In the Toolies/Tules

Hello, welcome to A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Cindy calling from north central Wisconsin.

Cindy, what’s on your mind?

So I’m calling about the word toolies.

Toolies.

Toolies.

When I was growing up, my mom would ask us to take things out to the toolies. Potato peelings, cherry pits, apple peels, peach peelings. She was a big canner and a cooker. And in meal prep or as we were taking in our harvest from the garden, we would be canning things for the fall. And all of our food waste would end up going out to the Thuleys.

The Thuleys. And how would you spell that?

I’ve never written it down. We just talked about the Thuleys. I think it might be T-U-L-I-E-S.

So just to be clear here, the Thuleys are what?

At my house where I grew up, it would have been the south corner of our yard where the wild plum trees grew. And it’s where we would throw our food waste. I think now it would be called a compost pile.

Sure.

Okay.

Cindy, I have to ask, did anybody in your family have any contact with the West, say California or the Southwest? The Pacific Coast or Alaska?

No. German heritage from my grandmother, and my grandmother used the word as well.

Did anybody serve in the military in California?

No.

Huh.

Well, the reason we’re asking is because there is the word tule, T-U-L-E, which is used largely in California and the Southwest. If you’re talking about out in the tulis, you’re talking about out in the wilderness. And it comes from a word from Mexican Spanish that means the bulrushes or the sticks, you know, the marsh. And so it’s like out in the sticks. It’s plants that grow in the sticks. And that’s the only thing I can think of, a remote part of your backyard that is similar to that. But maybe it’s some other origin. I don’t know. Unless your mom picked it up from a movie or a book.

It’s possible.

Yeah, I’m not sure. I just know that my grandmother used it.

Oh, she did. And then my mom used it, and I’m trying to carry on the Thule tradition with my girls. When we look at where this is used, I see Canada, Western Canada, Alaska. I see Texas is about as far east as it gets. Oregon, California, New Mexico, Arizona, throughout California, very California. It just does not make it typically as far east as Wisconsin.

Wow. That’s very interesting. But anyway, it sounds so much like the Thule’s that we use out here. It’s got to be the same thing.

Yeah, it means like the most remote corner of your yard where you’re never going to go. I mean, that’s what we understood. So we’d pick whosever shoes that were bigger than yours were sitting by the back door and march out there and dump out the potato peelings. In the middle of winter, it didn’t matter.

Well, I love that you’re passing on the Thule tradition to your kids.

Thanks. So keep up the good work there. And I would be very curious to know if anybody else farther east than Texas uses this word.

Yeah, and didn’t pick it up in the west.

Yeah.

Cool.

Sandy, thank you for calling.

Thank you very much. We love your show.

All right. Bye-bye.

Thanks for listening.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Well, whether you’re here in California or out in the Tule somewhere else, give us a call at 877-929-9673.