Sunday, January 07, 2007

Day 7 of 365 photos in 2007...



Day 7 of 365 photos in 2007... photojournaling my way thru 2007!

After today's heavy rains (probably because God and fan base crybabies like me were crying over our favorite football team - the Dallas Cowboys' loss), our creek in our back yard was rushing its banks with over four feet of rising water - the likes of which we haven't seen in many years. It's normally a trickle with enough deep spots for our dogs to swim in.

Speaking of the creek rising...

"Can you tell me the origin of the phrase 'God willing and the creek don't rise'?"

Answer:

Benjamin Hawkins, and the phrase would be correctly written as 'God willing and the Creek don't rise'. Hawkins, college-educated and a well-written man would never have made a grammatical error, so the capitalizion of Creek is the only way the phrase could make sense. He wrote it in response to a request from the President to return to our Nation's Capital and the reference is not to a creek, but The Creek Indian Nation. If the Creek "rose", Hawkins would have to be present to quell the rebellion. I believe that the phrase is somewhere in his preserved writings.

LINK

See the rest of the daily series archived at WonderDawg365

2 comments:

Kat Coble said...

Heh. I have been saying that for 25 years, and never realised that it referred to the Creek nation. Makes sense, though.

I still think it makes sense the other way. Having grown up one generation removed from farm folk (and in a city with 3 rivers) I've always been well aware of how definitely a flood can alter one's plans.

So I like it because it makes sense either way.

Kerry Woo said...

Ditto... let's not talk about the sun shining...