Blueberry Money

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Angela Duff, and I’m calling from Citrus County, Florida.

Hi, Angela, welcome.

How you doing?

Citrus County.

I’m just fine.

Well, you know, my husband and I are from very different backgrounds. I was a Navy brat, so I just kind of have a mishmash of language in my head. And I studied linguistics, so I’d like to think about it. But he was mostly from Massachusetts and New England. And so every once in a while, he’ll throw these words at me or these terms, and I just have no clue what he’s talking about.

And the other day we were actually riding in the car, and he spotted a man that, you know, looked very well-to-do. And he commented that this man probably still had his blueberry money, and I had no clue what he might be talking about. And he said that, you know, up in Massachusetts and even Maine, growing up, people would comment on that. And if a person was, like, really stingy, they would say that he still had his blueberry money. And he wasn’t sure, but he thought that it was because growing up, the children would pick blueberries because they were around. And that their first money would be that blueberry money, maybe.

Exactly.

He wasn’t sure.

Exactly.

What’s your husband’s name?

Ty.

Angela, Ty has it exactly right. You can find this repeatedly throughout history where people just kind of pick blueberries that are on the property or by the side of the road or out in the woods. And then they go sell them to the fruit stand and they make a little pocket money or pen money, right? And it comes up again and again. There’s one thing I saw from a book about women getting the right to vote.

Where the women would pay for their poll tax with their blueberry money,

Whatever little money they’d managed to gain from just like picking berries here and there

And then selling them and pocketing the change.

And so it’s actually even older.

Yeah, it’s quite old, actually.

And it’s from the Northeast.

It’s from the part of the country where blueberries might easily just grow in the wild

Or in the fields or in the hedgerows.

What a poetic expression, blueberry money.

That’s gorgeous.

It reminds me of pin money or maybe even a little bit mad money.

But what I like, though, is how close the whole expression of he probably still has his blueberry money is to other similar expressions for being miserly or stingy.

Like she probably still has her first communion money.

You ever heard that one?

Or he probably still has his bar mitzvah money, right?

And these are fairly standard widespread expressions for somebody being cheap.

Or he probably still has his lunch money from grade stool.

Or she probably still has her tooth fairy money.

You heard any of those before?

Yeah, yeah, definitely the lunch money.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Angela, thanks for calling.

Yeah, thank you so much.

You’ve settled that.

Thanks, Angela.

Thank you.

Take care.

Give our best of time.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

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