‘Word wagons’ had a field day…when they got to coastal N.C.

One of the great American linguists and lexicologists of our time was the late Dr. Frederic Gomes Cassidy, an English professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. 

He launched an ambitious effort in 1965 to create the Dictionary of American Regional English (known as the DARE project).

 

DARE was a massive reference work to catalog local words, slang and phrases from all across the United States. The primary source of funding was a series of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, with additional support from institutions, foundations and private donors.

Frederic Cassidy was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1907. His mother was a native and his father was Canadian. 

As a youth, Cassidy grew up in Akron, Ohio, a community that is featured prominently among the five DARE published volumes.

 

Joan Houston Hall (shown below), DARE’s editor, told Celeste Headlee of the NPR Network: “While it’s fun to learn about colloquial language, there are serious practical uses for the DARE as well. Forensic linguists once used it when a little girl in Akron was kidnapped, and police had only a ransom note to go on.”

 

“In this ransom note, the writer said, ‘Put $10,000 cash in a trash can on the devil’s strip,’” Hall noted.

Headlee reported: “The key phrase in the note was ‘devil’s strip,’ a term believed to be used almost exclusively in Akron, referring to the narrow strip of ground typically found between a city sidewalk and the street.” 

“As it happened, one of the suspects on the police list was a man from Akron. After being confronted with the evidence, linguistic and otherwise, the man ultimately confessed.”

Akron author Robert Trube offered: “Did you ever note how often, between a well-kept lawn and its adjacent sidewalk and a paved street, you see a strip of unkempt stony and weed-grown ground?”

 

This area’s status is a no man’s land between private and public property; it’s viewed as the devil’s place – “barren, unproductive and unused.” Citizens have suggested that it is a strip of land that a property owner must maintain and pay taxes on but is controlled by the municipality. The “devil” in this case is city government, Trube wrote.

There’s yet another legend that bears consideration. During the early-to-mid 20th century, thousands of families migrated from West Virginia to Akron to work in the booming rubber and tire factories. Because the city streets were bustling and dangerous with vehicle and streetcar traffic, working-class mothers needed a quick, effective way to keep their young children safe.

These mothers invented a boogeyman story, telling their children that the patch of ground between the sidewalk and the street belonged to the devil. Children were strictly warned never to step onto the “devil’s strip,” successfully scaring them into staying in the yard or on the sidewalk and preventing them from running out into the street.

Signage in Akron’s residential neighborhoods reminds motorists not to park their vehicles on the “devil strip.”

 

In 2023, the Akron RubberDucks minor league baseball team “rebranded” for one game as the “Akron Devil Strips.” (The RubberDucks are the Double-A affiliate of Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Guardians.)

Headlee said Dr. Cassidy sent 80 field workers out in “word wagons,” to talk to scads of people in more than 1,000 communities across America between 1965-70, making recordings along the way in order to capture pronunciations.

 

Residents of Down East Carteret County (particularly Harkers Island) were among the interviewees. 

Other coastal region communities visited by the field workers included Elizabeth City, Manteo, New Bern, Ocracoke, Rodanthe, Washington and Wilmington.

In all, the teams visited 34 North Carolina communities. Others in eastern North Carolina were Burgaw, Edenton, Goldsboro, Smithfield, Whiteville and Wilson.

The dictionary entries just started piling up…from “slick cam” weather to things being “whopperjawed.” 

Who let ‘Adam’s house cat’ creep into our lexicon?

You know the feeling…you’re out shopping with a friend and someone comes up to you and starts talking and asks: “How’s your momma ‘n’em?”

 

But you have absolutely no idea who this person is…asking about your family’s health. You’re pretty convinced you’ve never met him or her. And when your shopping partner asks, ‘Who was that?’ you just shrug and say, ‘I don’t know him/her from Adam’s house cat.’”

Every Southerner knows the translation: “I dunno who that is. Beats me.” But the reference to Adam’s house cat may be “a little perplexing’” to a “woodser” or someone from “Off.”

Michael Quinion of London, England, creator of the World Wide Words website, wonders: 

“Is Adam’s house cat a biblical reference? Is it something we missed as a child in Sunday school?”

 

Quinion cited research conducted by author Robert Hendrickson of Far Rockaway, N.Y., who has written dozens of books about “why we talk the way we do.”

Hendrickson says Southerners are famous for taking an oft-used phrase “and improving upon it.” That’s how “Adam’s off ox” became “Adam’s house cat.”

