Saturday, February 17, 2018

"From Hell To Breakfast" [Remembering My Father's Words]





The day did not have an auspicious beginning. 
From the upstairs bathroom window I watched rain sluicing down the green metal roof of the side porch below; the branches of the cedar trees on the side lawn flailed in the wind.
Another grey and soggy day. 

Toweling damp hair away from my face, I hauled on jeans and a shirt,  headed for the stairs, attended by the usual retinue of cats. 
The cats milled about as I turned on lights, prodded at nearly extinguished coals in the stove.
Opening the front door, ushering Charlie-cat in and the boy cats out, I noticed that one of the outdoor cats had barfed on the step--noticed, thankfully, before planting my foot in the
 congealing pile. 
With the mess disposed off, I headed for the cat kibble bin in the Amish washroom turned garage. 
Jim had left the overhead door open hoping to disperse some of the condensation that slicked the concrete floor.
"SOMETHING" had clearly trespassed in the garage during the night!
A trash bin was upended, tins strewn across the floor, likely the work of a possum.
I collected my work gloves and strode out to gather up the tins, finding that still more of them had been carried onto the gravel drive and abandoned there.
Picking up cans, with cold rain drizzling into the neck of my shirt, I suddenly thought how my late father, Larry, would have described the scene.

"That trash is strewed from hell to breakfast!"

Larry was not given to serious profanity. As I mused  over his usual lexicon, I realized that his favored epithets all contained the word Hell.

A deteriorating situation was predictably 'going to hell in a hand-basket!'

An object going too fast [as in a stranger's car on our usually quiet dirt road] was 'going hell-i ty toot' or 'hell-i-ty ding-dong!'
Larry did have a temper, and when thoroughly angered would blast out, 'Hell and damnation!'

Clattering tin cans into the now righted bin, I pondered, not for the first time, the source of my father's idioms.

The first language of my paternal grandparents was Canadian French. 
The first US born generation of families who had moved from Quebec to upstate New York, later congregating in Addison County, Vermont, French was the language they spoke with ease. 

My father dismissed French as words he didn't comprehend-- a language spoken when 'the old people' came for a visit. 
Larry's grandparents had at least a rudimentary grasp of English, clumsily phrased, accented, but serviceable. 
His parents made the decision to speak English in the home, thus sparing their children the handicap of starting school with a language barrier--a situation still common among the French Canadian families of the area when I was in school.
Although Larry's parents sometimes conversed with each other in their native tongue, Larry and his siblings had no grasp of French.

My father's phraseology seems to have been unique to him--at least I never heard others use his particular expressions. 
Growing up with a passion for descriptive words, an ear that picks up on an unfamiliar turn of phrase or a local idiom, I noted that my father sometimes arranged words a bit awkwardly in a sentence, described things in terminology peculiar to himself [a gathering of objects referred to as 'a couple, two or three.']  It was almost as though some faint cadence from the speech of his French Canadian ancestry found a home in his every day parlance, traces of which he was seemingly unaware.

It was my mother-the school-teacher who usually read aloud to us at bedtime, although occasionally if she was busy, Daddy stepped into the breach. 
He read well, but balked at unusual words. My sister and I found this entertaining and slyly coaxed Daddy to read our Sunday School lessons. 
Mother caught on to this when she heard us giggling as Larry struggled with 'King Nebuchadnezzar'--we were quietly but sternly informed the next day that we had been rude and it wasn't to happen again!

Gathering the last of the scattered tins,  thumping the bin back into the corner of the garage, I found that I was smiling--still annoyed with the creature who had made the mess, but warmed by memories of my father.
Undoubtedly I would need to be judicious in making Larry's pet phrases my own--but if one must clean up a rummaged trash bin first thing in the morning, there is an earthy pleasure in declaring that it was all strewn 'from hell to breakfast!'




16 comments:

  1. It was heartwarming to read your post today. You have such talent in writing. And, I loved learning about your family. I hope you get some warm, sunny weather soon. My best to you, Pat 💐

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    1. Pat; I'm glad you enjoyed this post. I never know what will tumble out of the memory closet!
      We seem to get a partly sunny day book-ended with three of rain and gloom. We're about 'over it!'

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  2. Great post, makes me want to call my Dad tomorrow. I could just visualize you and your sister sitting there listening to your Dad reading the Bible, while your Mom overheard what was really going on from from the other room.

    I never heard such creative use of Hell before, but like it.

    My Mom used to have a lot of funny phrases she used to describe things. Farm or country old time phrases. I can only think of two right now, but she had a lot of them. If something smelled bad, it smelled like "cats fightin'", another one that that had to be a country old time phrase was something was "as useless as t**s on a boar hog". I guess that would be pretty useless.

    Funny how cats always find the perfect place to get rid of their fur balls. Our old Persian cat always liked to surprise us like that. It used to make me use some colorful phrases when I stepped in them barefooted.

