Get the skinny on horsemeat, softball, maps

Gee whiz. To gauge from your response to Thursday’s column about human consumption of horsemeat, quite a few of you have at some point have had a few bites out of good old Trigger or your friend Flicka.

Well, to each his own.

Now, a personal note:

Gary, if playing softball at your age means you end up in the hospital with a fractured skull, maybe it’s time to think about stamp collecting or something like that. OK?

Now, down to today’s business, such as it is.

My husband and I have been having this discussion regarding the town of Peoria. I say it’s in the West Valley, he says it’s in the East Valley. Which is it?

I know I’ve said this before, but in this case I think it bears repeating:

I don’t know where you women find these guys. Don’t you ask your mothers for advice first? You know she would have told you that you could do better.

Show him the map. Peoria is in the western part of the metropolitan area.

Geez.

Next question:

I have a situation with our desert-landscaped front yard. In the past few months, we have noticed small holes in the gravel. Our immediate reaction was to fill up the holes. The holes appeared again within a few days. The other day I saw a long-billed grayish bird working very hard at the gravel. What kind of bird does this? How can I discourage this?

Long-billed? It sounds like a brown thrasher or something like that. I don’t know. It’s probably just looking for bugs or something. Leave it alone. How hard can it be to rake the gravel smooth again and let the bird start over?

C’mon lady, it’s the holidays. Live and let live.

How did the word “skinny” come to mean the facts or the real story?

This is what the Online Etymology Dictionary has to say about that:

“In the sense of ‘the truth’ it is World War II military slang, perhaps from the notion of the ‘naked’ truth.”

OK, I’m going to take some time off. I’ll be using this time around the holidays to work on my eating skills. My napping techniques can use a little fine-tuning, too. I’ll be back on the 24th. Don’t do anything rash before then, OK?

Reach Thompson at clay.thompson@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8612.

*Clay Thompson writes for The Arizona Republic. To read his column, go to www.azcentral.com

‘Gandy dancer’ query comes around bend

Today’s question:

My father used to tell us he worked summers as a gandy dancer on the railroad. Do you know where that phrase comes from?

Sorry, no, I can’t say for sure. I should get points for admitting that I’m not sure, don’t you think?

Geez, I’ve been serving up a lot of lame answers lately. I think I’m going to take some time off soon. Every three or four months or so I find that the well has just run dry and that I need to take a break.

Plus, my two sweet patooties are coming home for Christmas, so I should try to free up some time to spend with them. Which really means I probably will need to free up some time to spend taking most of the lame-o presents I got them back to the returns counter.

Anyway, do you remember that whole Arizona colloquium contest thing? We’ll deal with it later. I am still pondering the entries.

In the meantime, we’ll take up this gandy dancer thing.

Don’t you wish you had asked your father about this? I’m not being snarky here. There are lots of things I wish I’d asked my father about before he died.

Like why in the world he always thought that the rest of us would know what a “rod” was. He was always saying something like, “Oh, take it over there about a rod or so.”

Of course now, thanks to the miracles of modern science, we know that a rod means 16.5 feet, but back then, what were we to think? We just mostly took whatever it was we were carrying at his behest off in the general direction in which he was waving and hoped we got it somewhere near whatever a rod was.

But that’s neither here nor there.

A gandy dancer is a maintenance worker on a railway.

One thing I read said that the name came from the Gandy Manufacturing Co. in Chicago that made tools for railroad workers.

Most of the other stuff I read said that was hooey, and there never was such a company, but that a gandy, origin unknown, was a sort of crowbar tool that workers used to lever the rails into a level position. And as they moved around and levered and leveled and all, they were said to be dancing, in a way.

So, I think I got within a rod or so of that answer.

Reach Thompson at clay.thompson@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8612.
 

*Clay Thompson writes for The Arizona Republic. You can read his column by going to www.azcentral.com

OK, let’s wrap! Here is how to eat a tamale

I would just like to take a minute here to thank all of you who have called or written in the past few days to tell me I am an idiot.

I am an idiot because the other day I said I didn’t see how using cold water instead of hot would help conserve water, overlooking in my idiocy the fact that you have to let the water run for a bit before it gets hot, and that water usually just goes down the drain.

Duh.

Anyway, lots – and I mean lots – of you guys caught me on that. At least you’re paying attention.

Now pay attention to this; it is a classic newcomer/snowbird question.

We have spent 11 winters in Arizona and still don’t know how to eat a tamale. Since this apparently is the big season for tamales, give us some direction so we don’t look stupid.

Hmmm, tamales. I wonder if my neighbor is going to make tamales this year. She brought some over last year, and they were great.

I should start buttering her up. Maybe I’ll wash her car or something like that.

Anyway, eating a tamale is pretty simple, really. You just unwrap it and eat it. Whatever you do, don’t eat the cornhusk.

Nothing will mark you as newcomer/snowbird doofus as surely as eating the cornhusk. Gerald Ford did that once when he was president.

In some of Latin America, they wrap their tamales in banana leaves instead of cornhusk. Don’t eat the banana leaves, either.

Now, I say a good tamale shouldn’t need to be topped with any salsa or anything like that, but maybe that’s a matter of taste.

You’ll want to keep a flour tortilla at hand in case it’s especially spicy tamale. That will help cool your mouth by soaking up the oil-based hot stuff.

Tamales go way back, possibly way back to 5000 B.C. The thinking is they were a military staple because they could be made ahead of time and carried along by the armies to be heated up later or eaten cold.

Tamales also were used in religious ceremonies by priests who made the tamales and offered them to their gods as a sacrifice.

I’ve never had one, but some people make sweet tamales, stuffed with fruit or jam. That sounds pretty good, don’t you think?

Reach Thompson at clay.thompson@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8612.

*Clay Thompson writes for The Arizona Republic. You can read his column by going to www.azcentral.com