Beach Tale: Idioms with Nautical Origins

          Have you ever heard the phrase, “Not enough room to swing a cat?”  Don’t ask me why, but my mom used to say it a lot.  And since it’s a universal truth that as we sound more like our mothers as we age, I muttered it the other day when complaining about how cluttered the basement had become. 

My son asked, “What does that mean?”

I explained my childhood interpretation of the phrase, where you grab a cat (I envisioned our seal point Siamese, Punchy) by the tail and swing it around the room, knocking over lamps and pictures and whatever other knickknacks are within the cat’s circumference.    

“That’s crazy,” my son said.

So in my effort to prove myself right, I did a Google search.  Guess what?  (And I’m admitting this publicly here…) I was wrong.  And to further my surprise, I learned the phrase had a nautical origin.  Additional research showed a lot of common terms have ties to Navy traditions.  Here are a few, gleaned from Traditions of the Navy by Cedric W. Windas, copyright 1942:

Beach Tale: The Case of the Cruller Shop Arsonist

       

          The aroma of fresh-from-the-deep-fryer donuts floated through the doorway.  In response, my mouth sent out enough saliva to rival Niagara Falls.  I vowed to get even with the diabolical police chief who had assigned me the case of the four torched Cappy’s Crullers donut shops along the boardwalk.  I’d been on the Atkins Diet for 23 days in preparation for my Valentine ’s Day wedding, and this stakeout was above and beyond the call of duty.  But it seemed a logical conclusion that the only CC storefront still standing in a 100-mile radius would be the next to go up in flames.  Somebody needed to keep an eye on things, and I was the only one available.  Sometimes I just get lucky that way.  Sigh.

          I know it’s a cliché that cops never met a donut they didn’t eat, but the truth is we frequent the establishments on account of the availability of fresh coffee 24 hours a day.  But we’re only human.  So after ordering my caffeine fix, I tacked on a casual request for one maple-glazed cruller and then settled in a back booth to watch and wait. 

          Thirteen-and-a-half crullers later, my patience was rewarded.

          “You the detective handling the fires?”

Beach Tale: A House that Inspired a Novel

This is a tale about a house by the sea.  A young writer visited often with to pass the time with his cousin, Susannah Ingersoll.  Susannah was the daughter of a wealthy sea captain who lived with her family in a sprawling mansion right on the rocky coast of the Atlantic Ocean.  The cousins spent many a lively evening in the dining room of said mansion.  Since water was usually unsafe at this period of time (mid 1800s), spirits were often consumed for health’s sake, but it is not clear if said writer ever over-indulged.  But while sitting in that house, something triggered the writer’s imagination, and he went on to write a dark romance, one met with critical acclaim, and one that has stood the test of time.

The novel was first printed in 1851.  The setting was Salem Massachusetts.  The writer was Nathanial Hawthorne, and the book, The House of Seven Gables.   

If you haven’t read it, or in the event you have forgotten, here is the opening paragraph: 

House of Seven Gables, Salem, MA

"Halfway down a by-street of one of our New England towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst. The street is Pyncheon Street; the house is the old Pyncheon House; and an elm-tree, of wide circumference, rooted before the door, is familiar to every town-born child by the title of the Pyncheon Elm."

Beach Chat with Jayne Ormerod

Fifteen questions in five mintues....GO!

Name:  Jayne Ormerod  

Book you are reading right now:  Murder, She Wrote, The Fine Art of Murder by Jessica Fletcher and Donald Bain

Preference, print or ebook: Print!

Beach Musings Monday: "Warm Hands, Cold Heart" a super-short romance

          Caitlyn wrapped her hands around a mug of steamy coffee, inhaling the fragrant aroma of roasted Arabica beans.  She absolutely loved the smell of fresh brewed coffee, but detested the taste.  The only reason she’d brewed a cup was to have something to warm her hands on.  She had never been so cold in her entire life.     

          Having been born and raised in the sunny southern California, she was suffering her first winter on the desolate prairies of Nebraska.  The job offer had been too good to pass up, and being two-thousand miles away from Derek, that cheating skunk of an ex-fiancé, was an added bonus.  But she hadn’t realized how brutal winter could be until the first blizzard of the season hit and the furnace conked out.       

Beach Musing

It’s 25 degrees outside, and 53 inside (the big old boiler in the basement conked out about 1 a.m.) and I’m waiting for the repairman.  It’s hard to type with gloves on, and my fingers freeze up and fumble on the keys when I take them off, so I’m going to turn this frosty Friday blog post over to the professionals.  Travel writer and big thinker Bill Bryson gives us food for thought this morning: 

“Among the many thousands of things that I have never been able to understand, one in particular stands out. That is the question of who was the first person who stood by a pile of sand and said, ‘You know, I bet if we took some of this and mixed it with a little potash and heated it, we could make a material that would be solid and yet transparent. We could call it glass.’ Call me obtuse, but you could stand me on a beach till the end of time and never would it occur to me to try to make it into windows.”