Mavericks

I was going to include some of the information in this post in another article I'm working on for Lugubrious Drollery, but then I decided I should ratchet up my already intense research efforts a notch by reading a relevant book, or at least part of a book, before publishing the article. Or maybe I'll just look at the pictures, if the book has any. I've ordered it from Amazon, but in the meantime, I know readers of LD are thirsting for knowledge. So gather around the fire and quaff deeply, campers.

Without giving too much away, I will say that the article I'm working on involves an historical figure who could have been considered a maverick. Rather than waiting to share my desultory thoughts on the word maverick, I offer them up now.

First, let's review the meanings of the word desultory, which I have to look up any time I'm tempted to use it. From the Merriam Webster Online Dictionary:

Main entry: des-ul-to-ry
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin desultorius, literally, of a circus rider who leaps from horse to horse, from desilire, from de- + salire to leap--more at sally (a word I used to good effect in a previous post*, if I do say so myself--ed.)
1: marked by lack of definite plan, regularity, or purpose
2: not connected with the main subject
3. disappointing in progress, performance, or quality

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen, my thought process in a nutshell.

As I have pondered the word maverick these last few days, my thoughts have skipped like a flat stone hurled sidearm across a stagnant and algae-choked pond. I have ruminated upon a real-life Texas cattleman (who should be used to rumination), an old TV western, a cheap Ford sedan, and last year's Presidential campaign.

Let us begin (I know what you're thinking--all that, and he hasn't even begun?) with the etymology of the word maverick, from the old standby, The Online Etymology Dictionary:

Maverick: 1867, "calf or yearling found without an owner's brand," in allusion to Samuel A. Maverick (1803-70), Texas cattle owner who was negligent in branding his calves. Sense of "individualist, unconventional person" is first recorded 1886, via notion of "masterless."

My earliest recollection of hearing the word maverick, like many of the things that persist in my brain while more important data are lost, comes from television. I grew up on a duck farm, and there was no need to brand our stock. Even if they got outside the pen, they wouldn't waddle far, so our conversations would never include statements like, "I've got to saddle up the palomino and round up the mavericks." For one thing, we didn't have a palomino, or any other kind of horse. There was no desultory jumping around from horse to horse, circus style, at our farm. For another thing, there was no rounding up to be done. We would just grab the escapees by their necks and lift them back over the fence.

Now, where was I? Oh, yeah--TV. One of the coolest actors of our time is James Garner. Back in the fifties, he was the star of the western Maverick. His character was Bret Maverick, a carefree gambler, and of course, he was an "individualist" and "masterless." Whether he was supposed to be related to Samuel Maverick, the negligent cattleman, I don't know, and I don't feel like going to Wikipedia right now to try to find out. I have gone to the trouble to go to YouTube to embed the intro to the show here.



Fast forward now to 1970. That was the year my father purchased the second new car he had bought during my lifetime. The first was a 1964 VW Beetle, which I had commandeered. A frugal man, he went for economy again and bought a Ford Maverick. On those occasions when I drove it, I didn't feel nearly as cool as Bret Maverick, but I did prove that a tinny Ford with a four-cylinder engine and a three-on-the-tree manual shift could, however briefly, exceed one hundred miles an hour without blowing up--a fact I never shared with my father.

In case you don't remember the sleek lines of the Ford Maverick, I'm posting a picture here. I wasn't enamored enough with the Maverick to take a picture of it. I was fortunate enough to find a picture of one at Wikimedia Commons. It's even the same color as ours, although ours didn't have such fancy chrome lug nuts.


Lastly (do I hear cheers from the audience?), during last year's Presidential campaign, the word maverick was bandied about a good deal. Sen. John McCain, trying his best to distance himself from the extremely unpopular George W. Bush, painted himself as a "Washington outsider," (who happens to have been in Washington since 1982). He and his running mate Sarah Palin spent a lot of time calling each other "reformers" and "mavericks" even though McCain voted with the Republicans 93.8 percent of the time during the 111th Congress. You want a maverick? How about Sen. Olympia Snowe (R, Maine), who voted with the GOP only 34.4 percent of the time? Now, there's a woman who can say, "Thanks, but no thanks," and mean it.

So, there you have it, cowpokes and cowgirls--a brief ride through the deep recesses of my mind. Happy trails until we meet again.

*Link to previous post, "Step Into My Bidet," wherein the author cleverly uses the word sally.
Link to Online Etymology Dictionary

Argus

Recently, I signed up to receive A.Word.A.Day via email from wordsmith.org. Each day, a word with its definition and an example of its use shows up in my inbox. Last week's theme was words derived from the names of mythical creatures. The word for April 29 was:

argus (AHR-guhs) noun

An alert and observant person; a watchful guardian.

[After Argus, a giant in Greek mythology who had 100 eyes and was sent to watch over Zeus's lover Io. He was killed by Hermes and after his death his eyes transformed into spots on the peacock's tail. Greek argos (bright).]

