
Every region has its own vernacular and sometimes we are not aware of how familiar terms of our childhood might be to others. My dad was a farmer/rancher in South Dakota where a low-lying field or land near a river was called a “bottom.” My dad loved a good joke, but not so much when it was on him; thus, while we laughed until we were ill, he never cracked a smile as he read the following news in The Murdo Coyote, our local small-town newspaper: “The men are busy this week moving dirt on Ben Dykstra’s bottom.”
One local wit was heard to observe that his bottom must be a sizeable one to afford that amount of activity for that length of time.

Another small town diversion, other than the local newspaper, was the church bulletin. Typed and mimeographed by a volunteer before the age of the…