My family talks funny. My mom and
grandparents on her side of the family are all gone now but I can still
hear them using words like privy, lariat, pipsqueak, scuttlebutt and
wieners. They said things were okey-dokey and the bee's knees. My
grandfather, a great man who never used the words paradigm, facilitate,
sustainability, global warming or Facebook in his life always referred
to the cattle I raised as Aberdeen Angus. When's the last time you heard
them called that, 1954?
I didn't want
to be seen in public with my relatives for fear they'd open their
mouths and embarrass me. Take the word "rodeo" for example. I'm proud of
the fact that in my hometown there is a large park named after my
grandfather with several ball fields and other facilities where the kids
of my community can play safely. It's named after my grandpa because he
and some friends had a dream that if they produced annual big time RCA
sanctioned rodeos they could make enough money to buy the land and build
a first class playground for the kids. They did so in style. Now here's
the embarrassing part: my grandfather always referred to the land where
the rodeos were held as the "ro-day-o" grounds.
If
you want to lose your cowboy friends in a hurry just say "ro-day-o."
They'll think you are from Beverly Hills and do your shopping on
Ro-day-o Drive. Golly gee, no one goes to the San Antonio or Denver
Ro-day-o and the NFR is not the National Finals Ro-day-o.
I ask you, who else talks this way? No one.
So
you can imagine my surprise when I went to the Salinas Rodeo for the
first time and old-timers there were referring to it as the Salinas
Ro-day-o. I thought I was in some strange time warp where I was back in
my childhood. Surely all these people could not be related to me on my
mother's side.
Another word that grated like fingernails on a chalkboard was the way my
family used the word "ranch." Whenever anyone would say they were going
out to my great-grandma's place they'd say they were "going out to the
ranch." But she didn't own a single cow. She grew lemons and walnuts and
her place should have been referred to as an orchard or maybe a farm.
But never a ranch! You don't rope or roundup lemons, for crying out
loud!
I remember getting into an argument with
my mom one time about the way her family talked. "A ranch is where you
grow animals and a farm is where you plant things in the dirt and grow
crops," I patiently explained.
"Oh
yeah, Mr. Smarty Pants, haven't you ever heard of a dairy farm or a pig
farm? Or how about a fish farm? They don't stick fish in the ground to
grow them."
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