Fun With Phrases

There are two long-used and well-worn phrases that we've probably all used at one time or another: 1) What in Sam Hill is ...?, or 2) Where in Sam Hill is ...? 

Do you know the origins of either of those phrases? Well, if you don't know and you care to read on, you're going to learn about the many possible origins.  You see, nobody has ever agreed on the actual one, but the possibilities are certainly strange and funny.

There are six different legends about "Sam Hill."   Here they are in no particular order or veracity.

1. Sam Hill was a mercantile store owner in Prescott, Arizona in the late 1800s, and he carried a diverse assortment of items for sale.  People started using the term, "What in Sam Hill is that?" in reference to something unusual that might have been in the store.
2. Writer H. L. Mencken suggested that the term derived from the name Samiel, which was the name given the devil in the Carl Maria von Weber opera,  Der Freischütz.  Sam Hill was a polite way of referring to the devil, as in, "What the devil...?"
3. A lesser known origin was with a early Connecticut legislator with that name who served in the state legislature between 1725 and 1752.  He was there so long that it resulted in a popular adjuration, "give 'em Sam Hill."  (Hmm, not exactly the same phrase, but close)
4. A good candidate for the origin lies with the story of a Michigan surveyor of the 1800s, Samuel W. Hill, who used such foul language in his everyday speech that his very name became a euphemism for swear words.  he was known to tell tall tales of his adventures in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and when someone retold the story, they substituted the sinless synonym , Sam Hill, for the words that weren't polite in mixed company.
5. You may recall that I visited a town along the Columbia River in Washington State on one of my trips out west.  The town, Maryhill, was the namesake of the daughter of its founder, Samuel Hill, a millionaire businessman known as "the Father of Roads" in the Pacific Northwest.  Some have attributed the phrases above to him but, since he lived in the 1900s, he was too late to have earned the honor.
6. The final recipient for the beginnings of the phrases is (was) the adjutant general of the State of Kentucky, Samuel Ewing Hill, who traveled to the eastern border of the state where it abutted West Virginia to investigate the feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys. That battle had been raging for over ten years and had claimed over a dozen lives. of family members.  The feud made national news, and the country waited for word of, "what in the Sam Hill was going on up there?"

Of all the possibilities, I like the second one best, because of the close similarity of the names, "Samiel" and "Sam Hill" and their association with the devil, once considered a swear word.  It also fits the time line more accurately for the origin of the phrases in the early 1800s.  So now you maybe learned a new way to cuss without drawing criticism from the holy-rollers, and you can use it in so many ways, as well.

By the way, all of this is available online with Wikipedia, but you probably never would have thought to look it up independently.

I think I'll go look up some other interesting phrases and cuss words that aren't,  phrases like "consarn it," "yer durn tootin," "dadgumit," "dagnabit," and "where in tarnation." Now that swearing and cussing is becoming common in everyday life, even promoted on TV and in movies, some of these might disappear, and that would really be a shame.

Man of Steel

I'm going to break the mold once again and write about our 'perfect' president, but this column won't be so much political as it will be cultural.  Multiculturalism is good, isn't it?

We, the American people, have put ourselves in a quandary that seems insoluble.  The problems we have with our government's actions, and more specifically our debate about those actions, are the cause of a lot of dissention, divisiveness and discord among the various factions of our society. 

You all know where my politics and philosophy lie, as I make no secret of it.  However, I'll wager that you don't know that I have no loyalty to any political party, or organization or group.  I quit the Republican Party years ago, and I absolutely refuse to join any other political party.  I also avoid like the plague the Tea Party or any other PAC group.

Like many others too numerous to count, I am opposed to the current administration, and have not yet, in over five years, seen anything come out of Washington that I like or even remotely agree with. 

Also, like those others, I hesitate to express my opinions in 'mixed' company for fear of offending someone.  Many of you good friends and relatives continue to state that any disrespect for President Obama shows disrespect for the office of the president and is not tolerated.  I disagree with that, but for now I'll let it ride.

If I, or anyone I know, says anything negative about our president's policies or actions, the first thing that seems to be thrown out is that we are being 'racist'.  It seems to be assumed that if we are against Obama, we must be 'racist' rather than opposed to ideas.

Here is the crux of our dilemma... We cannot oppose this man for anything he does, or else we must be given the epithet, RACIST.  End of discussion, end of debate, end of conversation.

You may correct me if I am wrong -- and I mean that literally, but I don't think anyone will be able to do so -- but to my recollection and my knowledge of history, the United States of America is alone in the world as the only nation to ever fight a civil war of the Caucasian Race over the freeing of the Negroid Race.  In the American Civil War we caused the death or maiming of about one third of our population. 

Think about that for a moment... Virtually every nation on earth, every civilization in the history of mankind, has had slavery of some kind and to some degree.  Some nations in Africa and Asia still practice some forms of slavery today, to wit, the young girls recently kidnapped in Nigeria. Yet, among all those diverse cultures, we are the only one to have fought, bled and died among the non-slave populace to free those who we were holding in chains.

What did we get for our trials and tribulation? We have the gall to label each other 'racist'.  And we further have the gall to label anyone who disagrees with a president who just happens to be of a minority race, with that epithet in order to silence them.

Come on, Folks, get real!  Do you really believe that mantra that any American wants to starve children, the poor and the downtrodden? Can you honestly believe that we are happy to see people live in filth and squalor here in America, or anywhere in the world?

Is it really possible that you think I want to take away anyone's Social Security benefits,

or their temporary lifelines such as welfare and  unemployment and food stamps? And

finally, do we, either side of the issues, really swallow the Kool-Aid that the other side is close-minded and uninformed? 

We are all Americans, and that means we are 'exceptional' in so many ways that the rest of the world cannot comprehend.  We should be a united people with similar goals and aspirations.  However, since the 1980s, or maybe the 1990s, we have become more and more polarized and hostile toward one another to a point where even families are divided over everything.

When the late Rodney King uttered those words, "Can't we all just get along?" it was prophetic, because it ushered in a new era where we definitely do not get along, and we now go out of our way to stifle debate and compromise. All sides have the position that, 'it's my way, or the highway."

One of our famous presidents, Theodore Roosevelt, once said, “Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.”

Political?  I think not!  It is just good common sense.