The following came from the Missing Links column by Rootsweb. Thought you'd enjoy, especially Cher!! Glenda CHOCOLATE GRAVY AND I'LL DO SAY! by Laura-Day Roth, M.A. <gandalf@wko.com> Way down in the hollers of Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, I grew up climbin' cliffs, chasin' waterfalls, and eatin' chocolate gravy on my biscuits for breakfast. It was a time when most people didn't have TV 'cause it was against their religion, and those who did felt inclined to throw 'em over cliffs during the time of the revival. It was a time when at certain times of every day from different directions you could hear somebody gettin' hold of the Lord as it echoed unbeknownst to them across ole Bylew. I grew up talkin' the talk of the country girl at heart. Now we all try to talk like the generic anchorman on the TV, who's really just a paper doll. But we've lost somethin' along the way when we tried to get away from our roots, how we's raised, and who we was and are. There's somethin' about the way we talk, the words we use, ole sayin's, how we lived our lives -- even what we ate -- that reveals us our roots. Our genealogy is buried --embedded -- in our language and our habits. My Uncle Cal GIPSON, for example, always used to say "Bolix," especially if he burped after dinner. Well, the word "Bolix" in Ireland pretty much means that you messed up, ya made a mistake. And guess what? Ole Uncle Cal had Irish roots. Recently (thanks to RootsWeb friends) I made a fascinating discovery that I have French roots on both sides of the family, the DORSEY and the VINCENT lines. As luck would have it, I happened to be readin' Kate Chopin's "The Awakening" and selected stories at the same time. Ms. Chopin was a turn of the century writer who wrote often about French Americans from bayou country, so she includes a lot of French sayin's in her conversational pieces. Havin' a not so small imagination, I always "visualized" exactly how the talk would sound when I came across a character in her book who said "Dieu Sait" just before making another statement. I thought to myself "Well, I'll do say!" All these years when my family has used that colloquial term "I'll do say," they were very likely revealing to us their French ancestry, but we just didn't know. By the way, "Dieu Sait" apparently means "God knows" in French. Perhaps, the sayin' might actually have been "Au Dieu Sait"? Probably exactly what my ancestor said as he entered the beautiful rollin' hills of Edmonson and Hart counties toward the dens and hollows of Mammoth Cave. Now, if I could just figure out where Chocolate Gravy comes from. I know it's considered "Appalachian" but I just wonder what secrets it holds about our roots. Of course, I been told that the French use lots of sauces in their cookin'. Could that be it? I just know I really like it and it's really, really good on my Mom's homemade brickle biscuits. Well, Au Dieu Sait, Laura Day-Roth, M.A. <gandalf@wko.com> ************************** HUMOR: Thanks to G. David Thayer gdthayer@navicom.net>, who reports that the author is unknown to him. Shooting the breeze down at the veterans hospital, a trio of old-timers ran out of tales of their own heroic exploits and started bragging about their ancestors. "My great-grandfather, at age 13," one declared proudly, "was a drummer boy at Shiloh." "Mine," boasted another, "went down with Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn." "I'm the only soldier in my family," confessed vet number three, "but if my great-grandfather were living today he'd be the most famous man in the world." "What'd he do?" his friends wanted to know. "Nothing much. But he would be 165 years old." * * * * * PERMISSION TO REPRINT articles from MISSING LINKS is granted PROVIDED: (a copy of this notice appears at the end of the article. Previously published by Julia M. Case and Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG, Missing Links: RootsWeb's Genealogy Journal, Vol. 4, No. 30, 21 July 1999.