The example of the word's use was:

"Arnold [Schwarzenegger] knew immediately that Total Recall needed an Argus-eyed director who could maintain control over complicated visual effects, extravagant futuristic sets, dangerous stunts, etc. -- while also demanding good performances from his actors."
Bill Jones; Muscles Parlayed Into Stardom; The Phoenix Gazette (Arizona); Jun 2, 1990.

A nice example to be sure, but I heard an even better one last week on the podcast of the Public Radio International show Selected Shorts. If you want to hear it, you can download it for free at iTunes. The program, entitled "Word Pictures," includes a reading of a letter from Dalton Trumbo, written in 1958, and addressed to the manager of the Franklin Hotel in Rochester, Minnesota, where Trumbo and his wife stayed while they were being evaluated at the Mayo Clinic. The letter is in response to the manager's allegation that the Trumbos pilfered a coffee pot from the hotel. Dalton Trumbo was one of the Hollywood Ten who were blacklisted during the McCarthy era. He actually was a communist, but also a very talented screen writer and novelist. When he couldn't get work in Hollywood, he and his wife moved to Mexico, where he continued to write movies, which were sold under the names of various "front men" whose names appeared in the credits. Anyway, this letter is a very funny rant. Trumbo recounts how, on their first day in the hotel, he and his wife ordered cocktails to be delivered to their room. While they were waiting they read all the "institutional literature with which our quarters were awash." All the placards, brochures and warnings not to steal the ball-point pens were "breezily signed by Mr. F," who Trumbo inferred was none other than the owner of the hotel, Mr. Franklin. So omnipresent was his name in their room that he was "a brooding, wheedling, hectoring spirit that leered at us through argus eyes from every nook and corner." And so forth. You really have to hear the whole thing, because these brief snippets don't do justice to Trumbo's acerbic wit.

Please note that argus should not be confused with Argos, the dog who patiently waited back in Ithaca for over twenty years while his master Odysseus went galavanting around the ancient world. Nor should it be confused with Argos, Indiana, where I first experienced nervous perspiration performing a cornet solo in a band contest in middle school, or what we at that time called junior high.

The Tao of Foo

The internet is an overflowing font of serendipity. It's Easter, I'm on call, and I'm surfing the web between phone calls. A Google blog search for etymology led me to a post about the word foo at Goldblog, written by Corey Goldberg. Sorry, Corey, my knowledge of computer programming hasn't progressed beyond the class I took in BASIC computer language in college, so I don't understand most of your blog, but I was interested to find out that foo is your favorite word.

Apparently, foo is used a lot in writing computer code. Corey provides a link to a lengthy document entitled "Etymology of 'Foo'" by D. Eastlake 3rd, C. Manros, and E. Raymond. As I read through it, I was struck by the following:

The earliest documented uses were in the surrealist "Smokey Stover" comic strip by Bill Holman about a fireman.

This brought back memories of weekly trips to my grandparents' house a mile down the road on Sunday afternoons. We would come home with the Sunday paper. The Millers would drive into the drug store in Syracuse Sunday mornings to buy the paper, because I don't believe it was even possible to get home delivery where we lived. For me, one of the highlights of the funnies was Smokey Stover, with his two-wheeled fire engine and various crazy gadgets. At the time, I didn't appreciate the surreal quality of the comic strip, but that was part of its appeal. As you might expect, there is an official Smokey Stover web site, and it is quite interesting. I had to go there to refresh my memory about Smokey. One thing I had forgotten was that Smokey's creator, Bill Holman, had grown up in Nappanee, Indiana, just a few miles from my hometown of Milford. I had also forgotten that the word foo appeared frequently in the comic strip, and Smokey's vehicle was the foomobile. Holman claimed he had seen the word on the base of a Chinese figurine. According to Eastlake, Manros, and Raymond, the Chinese word fu (transliterated as foo), can mean "happiness," and might have appeared on a Chinese statuette.

Foo, or rather foo-foo, is a popular term around our house. Early in my relationship with our annoying apricot poodle, Sid Vicious, I started to call him Foo-Foo. I'm not sure where I got the term. Maybe from the Muppets, because I have just learned from my web surfing that Miss Piggy had a dog named Foo-Foo. It just seems appropriate for a small poodle. We have also converted it into a verb, as in "The puppies are going to the groomer to be foo-fooed," meaning they will return in a state that no self-respecting coon hound would find himself in. Foo-foo can also be an adjective, as in "She is going to Starbucks to get a foo-foo coffee." I have also learned today that the closely related word frou-frou comes from the French and means "fussy or showy dress or ornamentation." It can also mean "a rustling sound, as of silk."

Finally, as we complete our serendipitous sojourn through the world wide web, let us note that a character named Le Comte de Frou Frou appeared in Episode 3, "Nob and Nobility," of the BBC comedy Blackadder III, starring Rowan Atkinson.