The Prairie Spy

Alan “Lindy” Linda

Some time ago, at a place where I worked, everyone came back in on Monday morning, with everyone eager to share their weekend behaviors with everyone else. Just like kindergarten show and tell, kind of.

Bob (not his real name, because the real names are changed here to protect word murderers, which is what this is about) had an exciting time. He had lots of company in for a Saturday night meal. Everyone was having a good time, laughing at one another’s jokes when suddenly one of the men grabbed his chest and instead of laughing, got a “whoee-that-hurts-like-Hell” look on his face. Broke out in a cold sweat. Quit talking. Fell off his chair.

Bob said: “That’s when we called 911, the medics came, and they rolled him out the door on a Guernsey.”

In the world of slaughtered word usage, guerney—which is what folks who are having a heart attack are rolled out the door on—and Guernseys—doe-eyed cows known the world around for giving milk with a high butterfat content—are a great example of why the English language can be butchered so cheerfully. The best part is that the butcher does so while gaily infatuated with his or her blundering command of the knife.

In this household, somewhere along the way, one of our favorite words while the kids were growing up was “Hyena.” We’d all be in the car, loaded up, ready to go. And late. Should everything be proceeding normally, we’d always be running late. “Where’s Nine?” I would ask of Eleven and Thirteen, who were miraculously already buckled up in the back seat of the wagon. One of them would look up from whatever book they were reading and reply: “She’s taking a Hyena; she’ll be here shortly.”

Anytime one of them said that, we’d all grin and enjoy ourselves while we thought back to the person—we couldn’t remember who or when—that had told us about this particularly entertaining murder of the English language.

“Hyena,” of course, is substituted for “hiatus,” which means more or less a brief interval.

When people were giving me directions for service calls, they often came in the shape of a Hyena. Another serviceman and I were once exchanging the various misdirections which we had gotten from people trying to tell us how to get to their house. I started the competition by telling about the lady who had told me to “drive past the corncrib.” Several stops for directions from people in the general area finally got me to her place. “Say,” I said, “about that corncrib. There isn’t one, you know.”

“Yes,” she replied, “but there used to be one many years ago, and everyone knows where it used to be.”

Sure they do. Especially the people who already know where they are.

I had another service call where the person told me to drive between the two lakes, keep going north until two dogs come out and chase you. Then turn left. I’m the first place.

You know what? That’s exactly what happened. I drove. Two dogs came out and chased me. I turned left. Best directions I ever got.

The guy I was talking to said: “That’s a good one. The best one I ever had, the lady called, said her furnace was out. She told me she lived two miles south of the blue house that burned down.”

He had me there.

Back while I was in the hardware store one day, I was talking to a neighbor. He was describing his deer hunting escapades to me, which is a tradition around these parts. He rambled on about the 30-30 that had been in the family for years, where his dad got it, the nick in the back sight from when his dad’s dad had used it to tighten a barb wire fence, the son he was himself going to give it to.

It began to look like we’d never get to this year’s hunting, because first we were going to have to relive his dad’s dad’s hunting with that darned rifle first. This turned into about an hour and a half of every deer he and his entire family had ever shot with that rifle.

Finally, in the middle of this marathon, I was barely listening. “Blah, blah, blah, but I’m hoping the Little Woman survives ‘cause don’t you know she’s got the mentalpause.”

Mentalpause.

Yup. Had it myself. Likely as not, I’m in the middle of it right now.

If you want to know where it is, it’s just past the burned down blue house.

I hear a Hyena calling me.