means an unfaithful wife. He convinces me too. The whole book is a detail analysis of Shakespear's plays word by word seeking instances where words don't seem to fit.
I have been having much trouble sleeping. Last night I simply could not sleep before about 3:30 AM. No pain, no major discomfort---I was just high and couldn't relax. So I read. Frank says it is a guilty conscience
Weatherford has been named an automobile pollution zone so every year when I get an inspection sticker now I have to have a detailed emission test to prove that I am not messing up Al Gore's world. This year it just proved that I WAS. So far it has cost me $302 to find out that a solenoid in my emission system was stuck and failing to stop gasoline fumes from getting out of the car---and I still don't have a sticker. I have to drive it 100 miles and take it back for a retest to assure that they really foumd it. Why do I think this process is a sham? I dunno but I do. Did you know that Al Gore's house has 13 bathrooms?
Gotta go peel peaches.
Love
Dad, granpa, ami
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WHAT DO YOU CALL A HORSE?
I have always been fascinated by the world of words Why this word for that thing, what is the difference between this and that and things like that. Long before I went to school my parents had taught me to read from the cartoon bubbles in the Sunday comic strips. Not that I could understand everything that I could pronounce but I could puzzle out just about everything in the comics. It was my chore in most of the little towns where we lived to go down to the drug store on Sunday morning (if it was a town where the drug store opened on Sunday) and buy a newspaper (hopefully a Denver Post because it had many more comics than the Amarillo paper) and then to rush home and crawl into bed with mother and Dad and get their help in reading the funnies—every word of every comic.
At some time when I was a child I gained a low opinion of the Arabs because I read somewhere that they had 26 different words for "Camel". I remember thinking that was pretty stupid. ,After all a camel was a camel unless it was a dromedary just like a horse was a horse. But as I grew older I began to realize that a horse was not just a horse and maybe the Arabs were not so stupid after all. After a little study I decided that a horse could be referred to in at least 23 different ways
and still be within the bounds of the English language. To wit:
1. HORSE; the generic name for the beast. This is from the Low German "ors" and Middle Dutch "hors". The word first appeared in English in 725 AD as "hors" in the folk tale "Beowolf".
2. STALLION: Male horses kept for breeding purposes. From the Old German "stall" (hence our pen in the barn) through Old French "estalon" and into English as "stallion".
3. STUD: From Old Middle Low German "stot" and it originally referred to any horse male or female kept for breeding purposes. The restriction of the term to mean only males did not occur until 1803. The modern German word for "mare" is "stute".
4. MARE: A truly mixed up word in the 1200s. First there was the Old English word "merh", the West Saxon word "myre", the Old Frisian word "merru", the Old German word "marha" and the Old Icelandic word "Merr". All of them meant a female horse kept for breeding purposes and from one or all of them we got our English word "mare".
5. Filly: A very young female horse not yet of breeding age. From Old Norse "fylja". By some racing venues today a filly is any female horse less than five years old.
6 Gelding: From Old Icelandic "gelda" meaning "to castrate". Technically the term gelding can be applied to any domesticated male animal that has been castrated but it is commonly used only for horses.
7. Foal: From Old High German "folo" meaning "to give birth". Now applied in modern English to recently born young horses.
8. Colt: From Proto-Germanic "kultaz" meaning "child". Young camels by the way are called colts.
9. Pony: From Scottish "powny" and probably introduced into Scottish from Old French "poulain" meaning "foal". Latin "pullus" also meant the young of any animal (hence "pullet".In modern English I think that the word also connotes a horse of small size as well as a young horse.
10. Bronco: Interesting word. It is from Spanish word "bronco" meaning a rough piece of wood with the knots protruding. I can imagine that word being used to describe a horse after riding it across the American Southwest all day. In American Spanish I think that it also connotes an untrained horse as well as a "rough" horse.
