“He helped me plant 7 rows of taters and I tell you what when we finished he was hitting the same lick he was when we started.”
—————
Tipper
Overheard: snippets of conversation I overhear in Southern Appalachia
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don’t know how to spell it but it ain t heard hits more like he-ard.
like I he-ard sumpin yestedy far sartin..seems lak ol freds fididar
{refrigerator) dun quid awarkin…
wall…hits a mighty nice day here
…hows it with youns?……
It takes a pretty smart feller to size up what he has to do and set a pace to finish just when he needs to. Some folks start out like a house on fire and burn out before the job is done. Others don’t ever get started and end up doing it tomorrow. Me, I start out doing one thing and end up doing another. The other day I was working in the garden and a spotted poison ivy plant. I stopped right where I was and went for the Roundup. I spent the rest of the day looking for and spraying poison ivy.
Lazy people “wouldn’t hit a lick at a snake”.
Tipper,
The other day I got so tired I don’t want to talk about it, but I will. Using post hole diggers, I dug and planted 12 tomatoes. That’s all I got done and it wore me out. The next evening I planted 1 pound of yellow onion buttons and that hurt my back, reaching over. I’m too heavy and marr-up in that fresh plowed ground. Kinda reminds me of this
man going down the railroad tracks when a train came upon
him. The Engineer slowed down to
a crawl and told the man to get
off the tracks. He turned around
and said “yeah, you just want to
get me off and in that fresh
plowed ground so you can catch
me!” …Ken
We used to say ‘lick and a promise’ for a job not thoroughly done, such as garden weeding, because of the press of circumstance; darkness, rain, company coming. I never heard what the promise was but expect it was to return later and do the job up right.
Knowing how to pace oneself for the difficulty of the work, the working conditions, etc is a real art. Someone who knows how to do it can ‘work rings around’ someone who ‘goes at it like fightin’ fire’ and wears themselves out early. The veterans make any job look easy and never have to get in a hurry.
I’ve been putting down mulch all week, I think I could use the ‘lick’ this guy has left. Well, happy weekend to all. Someone needs to do a rain dance for the outter Lenoir area. The pollen is miserable and the soil is so dry.
I’m getting ready to move and I sure could use that fellow!
Hittin a lick is common descriptive English in my area. Any native would automatically visualize a person or a mule working at the same speed at the completion of a job as when you first started. Most folks would want to know how long the rows were before deciding how impressed to be. This was one reason many farmers chose a mule over a horse as a draft animal as they would hit the same lick all day long while a horse might start faster than the mule but would slow down as they tired while a mule would pace themselves and “Hit the same Lick” all day.
Tipper,
I hope Pap is now doing much better after being home a few days. Nothing like home-cookin’ to help you feel better!
Soon, whether you agree with him or not, he will be “hittin’ a lick”, that’s just what mountain men are made of…LOL You can’t keep a good man down!
Good Luck this weekend. Looks like it is going to be pretty here…
Thanks Tipper,
PS
By the way…we had a little cold snap! Is it “Blackberry winter” or “Whip-poor-will winter”? I heard the “Chuck-wills-widow” here last week before the cold snap!
I haven’t heard a Whip-poor-will in a couple of years around here. I did hear one down toward Sweetwater this past weekend, which is way South East of us. We used to have them call often here but now we just have the Chuck-will-widow.
Wow, that’s moving right along!
Wow, that’s moving right along!
Wow, that’s moving right along!
Wow, that’s moving right along!
That’s pretty impressive after planting 7 rows….must be young. LOL!