Transcript of “Drag it Through the Garden Burger”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
And Grant, you remember the conversation that we had with Kelly, who was calling us from Norfolk, Virginia, where she says people order hamburgers all the way deluxe.
Right. That means they want everything on it, all the condiments and all the toppings.
And you and I said, we don’t really know anything about that.
Yeah, she was wondering if the term all the way deluxe was unique to Norfolk.
And we didn’t hear from other people who ordered things that way, but boy, we sure got a lot of responses anyway.
Yeah, after the fact, the calls and the emails, they came pouring in.
They did. We heard from Sarah Jones, who said where she is in South Carolina, the terms deluxe and all the way mean two different things.
She says deluxe means mayonnaise, lettuce, and tomato, and all the whey means go ahead and add mustard and onions and whatever else.
And Richard Fitzsimmons in Pittston, PA, wrote to say that as a teenager, he and his friends would visit Ocean City, New Jersey, and they’d hang out on the boardwalk and order hot dogs and hamburgers, and they always wanted every topping available.
And the phrase that they used there was, put it through the garden. Just run through the garden and grab one.
I’ve heard that one before. Drag it through the garden. That means you want all the toppings.
And this brought back so many memories for so many people.
Steve Williams wrote us from San Antonio, Texas, to say that he grew up in Bay City, Michigan.
And he says that one of his favorite summertime treats was when the family would go out to a seasonal burger joint or maybe a family-owned eatery or diner.
He says, we’d all get cheeseburgers and fries and maybe a chocolate malt or a root beer float.
And in that neck of the woods, a deluxe cheeseburger included lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise on top of the standard toppings of mustard, ketchup, and pickle, and sometimes onion.
And he says, as I’ve grown up, I’ve traveled, and I’ve seen many menus get cute and creative with their loaded burgers with names like dumpster burger, trash burger, or everything but the kitchen sink burger.
Oh, yeah. Well, don’t get started on garbage plates and trash plates because those are a whole thing in some parts of the country.
Is that right? Is that a term? Garbage plates?
Yeah, that’s a plate. That’s a term. Yeah. And they can be delightful.
Just imagine your nachos with everything. It’s a huge plate.
And it really looks like they cleaned out the last of the chili bowl and the last of the salsa jar and the scrapings from the bottom of everything on the condiment table.
It can be really good, though, because every single one of those is delightful to the taste buds.
But we have yet to hear from anybody else who orders things all the way deluxe.
I wonder if it really is specific to Norfolk.
Yeah, Norfolk, Virginia might just have their own thing, and that’s not unheard of.
We have regionalisms all across the United States and Canada and elsewhere in the world,
No matter what language you speak, if it’s English or Spanish or something else,
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