Down to Brass Tacks

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Elisa. I’m calling from Memphis, Tennessee.

Well, welcome, Elisa. What’s on your mind?

My mom, who is in her 80s, and she’s a very vibrant octogenarian.

But she unfortunately had a fall back in May and had a traumatic brain injury.

But she’s doing okay.

But at the time, she was in the hospital, and she was basically sedated and not speaking for about two and a half days, and we didn’t know what to expect.

And I was sitting next to her, and all of a sudden, on the third day, she kind of squeezed my hand, and I realized she was going to say something.

And the first words out of her mouth were, let’s get down to brass tacks.

Wow.

And I really, I’ve heard it, but not from her and not recently.

And that was the first thing that came out of her brain after a brain injury.

And I just realized that I don’t even know really where it’s from or why.

Wow.

So nothing like where am I?

And who are you?

Yeah.

Who are you?

She sounds great.

Let’s get down to brass tacks.

So B-R-A-S-S-T-A-C-K-S, brass tacks.

Yes, I actually honestly thought it was T-A-X, and then I thought about it.

I was like, no.

No, no, no.

It’s the little piece of metal that you use to hold down paper or carpet, that sort of thing.

Or there’s a theory I’m going to share with you that might—

Well, there’s this fellow named Patrick Traeger.

He’s French, and he has a great website called wordhistories.net.

And he has a theory based on an old newspaper article that he found that it has to do with brass studded coffins.

Patrick’s idea is that because the expression originally was to come down to the brass without the tacks, without T-A-C-K-S, not long after it became brass tacks.

That it’s the idea of something being so fundamental as death, basically.

Wow.

It’s about stripping away all the pretense of the nonsense of life.

Death takes the fakery and artifice away from all of us.

Wow.

Yeah, so that’s his theory, and I like it, but the evidence is pretty thin right now.

But the expression goes back to the mid-1800s.

So it’s just always been this idea that we’re throwing away the nonsense and the rubbish and getting right down to the essentials.

There are other ideas that float around like it like it has to do with brass tacks on upholstery versus less valuable tax or something like that.

But but it’s it’s pretty much a mystery.

But what’s a mystery to me is what did she mean by that?

What was her next statement?

What did she want to talk about?

You know, I really don’t know.

And my dad was there and he does not remember.

I said, this is what she said.

And then I guess in that moment, I felt she was just asking me like, what, what is going on?

Why am I, where am I?

Cut to the chase.

We got business to do.

Well, Lisa, I hope she’s doing better.

Give us, give her a squeeze from us if you would.

And thank you for calling.

Oh, thank you.

Thanks so much.

All right.

Take care.

All right.

Thanks for calling.

Bye.

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