My Father Knew How To Speak Good English But Sometimes He Played With His English

When it came to education, my Father was a man of his times. He went to the 5^th Grade in Grammar School. Then his Father said to him (as he did to all his children), “That’s enough of that. Time for you to get to work at working”. That probably meant, Get To Work In My Grocery Store!

So, what was it my Father said in Not Good English? He often said, “Don’t worry about nontin.” All these years later (he died in February of 1966) his tongue-in-cheek ditty would be coming into fruition for Corner Grocery Store Owners like him (if there were any corner grocery store owners like him still out there).

Here’s how it would work...

Ø He would go to his nearest print shop and have the above Warning Sign printed up.

Ø He would only need 1 sign.

Ø He would dig out 1 thumb tack and thumb it to the wall right inside his corner front door.

Ø He could then sit back and relax and not worry about nontin (yea, I know that’s a Bad English Double Negative).

That’s right, customers could be repeatedly bitten by his own dog or any other dog that happened to be in his little corner grocery store and he would not be liable because he had thumb tacked that little sign inside his little corner grocery store and now, he was worrying about nontin.

In Today’s Litigious Society there would be a fly in his ointment but not back in his day. Today he would need several more signs and several more thumb tacks. That’s because today he would have to tack up several more signs outside his store because he would certainly be sued by bitten customers who were approaching his store but were not actually in his store. It’s the Intent To Enter Provision.

In my Daddy’s day, if the Intent To Enter Provision were raised in a courtroom the Judge would certainly have said, “Get Out Of My Courtroom!”

Would I kid u?

Smartfella