Good Leather

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Tracy Isley from Montana.

Hello, Tracy.

Hi, Tracy. Where are you calling from in Montana?

The Bozeman Livingston area.

Oh, very good.

All right, and what would you like to talk with us about?

Well, I’m actually from Wyoming.

I grew up in Wyoming in a little town called Dubois.

And my father grew up in the high kind of plains of Wyoming in a town called Rock River.

And he had a lot of expressions that he used, but one in particular that he used that I have not been able to find or have never heard anybody else use was good leather.

Good leather?

Good leather.

And he would use it like when we would work on something and it had the outcome that he was seeking.

So if you were engaged in a task and you completed it and it was just right, he would say, good leather.

You know, like, that’s good.

And I have never, and so I’ve always used it and I’ve never heard anybody else use it.

And when I say it, people are like, what?

What are you talking about?

And I was wondering if you guys have ever come across that expression.

Tracy, do you have any ideas about it yourself?

Does it conjure any images for you?

Of course, my father was very much into the cowboy kind of genre.

And he wasn’t a cowboy himself.

He was an electrician, but he loved the cowboy world.

And I suspect maybe from there.

Let me ask you about your father.

Was he into baseball?

No.

He wasn’t.

The only use of good leather that I know of that’s similar to that is in baseball.

It’s used to describe good defense or good fielding.

Wow.

Because you have the leather on your hand when you’re out there,

And you’re catching the ball and doing the thing that needs to be done.

And also the ball itself is covered in leather.

So all of the leather is doing what it needs to do in order to win the game.

Right, right.

I don’t know of any others, but I could totally see this coming out of Cowboys and Western mythology.

Did he read fiction about the cowboy lifestyle?

Oh, yeah. He loved all that.

Okay.

And he was really into Tom Horn, you know, the whole story of Tom Horn,

Because Tom Horn was a big legend down around that part of the country.

And, you know, any kind of Western figure that had real historical interest

Or even fictional was part of his life, yeah, for sure.

It’s descriptive.

I bet that even though people cock an eye when you say it, they all know what you mean.

I think so.

Sometimes I don’t think they do.

Like, you know, I usually use it when I’m writing an email.

Like if somebody sends me an email and I agree with what they’re saying

Or we’ve succeeded in what we were trying to accomplish, I’ll say, good letter.

And they’ll…

Yeah, maybe that’s a little fake.

No, I’ve never heard it.

But hang on to it.

I don’t know what I’d say.

Hang on to it.

It sounds like a hand-me-down from your father.

It’s like somebody leaving you, you know, their favorite saddle, right?

Language is an artifact of the people who came before.

Hang on to it.

Yeah, for sure.

Okay, well, thank you.

I love your show.

It’s a great show.

I listen to it from my studio every Thursday night here in Montana.

Thanks, Tracy.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

What are your linguistic heirlooms?

We’d love to hear about them.

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