We don’t talk like we used to around here. I suppose there are lots of reasons for that. For one, we used to be mostly a farming community around Pea Ridge, with many families living here generation after generation, and not many people were moving into the community from other states. The local dialect could stay much the same over time, with very little new stuff being injected into it.

The invention of radio brought some new things affecting people’s ways of talking back 100 years ago, but not a whole lot changed until the 1940s and World War II. The 1940s exposed people to the wider world in a way that had not happened so much before, and people were moving about the country looking for work more than had happened before. More people heard accents from the Midwest, inflections fromthe West Coast, and even now and then met up with someone from “Bahston” or from the Bronx in New York. The coming of TV in the late ’40s really exposed people in a steady way to new sounds and new expressions and even new words.

The Ozark language, which used to be heard around northwest Arkansas and southwest Missouri, used lots of abbreviations, lots of contractions and lots of unique pronunciations. Many of the old expressions seem to be fading away, or are already gone.

One of those that comes to mind is the expression, “moseyin’ along.” That was something tosay when you were taking your leave and going on your way after visiting with people for awhile.

You would say, “Well, I better be moseyin’ along.” Moseyin’ along was different from rushin’ about.

There wasn’t any real hurry and not too much direction to moseyin’. It may be that people don’t mosey along any more because everybody is in too much of a hurry.

People have always had funny ways of saying Yes, or No. Just a Yes, or just a No is like plain black and white pictures. People like color, so we get Yeah, or Yup, or Nope, or You bet!

Some of us, myself included, use OK quite a bit. That one is for people who are pretty calm natured. OK is not an exciting Yes, it is the calm person’s Yes. OK is Yes with very measured enthusiasm. “Sure!” has vim about it; OK is not so decisive. OK can be a hesitant yes, like saying That’ll be OK - I guess. Then there was Okie Dokie. That one was a kind of carefree yes, a sort of rockin’ along, goin’ along sort of Yes. I don’t hear that one much any more.

I used to hear the expression, Down in the Git-along! That was for when your back is out of whack, or you hip is giving you fits, or your leg muscles are sore, and you don’t feel like getting up and doing anything. Usually Down in the Git-a-long was not too severe a pain; it was a kinda sorta “jis don’t feel too good” sort of hurtin’.

Being a little down in the git-a-long could even be for when the garden needed hoeing and you weren’t much in the mood fer hoein’ ’cause yer back wus achin’.

Here is one that never made any sense to me, although I understood perfectly well what was meant.Somebody would say, “He’s a’drivin’ like a bat out of Joplin!” I’ll confess I never saw a bat drive, and I never saw a bat in or around Joplin either, not even one leaving out of there.

Some comparisons you can understand; but that one I never did. You just knew that the guy was really driving fast, and making a commotion, leaving the horses rearing and the chicken feathers flying.

Also I’m thinking of old expressions like Fit as a Fiddle, Cool as a Cucumber, Slick as a Whistle or Light as a Feather. Fit as a Fiddle was for braggin’ on a fellow about how well he was looking. These days, cool means good - something desirable, Cool as a Cucumber meant unruffled, rock steady in a nervewracking situation. Slick as a Whistle meant quick and clever, or quick as a fox.

Then there was the expression, “T’che doin’? to which the answer might be, “Nuttin’.” The schoolbook wording, What are you doing? would take forever and sound sissy. Couldn’t something like that one work in today’s texting world? Do you think we’ll get so we talk with our thumbs instead of our tongues?

◊◊◊

Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history.

He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.

On the Record, Pages 6 on 01/26/2011