Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know the man.
—Confucius
Along with reading newspapers, his own included, my father would occasionally browse through a political book “to find out what politicians are good and which are bad,” he said. He added dryly, “The ones who are good, of course, are generally the ones who wrote the book.”
There were a number of expressions that my father used with consistency. When he was nearing the close of a deal, he would allude to “getting down to the short rows,” a farm expression about plowing a field.
Another favorite expression was a result of my stint as a wrestler. Since I frequently practiced without earguards, I developed a minor case of cauliflower ears and went to the hospital to have it corrected. For months afterward, my mother told her friends the details of the operation as if it were a big deal, and whenever she got to talking too much to other people about anything my father would say, “Now tell them about the ears.”
My father did not like words that ended in “ism.” He told the Johnson School graduates, “There are some ‘isms’ you should avoid like the plague: favoritism, cronyism and nepotism.” I doubt if Pops would have liked unchecked environmentalism and rabid anticapitalism much either.
He referred to gossip and chatter when the talk became less rational, more emotional or anything he did not want to hear as “Dickey-Bird” talk.
And lawyers will tell you the commonly used, two-word legal phrases applied to claims considered excessive or frivolous are “arbitrary and capricious,” for which they are “shocked and appalled.” I remember the day my father looked up what to him was a new word under the C’s in the dictionary. From then on his favorite two-word expression for someone who argued with or opposed his views was that they were “surly and churlish.” I heard that a lot.
Like me, my father tried to avoid trouble, and I heard him frequently say to Babcock, “We don’t need to be pioneers, do we, Johnnie?” Avoiding trouble meant being cautious on anything that might cost money unless it was absolutely necessary.
Another of my father’s favorite expressions was “bug-dust” when he thought something was cheaply priced. But it wasn’t “bug-dust” whenever it was time to give an employee a raise. When he went through my outdoor budgets, the first page he always turned to were the proposed raises. When it came to raises, or anything to do with wage or salary overhead, my father was not into largesse.
He also used the expression, “I wash my hands of it,” which signaled end-of-the-round finality. Once he encountered something he didn’t like, be it a conversation, argument or situation, he turned away and seldom looked back.
His tendency to move on when he was through with you, or hoped you were through with him, was capped with, “Is that it!” If he received the hoped-for “Yes,” he would clap his hands together and move on to the next thing on his mind, to the next plane of existence, and whether you were standing there or not, you ceased to exist.
But his most ominous phrase was “Thanks a million,” particularly if you were the one hearing it. This generous sentiment generally meant that the deal you just concluded with him had worked out, as Johnnie Babcock said, “One hundred percent to him, twenty percent to you.”