11. Mustang: From Mexican Spanish word "mestengo" meaning an animal that strays and may be wild or ownerless. Also believed to have ultimately derived from the Spanish term "miscere" meaning "mixed".
12. Percheron:
13. Clydesdale:
14. Belgian:
15. Arabian:
16. Shetland:
17. Thoroughbred:
18. Tennessee Walker:
19. Quarter Horse:
20. Pony Of The Americas: Twelve through twenty are different breeds of horses and could be used to refer to a specific animal or to differentiate between horses. "He arrived riding his Quarter horse." makes perfect sense.
21. Roper:
22. Hazer:
23. Bulldogger:
24. Cutting Horse
25. Jumper: Horses can also be differentiated by specific skills they have been taught and trained to. A contesting roper would not think of roping a calf from a trained jumper horse so calling a horse by its training or "occupation" can also be a legal differentiation.
So there you have 25 different things that you can call a horse in English and the Arabs with their snooty camels have only one more than we do. Now I am sure that I have missed one designation and that you can think of one more different thing one could call a horse. Let me know so that we will be just as meticulous about our horses as the Arabs are about their camels.
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Many years ago...in 1992 to be exact...I went to Austin for the 50th reunion of my high school graduating class and as I was leaving town I stopped by the University of Texas campus to see if I could see Dr. Schulz-Behrend or Doctor Wolfgang Michael who had been my two principal German professors before I graduated in 1949. Neither of them was in their respective offices which is not surprising because it was a very unusuaql time for a visit. It was about 5 PM on a Saturday and I would really have been amazed to find anyone in their office at that time. But I did find their offices and decided to leave a note on Dr, Michael's office door. I had seen neither of the two professors for close to 43 years not had I had any further instruction in German. So smart-alec me I decided to make the note a poem and to write it in German (?). So without a moments hesitation nor any reference to a dictionary or anything I composed the following poem:
Ein Geist
Hier steht ein Stimme von Jahren vor,
Der Dicker Vetter doch von JEDERMAN,
Und Der Wirt von Minna gar.
Und wenn andern spielt den Faust
(Erster Teil nur, naturlich) war ich auch da.
Und Spaeter zwanzig Jahren meine Tochter spielt
In Vertauschten Koepfer hier.
Kennen Sie diesen Geist?
Am 1 August 1992 war ich hier.
Now I didn't send this on to brag about my German . In fact I imagine it provided many a good laugh around the Modern Languages faculty at UT. I sent it to provide a good laugh for those of you who do speak German. And for those who do not I submit this translation:
A Ghost
Here is a voice from long ago,
The fat cousin of the play "Everyman"
And the Innkeeper Of "Minna von Barnhelm".
And when others played in "Faust"
(First Part only, naturally) I was also there.
And twenty years later my daughter played here in "Transposed Heads".
Do you know who this ghost is?
I got a big bang out of finding this scratched out poetry on the back of a University of Texas Extension Catalogue. It was the first time that I had thought of that doggrel in years and years. I might explain also for those who have not read "Faust" that the Second part of the play is very crude and sexually oriented and Doctor Michael very wisely cut the whole part from our performance---which has been customary for years and years in performing the play. I did not have a role in "Faust"
but was accorded the role of "Stage Manager" for the play. I had a lot of fun in the German activities at UT. I don't remember when it was that Dr. Michael died but it wasn't very long after I left this poem...perhaps I should have not tried to show off my German.
Love
dad, granpa ami
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I learned today that Willa Cather's gravestone in Jaffrey, New Hampshire has the following inscription:
"That is happiness to be dissolved into something complete and great."
That sort of caught my eye when I read it and I did a little further digging in encyclopedia and on Google to see what they had to say about Willa.
Willa was born on 7 Dec 1873 and died 24 April 1947. She attended University and became an English teacher at high school in Pennsylvania. From the age of ten until adulthood she had lived in rural Nebraska. She was raised in the Baptist Church but withdrew from it and became an Episcopalian in 1922. Willa became an editor of a magazine (McClures) in NY
and later was promoted to Managing Editor.
