Old Edward, Old Edderd Sayings

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Pear. This is Walt, and I’m calling from my high school classroom in downtown Los Angeles.

Whoa, fantastic. Well, Walt, what do you teach in high school?

I’m a theater teacher.

Theater. Theater kids, our people.

Yay!

I guess they’re all our people. What’s on your mind, Walt?

Well, if you can, I’d like you to settle a heated dispute I am having with my brother and sister.

The three of us were at a family reunion not long ago, and the conversation turned to reminiscing about our sweet mother who died in 2005.

She’d be 101 today if she were alive.

We were catching up on our year and whatever, and I told them that last year I directed an original work that I wrote based on a Mark Twain novella.

And I was telling my brother and sister how I had used a lot of mom’s charming old-timey sayings in the course of writing it to add to that homespun feel similar to Mark Twain’s prose.

In describing the whole lot of mom’s sayings, I used the expression old eddard sayings.

And I was sure they heard our mom call all of her quirky phrases that, and they razzed me that I was just making that up and being dramatic.

And I thought maybe they were gaslighting me because I’d heard her say it several times, but they insisted I must have gotten it wrong.

So I guess my question is, have you ever heard that expression used to describe these old times?

She had a hundred of them, old-timey sayings.

Walt, do people accuse you as a theater director of being dramatic a lot?

It’s the bane of my existence, yes.

Well, we’re happy to tell you that you are in the right.

Oh, I feel seen.

Yes, you win, Walt.

Any idea how she spelled Eddard or Eddards?

Well, no, but I being, you know, a language teacher, I thought it must be the past participle of some verb to edder, E-D-D-E-R.

Sure, I mean, it makes sense.

Yeah, I, you know, and or maybe it was old debtors things, but that didn’t make sense.

You know, so no, I have no idea because I looked it up and tried to do my due diligence before I called you.

Well, we can tell you that actually what it is, is Old Edwards.

Oh, okay. That’s something I had a lot of thought of.

Yeah, I like the past participle idea, but it’s Old Edwards.

And this refers to an old-time radio show.

Maybe she listened to it because it aired during the 1930s, 1940s, and the early 1950s.

And this old-time radio show was called Lum and Abner.

Oh, I’ve heard of that.

Okay. All right.

Well, this show featured two main characters, a guy named Lum Edwards and his sidekick, Abner Peabody.

And these characters, Lum Edwards and Abner Peabody, were two storekeepers who were in the fictional town of Pine Ridge, Arkansas, there in the Ouachita Mountains.

And they played these guys who were seemingly unsophisticated, uneducated, but usually got the best of the city slickers who came in.

Exactly like you described it as kind of corny, homespun humor.

And this character of Lum Edwards had a lot of clever sayings.

One of my favorites is, society is like pie.

The upper crust doesn’t count for much unless there’s something mighty good below it.

Yeah.

Well, they weren’t really adages like that.

She’d just say it.

So maybe she was just attributing, you know, old Eddard saying to just anything she said.

I don’t know.

And it makes a little bit of sense because her father was from Arkansas.

Oh, perfect.

Perfect.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Here’s another old Eddard saying.

We’ve always figured that if a feller would choose his friends the way he chooses his britches, there would be fewer rips in friendship and no patches on the seat of his wisdom.

I don’t know how useful that is.

A way with words, a patch on the seat of your wisdom.

The one that keeps coming to my mind, you know, all the time, and I put in my conversation and I don’t even realize I said it until somebody looks at me oddly, is if somebody’s complaining about something, but it’s not that bad, my mom would say, well, that’s better than poking the eye with a sharp stick.

And we used to look at her like, everything’s worse, not as bad as a sharp, poking the eye with a sharp stick.

You know, and she had a whole bunch of those.

So, yeah, that sounds exactly right and awesome.

I’m happy to hear that there is a real term.

Yeah, you’re happy to hear you’re right.

You win the debate.

You win.

It’s time to call them up and go, nyan, nyan, nyan, nyan.

Oh, there is going to be a strongly worded text.

Strongly worded.

Whoa.

I think you’ve got to go for the voice note with a lot of drama in it.

Yes.

Oh, okay.

That sounds good.

Walt, thank you so much for sharing your memories of your mother.

And thanks for doing the hard work with the kids and teaching them about the world.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

What a pleasure to talk to you.

Thank you.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Take care, Walt.

Well, I’m a pickin’ and she’s grinning, and you can give us a call at 877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.