March 1, 2010

This is so cool!

Today in English we were assigned to write a slang dictionary! We have a week to do it, but the minute I got back to River Bend and heard Pepper shouting at Ace, I knew COWBOY SLANG would be the perfect project for me.

It turns out that Pepper was just walking past the fence and Ace reached his head over and snagged Pepper's brand new gray Stetson right off his head! Not only did it cost almost his whole paycheck, but it looks a lot like Dad's, and that's no coincidence. So, yep, Pepper was pretty mad.

He was about to go out and chase Ace, but he turned to me and said, "I'll tell you Samantha, when you're not around, that horse is meaner than a rattler on a hot griddle!"

Kind of gross, but pretty funny. And that got me to thinking about other cowboy talk I hear all the time.

I remember when Dad was talking about Linc Slocum once and said "Linc looked mad enough to chomp a chunk out of an axe!" and I heard him laughing with Gram once, saying someone (he refused to tell me who!) was "so dumb he couldn't tell a skunk from a house cat."

I'm trying to get this stuff in alphabetical order, but maybe I shouldn't bother because I know I'm going to be adding expressions all week and know what's the best thing about doing this? Everyone on the ranch has been contributing!

Here's what I've got so far ...

Axle grease -- butter
Bean master -- chuck wagon cook
Bake a horse -- wow, I never heard this one before, but it means when you run a horse way too hard and he's super hot
Hay burner -- a horse
Bangtail -- a mustang (from Dallas, of course, but he doesn't know how wild horses got this name)
Gray Cat -- I love this one! It's from the really old West & it was someone who slipped in, quietly and inconspicuously, to check out a bank before the bank robbers made their move
Wake the snakes -- used like this: That durn dog is so loud he's like to wake the snakes!
Rowdydow-- this one's from Gram and it means "tacky" or low class, like "Samantha Anne, don't you think that outfit's just a little rowdydow for a nice girl like you?"
Pancake -- English saddle

More later, right now I've got to ride my mean as a rattler horse over to Jen's and tell Ryan I never knew any one who rode on a pancake before!