Willa was a novelist. She wrote altogether about 12 novels of which I have read four. These are:
O Pioneers (1913)
My Antonia (1918)
Death Comes For The Archbishop (1927)
Shadows On The Rock (1931)
I think that "Death Comes For The Archbishop" is one of the top ten novels that I have ever read in my life and the other three novels that I read were also very good writing. Her novels were very sensitive and I liked all of them. I still have plans
to read a couple more of her works.
Some of her other novels were:
The Song Of The Lark (1915)
Alexander's Bridge (1912)
One Of Ours (1922)
Sapphira And The Slave Girl (1940)--I have this but haven't read it.
Willa frequently quoted the sentence above which is now on her gravestone and also frequently said:
"The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one's own."
So having read the novels noted above I knew nothing about Willa and assumed from her writing that she was a staid, delicate, demure little lady. That seems not to be the case.
At University Willa first got into trouble with the school authorities because she dressed as a man, cut her hair short in masculine style, smoked fine Cuban cigars endlessly , drank beer in great quatities at bars normally not frequented by ladies, carried a bottle of rum with her at nearly all times, and dearly loved a good fight with no holds barred and with the toughest men in the place. These were all activities which were not normally a part of the social scene for young ladies at University in the 1890s. At no point do my sources indicate that Willa was a lesbian but after reading a bit about her I came to the conclusion that she probably was.
So now that I have learned a bit about her background I am even more eager to read some more of her works and I continue to be puzzled by her gravestone inscription. It is not that I disagree with what it says but rather that I am surprised that Willa chose it for her gravestone:
"That is happiness to be dissolved into something complete and great."
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I have become nostalgic about Italy lately. Actually "homesick" would be a better word. Not that I ever lived in Italy but I did visit there several times a year and I learned to love the country and the people. I do not speak Italian but when I frequently traveled there I had reached the point that I could understand the gist of most conversations going on about me which incidentally considering the now current street slang ,jargon, cant and newly invented profanity is about all I can do in an English conversation these days. I did try to learn Italian and could make myself understood on a very basic level. Si dice however that speaking idiomatic Italian is a long way away from speaking textbook Italian and I never even reached the latter..
Si dice is an Italian expression that translates into English pretty well as "they say". It is very frequently used in almost all Italian conversations. You mustn’t take the expression too literally however. "They" may never have said it and both parties to the Italian conversation are aware of that. For instance si dice may be used by the speaker to indicate that the information he is imparting he "thinks" is true, or perhaps that it "should be" true, maybe that "it used to be" true or even perhaps that he "wishes" that it was true. There are probably four different gestures in the Italian gesture lexicon to go with each of those possibilities but they are more secret from we non-Italians than the Da Vinci code. The phrase is very handy in Italy. It adds credibility to the statement it precedes. In Chicago we might well question the speaker with "who said?". No fellow Italian would ever be so rude or unsociable as to question who "they" were, much less that "they" said it. Si dice is almost the Italian equivalent of reference to the encyclopedia and does away with carrying those heavy books about. I must stress that the listening party to the use of si dice must be Italian also. The listener puts his own home grown windage on the conversation the minute he hears the si dice spoken and he knows very well that there was no "they" and that they didn’t "say " it.
The French with a kindred language may well use the expression. I simply don’t know enough French to have picked up its use if it is current in France. I rather think however that the Gallic personality is such that your average Frenchman would just not be impressed that "they" said anything at all. I’ll have to query my French friends to see about that.
I am not aware that the German language has a comparably useful form. Sie sagen means the same thing in German but I have never heard a German use the expression in the same sense that the Italians use it. A German would just not be impressed with what "they" said whoever "they" might be. The German would like to see fifteen volumes of data as well as the laboratory routine and certification that describes how the data was collected and the mathematics that expressed all variations from the mean and would also like to see the University diplomas and the syllabi of all courses that the researcher took at University. I just don’t think that the Germans would make use of the same expression or one that had the "nominative uncertainty" of si dice.
