In the hills and bogs of this great country, there is a language spoken which is a derivative of the English language. That derivative is called “country speak.” If, for example, you follow the announcements of Richard Shelby, the U.S. Senator from Alabama, you will notice that he pronounces the word “can’t” as “caint.” This is a good start on speaking country speak. If you were to use the term “hisself” rather than “himself,” that would practically make you a full practitioner of this language.
In the past week, there were two events that collided in my brain. One had to do with a friendly evaluation by Bill Knapp, who was one of my supervisors in 1950, and the other has to do with the precipitous drop in the price of crude oil by the barrel. I will do my best to make some sense out of this cerebral collision.
The subject at hand here today is the garment that men wear on the lower half of their bodies. In country speak, that garment is usually referred to as “britches.” When country speakers become contaminated by exposure to city folk, they ordinarily begin to call britches by the urban term of “pants.” If one were to use the term “trousers” instead of britches, I suspect that the country speaker would either profess ignorance or say that you would be too uppity for his taste. And so today this essay will have to do with the unadorned term “britches.”
In 1950, I was an employee of the AT&T Company in its plant department in St. Louis. For a time I reported to Bill Knapp, a Texan who often used country speak to convey his messages. For many of us, including myself, Bill Knapp could do no wrong. Bill had been an Army Captain in the Second World War, which set him apart from all of the other supervisors in St. Louis. He was a down-to-earth man whose observations made eminent sense to all of us. Obviously, I liked Bill Knapp but his bosses, specifically including a man named Bill Heywood, did not care for Bill Knapp.
Before this essay is finished, I hope to get to Mr. Heywood. But in any case, the local union in St. Louis in the Long Lines Department of AT&T had been dominated for many years by craftsmen working in the test room three or four miles from the division administrative offices. Those of us who worked in the administrative offices thought that the administration of the union was taking us in the wrong direction and so we mounted a vigorous campaign to oust the current leadership. The campaign was successful and in 1950 I became the President of Local 6350 of the Communications Workers of America.
My desk was immediately in front of Bill Knapp so that he could see nearly every move I made. In the corner office a few feet forward sat Mr. Heywood at a walnut desk which came with a secretary and minions to answer the phone whenever his secretary was away to eat lunch. The bosses in the administrative offices were much aware of my efforts to become President of the local, because of its high publicity. Not long after my having become President of Local 6350, Bill Knapp said to me about my work for the union that “You ain’t tore your britches yet.” Bill meant this as a compliment and as a speaker of country speak, I understood it perfectly. His message was, “Try not to get your britches torn while you take care of your company duties and its natural protagonist, the union.”
Now as to Mr. Heywood. During this period I came into possession of a letter that Heywood had written to Bill Knapp’s boss. In the letter, Heywood complained that Bill Knapp’s performance was not making a positive contribution towards Heywood’s career. I suspect that the letter was leaked to me by one of the secretaries but I said nothing. To the extent, that if I buddied up with Bill Knapp, it would give Mr. Heywood more ammunition to contend that such action did not contribute toward his advancement. As things finally turned out, Bill Heywood got into a discussion with Henry Killingsworth, the boss of the whole Long Lines Department, and seemed to have insulted Killingsworth. Within a year or so, when the Long Lines Department was reorganized and a new office was established in Kansas City, Mr. Heywood found that he had been clearly demoted. The walnut desk was gone, to be replaced by a metal desk. The secretary was gone, to be replaced by no one. I was a low-level supervisor by that time in Kansas City and had much to do with furnishing the office needs for Mr. Heywood. He took his come-down extremely hard and, rather than saying “It serves you right,” I was moved to sympathize with him because I thought Killingsworth was a colossal bastard. Within 18 months, Heywood died of congestive heart failure which, in my humble opinion, was largely attributable to his come-down with his view of himself and his career with AT&T.
It might be argued that Mr. Heywood had gotten too big for his britches and that the bosses in New York had cut him off at the knees. I fully agree that Heywood had gotten a bit too big for his britches but his demotion and ultimate death were a bit more than I could understand. At this point, it might be observed that I witnessed Heywood’s come-down because the company had selected me for a management position and had promoted me. So I suspect that Bill Knapp’s evaluation of “You ain’t tore your britches yet” may have been on point.
