“Well Bless Your Heart” May 2000…repost June 25, 2013

NOTE from Russ Austin.   As I looked for another great re-post a word Mrs. Crumly has not used here is “hope.”  I am ONLY 50 years old and I grew up hearing a really great friend to daddy and our family, Mr Kermit and others,  use “hope” as in  “I hoped my wife in the garden this morning.” And would you believe that our Sand Mountain school system tried to get us to say “help.”  “I helped my wife in the garden this morning.”  I tell ya what, “bless their heart.”………………

It was very early morning as I arrived at my friend’s house to pick up some cucumbers for pickle making (we now have eight gallons in the making), and “Well bless your heart” was the greeting I received.  How long has it been since I heard that phrase, I thought to myself.  It’s just another example of how we are losing our old Southern manner of speech.

I read somewhere that a southerner could get away with just about any kind of awful insult if it were prefaced with “bless her heart” or bless his heart.”  Such as, “Bless his heart he is so bucktoothed he could eat an apple through a knot hole.”  Or remember the tongue-clucking type?  Tongue-clucking was done just prior to a shameful remark or perhaps in an effort to make one feel ashamed. One tongue-clucker might remark: “You know, it’s strange that even though she had that young’un seven months after they got married, Bless her heart, it weighed 10 pounds.”  My daddy used to say it didn’t take some folks as long to have their first child as it did the others.

It appears that some native southerners have begun to act somewhat embarrassed by southern terms and/or speech.  I love the oldies and try to keep as many alive as I can. When I’m asked how I’m doing, I always reply with “Tolerably well.”  John’s aunt used to tell me I didn’t say it right — she said it should be pronounced “tolably.”  It used to be such a commonly used term and now we don’t hear it anymore.

Another thing, I grew up in an era when swearing was not allowed — one of the hardest slaps I ever received from my mother was when I said, “Well, I’ll swear.”  It was perfectly all right to say “Well, I’ll swanee” or “I’ll swan.”  When have you heard those terms used?

Depending on who I’m talking to, sometimes even I stop before saying such southern things as “right much” or “right close.”  Non-natives think this to be”right funny.”  My northern friend and I were quilting together several years ago on a day that had started out as cloudy; however along toward lunch time I looked out the window to see the sun shining and remarked, “The day has turned out to be right pretty.”  “Right pretty?” my friend asked.  She didn’t understand “right pretty.” 

I can tolerate explaining the terms I use to a non-southerner, but it galls me to have to explain them to a native – and I find I have to do that more and more.  Recently I used the term “getting down in the short rows” to someone and they didn’t understand!  “Getting down in the short rows” means you’ve worked a right smart on your job and it’s nearing completion.  Perhaps only a farmer or an offspring thereof would understand.

Have you noticed how our magnolia-mouthed sales clerks now say “youse guys” instead of “y’all?” It’s a disgrace to natives of this land of cornbread-crumbled-in-buttermilk.  (“It really is good – have you tried it?)  Where did they learn such?  On television, no doubt!

Maybe I’ve already told the story about showing my new sack quilt to a Georgia college professor.  I had tried to choose sacks that still had the lettering on them.  Years ago ladies would try so hard to get out the letters, but the black ones were immovable on fertilizer sacks.  This particular sack quilt has some fertilizer sacks, a sugar sack, a sack that had contained clover seed and a sack from the Archie Martin Mill here in Geraldine (they made cornmeal).  The professor stared a few seconds at the work of art and stated, “Well, that says guano.”  Boy did that get my attention!  “Ralph, you can’t say “gu-anner” good can you?”  Nobody said “guano” on Sand Mountain and I just couldn’t resist shooting that back at the educator.

And another thing, an old friend continues to use a word from her past — “everwho” instead of whoever. How many people do you hear say that word today?  I questioned her about her usage and “bless her heart” she fondly replied, “It was a word my daddy used.”  On well, “bless your heart,” such is the Windy Knoll’s style of country living.