puutterings

[puutterings]

puttering away at the lubricator. By the light

        “You don’t?” says I. “Well, as how those happen to be mine and I stowed ’em in here, perhaps, it ain’t exactly customary for the fire-boy to tote the glims up in this moss-covered, tumbled-down, backwoods burg. Just the same, I’m going to take those lanterns along with me,” I informs him as I climbs over the counter, takes ’em, and climbs back.       By this time it was close to nine o’clock. I spends another five minutes stumbling around a poorly lighted rubbish-strewn roundhouse looking for the old hog.       When I found her and piled myself and baggage aboard the Eagle Eye was puttering away at the lubricator. By the light of his torch I saw he was looking as sweet as a tub of new pickles.       “How are yer?” says I.       He responds with a silence that was eloquent...

ex ex Charles W. Tyler, “The Mutiny On X-2329” in Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen’s Magazine (“Published Semi-Monthly by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen”) 62:2 (Chicago, Ill.; January 15, 1917) : 12-14 (12) U Texas copy/scan (via google books) : link

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a slight bit more of, and on, at 545  

[puutterings]

the spirit behind them

  Sara Lou’s beautiful dark eyes had a roguish gleam that the family long ago learned to recognize. “That child’s up to some mischief, I know,” thought Eunice, smiling in spite of herself. Some of Sara Lou’s audacious doings were as delightful as her little girl escapades.       “I’ve come upon Aunt Esther’s portrait in this story,” said Sara Lou demurely. “Not a portrait exactly, but a good snapshot of one familiar pose. Listen! ‘Such women give all their time to puttering about a house, and no one in all the world is any better off for their puttering.’”       “I suppose you’ve just had a letter about her house cleaning.”       “I have. Not a detail was omitted. Not a delinquency of maid or weather...”

ex Mary S. Stover (“Lockport, N.Y.”), “Who’s the Better for It?” in Christian Advocate (“General Organ of the Methodist Episcopal Church South” ) 85:45 (Nashville, Tenn.; November 7, 1924) : 1422 / 14 U Texas copy/scan (via google books) : link

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full transcription at 544  

[puutterings]

The “Homo Fiend” // muttering and puttering and buttering his bread

        In cultivating a sense of humor, along with speech reading, I seem to have collected a sack full of funny things which happen to me nearly every day. Shall I shake the sack in hopes that the funniest of all may come to the top? Or shall I shut my eyes and “grab” for one of the funny things from this jolly bag of funnies?       The “Homo Fiend” (see his photograph in the May issue of the Volta Review [ link ]) must always be reckoned with! When he is not “muttering and puttering and buttering his bread” he is sure to be engaged in other performances equally disconcerting. One morning he played a trick on me.       I was feeling unusually virtuous, because the house had religiously been set in order, dishes washed, floors swept, and fragrant soup merrily simmering for the children’s lunch. All this, too, with the unopened pages of the Volta beckoning in a most tantalizing way. Faithfully I attended to “duty first,” then with a happy sigh, was soon lost in the inspiring pages.       It may have been hours, or only a minute, before my nephew appeared in the doorway. I understood him to say something about “soup boiling over.”

ex “The Friendly Corner” in Volta Review “For the Deaf, the Hard of Hearing, and Their Friends” 26:6 (June 1924) : 48 Harvard copy/scan (via google books) : link

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more at 543  

[puutterings]

At last, the interesting cases came forward

  ...At last, the interesting cases came forward. A child about three years old was lifted into the chariot; she had never walked, owing to a terrible malformation in her back, which was shown to the crowd. The doctor rubbed it with some ointment, and put the child aside, and in the mean time treated a little boy for deafness. We could see her puttering over his ears, but could not make out exactly what she did; but, before the child went away from the chariot, he [49] could hear a watch tick. It really seemed as though it were a revelation to him, he was so surprised at it. Another anointing then took place over the child with the crooked back; and, after several applications and rubbings, that child got down from the chariot alone and walked away. Our little boy came back to us, and said it made him feel “kind of queer and sick,” and he thought he wouldn’t have his tooth pulled today; a policeman, he said, assisted him to get out of the crowd. two hours’ work was over for the afternoon, and I was much disappointed not to have seen the paralytic cured.

ex Surprise Land : A Girl’s Letters from the West. by “E. G. H.” (Boston: Cupples, Upham & Co., 1887) : 48 Harvard copy/scan (via google books) : link same (via hathitrust) : link

