MOULTRIE, Ga.  — Occasionally I find it necessary to explain some words and phrasings I use in my columns. Not everyone was fortunate enough to be raised on a two-horse farm, to run barefooted in a freshly plowed field and to listen to WCKY in Cincinnati at night on an old RCA radio where the tubes were exposed because I caught my foot in the cord one Saturday morning, jerked it off its apple crate stand and shattered the case into a thousand pieces.

It was in that fantastic environment that my language had its origins. And that vernacular sort of stuck with me, and some of those events are forever reference points.

Let’s start with “gee” and “haw.” If you wanted your mule to turn right, you said “gee up there.” And if you wanted it to turn left, it was “hawwww!” And if you had two mules that refused to pull together, the expression was that they didn’t “gee and haw well.” Our two mules, Pete and Pet didn’t “gee and haw” well … kind of like Democrats and Republicans.

One neighbor had a mule named “Dammit.” Well I found out later that the mule’s name was Kate. But all I ever heard was “Gee up there, dammit!”

Then we have “in the short rows.” That typically meant that you were about finished hoeing a field of peanuts. Or you were about finished picking butterbeans. In a field that had curvature, some rows tended to be shorter than others.

In that venue we also have “tough row to hoe.”  That means you got the row with a lot of nutgrass on it. If you want to know more about nutgrass, then Google it. I’m still trying to forget about it.

I have used the expression “shoot in the creek until you hit a fish” on more than one occasion. A reader asked me to elaborate.

Well, back when I was growing up we didn’t have the expression  “think outside the box.” When something wasn’t working and we didn’t know what else to try, someone would say “just keep shooting in the creek, and you’re bound to hit a fish.”

I’ve also made reference to “poor man’s caviar.” That’s mullet roe. Fish eggs. You fry them and eat them with cane syrup. Don’t use maple syrup. That would be like putting catsup on butterbeans — an incredible insult.

Now had mullet roe been given a French name, it would have been served in the finest restaurants on the Mediterranean. But it’s just plain old roe so it’s often looked down upon by chefs and other culinary “experts.”

I recently explained “trot line” to a fellow from Pennsylvania. It’s very simple. You string fish hooks on a long line tied between two trees in the swamp. It’s a great way to catch catfish.

Now I have no idea why it’s called “trot.” It just was. Actually I would see the word “trot” having greater application to eating too much fish roe than a method of stringing hooks in the creek.

In closing, after writing about National Popcorn Day I was chastised by someone who said I should not be writing about something so simple … that I should be writing about political corruption, injustices and stuff like that.

Well okay, I’ll give it a shot. I think everyone should have equal amounts of popcorn at a fair price. It has much greater nutritional value than potato chips and is a great fiber source, a factor that might serve Democrats and Republicans as they strain to provide leadership. Popcorn in every pot I would say!

(Dwain Walden is editor/publisher of The Moultrie Observer, 985-4545. Email: dwain.walden@gaflnews.com)