JIM “PAPPY” MOORE: The Old Timer Sayings

Mike Capps and I talk about some of the sayings we learned from Old Timers and we lament that it seems those will die out with us. They don’t seem to catch on any more. We say them around our own sons, but they have not caught on with Millennials.

Mike Capps and I have been friends since 1954 when we were little shavers. Our dads were good friends. Once the four of us renovated the Capps house. His dad was the brains of the operation. We did the grunt work. Daddy was a willing helper. He would say “I can hold the other end of a two by four,” and he taught me how to do that.

Mike and I have conversations about all manner of topics which amuse us. He writes some of his down and they are excellent. One of the things he and I love to reminisce about are what the old timers used to say. That would include his Dad, who was born in 1924, my Dad, who was born in 1926, and their fathers who were born in the 1800s. We lament that so many of the colorful sayings are probably going to die with us.

My dad was a preacher who would say profound things about the nature of man like “everyone is good for something, even if only as a bad example.” He told me that after I talked badly about the father of a friend of mine, a man who truly did wrong far too often by his wife and kids.

Mike’s Dad was full of colorful sayings that hearkened to his days of growing up in deep East Texas, living in a small house with no indoor plumbing. Things like “it’s hotter than a chicken in a wool basket!” I never knew when that happened, but just the thought of being inside a wool enclosure sounds hot as the dickens. He’d make a point about not being a jerk by saying “two horses’ behinds don’t make a horse!” But an all time favorite was his testimony about being an honest man: “If I tell you a rooster dips snuff, you can look under his wing and find his snuff box!”

Mike’s great Aunt Vivian had sayings she would toss around, too. Our favorites from her were about smells. If she smelled something really rotten, she’d say “that’d gag a buzzard off a gut wagon!” Or, if someone let one fly, Aunt Vivian would snarl and say “you smell like somethin’ crawled up in you and died!” She did have a way with words.

Mike’s Dad had nicknames for things, and you had to be around him to know what he meant. Now, I never heard channel locks called channel locks because Mike Capps’ dad would say “Jim, hand me those golly-whoppers over there by you.” That’s where I learned they were called golly whoppers by his dad, and that is what I still call them.

Mike’s Paw Capps would not hear of having a toilet put into his house down near the community of Beulah, south of Lufkin. He continued using his outhouse to the day he died. He said “Any man that’s too sorry to not crap away from the house is just sorry. You don’t crap in the house!” Oh, man. I can hear him say it. Paw Capps was a hard working man. His back felt like steel. Like cast iron. It was that hard, and it got hard from working hard. The first time I ever ate frog legs was at his house. He gigged the frogs and got the legs. Maw Capps cooked them. Delicious. They do taste like chicken.

My Paw Paw Moore lived through WWII in France and made it home to Texas where he got half a finger cut off working in a mattress factory. When he would see one of his grandkids in their toddler years picking their nose he’d lean out and show them that half of a finger and say “booger got my finger!” To this day we cousins still laugh about it, and he’s been gone since 1979.

Granny Moore would always say “Jim, you need to get you some chickens.” I watched her wring a chicken’s neck when it was time for chicken dinner.  Their generation does not get enough respect from today’s crop which followed our generation. Those people lived through the Great Depression. They lived through hardships today’s youth cannot even imagine. We are all indebted to them.

So I guess I’ll close this out and be done reminiscing about bygone days, but here’s my tip of my hat to those who came before us. We stand on the shoulders of giants.