Back in the day sayings

Have you ever thought about all the things people don’t say any more?

I have and I have come up with a lot of once-popular sayings. People don’t use any more.

Like when somebody is going to clean his or her house for the first time in 27 years they often tell their friends “I’m going to use little elbow grease on this house tomorrow.”

All sorts of terms have bitten the dust including “gee whiz” and “land sakes” and “gee whiz” are gone with the wind .

A long time ago I had an uncle who every time he was playing poker and he wanted his last card he would say “gimme it down like a deep-sea diver.”

When is the last time you heard someone say she (or he) is “skinny as a rail” or “tall as a tree” or a person was said to have “a face that would stop traffic.”

Have you ever actually seen someone who was really “as big as a barn?”

My late grandmother had a ton of sayings she used all of the time. She would shout “hark!” if she wanted you to be quiet because she was listening to her favorite soap opera on her Philco radio which was about the same size as a 1943 Buick sedan.

Back in the old days if somebody was planning to remodel their outdated home they wouldn’t say “I’m going to remodel my outdated home.” They would say, I’m going to “spiff up this place.”

The word “spiffed” isn’t even in most dog-eared dictionaries but when I was a kid most of my relatives used it to say things like “I think I’ll spiff up my house.”

The old sayings go on and on and on.

There are at least a million of them.

They include, but are not limited to :

“He (or she) flew the coop.”

“She has a face that would stop a clock.”

“A penny saved is a penny earned.”

“Happy go lucky.”

“No luck is good luck.”

“I’m going to use a little elbow grease on this dirty floor.”

And, last but not least, there’s an old saying that goes “Heavens to Betsy.” That one always confused me because I never did find out who “Betsy” was.

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Senior Moments

By Bob Batz

Bob Batz is a retired long-time journalist and weekly columnist. Contact Bob at [email protected].