This Month’s Featured Article

Words are stupid, words are fun
Words can put you on the run
– “Wordy Rappinghood” by Tom Tom Club

“That man is crazier than bob-tailed chicken on a rickety hen roost,” my born-at-the-turn-of-the-20th-century granddaddy would say to me, or at least in my direction, when I was a wee little fellow several gazillion years ago. I can only guess I might well have looked at him more than once with an expression of, “Huh?”

When I’d grown a bit older and apparently my ever-present self began to allow for more colorful observations, he might be heard to say that so-and-so was, yes, “crazier than a s%#&house rat.” To complete the “crazy trio,” an entity I believe was more happenstance than planned, my grandaddy might be heard to opine, “That boy’s crazier than a hooty owl.”

Jesse’s own scientific “research”

For the record, scientific techniques/principles/anything that might resemble a study or survey were not deployed in the making of this story. In a takeoff on the follow-one’s-nose method of tracking something down, in this case, I’ve generally followed my two ears in the attempt to decide where to properly place sayings and phrasings and, in general, oral utterances that provide clues as to where these things say they belong. 

Can I categorically, empirically, swear-on-my-mother’s-grave assert that the articulations to follow are products solely of this area? Soitanly not. Some extend statewide, others nationwide, mayhaps even worldwide, but there are things that place a speaker firmly within the confines of what most of us seem to perceive as the Hudson Valley, not some cockamamie poppycock cooked up in the Tikkity-Tokkity universe. 

Upstate vs. downstate with a side of two-three salt potatoes

Let’s start with the single issue occupying the minds of all New Yorkers, that of establishing where they are, seeing as how no one seems able to settle this ofttimes hotly contested debate, so, the first person to effectively and once and for all provide clarity to the upstate/downstate internecine battle gurgling along barely below the surface will earn a lifetime supply of salt potatoes and a free weekly fish fry, which we’ll get to in a bit.

Personally, I’ve always put the dividing line at I-84, which encompasses such august locales as Fishkill and Shenandoah as it merrily wends its way through our corner of New York State, while for others the Tappan Zee Bridge, or whatever they’re calling it this week, fixes the dividing line. 

For my purposes, I’m sticking with phrases, sayings, and words that may not have achieved particular prominence here, or even originated here, but, if not, sure sound as though they should have. 

The only places I’ve gorged on enjoyed salt potatoes is at sporting events and county fairs occurring in the Hudson Valley and nowhere else, which seems screwy to me. This concoction is practically indecent on the palate-pleasing scale of things. While never much of a potato aficionado, there is no way I can get away with a couple-three, aka two-three, of the salt potatoes sitting there in their sexy little former hot dog boat all smothered in butter on a warm July evening.

I don’t think you could limit yourself to eating only a couple-three yourself, given half the chance. The woman with the dubious pleasure of looking after yours truly as a young-un on the days my mom was at work once admonished me for conflating or otherwise ignoring completely the meaning of a “few” vs. a “couple.” 

Clearly, I’d yet to encounter the rather nebulous usefulness of a couple-three, something that may have helped me pull myself out of the weeds.

Hamburg, hamburg and hamburgers

When you overhear someone say they’re off to The City for the day, you know it’s not Cincinnati or Omaha they have in mind, unless by some chance you actually do live within striking distance of either of those locales. “All in one day,” my dad would reliably announce as we pulled back into the garage following a pilgrimage to Shea Stadium, or, once, after a trip to the New York World’s Fair in 1965.

It was later in life that I stumbled onto the notion that hamburg was not only something you eat, but a village and a town in western New York. That revelation came a few years after arriving on the college scene in central New York only to have it dawn on me that most people in the known universe refer to the stuff you eat as hamburger. Who knew? My dad was born in Hamburg. So there.

Likewise, seckyuhtary, otherwise known as secretary, regardless of whether we’re talking someone who might engage in such activities as take dictation, type things, file stuff, and the like, or a piece of furniture at which said individual might well post themselves as they ply their trade. At the point in time the realization struck that it was not only my mom, but everybody, that said it, I came to the conclusion that folks up and down the Valley had indeed received the memo.

Speaking Hudson Valley

Do you put things in the drawer or the draw? If you said “drawer,” I’m here to tell you that you’re not doing it correctly. “Put that spoon back in the draw,” which is not exactly like drawing to an inside straight, but does, if you speak Hudson Valley, provide clear instruction as to where the spoon should go. Drawer? Ha! That must be someone who draws things.

Here’s a beauty that most certainly doesn’t belong exclusively here, and may well not have originated here: should of. I should of shot that ill-humored bear when it decided to break into my house and steal back its porridge. I should of taken the Taconic, since it’s daylight and I had half a chance of avoiding one of the 37 million deer maliciously eyeing the front of my car as I rolled by. I should of not hit that deer. In an alternate universe, where relatively decent English is spoken, I’m thinking that, all things considered, I should have stayed home and avoided driving that day.  

A close cousin to “should of”: seent. Again, most likely not the sole property of the Hudson Valley, but it seems to have rolled its RV into town and set up shop, cuz the seckyuhtary I don’t have wrestles with this one all the time. Once upon a time, in referencing the release of a Saw sequel on Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update, Michael Che said simply, “seent,” and, besides nearly sending me off the sofa in peals of laughter and simultaneously freaking out the little doggy next to me, with that one word exposed one of the darker routes taken by speech in the Hudson Valley. Okay, its use won’t start a war, but it does my ears no great favors. Was that something you seent with your own eyes? I doubt it.

Creating his own saying, yes-yes

Yes-yes. Perhaps a second cousin to the modern proliferation of “wait, what,” it seems to me that yes-yes has dwindled in usage over time but once was a popular thing to say on athletic fields and in saloons and wherever else it might come in handy. Strike three! Yes-yes! I’ll have another tequila sunrise, yes-yes! Naptime yet? Yes-yes!

It must be time for us to invent our own. For years now, I’ve thought about coining a word or phrase that addresses an irritating little problem we’ve all run across at least once in our lives, that of something that looks exquisitely tasty on the grocery store shelf and turns out to be anything but once unwrapped and consumed. I’d like to propose calling it a Van Throckmorton, after Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve from The Great Gildersleeve radio show of the 1940s and ‘50s, a notorious gasbag who sold girdles. Years from now, when someone peers into Wikipedia for a Van Throckmorton reference, or perhaps consults the etymology people, they will know to associate Main Street Magazine with a Van Throckmorton, and they’ll look twice at that faux delicacy in a shiny box on the supermarket shelf before forking out good, hard-earned dough for the equivalent of a trinket.

If you’re in the mood for what pretty much the rest of the world refers to as fish and chips, hereabouts you might find yourself on the receiving end of a blank stare if you request fish and chips from that ever-so-patient person taking your order. On the other hand, if you ask for a fish fry, you’ll be in business. 

Once upon a time, I would be advised to put something in the cupboard, at one time universal for the things that would hang above counter space, for instance, but one which now seems to have given way to cabinet, wholly confusing some of us who grew up with cupboards. Again, likely not a Hudson Valley invention, but one that was prevalent at one time. 

Everybody’s gotta be somewhere, my dad would say. And now we all know where that is. •