Now we come to another case of people getting too big for their britches. For the past two or three years, the world has watched as the price of crude oil has advanced inexorably toward new limits. Gasoline, of course, is made from crude oil, and as the cost of gasoline increased, people were forced to look for other means of transportation. But the oil-producing states simply said that that is the new reality. The oil producers said that in a short time, consumers would have to accommodate the desires of the Indians and the Chinese for great amounts of oil and so it has become quite dear to everybody.
The Russians have produced a good bit of oil recently and, with the rise in prices, they could envision Russian hegemony over much of Europe and perhaps the rest of the world. To a large measure, the Russians were saying to the United States that “Now we have the upper hand and you must get acquainted with becoming the second fiddle.”
Saudi Arabia is the world’s leading producer of crude oil and on two occasions the United States dispatched, first, Vice President Cheney and then President Bush to go to the Saudis, hat in hand, to ask them to increase their production so that the price would drop. In both cases, the President and the Vice President of this country were told to kindly get lost.
I suspect that the other countries that were producers of oil could envision taking their earnings from oil sales and turning them into a caliphate which would convert Christians into Muslims. In Venezuela Hugo Chavez started to nationalize other industries in that country and patronize the United States by sending us cut-rate crude so that people in such places as the Bronx in New York were able to heat their homes this winter. It may be that Chavez was the man who was probably the leading contender for being too big for his britches.
The Nigerians, who draw “sweet oil” from the earth, which is highly desirable, cannot seem to agree on anything and their efforts to cash in on the world market were thwarted by their antagonism toward each other.
The Iranians who had all of this crude oil to offer on the world market have very few refineries of their own and, as a result, their drivers are often forced to wait in long lines at stations that offer them petroleum products. Unfortunately, the United States and Western Europe are not producers of great amounts of crude oil and, for some time, it appeared that the whip handle was in someone else’s hands. We were either going to pay the price, exorbitant as it was, or we would be forced to walk or take the trolley or the bus.
But then some events took place that mystified all of us. As it turned out, the Chinese had some financial woes of their own and the thought that they were going to require perhaps a billion cars disappeared. The same happened to the Indians who had pinned their hopes on small-engined cars to take them out of their rickshaws and put them in automobiles. For the United States, which is the leading consumer of oil products, the price had gotten to staggering proportions and our fellow Americans were forced to resort to public transportation and, for vacations, to stay at home. May I suggest that this isn’t all bad?
In any event, it is reasonably clear that the oil producers had grown much too big for their own britches. On July 11, 2008 the cost of a barrel of crude oil was $147.27. In the next five months, a spigot in that barrel of oil must have come loose and the price has dropped in the first week of December to something on the order of $42. That is a loss of 72%, which is even greater than the losses that some of us have encountered in the American stock market. On top of this, there are forecasters who contend that the price of crude oil will continue to drop and will not settle until it reaches the $30 level. One commentator said it would drop to $20. I don’t believe that commentator. So as you see, it is obvious that the producers of crude oil have grown much too big for their own britches and no one sympathizes with them now that they are forced to undergo a form of poverty.
A passing thought in that the Saudis have a tanker that is longer than three football fields loaded with oil that has been hijacked by pirates from Somalia. In the length of time that the pirates have held the ship hostage, the cost of the oil has dropped from about $140 a barrel to around $40 a barrel. If the Saudis hold out a little longer, it may be that the pirates from Somalia will give up and return the ship to the Saudis, and say, “Good riddance.”
Well, there you have three cases of britches that comprise the burden of this essay. The oil producers clearly have grown too big for their britches and I applaud their come-down. Then in Bill Heywood’s case, because of my dislike for Henry Killingsworth, the big boss of the Long Lines Department of AT&T, my sympathies were always with Bill Heywood as difficult as it was to love him.
And let’s not forget Bill Knapp’s admonition to me about “You ain’t tore your britches yet”. It was welcome advice. I took that to mean that I should not seek out instances where my britches might be torn.
The final thought is that I hope the term britches makes a comeback into common usage because those of us who understand country speak continue to believe that “trousers” is an effeminate term. And so I say, “Up with britches and down with trousers!” I challenge my fellow Americans to produce a better slogan which has as much sentiment and pathos as this one.
E. E. CARR
December 6, 2008
Essay 351
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Kevin’s commentary: I very rarely hear the word “britches” outside of the context of being too big for them. Accordingly I think that telling someone that his britches are intact is definitely a clever way of saying that that person keeps his ego in check.