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more at 542  

[puutterings]

all the time and puttering to the last

        There was no glare anywhere, though high [42] windows, in accord with the high ceilings, were on three sides of the house. Sylvestre was forever the advocate of the dim light. She said that not only did it mean peace and rest for the eyes, but evoked poetry. This as to interiors, but in God’s great outdoors values are different, though she confessed to delight in a dark, rainy day.       “Most people,” she said, “think there is no such recuperative force as all the light that can be obtained; and this may be true medically and for continuous work — but not for relaxation or refreshment. To the nervous, to the weary, a dim light is the peace that descends — especially in summer. Try it! First stand as long as you can the light pouring in. Then pull the shades half down or more, so no longer there is an overhead light, hardly a horizontal one, if you are doing nothing onerous, and watch the change in your feelings, your nerves. Why, it is often something like a miracle. Fatigue, anxiety, strain, disappear utterly, and bliss comes instead.”       In winter, from the gilt cornices of these high windows depended damask curtains over ecru linen lace in Arabian pattern, while long gilt pierglasses, harmonizing with the cornices, in every room upstairs and down reigned supreme. The Baltimore lady was responsible for these, saying she always wanted to know exactly how she looked to others as well as herself to the last comb, pin and tie. In this respect she was most unlike her [43] granddaughter who, though so amazingly resembling her in appearance, seldom took the trouble to look in the glass, and thereby was now and then criticised for something like untidiness.       “Well, we can’t have everything to please us,” she once said. “To be looking at yourself all the time and puttering over your face not only takes up so many precious minutes but seems to me vulgar. Anyhow, I wear the right colors, I keep myself mended, and I’m clean.”       Indeed she was clean, she believed in cold water, and hot too, to the last degree. The number of bathrooms in the house, due almost entirely to her wishes, were no slight expense.

ex Helen Bartlett Bridgman (1863-1935), The Last Passion (New York: Cloister Publishing Company, 1925) : 43 U Michigan copy/scan (via google books) : link U California copy/scan (one of two via hathitrust) : link

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rather more, and still more, at putterings 541  

[puutterings]

puttering about aimlessly trying to sweep up twenty-three truck loads of debris with a broom

        There was a time when researchers argued a very different position on this matter, however. And no doubt, some observed — or perhaps had reports from — victims who were overwhelmed by the disruption of a disaster. Thus, “the disaster syndrome” was created. Wallace (1956) defined it as: “...a psychologically determined defensive reaction pattern consisting of these stages : (1) people appear dazed, stunned, apathetic, passive, immobile or aimlessly puttering around; (2) extreme suggestibility, altruism, gratitude for help, personal loss minimized, concern for family and community; (3) euphoric identification with the damaged community, enthusiastic participation in repair and rehabilitation; and (4) euphoria wears off and ‘normal’ ambivalent attitudes return (full course of the syndrome may take several weeks) (Wallace, 1956).”’

ex Thomas E. Drabek, Human System Responses to Disaster : An Inventory of Sociological Findings (1986) : 147 initial landing, preview at google books : link borrowable at archive.org : link>

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the above was the initial landing. but, original (1956) — Anthony F. C. Wallace, Tornado in Worcester : An exploratory study of individual and community behavior in an extreme situation Disaster Study Number 3, Committee on Disaster Studies, National Academy of Sciences — National Research Council, Publication 392 (1956) : 109 archive.org : link

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rather more at putterings 540  

[puutterings]

pung slump puttering; snore, swow, vum. Old Entick’s columns near

  Pung. Puttering about. Puzzle. Quilting match. Rave, if angered. Raound, for round. Reckon.   Set by, prized. Shack, a ragged beggar. Shet, for shut. Slick, for sleek. Slobber. Slosh, Slump. Snicker. Snore, I snore, I swow, I vum. Sozzle.

ex “The Wolcott Dialect,” in New Connecticut : An Autobiographical Poem. By A. Bronson Alcott. Edited by F. B. Sanborn [who presumably provided the notes and introductory material]. (Boston, 1887) : 136-139 (138) U Colorado Boulder copy/scan (via google books) : link LoC copy/scan (via archive.org) : link

different (better) formatting, and contextualizing, at 539  

[puutterings]

“I hit a nail where it wasn’t.” / “The precision of that!”

