RE: God willing and the creek don't rise.
Wow. I was doing a little research today about random things, and I found this:
The phrase would be correctly written as God willing and the Creek don't rise (like dad/neil said), but I didn't realize why. Creek here is capitalized because it is referring to the Creek Indian Nation. Benjamin Hawkins was the superintendent for Indian affairs in the southeast U.S. at the beginning of the 19th century. A few sources say he wrote this in a letter to the president of the U.S. after being summoned back to Washington from Georgia. He'd be there 'god willing the Creek [Indians] don't rise." It was written in reference to the perception that the Creeks were savages.
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Cool. I had assumed that was a Bob Davis-ism roughly translated as: "With good luck and no unforeseen problems we will most likely be successful." Which I guess it does. Roughly translate as.
ReplyDeleteI just figured it had to do with a small, flowing body of water... a stream perhaps, or maybe even smaller... a crick, right Neils? You know, like... "I'll be there, so long as there's not torrential downpours, causing the crick to overflow its bank and wash out the road (in which case transit would be inefficient and unsafe), quickly flooding everyone's houses, (in which case we will be tending to more important and urgent taskings.)" You know, something like that.
Dangit, I need to start my own blog. My original comment was too long. Anyway, good to know. Benjamin Hawkins. That's Colonel Hawkins to you.
ReplyDeleteAnd we thought RJ was an original! I guess all stories start somewhere and he doesn't make them all up.
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