The Rock Wall

I heard an ad on TV the other day. It is really old and I first remember hearing it in the late 50’s or early 60’s. It is for Chevrolet and  is a song..” See the USA in a Chevrolet. American is asking you to call.”

It used to be that when you went to see someone, you called on them. Some people had calling cards – cards about the size of a business card  – that had your name on it. There is a collection of calling cards at the Wayside Inn Museum. I wondered if someone in this era would think it meant that Chevrolet was asking you to pick of your phone and order a  new car.

It is sort of like an old phrase I heard several years ago. “Is your mother at home?” It doesn’t mean is she at home right now. It is a question asking if she was a house wife or did she work?

One phrase I heard for the first time in El Dorado Springs was “A lazy man’s load.” The way it was explained to me was it wasn’t someone who didn’t work at carrying a share of the load ( what ever the load was) but it was a  load that should have been shared by more than one person or a load that should been unloaded in smaller pieces. So the person that was carrying a large load of ‘whatever  was evidentially a lazy man because he literally bit off more than he could chew so that maybe he wouldn’t have to back and get more. It was confusing to me.

One of my mother’s favorite expressions was “don’t get your tail over the dashboard.”

I’ll leave you with that.

KSL