1478 Holler

I like living close to the country. It brings you up short sometimes and helps you question your prejudices on stuff. Priorities on the farm are poles apart from priorities in the city. The cow lowing in the barn because she needs to be milked is a whole lot different from the groan in your car's engine that may keep you from driving to work on time.
How does that old joke go? What do you call an Amish guy with his hand up a cow's backside?
Mechanic.
So it was funny the other day when I heard a story about a fencing class they were offering at the Yelm Library. Fencing in Yelm? Yelm ain't a country town anymore? I say this with all due respect and love. Yelm is a place where you'd expect gunslingers at high noon. Not fencing.
Folks in tight white coveralls with baskets on their faces dancing around with skinny wands seems more like a Harry Potter movie than a Prairie Days demonstration.
Big broadswords maybe. Scottish claymores. Something you could repurpose as a machete to whack down some prairie scotchbroom.
Then it occurred to me. Maybe they were talking about a class for putting up fences. Every pasture needs good fencing.
Yeah…maybe it's down in the holler. That's another country word I love that gets me confused. Because you also say, "I gave him a holler."
"When you get close to town, give me a holler."
"Will do, where do you live?"
"Down in the holler."
"So I should give you a holler so I can see you down in the holler you live in already."
"Yep, and holler loud when you get there, we'll be in the back forty doing some fencing..."
America, ya gotta love it.