You've come a long way, Ol' Boy
Jim Hoy's column this week speaks of playing shinny, a game which evidently was called shinty in Scotland where it originated. Thanks, Jim, your Ol' Editor has long wondered how the name shinny originated. Now it makes sense.
For one who likes to ponder the origin of words and sayings, it gets interesting at times. Oil field workers who refer to working a tower probably don't realize that a shift, called a tour, was mispronounced so long that it became another word — tower.
But, things have changed. Your OE went to the same schools as Hoy, though decades apart, and played the same games. It wouldn't be allowed today, but we played "blackman" which Marion friends report was much the same game as "pump pump pullaway" locally.
Friend Wife continues to refer to Adam's all fox when we've tried to explain that it's Adam's off fox. It's like trying to get Marion folks to take the h out of Slusser the l out of Heidebrecht or pronounce Roger and Marie's surname Morse properly, not Maurice or Morris. Folks at Lost Springs take the first r out of Bernhardt and folks at Pilsen change an a to y in names like Klenda and Stika.
The one that pleased your OE was to discover the derivation of "whole nine yards." It doesn't refer to truck load, as many believe, but comes from the Army Air Corps fighter pilots during World War II who while debriefing following a mission would be asked about encountering an enemy airplane. "Did you get a shot?, he'd be asked, and the reply would be "I gave him the whole nine yards." Fifty caliber machine gun ammunition belts were 27 feet long.
Yes, times change, as reported above. Your OE recalls "catching flies" at the delivery end of the sheet fed Babcock press (there's one just like it in the printing museum at Peabody). The press sat exactly where the OE's desk is located today. It was a boring job, one he hated, but somebody needed to do it. He also recalls making up pages in lead, using Linotype slugs and later the sticks of type from that wonderful Ludlow machine. Then came cold type, courtesy of Compugraphic, eventually we did away with the film and light proof box, went into computerized typesetting, and finally accepted pagination.
Now we are in the digitized age, we've been using digital cameras for years. We now use PDF files (portable document format) to transfer pages, a full page of the newspaper at a time, directly to the press. Pages are put together electronically, no paper involved, and go via Internet to the press. It's better and faster. And it's a long way from "catching flies."
— BILL MEYER
