open up daylight
v. phr.— «The speedy Baby Bubble quickly outfoot that gelding and opened up daylight over Grog.» —“Gratton Colt Is Surprise As He Takes Derby Trial” in Hialeah Park, Fla. Syracuse Herald (N.Y.) Jan. 26, 1936. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
Ophelia in Johnson City, Tennessee, wonders about the exclamation her great-grandmother often used when something surprised her: Cat bristle! That may be her own version of a minced oath, although it fits with the idea of how a cat’s tail might look...