Sell Like Hot Cakes

Hot cakes have long been a popular food staple from earliest times in America.  They were first made with cornmeal and fried in pork lard.

They were so popular with regular folks that griddle cakes or pancakes were always served piping hot and were oftentimes sold at church benefits, fairs, and other functions to raise money for community projects.

Selling hot cakes was an easy sell to an eager public and soon, anything that sold in great numbers and with little effort was said to sell like hot cakes.

Don’t Let The Bedbugs Bite

Bedbugs were the bugs that came in with the straw.  Although some mattresses were stuffed with goose down feathers, other mattresses were stuffed with straw.  However, whether a mattress had goose down or straw in it, pioneers who came into contact with straw unwittingly carried bedbugs back into the house.

Bedbugs were dangerous in that they inflicted people and animals alike with irritating, and sometimes painful, bites.

It’s from this era that we have the children’s rhyme:  “Good night, sleep tight — don’t let the bedbugs bite.  If they do, grab a shoe and whack them ’til they’re black and blue.”

Good Night, Sleep Tight

Back in colonial times, mattresses were made of goose down feathers. While this made for a very luxurious sort of mattress, it wasn’t as firm a mattress as some would have liked.

In an effort to create more firmness in such mattresses, ropes were tied around the mattress width-wise at the tope, middle and bottom and pulled tight in order to condense the goose down feathers. The tighter the ropes were pulled, the firmer the mattress. For those who preferred a firmer mattress, this provided a better night’s sleep than the unbound mattresses.

Nose To The Grindstone

The Pilgrims were also responsible for this phrase.  Back in the 1600s, the main staple food was corn.  However, in order to get the greatest use from corn, it had to be ground finely until it was cornmeal.

In order to achieve this feat, corn kernels were poured into a stone bowl in which the millstone rested.  The millstone, of course, was turned by the power of the windmill.  However, in order to get the corn into the bowl, the miller had to pour it in from the backside which meant his face was as close to the millstone as you could get without actually causing injury.

Three Sheets To The Wind

Three sheets to the wind comes from the Mayflower and its Pilgrims who used the resources of the Mayflower once they arrived in the New World.

These windmills were built with three ‘blades’ that caught the wind.  In time, the Pilgrims came to realize that three sheets made for a rickety windmill and so they added a fourth blade to their windmill design.

When someone overindulged in alcohol and walked in a ‘rickety’ fashion, it was said that he was three sheets to the wind.