Funny Sayings

[Ol' John Brown]

Here's a few sayin's I've collected over the years. Hope you enjoy them.

"[He or she] had a face that would make a freight train take a dirt road!"-- Thanks to my friend Zeb for this one.

"[He or she] is dumber than a stack of toes!" -- Thanks to my friend Farrell for this.

"[He or she] is about as sharp as a mud pie and nearly as bright!" -- This one is a Rupert original.

"His (Ol' John Brown's) coffee would float an iron wedge!" -- Sweet Moxie Brown's Grandmother

"You look like you've been rode hard and put up wet! [like a horse]" -- Old Appalacian sayin'

"You keep flappin' your jaws like that and you'll get your tounge sunburned!" -- Foghorn Leghorn derivative as best as I can tell.

-- Ol' JB

[The Folks @ TanneryWhistle.com]

Cratis Williams, the late "Dean of Appalachia" over at ASU once put together a collection of "mountain metaphor" that was largely humorous, but sometimes downright poetic. An amazing number of the metaphors were obscene and probably should be used with caution. However, I remember that he had some old standards, such as:
"He was grinning like a mule eating saw-briars."
"The dirt was so poor in that county, they buried the dead with baking soda so they could rise again."
"The land over there is so steep, you can skin your nose walking up it."
"He is as slow as fog rising off cow manure" (sometimes "he is as slow as cold molasses."
These things go on forever. Cratis had close to a thousand.
Gary

[Ol' John Brown]

Here's a couple of cute one's about slowness . . .

"He was so slow that we had to draw a chalk line around him and come back every few hours to see if he had moved!"

"He was such a slow carpenter that I had to sight him in the claw of my hammer to tell whether or not he was moving!"

This part isn't and old saying as much as a comical reflection:

Our landlord has a fellow working for him (both will remain nameless) doing carpentry work and such and he was an excellent carpenter but . . . he was just shy of 80 years old.

He came to our house to put up new siding at 7:00 am each morning. He measured, cut and hung one piece of siding before lunch and did the same after dinner before calling it a day.

This went on for a couple of days before we called the landlord and suggested that the old fellow might appreciate an extra hand . . . The landlord understood and said he would take care of it. The next morning, I come out of the house to go to work and find a guy helping him . . . a guy with one arm

The siding job was finnaly finished some three months later.

Ol' JB

[Hotshots Boy]

Nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rockers.

Slower than a cold thumb

The hills are so steep at my house that I fell out of my garden three times this week.

That kid was so ugly they had to put milk around his mouth to get the cats to kiss him.

That kid was so ugly he had to sneak up on a glass of water just to get a drink

[erslyman]

Cratis Williams was a great man, indeed. Most impressive his contribution. Always fun to read such delightful metaphors.

Tall Tales of The Bible Belt

--Ernest Slyman

The Evangelical Spectator
evangelicalspectator.typepad.com/

[cacolonel]

Here's a few more I recall:
I felt as nervous as a cat in a clay alley
She felt as welcome as a whore at the church picnic
That child's so ugly they'll have to put a pork chop around his neck just so the dogs will play with him
By the time I finally finished, I was plum dog tired.
Thanks for the memories!
--CAcolonel