Do you feel as if you sometimes "work like a dog?" Have you ever "taken the bull by the horns?" Has your work often felt as if you were "pushing a log chain uphill?" Perhaps it's best to just "hit the hay".
These are the types of sayings author Bob Bohlken has been collecting for many years and are now featured in his latest book, Listening to Rural Midwestern Idioms/Folk Sayings.
Folk sayings, or idioms, reflect the events, objects, experiences, and lives of farm folks of the past.
Many of these sayings have been lost to a new generation not familiar with threshing machines, hog butchering, butter churns, hay stacks, and hundreds of other terms relating to rural life of yesteryear.
In the not so distance future, computers, cell phones, and digital cameras may have their own lost vocabulary.
Elderly Midwesterners will recall many of these expressions.
The younger folks may have heard grandparents use some of these phrases.
They may not know their meaning because they do not have a known reference to the sayings.
The author, Bob Bohlken, noted storyteller and observer of the local folks, doesn't want the meanings of these idioms to be forgotten.
He wrote this book for two reasons: 1) to record the meaning and references made to the past way of living in rural northwest Missouri and surrounding area and 2) provide entertainment for those who remember the sayings of another time.
The events that caused the expressions can be relived again and again through this entertaining collection.
Bohlken grew up in the small, rural town of Talmage, Nebraska.
He calls this a "jerkwater town" because it refers to small towns where the trains only stopped long enough to take on water for the steam engines.
While growing up he worked in a hardware store and a hatchery/produce store.
Here he learned to understand the colorful talk of the local farmers.
He found out it was not good to "count your chickens before they are hatched" and that "cream always rises to the top.
" The local businesses were ideal places to "chew the fat", "shoot the breeze", or "spin a few yarns" about the olden days.
Various sayings or expressions were used to describe feelings about neighbors, marriage, common sense, money, and relationships.
For example, she may have "led him down the primrose path" before she "gave him the boot.
" Or, speaking of common sense and intelligence, one might say: "he's three pickles short of a full quart.
" There were also sayings about serious subjects such as death and dying.
You don't want to appear as if you have "one foot in the grave" or "are living on borrowed time".
Referring to someone who may not have many days to live, it might be noted that "he sure shouldn't be buying any green bananas".
Another favorite topic, sports, has been referred to in different ways.
For example, do you know "right off the bat" what kind of sayings might allude to baseball, football, and other sports? You have probably been thrown a "curve ball" every once in a while, or maybe you "couldn't get to first base " with someone.
If you have been in a discussion with someone regarding a problem, you know that you need to "keep your eye on the ball" or you will be distracted.
Bohlken spent over 42 years in the teaching field.
Over 30 years were spent as an administrator and professor of communications at Northwest Missouri State University.
Since his retirement, or as he refers to it as "going out to pasture", he has been a serious collector of folk sayings in this mid-western region.