Poor as Joe’s Turkey

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jim Briscoe. I’m calling from Indianapolis.

How are you?

How are you, Jim? Good, how are you doing?

Fine, coming along just fine. Thank you.

Glad to hear it, Jim.

Good. I had an idea. As a southerner, it’s always struck me as very curious that there are a number of interesting southerners related to individuals. These people are mysterious. They are from some remote time, but they nonetheless are kind of funny in the way they’ve worked out in our parlance in the South.

One that particularly interests me and tickles me is the expression to be poor as Joe’s turkey. Now, in the South, to be poor or poorly can mean that you’re ill, you’re not feeling well, and that’s one thing. But, of course, to be poor as Joe’s turkey means that you don’t have a dime to your name, you’re impecunious. Impecunious.

But to be poor as Joe’s turkey might refer to your weight. If you have lost a lot of weight, if you’ve been ill, maybe you are poor as Joe’s turkey and just skinny, even emaciated. And with your way with words, I wonder if you have a way of tracing that. Who was Joe? And what did his turkey have to do with any of that?

All right. Well, let’s ask you a question here. Let’s just review. You’re talking about the expression poor as Joe’s turkey, P-O-O-R-A-S-J-O-E apostrophe S-T-U-R-K-E-Y, poor as Joe’s turkey, right?

That’s right.

Well, Jim, what if I told you that the more common person to own the turkey wasn’t Joe, but Job? Job. J-O-B from the Bible.

Well, that fell away. The pronunciation Job fell away, and in the usual way of these things, evolved to Joe’s turkey, as I heard it as a youth coming up. Huh.

Well, you know who Job was in the Bible, right? He was that righteous man, and then Satan dares God to deprive him of everything to see if he remains righteous, and then God destroys his family and takes away his house and his possessions. You remember that story?

Yes, certainly, certainly.

Right, afflicted with the boils and sitting on the ash heap, scraping his skin with broken pottery. I mean, Job was in poor, poor shape.

Did he have turkeys?

I don’t recall those from the Bible.

Well, no, turkeys are a New World animal. I don’t think they had those. I don’t think they had those back in the day. They migrated to the Western Hemisphere sometime.

Yeah, well, my hunch here is this is just a particularly glorious expression that pushes the simile even further. It’s not just poor as Job, but poor as Job’s poor turkey, as ugly and scrawny, as emaciated as you’re talking about. That’s doubling it. That’s adding insult to injury, isn’t it?

It is.

I think it is. And, you know, one other expression that I’ve seen like this using Job’s turkey is, you remember in the Bible, Methuselah?

Yes.

He was Noah’s grandfather, and he lived to a ripe old age of 969 years.

Yes, I remember the tale of that. In the Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English, there’s a reference to some hoss, some horse. I’ve seen the expression in the past, old as Methuselah’s cat and as poor as Job’s turkey.

Oh, huh. That’s interesting.

Well, certainly you hear old as Methuselah.

Yeah.

I haven’t heard it linked that way.

Yeah.

Interesting.

So I think we’re talking about a biblical expression. I’m not sure how far back it goes, Grant. As far as I can find, about 1816, actually. There’s some history here to this.

Well, thank you so much for calling, Jim. It’s a great question.

Oh, thank you very much.

Thank you, sir. Bye-bye.

Thank you. Goodbye.

We’d love to hear about your Southern expressions or something that you’ve long said and just now started to think about where in the world did that come from? The number to call is 1-877-929-9673. That’s 1-877-WAYWORD. Or send us an email. The address is words@waywordradio.org.