        Myron also did some varnishing of the oak timbers on the outside of the house, for he had a Ruskin feeling that he must contribute to the labor of his dwelling, and Delia said that Myron’s contribution was the best of all because it was done in a “spirit of pure craftsmanship” and the timbers he had varnished gave a “lift” to the house that it would not have had otherwise.       Myron was really happy <strong>puttering around with the workmen</strong>, and they didn’t mind because he let them do what they pleased. He listened very carefully to their conversation to get “the interesting American speech rhythms,” and he said their language was very vivid. He liked to recount at dinner how one of them had said, “I hit a nail where it wasn’t.”       “The precision of that!” exclaimed Myron with admiration. “It has such a virile impact.”

ex Bravig Imbs. The Professor’s Wife (1928) : 46 : link same (via hathitrust) : link

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more (on the novel, and on Imbs) at 538  

[puutterings]

[wanting] sprawl; a streak of lack; always late in the tide; the puttering stage

        A man who lacked energy or was downright lazy was said not to have “sprawl” enough to dig his potatoes, or whatever he neglected. Did that mean that he would not even move when sprawled out? Certain ones had no “gumption,” “a streak of lack,” were “wishy washy” “looked [135] like something the cat had brought in after dragging it over the stone wall and through the wet grass.” A man or woman who was inefficient but not vicious was often called “a poor tool.” Some were “always late in the tide,” had “reached the puttering stage,” or just “fudged.” A weak inferior sickly man was called “a puke of misery.” A shiftless person was “easy as old Tilly” or “did not amount to a Hannah Cook.”

ex Anne E. Perkins, M.D., “Vanishing Expressions of the Maine Coast,” American Speech 3:2 (December 1927) : 134-141 (135) U Michigan [?] copy/scan (via google books) : link same (via hathitrust) : link

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Anne E. Perkins (1873-1961), “physician, ornithologist, botanist and botanical collector” wikidata : link Maine Women Writers Collection : link  

[puutterings]

with pencil and brush; but puttering with lathes, drills and presses

        Mr. Parrish makes his living with pencil and brush; but puttering with lathes, drills and presses is his hobby. In fact, he has a completely equipped machine-shop right under the studio out back of his house. If there are stains on his hands, it may be paint from his palette or it may be oil and grease from the machines.       The New Hampshire artist has been an amateur machinist all his life; of course his intimate friends and neighbors have known it all along, but the fact reached the outer world only a few days ago — in a curious way.       Mr. Parrish sent in his subscription to Iron Age.       “What under the sun,” they said in the magazine office, “does Maxfield Parrish want The Iron Age for?”       They wrote and asked him. Because he is an amateur machinist, he replied, and because he has a machine-shop of his own under the same roof that covers his studio.

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ex “Maxfield Parrish as a Mechanic,” based on something by Charles A. Merrill of the Boston Globe, in The Literary Digest 77:6 (May 12, 1923) : 40, 32, 33 University of Georgia copy/scan (via google books) : link  

[puutterings]

laden with baggage, orating at street lights

  ... All share equally in the democracy that is poverty: bodies broken, spirits equally disfigured.       There are ex-mental patients, comprising one-third to one-half of the homeless population, both locally and nationally. Not at all difficult to spot, they are muttering, puttering souls, pockets and shopping bags bulging with all of their worldly possessions. They are living testimony to the abysmal failure of deinstitutionalization.     ₁

      Next to a widely circulated belief that our streets are populated by alcoholics, the other well-established image of the homeless is one of “crazies,” muttering, puttering souls, laden with baggage, orating at street lights, or shouting at invisible beings. Their appearance tells us that they do not even care for themselves. Their persistent presence in public places tell us, among other things, that they reject our efforts to help and choose to remain in miserable circumstances.     ₂

sources :

1 Statement of Mitch Snyder (member, Community for Creative Nonviolence, Washington, D. C.); in an increasingly interesting exchange with Senator Specter., page 7; and 2 a photocopy (submitted for the record?, evidently of Thomas S. Szasz, “Mental Health, Mental Hospitals, and the Homeless,” The Second Sin, page 19

from Street People, Hearing before a subcommmittee of the Committee on Appropriations, United States Senate, Ninety-Eighth Congress, First Session. Special Hearing. (1983) : link  

[puutterings]

because of the voice I heard

  as it was drab and mundane. It was the kind of place reserved for muttering, puttering, stuttering in.       “The reason I looked in the first place was because of the voice I heard . I was walking by her place one night when I was positive I heard some lady whispering to me...”

ex Steven H. Semken. Pick Up Stick City (2005) : 74 : link “in this book” snippet only.

