Sherry from Green Bay, Wisconsin, remembers that whenever she balked at doing a chore as a kid, her grandmother would say If ifs and ands were pots and pans, a tinker would have no trade. Her grandmother was suggesting that merely paying lip service to something doesn’t get the task done. Another version goes If ifs and ands were pots and pans, there’d be no work for tinkers’ hands. A still longer version: If wishes were horses, then beggars could ride / If turnips were watches, I’d wear one by my side / If ifs and ands were pots and pans / There would be no work for tinkers. Dandy Don Meredith often recited a similar a somewhat similar phrase about wishful thinking that involved candied nuts. This is part of a complete episode.
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Thank you for the segment on “if ifs and ands”. I had only known the first verse and learned it as “If wishes were horses, we’d all ride to the fair”. Have you encountered the other rhyme I remember along that line: If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we’d all have a great Christmas?
Thanks again, Linda Bugg