Of course in English we have "they say" which literally means the same thing as si dice and we use the expression in conversation quite often but I don’t believe that it comes close to carrying the meaning and authority in Kansas City that the Italian expression carries in Milano or Napoli.
A good part of that difference is the listener. Like the German we might commit that conversational sin of asking "who is they".
Next time you are in Italy tune your ear to pick it up.Looking for it you will have a somewhat clearer understanding when an Italian confronts you with si dice, but don’t play the ugly American and ask "who said?". I found that the Italian expression ma certo ( pronounced "Ma chair toe") was a very useful expression to throw into the conversation at any time any where and you don’t even have to wait for the other speaker to stop talking. It means "I agree" and you will be accorded the reputation of speaking perfect Italian if you make frequent use of it.
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I Been Everywhere , Babe
I was digging around in a box of pictures the other day and came across again a big sheet of paper covered with my mother’s Spencerian handwriting where she had attempted to make a list of all of the towns where we used to live. It was typical of my mother that as a memory aid and an attempt to orient her thought processes she first made a list of where we were each Christmas since she had been married and then went back and tried to fill in the towns in between Christmases. Her total list only goes through 1943 but my memory is pretty solid concerning where I was after that so I am going to type up the list and print it out and put a copy of it in the picture box for some of my progeny to find some day. I( count my three different rural Hale County locations as towns. Dates shown are when I moved TO the town
I have often said that by the time I graduated from high school I hade lived in 42 towns and attended 26 schools. That may not be EXACTLY correct but it is close enough for government work. You can count them up yourself. I graduated in 1943 from High School and attended three Universities (Univ of Texas, Texas Christian University, and Pepperdine University).
Anyway here goes:
* indicates school attendance at this location
Hale County (Halfway) TX Born May 1927
Dallas TX Jun 1927
Plainview TX Nov 1927
Crosbyton TX Feb 1927
Dickens TX Jun 1928
Carlsbad NM Dec 1928
Plainview TX 1929
Silverton TX Jan 1930
Wellington TX Apr 1930
Dalhart TX Jun 1930
Beaver OK Apr 1931
Muleshoe TX May 1931
Sudan TX Jun 1931
Tahoka TX Aug 1931
Post TX Sep 1931
Columbus KS Oct 1931
Happy TX Nov 1931
Haskell TX Mar 1932
Throckmorton TX May 1932
Lubbock TX Jul 1932
Paducah TX Aug 1932
Beaver OK Oct 1932
Shattuck OK Dec 1932
Dalhart TX Jan 1933
Memphis TX* Aug 1933
Clarendon TX* Jan 1934
Rule TX* Mar 1934
Dalhart TX* 1934
Lubbock TX Jun 1934
Brownfield TX* Sep 1934
Plainview TX* Jan 1935
Hale County (Bellvue) TX* Mar 1935
Carlsbad NM* Dec- 1935
Perryton TX Jun 1935
Dalhart TX* Sep 1936
Borger TX* Aug 1937
Plainview TX* Sep 1937
Hale County (Bellview) TX* Oct 1937
Lancaster TX* Nov 1937
Greenville TX Jun 1938
Royce City TX* Sep 1938
Rockwall TX* Oct 1938
Munster TX* Dec1939
Hamilton TX* Jan 1939
Corsicana TX* Jun 1939
Sayre OK* Sep 1939
Giddings TX* Nov 1939
Cuero TX* Dec 1939
Austin TX* Graduated Jan 1940
South Lyon MI Jun 1943
Fort Worth TX* TCU Oct 1943
By my count above that is 51 towns by graduation time but only twenty-two schools attended or counting my three colleges attended that makes 25–still short of the oft quoted 26 schools by one.
Anyway it was a lot of moving around.----It passed the time.
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