Roderick commented on my colloquial use of the verb 'to fix' as in 'I fixed pancakes' in a previous post, as if there was something wrong with the pancakes that needed repairing. I replied that there was indeed something wrong with the pancakes as they weren't pancakes yet. I use another colloquial form of the verb as in 'fixing to' do something which has been commented on many times during my life but here's two examples:
One, when I was 20 I spent a year at the Chicago Art Institute and one of the classes I took was ceramics. The first day of class the instructor gave a tour of the ceramics facility and we passed an area where the slip molds were and there was one of these molds perched precariously on the edge of the counter and the edge of a stool. I pointed this out to the instructor. Now you have to understand that at 20 I had never left Texas to live anywhere else, born and raised in Houston which at this point in time was not the 4th largest city in the nation and it was well before the city population exploded in the late 70s and 80s from people moving in from out of state and my Texas twang was strong. So back to my calling the instructor's attention to the slip mold, “That thangs fixin' to fall,” I said as I pointed at the slip mold. He didn't seem concerned about the mold but it stopped him in his tracks, looking at me he demanded, “Where are you from?”.
Two, I've written about being a river guide and on one private trip with my friend and fellow guide John whose daughter and her boyfriend/husband (? I forget which) from New York state had come down to visit and John had arranged this trip for them down Boquillas Canyon on the Rio Grande in Big Bend. The daughter's BF/H had prepared a list of things he wanted to experience while in Texas, one of which was Texas barbecue and two others were the use of certain slang. It's a 12 hour drive to Big Bend from Houston and it was dark by the time we got to the campground/little store where we would pick up our shuttle driver so we just laid out our sleeping bags on the ground to get some sleep before we got up early for put in on the river. At some point during the night I woke to feverish whispering and flashlights, John's daughter and the BF/H were sitting up freaking out over something. What's wrong I asked. Something is rooting around over there, over there being very close to where we were all sleeping. It was a small group of juvenile javelinas that the owner of the campground would throw feed out for.
image via the internet
Anyway, I was a little annoyed that I had been woken because the next day was going to be a lot of work so I clapped my hands loudly a couple of times and yelled at the javelinas to 'git!'. Ding, slang #1. Later in the trip I used 'fixin' to' do whatever it was and the BF/H joyfully ticked that one off his list as well. Glad to oblige.
"Fixing" to do something is definitely part of our vocabularies around here. "I'm fixing to go to town." "I'm fixing to call her." "I'm fixing to kick some ass." Haha!
ReplyDeleteAlso, I fix dinner every night. Although I realize that for some southerners, "dinner" is the noonday meal which I call lunch and "supper" is what you eat at night. Actually, I use dinner and supper interchangeably.
Also, it pisses me off that there is a widely held belief that anyone with a southern accent is a few points short of a normal IQ.
DeleteI grew up in Georgia with extended stays in Alabama. Fixin to was part of the lexicon. Jim (spouse), a northerner, has picked it up and also uses it. Alabama uses "carry" as in Mabel is going to carry me in to town. Really, though, fixin to sounds like standard english to me, as well as fix dinner. How else would you phrase that?
ReplyDeleteback when I worked in a women's organization, very privileged white ladies on the board, two from Texas. I really admired their resistance to being called out for saying things like "might could". Texan and proud of it! They also did me the favor of avoiding the where are you from, no where are you from really aggression I dealt with a lot with other board members.
ReplyDeleteI got a very good impression of Texas from people like them.
When I moved to Texas in the 70s, I started learning the local lingo pretty fast: first, because I had no idea what it meant, and then because it so clearly was useful language. Now, I use "y'all" and its plural, "all y'all," "fixin' to," and "howdy" without a thought. I've always loved "all hat and no cattle," and "cotton to" is useful. The funniest phrase I ever heard was in line at Target. I don't know if it's specifically Texan, but I loved hearing one woman say to another, "Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit!"
ReplyDeletedon't think I've heard that last one myself but my husband and I were in line at some store and the woman in front of us at the cashier dropped a coin. Ma'am, you dropped your dime (dime pronounced di-ime). 'Oh, say that again' she said. we looked at each other puzzled and asked, you mean di-ime?
DeleteWhen Mike was in graduate school in Cincinnati, after he'd said something about fixin to do something, a fellow grad student (from Pennsylvania) stood up & said, "no one is "fixing" to do anything around here!" It had got on his last nerve - so of course they all started saying it even more.
ReplyDeleteReading this reminded me of one of the times I drove across country in the early 1970s. I was at a rest area somewhere in the midwest and a guy came over to the car and said, "Don't drive across Iowa, y'all get yourselves shot." I never heard talk like that before, saying y'all. I'm from New Jersey! I don't think I've ever used the word "fix" like this, but I sure am going to try and work it into my sentence tonight when I'm chopping vegetables and fixin' dinner.
ReplyDeleteEllen, you are a gem. I still say "fixin’ to” and spend a lot time “fixin’” paragraphs to eliminate that little slip-up. LOL. I often forget to correct it when I’m in a hurry though, and to this day no one has ever tried to fix me. Reading you still feels like home although I have not seen relatives in more than two years. Bless you, woman.
ReplyDeleteI just might be fixin to comment right here! My dad was from Philadelphia and married a woman from the back woods in Georgia (my mother). We lived all over the United States, mostly in Norfolk, Va. But we talked the way our mother did. People were either repulsed or charmed, thinking us to be an oddity and probably not too bright. I can go either way. We were called Yankees when we would move to Georgia with every deployment my Dad was on. I had a boss from Wisconsin during my tenure with the fabric chain who told me I sounded ignorant when I said "fixin to". I told him he sounded like an arrogant ass everytime he opened his mouth and we came to a quick understanding about dialect.
ReplyDeleteI have a dear Texas cousin, whose husband (many generations Texan) often corrected my Yankee dialect. A favorite, good for everyone: pea-cans go under the bed; pecans grow on trees.
ReplyDeleteI moved from Wisconsin to Atlanta. A woman got on the elevator with her hands full of packages and said, 'Mash six for me, wouldja shug?' and I just stared at her as my brain whirled as I tried to interpret. And now I'm in Texas and might could with the best of them.
ReplyDeleteIt would be a real shame to eliminate local dialects and accents, and homogenize us any more than we already are. My favourite of all time was when a fellow in Alabama told me that something was “as sure as cold shit in a dead dog!” That seems pretty sure to me.
ReplyDeleteI've wondered if my son and his family will pick up the local lingo now that they have moved to Manvel, TX just outside of Houston. My daughter-in-law is from China and her mom lives with them and speaks Chinese mostly. Their 2 kids speak English and Chinese and have lived in the Chicago area until now. So I am curious what combination of terms and accents will make its way into their speech!
ReplyDeleteI still use southernisms in my speech here in England, which occasionally causes amusement. And one thing I've noticed -- the English use the word "reckon," which I always thought was a southern expression, but I guess it traces right back to England. Somehow it mostly bypassed the northeast USA!
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