EUPHEMISTICALLY SPEAKING....so to say ~ Sumtimes shouted, sumtimes muttered...

“Hellfire ‘n damnation, Boy!” Manuel W. Smith......

I heard those words a lot when I ‘uz a boy...mostly over simple things that I shudn’t a had a problem with back then...whether it wuz cutting the grass, hoeing the weeds ‘er maybe I just didn’t move fast enuff ~ “Hellfire ‘n damnation, Boy!”

Y’know, I knew at the time that he didn’t mean anything by it ‘n that he’d prob’ly heard the same words from John Sam hisownself back when he wuz a boy... (John Sam being my grandfather, a quiet, taciturn man that seldom raised his voice...he drank his coffee black out of a saucer ‘n so did I when I wuz 6 or 7 years old)

‘Course, back in those halycon daze, Beattyville boyz didn’t say words like that....what we used wuz ‘euphemisms’ and it’s doubtful if any of us would’a known what a body wuz talking about if they had said, ‘euphemism’..."Heckfire" we said...’n "Doggonnit!" ‘n "Dang" ‘n "Son of a gun" ~ words like that...we knew the real words they ackshully stood in for, we just didn’t know that they were called euphemisms...

Men (women, too) c’ud swear, some of ‘em like troopers...My Uncle Fred ‘n his brother, Lewie...didn’t bother with euphemisms but they were the exception rather than the rule...’Way back then, there wudn’t any such thing as ‘Take your child to work day’...that’s pretty much a modern invention...so we didn’t ackshully know how men talked at work but when they were home, around women ‘n children, most men didn’t swear...Heck, back in those daze, most men smoked but they did it outside ‘n almost no one kept licquor in the house...Men went t'the barn or the shed to share a little 'touch' when friends came t'call....

Dad wuz still saying ‘Hellfire’ when he wuz 90 years old ‘n got frustrated over sumthing...we’d sit on his little deck drinking beer ‘n looking at the Kentucky hills acros’t the river ‘n he’d tell stories about the horses he’d had ‘n the first car ‘n how he sent off to Frankfurt to get his first driver’s license...you didn’t need a license to drive back in those daze but he wanted one...cost him a quarter which wuz ackshully a pretty good chunk o’ money to spend on sumthing that you didn’t need...

When I wuz a boy, I found a quarter one day ~ “Heckfire!” I tho’t I wuz rich ‘n it went to my head...that quarter took me to the movies, bought me a soda pop, a large popcorn ‘n a candy bar...durn near enuff t’make a boy sick ~ dunno what all that ‘ud cost t’day but gotta be considerably more’n a quarter...

Ah well, times change...lot of people think that we’re making progress, evolving so to speak...I ain’t so sure of that...somewhere in the world in the next few minutes p’haps, give or take, the seven billionith person is gonna be born...I think Manuel Smith ‘ud prob’ly say, “Hellfire ‘n damnation, Boy! That’s a heck’uva lot of people.”

“The nicest thing about the future is that it always starts tomorrow.”