who laid the rail
adv. phr.— «I found the yard full of neighbors, who had organzied themselves into a kind of indignation meeting, in which the city fathers, mothers, sisters, cousins and aunts were abused from who laid the rail.» —“Mrs. Arter and the Cow Ordinance” Macon Telegraph and Messenger (Georgia) Oct. 15, 1881. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
A Navy veteran recalls hearing the Southern expression fat lighter from his wife’s family in Troy, Alabama. It denotes an old, resin-rich pine wood that becomes highly flammable as it ages. Fat lighter is prized as kindling and often called fat...
A profile in The New Yorker of writer Patricia Lockwood, author of Will There Ever Be Another You (Bookshop|Amazon) opens by saying she has “the impish verve and provocative guilelessness of a peeing cupid,” a description the quirky author herself...