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    1. Susie; Many of the country sayings are surely based on experience. Two tomcats fighting leaves the surrounding area quite malodorous. Have you noticed that a cat about to 'erp' finds a comfortable place--like a scatter rug or under the dining room table?
      Although scolded, I think my sister and I didn't fully realize that we were being disrespectful of our Dad's English.

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  3. That made me smile - those gentle memories of your father and his special idioms. I am familiar with the going to Hell in a hand-cart expression, so that's an English one he picked up. I have used Hell's Teeth (with the stress on Teeth), and Hell's Bells and Buckets of Blood (which came from one of my favourite pony books by Monica Edwards). I still rather like that one!

    Your mention of your father stumbling over words which were new to him has made me think of the young auctioneer they have at Brecon. I think he has Dyslexia - he certainly has a BIG problem with reading the items from the catalogue and doesn't know how to pronounce what I think are commonplace words. Such as a Hornby (Hornbee) train was pronounced HornBYE, and a repro film poster for Casablanca was properly murdered - he didn't even get the letters in the right order! I am afraid his "audience" are somewhat cruel when he gets it wrong and he now leaves out anything he knows he will struggle with . . . Not that I am saying your dad was Dyslexic (as I'm sure he wasn't) but it's just the unfamiliar words reaction.

    I love the idea of the cadence from his Canadian French ancestry coming through in his speech. Having heard his parents and the "old folks" talking in French, this wouldn't have been at all surprising.

    BTW, "from Hell to Breakfast" is a wonderful expression!

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    1. Jennie; "Hell in a hand-cart" was a variation that Daddy used. Daughter G. has adapted that to fit her large collection of purses--she tosses it out as an 'insider' remark--" I'm probably going to hell in a handbag" [for whatever misdeed.]
      You explanation of Larry's patterns of speech makes sense--why didn't I tumble to the fact that the English he heard at home was spoken by people who were not fluent in the language. The French rhythms of phrasing are different and that was apparently passed down.
      Thank you for calling that to my attention!

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  4. I like your Dad's use of words. My inlaws spoke Spanish and English, but taught the boys to speak English after teaching the oldest Spanish and seeing his struggles.

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    1. Janet; You've nailed the dilemma. Many of the French Canadian children in our town repeated first grade because they needed to become familiar with English. Some were not allowed to speak English at home. Others became comfortably bi-lingual. Often the men of the families, needing to do business in the community, learned passable English while the stay-at-home women did not.
      I think my grandparents made the sensible choice, but I've always regretted the loss of a second language which by inheritance should have been mine.

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  5. What great cussin' words! Your Dad sounds like quite the interesting character. I hope the rains don't cause any major problems your way. There is a lot of small stream flooding here, and the Ohio River is in flood stage as well.

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    1. Granny Sue; "Cussin" words as opposed to 'using the Lord's name in vain' or the 'dirty' talk which has gained too much traction seem to add 'color' to speech. There was little swearing in the small town of my youth, nor was there vulgarity--as least not that I overheard.
      Re the rains: streams here are full up--the Green River is at bank level and ready to spread into the fields and swamps that border it. The rain could quit for a week without anyone missing it!

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  6. Hellity ding dong is a good ne! Lol I love that last photo. :)

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    1. Softie; I could be tempted to let a few of Daddy's phrases sneak into my own lexicon. Oh dear, what would people think!
      The last photo was taken a few years before my dad's passing in 2009. He was an avid trout fisherman.

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  7. Now here's some good reading! You really are quite the writer. I was fortunate to grow up in a home where "cuss words" were not allowed. However, I heard the word "Hell" a lot at church when one of the "Fire and Brimstone" preachers were conducting "Revival Meetings," and I married a nice guy who has taught me a few colorful words through the years. Now, in the matter of your overnight visitor, I would be quite suspicious of some hungry little critter with a furry striped tail.

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  8. Chip; I don't recall that the threat of 'hell' figured in the Sunday sermons of my childhood--there are a lot of small church 'revivals' posted in our area, and the word does appear on their notice boards.
    Raccoons do make a mess. We've not seen any close by, but possums are legion--we chase one off the front porch just after dark at least once a week. Later in the day I discovered an empty olive oil bottle had been carried nearly the length of the lane--I'm refusing to consider that any critter larger than opossum/coon, etc made us a visit.

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  9. Wonderful memories of your dear Father to keep you smiling during your aggravating morning! Love seeing the photos. We only know them as Fathers and Grandfathers, but once upon a time they were vibrant and young with hopes and dreams we could never know. I do remember my parents and grandparents using the phrase, 'Going to Hell in a hand-basket' to describe someone of dubious character. Your night-time visitor had a wonderful little snack to tide him/her over for a while :)

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    1. Karen; Truly, as children we see our parents and grandparents, all adults, as living on a different plain--it takes some growing up to remember that they were, as you say, 'vibrant and young.' Thinking of Daddy did help with the clean-up process!

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