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author page at google books : link  

[puutterings]

No murmuring, muttering, puttering. No reading.

  ...as its waves bounced invisibly against the cement walls.       This is the sort of solitude Pascal was talking about. No pacing, for that brings in the world. No murmuring, muttering, puttering. No reading. This is the sort of solitude whose acceptance is a poetic or religious act. Or is a sign of an utter lack of inner resources, a solitude often, if not best, spent drunk.       Lights reflected...

ex chapter titled “Solitude,” in Joel Turnipseed, his Baghdad Express : A Gulf War Memoir (2003) : 109 : link

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author page at Hotel Zero (typepad) : link not seeing more recent things; the writing is good.  

[puutterings]

idle dreaming or sentimental puttering; the hour has come and now is when

        In these days of the twentieth century every thoughtful person who is awake to the signs of the times and the issues of the hour must see that idle dreaming or sentimental puttering about little things can no longer pass for religious thought or work. The hour has come and now is when those who are in earnest must have done with half-hearted and conventional dalliance with the church and religion, and begin to take the gospel of Jesus seriously and joyfully as an immediate call to responsibility and action; not about a problematical future in celestial realms, but about social and civic and public conditions right here in our own streets and neighborhoods.

ex Rev. H. Arnold Thomas, M. A., in British Congregationalist, in “from our exchanges” in The Christian Science Sentinel 11:50 (Boston; August 14, 1909) : 998 : link  

[puutterings]

dozing by the kitchen fire, — or puttering around in the feed lot

        Therefore, pay heed to the opportunity which is now knocking at your door. Don’t let it find you dozing by the kitchen fire, — or puttering around in the feed lot, deaf to the plea which thousands of your fellow farmers are making to you at this hour. Plan your next season’s crop carefully — but remember that rain, sunshine and hard work alone will never “pull you out.”

ex cover page editorial, “That Mortgage of Yours” (“by the author of After-Thoughts”) — encouraging farmers to band together in the Farm Club movement, against the predations of banks (“industrial thieves”) — in The Missouri Farmer (“Columbia, Mo.; The home of Missouri’s great agricultural college and the Missouri Experimental Station”) 9:1 (January 1, 1917) : 1 : link

[puutterings]

And so he sets forth in detail the working of his mind; a pond to be dragged

  The Red House Mystery, by A. A. Milne (Dutton. $2.00). A first-class mystery story by the author of “Mr. Pim Passes By.” To those who know Mr. Milne it is not necessary to say that this is not an ordinary and typical mystery story. The man who tells the tale, a chance visitor to the Red House, is the man who, while the police were puttering around, determined to solve the mystery himself. And so he sets forth in detail the working of his mind, the steps by which he arrived at the truth. There is a pond to be dragged, a ghost, a hidden passage-way and other dramatic stage effects, and the story is a good one.

ex “Among the New Books,” in The Congregationalist (“Continuing The Recorder and The Advance”) 107:42 (October 19, 1922) : 505 : link  

[puutterings]

about the house. There were haggard lines in his face, signs

        When Ezra had finally escaped and had drawn the covers over his head he lay for a time thinking how he hated the daylight that had not yet fully died out of the sky. Then he dropped into a shamed and stunned sleep. He did not yet know that youth with its irresponsibilities had that night been left behind him, and that new issues would face him at the coming of the dawn.       At four o’clock the next morning Jan Harmdyk was puttering about the house. There were haggard lines in his face, signs of the sleeplessness that had been his during the night.       “Ezra-a-a,” he shouted up the narrow stairway. “Ja-a-a,” came the sleepy response. .       Baby Johannes stirred uneasily in his sleep as he lay by the side of his burly brother awakening. Neither one of the boys was fully awake but both felt the discomfort that the first breaking in of consciousness gives to the weary sleeper, and both also felt the delicious luxury of the forbidden moments in the twilight time between the awakening and the getting up.

ex Arnold Muller, The Dominie of Harlem (Chicago, 1913) : 289 via google books : link

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Arnold Muller (1885-1959), newspaper editor, writer, professor at Kalamzoo College brief bio at Dutch the Media : link