Remembering Big Len

Last week marked nine years since my Dad, affectionately known to some as Big Len, left this world and made it a few shades less colorful. Tomorrow would have been his 88th birthday. Rather than tell you what a wonderful, giving, selfless man he was (many of you already know that), I'm going to share some examples of the colorful way he expressed himself. Big Len was a bit like Archie Bunker (I'm dating myself), in that he often didn't get words or phrases quite right. Whenever I hear my Dad talking in my head, these are some of the things he says that make me smile:

• Chesterfield - this is a sofa if you were born in Canada or have a bunch of Canucks for relatives
• Davenport - this also means sofa
• Down celler - this is a basement
• Tamata - tomato
• Patata - potato
• Punkin - pumpkin
• Asparagris - yes, he called it that
• Dungarees - pants
• Up-To - as in, "We were up to Wegmans when I got a bad case of gas"
• Hots - hot dogs
• Lull - this means slow...Goom called Dad this when we played cards
• Leonard Box - she also called him this. I never understood the origin, but it made Mom and Gooma laugh their arses off
• Harvest Frog - as in, "her has is bigger than a harvest frog's"
• Grand Old Opra - actually the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville
• Fresh - this meant either a heifer was knocked up or or that I was being mouthy
• Schafer bugs - Japanese beetles
• Scours - cow diarrhea
• Cow flop - normal cow poop
• Doc - a nick name my Dad earned after attempting to fix some male calves by putting rubber bands around their nuts...he missed one and that dude got Dad's whole herd "fresh"
• Ungion - onion
• Reddish - radish
• Brass Monkey - as in, "it's cold enough to freeze the balls off a..."
• Pick Stone - I dreaded hearing this phrase each spring...it involved picking up gravel from the sides of the driveway that had been misplaced by the snow plow during the winter...we picked it up piece by piece, dumped it in buckets until they were full, then dumped it back into the driveway and began again
• Pick Walnuts - whatta you think?
• Get Your Ass Behind You - directions given to my brothers when using a wrench, Dad didn't swear around me until I was over thirty years old
• Cukes - cucumbers, which Dad ate in a sandwich on buttered white bread
• Son of a Seapup - SOB
• Chicken Ass Mary - referring to a woman with a big caboose
• Up south/Down north - I don't know....
• Silver Bells - if you never heard my Dad sing this while dancing in our living room, then you haven't truly lived
• Grand Pricks - the car...grand prix
• Thousand Islands - not the location, but the salad dressing
• Like Two Pigs Wrestling Under a Blanket - another way to describe a large butt

There are endless others but you get the idea.

Happy Birthday, Dad. I hope you're enjoying hots and pop with Goom, surrounded by all those that went before you, as well as those that came later.