call calf-rope
v. phr.— «“I said I wasn’t going to say anything about the rain, but at this point I am about ready to call calf-rope,” said Kerens Grain’s Sonny Carpenter, using a term meaning, “I give up,” similar to calling “uncle.”» —“Inside the Golden Circle: Rain, rain…“ by Raymond Linex II Corsicana Daily Sun (Texas) June 15, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
The word hipster might seem recent, but it actually originated in the 1930s when it referred to jazz aficionados who were in the know about the best nightclubs and cool music. Speaking of music, a professional musician reports that it’s...
Jerry in Lutherville, Maryland, was reading a 2018 biography of Nelson Algren, author of The Man with the Golden Arm, that mentions a group in the 1930s that were described as hipsters or hepsters. In the 1930s, the word hipster applied to a jazz...
Barry Popik’s web site has several citations for this phrase and some of its variants, here:
http://tinyurl.com/3e37vo
There’s also an entry for it at PBS.org, from their “Do You Speak American?” site:
http://tinyurl.com/yram2k
Thanks! The Dictionary of American Regional English has a full entry for it that takes it back to 1878 and shows that it’s very regional, primarily found in the Gulf states and the South Midlands.