
“Afterwards many of us have nary a bit more sleep in us than a screech owl.”
Tipper
Overheard: snippets of conversation I overhear in Southern Appalachia
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“Afterwards many of us have nary a bit more sleep in us than a screech owl.”
Tipper
Overheard: snippets of conversation I overhear in Southern Appalachia
Subscribe for FREE and get a daily dose of Appalachia in your inbox

“Well we better get on.” “You ought to just stick around we’re real peaceable right now.” —————————– Tipper Overheard: snippets of…

Overheard: “I wish you could remember the song because I like to sing about going to the mill. Not many…

“Well if that don’t beat all! I’ve never seen the like in all my borned days.” Last night’s video: Mountain…

“That’s the way a body does. They just get busy and let things go that ought to be done.” Tipper…

“Burell’s dead; Dexter’s been dead for a few months now. They’re a going fast. I’m hunkered down cause I’m thinking…

“You already drunk those I bought last week?” “Yep. I just soak em in me.” —- Tipper Overheard: snippets of conversation I…
Sounds like somebody got an awful scare or had an awful amount of caffeine.
Sanford, I thank E.TN. and E.KY. speak a common language. Well anyways, they used to.
A new one on me…but very descriptive!
To have no more sleep left than an owl would just mean to give it up and get up. Growing up, I heard that called ‘the big eye’. Somebody would say something like, “I just got the big eye and couldn’t go to sleep to save me. Finally I just got up and sat out on the porch till daylight.”
My teenage friend Lake Weaver, would say that when he grew up he wanted be so rich he could afford a “hainged Cadillac”. Meaning the car would be so long it would have to be hinged in the middle to go around corners.
That’s very descriptive of no sleep and I had never heard that one. I often hear barred owls and a great horned owl sometimes, but haven’t heard a screech owl in many years. I used to hear them called scritch owls.
AW, scritch owls was what screech owls were called in the mountains of North Eastern Tennessee where I was born. The same word was used when someone stopped their automobile too quickly on asphalt. “He always stops his car so fast (instead of quickly) that the tars scritch. I jest wush he’d not do that cause it sceers me!” Another expression that was used about automobile tires was, “He took off so fast that he made the tars squeal!”
Had you ever heered somebody squall thur tars when they left. There wudden that much assfault whur I come frum so we always throwed gravel.