Sam from St. Paul, Minnesota, says his dad often used the expressions Do you think I just fell off the turnip truck? and I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck, meaning “I’m not naive” or “Do you think I was born yesterday?” Turnips have long been associated with supposedly unsophisticated rustic folk, and the phrase fall off the turnip truck conjures an image of country bumpkins piling into the back of a truck to bring their crop to market in the big city. During his years on The Tonight Show, TV talk-show host Johnny Carson often used this alliterative phrase. There are a lot of variants, including cabbage truck and turnip wagon. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Just Fell Off the Turnip Truck”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, Grant and Martha. This is Sam from St. Paul, Minnesota.
Hello, Sam. Welcome to the show.
My question is, growing up, there was an expression that my dad would use with us kids.
And he would say, do you think I just fell off the turnip truck, or a variation of that, you know?
I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck.
And what he meant by that was, do you think I’m that gullible or that naive?
And trying to say that he wasn’t that. And I guess he would occasionally use it for us when we were trying to trick him maybe or didn’t think he knew something, but he just would use it more in his general day-to-day conversation, talking about situations he faced.
Basically to say that he knew more than this other person thought he did.
And so I’m just wondering the history of that, where it comes from, if other people use that.
Phrase because I’ve only really heard my dad see it. So I was just curious for your thoughts.
So kind of a synonym for wet behind the ears or I wasn’t born yesterday, something like that.
Yes, correct. Turnips have long been associated with being exactly that, not too bright, not too swift. They’ve been associated with what people might describe as naive country folk. Country folk differ with that. But I mean, as far back as the mid 17th century, there was a book that referred to a poor turnip eating clown. It may be because turnips were traditionally fed to barnyard animals. And if you didn’t have a lot of money, you might subsist on turnips. And so they’ve long been associated with people who might be described as rustic.
And picture somebody bringing turnips to market, you know, riding on a truck, a turnip truck, literally, you know, you got a whole truck full of turnips there. And if you fall off, then you’re somebody who represents the kind of thing that we’re talking about. So the idea is maybe even more, not just driving it, but you’re tagging along. Your legs are dangling over the back of the wagon and you arriving into town is a big deal.
For you, but for nobody else. Yeah, you’re not up in the cab. You’re back in the cab. You’re a country bumpkin maybe and just not savvy to the sophisticated ways of the big town.
Yeah. So people have been talking about the turnip truck or the turnip wagon. There’s something nice about the alliteration of turnip truck. But the guy who popularized it a lot in the 70s, that the expression, I didn’t fall off the turnip truck, was Johnny Carson of all people.
Really?
Yeah. Was your dad a fan?
Wow. You know, I don’t know, but my grandpa may have been, and that’s where my dad may have heard it from, so I don’t quite know. Okay. But yeah, it means just what you said, that I wasn’t born yesterday, that kind of thing. Yeah. Very cool. Sam, thank you so much for your call. Well, thank you so much.
Our pleasure, of course. Call again sometime. Good talking with you, Sam. Good. Take care. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye. And of course, you and I would both take pains to explain that we don’t think that country folk are unsophisticated or naive. As people who are ex-country folk ourselves, so we renounced that belief.
Right.
Exactly.
Some of the wisest people I knew were country folk.
Absolutely.
But the variant, by the way, is cabbage truck. Just fell off the cabbage truck. And there’s a bunch of different ways it’s been expressed over the years.
Huh.
I didn’t know that.
