who laid the rail
adv. phr.— «He was and is a gamester from who laid-the-rail. A fiercer competitive spirit never burned than the one which fires Grimes.» —“Burleigh Grimes Has Tough Job Ahead Managing the Dodgers” by Henry McLemore in New York Dunkirk Evening Observer (New York) Nov. 6, 1936. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
A young caller from the Hudson Valley of New York wonders about his grandmother’s use of stemwinder to praise a speech she thought was excellent. In the early 1800s, people used pocket watches that had to be wound with a tiny key. Once someone...
Amid court-ordered busing in the 1970s, a middle-school teacher tried to distract her nervous students on the first day of class with this strange assignment: find a monarch caterpillar. The result? A memorable lesson in the miracle of metamorphosis...