Editors at the Grammarist, a unit of Found First Marketing, a digital publisher based in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, try to explain it this way:

“An off ox is the draft animal in a team that is situated on the right, the farthest away from the driver. The driver places the most experienced draft animal closest to his guiding leads, hoping that the off ox will simply follow what the lead animal does. The off ox’ habits and idiosyncrasies would not be as well known to the driver, as it is harder for him to observe the off ox.”

 

“Though the idiom ‘don’t know someone from Adam’s off ox’ has been in use since at least the latter 1880s, it did not emerge into popular culture until U.S. President Bill Clinton used the term during a news conference in 1993.

 

Celeste Headlee of the NPR Network said that a reporter asked Clinton about an Air Force official who had criticized the president. “How could he say that about me?” Clinton responded. “He doesn’t know me from Adam’s off ox.”

 

Headlee said: “Most of the journalists at that news conference had no idea what Clinton was talking about. It turns out the president was using a regional expression that meant the official didn’t know him at all.”

Chrysti Smith, a columnist at the Bozeman (Mont.) Daily Chronicle, said the expression initially appeared just as “I don’t know him from Adam.”

 

She said author Charles Dickens of London, England, was the first to use the expression in print in his 1840 novel “The Old Curiosity Shop” when he has a character remark, “He called to see my Governor this morning…and beyond that, I don’t know him from Adam.”

 

Smith said other variations appear from time to time, including “Adam’s brother,” “Adam’s pet monkey,” “Adam’s Aunt Bessie,” “Adam’s grandmother” and “Adam’s left foot.”

It turns out that 1840 was a “very good year” for idioms in London, England.

Elsewhere in the city, the phrase “two shakes of a lamb’s tail” first appeared in “The Ingoldsby Legends,” written by the Rev. Richard Harris Barham, a cleric in the Church of England, who was assigned as a minor canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.

 

Writing for Grammarist, Candace Osmond said: “Two shakes of a lamb’s tail means something will be done quickly or in a very short amount of time – ASAP.”

 

“It’s a whimsical and vivid way of expressing the concept of speed and promptness,” she said.

‘N.C. objects’ treasure hunt leads to Jacksonville

Continuing to explore “objects” from eastern North Carolina that have influenced the state’s heritage and culture, editors of Our State magazine selected “military identification dog tags” to be a key part of the story, which is featured in the September issue.

 

Contributing writer Kevin Maurer said that nearly 100,000 active-duty troops and National Guard members are currently serving in North Carolina, and dog tags remain standard issue. (They were first authorized by the U.S. government in 1906.)

 

The North Carolina Institute of Medicine, based in Morrisville, estimates that approximately 619,000 veterans currently reside in North Carolina, ranking the Old North State eighth among all states.

Onslow County has the fourth highest number of North Carolina veterans, trailing only Wake, Cumberland and Mecklenburg counties. That only stands to reason, as Jacksonville, the Onslow County seat, is home to several military operations, chiefly Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune and Marine Corps Air Station New River.

Our State readers were invited to visit the newly opened Carolina Museum of the Marine in Jacksonville, a 25,000-square-foot facility that pays “tribute to the service, sacrifice and leadership of Marines and Sailors connected to the Carolinas.” Admission fees apply.

 

Another important object that has helped shaped North Carolina is the “soda bottle.” 

Contributing writer Bryan Mims (shown above) noted that New Bern is the birthplace of Pepsi-Cola, invented in 1898 by Caleb Davis Bradham, owner of Bradham’s Drug Store.

 

As early as 1893, he developed a concoction of “sugar, water, caramel, lemon oil, nutmeg and other natural additives” that he believed was a healthy cola drink. He called it “Brad’s Drink.”

Bradham renamed his beverage “Pepsi-Cola” in 1898, getting its roots from the word “dyspepsia,” meaning indigestion.

Bradham formed the Pepsi-Cola Company in 1902, and “Pepsi-Cola” became an official trademark in 1903. Bradham began selling his syrup to franchised bottlers. The company was serving customers in 24 states by 1910.

 

To complete the “interesting objects” circuit, Our State staff writer Rebecca Woltz welcomed readers to North Carolina’s “Spin City,” where 30 towering whirligigs twist and turn whenever the wind blows in downtown Wilson, the county seat of Wilson County.

The Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park is now a tourism destination of major proportions and has been a magnet for the development of other entertainment, arts, foods and beverage related businesses in the area.

Farm machinery repairman Vollis Simpson began making gigantic kinetic sculptures on his family farm in Wilson County as a just-for-the-fun-of-it hobby. Some of his creations were 50 feet tall or more. He attracted the attention of curiosity seekers.

 

After his death in 2013 (at age 93), the New York Times described Simpson as “a visionary artist of the junkyard…who made metal scraps into magnificent things that twirled and jangled and clattered….”

