Sayings

Unless otherwise noted, the Kathryn Tucker Windham blog is written by her daughter, Dilcy Windham Hilley.


Most everyone has a treasury of family sayings.  They aren’t the commonly-used phrases everybody knows.  These come from some happening that’s legendary in family stories.

My mother had a trove of sayings.  Many came from her childhood in Thomasville, Alabama, especially from her aunt, Bettie Forster, ---Aunt Bet we called her---the postmaster in Thomasville for decades in the first half of the 1900s. (Aunt Bet refused to be called a postmistress.  “I,” she said, “am no one’s mistress.)  

One day one of her well-to-do acquaintances stopped by the post office to say hello to Aunt Bet.  My aunt greeted her and admired an expensive ornate ring the woman was flaunting about.  The woman lifted her nose and, in a trifling tone, said “Oh, it’s just a little piece of brass and a little piece of glass.”

Family saying.

But one of my favorite sayings came from my mother and likely came from hers and hers before her.  I don’t know the origins of this saying, but, if something on the table was to hot to eat, my mother’s advice always was, “Heat will cool if greed will wait.”

Family saying.

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