The Whirligig Museum curator says: “Simpson’s monumental, fanciful, wind-driven creations have been appreciated by millions of people.”

 

The Whirligigs are now officially classified as “folk art.” The structures incorporate reflective highway and road signs, HVAC fans, bicycles, ceiling fans, mirrors, stovepipes, I-beams, pipes, textile mill rollers, ball bearings, aluminum sheeting, various woods, steel rods, rings, pans, milkshake mixers and many more materials that form and support the moving parts.

 

Surely, there’s a bunch of worthy “North Carolina objects” that didn’t make the cut for the top 50. It must have been a difficult decision for the Our State crowd to winnow it down.

We could start a list of some of the coastal and eastern North Carolina items. 

Two immediately come to mind: Scuppernong grapes on Roanoke Island and the legendary tea pot in Edenton. Message me at swindsguy@gmail.com if you have other nominees.

The Edenton Tea Party was one of the earliest organized women’s political actions in United States history. On Oct. 25, 1774, Penelope Barker (shown below) organized, at the home of Elizabeth King, 51 women in Edenton, the county seat of Chowan County. Together they formed an alliance wholeheartedly supporting the American cause against “taxation without representation.”

‘Lost Colony’ is essentially North Carolina’s starting place

For the cover story in September’s issue of Our State magazine, editors make the statement:

“North Carolina’s story lives in objects made here, used here, treasured here….They carry the marks of work and worship, progress and protest, music and memory. Some built industries; others built traditions. A few changed the nation. Together, they tell us who we are, who we’ve been and what we carry forward.”

 

A good number of those “objects” selected have coastal connections. The coast is where it all started…with the legend and lore arising from the “Lost Colony.”

 

Contributing writer Katherine Snow Smith tell readers about the ornate theater costumes of England’s Queen Elizabeth I, who has graced the stage is the cast of The Lost Colony outdoor drama. 

The production has been performed continuously in Manteo in Dare County since 1937. Each of the queen’s gowns in the troupe’s wardrobe weighs a hefty 37 pounds or so.

 

It was Queen Elizabeth I who endorsed the expedition organized in London, England, by Sir Walter Raleigh to attempt to build a British military compound on Roanoke Island as early as 1585. 

Due to hardships encountered, the men threw in the towel and sailed back to England in 1586.

Raleigh sent out a second group of colonists in 1587, intent on establishing a settlement on Roanoke Island, led by John White. This is the collection of families who became the “Lost Colony,” never to be found.

 

What became of them remains an unsolved mystery, but there are clues to indicate that the original settlement simply dissolved, as the English families were assimilated into the villages of Native Americans.

Some research suggests that several bands of lost colonists may have found their way to Cedar Island and Hog Island within Carteret County. Also, consider the possibility that local historians may have been correct when they tossed out the notion:

“The ‘Lost Colony’ wasn’t lost at all. It was the people who came looking for it who were lost.”

Equally mystifying to music lovers in North Carolina is the precise origin of “Carolina Beach Music” and shag dancing. 

Some say the craze started at Carolina Beach in New Hanover County. Others vote for Atlantic Beach, here in Carteret County.

 

No matter. What’s important is that a pair of “shaggin’ shoes” qualifies as another of the top 50 “defining objects” in the Our State write-up…shining the light once again on coastal North Carolina.

 

Rebecca Woltz, an Our State staff writer, said: “The Carolina shag’s six-count steps were shaped by the rhythm and blues and swing music that filled coastal juke joints and oceanfront dance halls.”

Dancers preferred flat shoes with smooth leather soles, perfect for gliding across wooden dance floors, she said.

 

Kurt Lichtmann, who taught dance at Ithaca (N.Y.) College, explained that the shag “doesn’t bounce or hop – it glides. The shag is smooth….”

Stewart Tick of Bluefield, W.Va., a noted musicologist, said beach music, with “a mid-tempo shuffle rhythm and a prominent light backbeat were ideally suited for doing the shag, a style of swing dance, characterized by smooth, fluid movements and often somewhat elaborate footwork.”

 

“Upper-body motion was held to minimum, and the turns and spins were slowed to an appropriate pace.”

College kids in the Carolinas liked to shag, reported journalist Allison Hussey of Brooklyn, N.Y., because it’s relatively “easy to keep a drink in one hand while spinning your dance partner with the other.”

 

One of the favorite shagging venues in all of eastern North Carolina was “The Williams Lake Dance Club” in rural Sampson County, near Spivey’s Corner and not too far from Clinton, Dunn and Newton Grove.