Ozark people have a unique way of measuring time that, chancy as it might appear, has worked for us for some 200 years. It is time based on specific events rather than calendar days, a loose way of looking at time's passage, which people elsewhere find hard to believe. Not many businesses today, for instance, would accept payment of a debt based on the Ozark way of figuring. "I'll pay you Walnut Time," "Fur Season" or "Root Diggin'" would all sound pretty random to your average bank, as would "Sorghum Makin'" "Fire Wood Time" or "Berry Pickin'" but these events, in other times were always dependable paydays in the Ozarks, when a family could figure to settle their bills with cash.

Stranger still to the city ear would be terms like "Blow month" for March "Green up" for May, "Haying" for midsummer, "Layin' by Time" for August, "Butcherin'" for November. Years were remarkable for happenings, not numbers: "The year of the big freshet" refers to both the "100 year floods" of 1895 and 1993, and "Hoover Days" is still a sweeping description of the Great Depression of the '30s, including even the years when Roosevelt was president.

Generalizations, rather than dates, are dear to Ozark folks. The most startling example of this to me was an old Ozark family who had a somewhat addled "Aint Idy," who dated everything large or small from the "Day When Billy Killed Himself." I was never sure whether Billy was Idy's first or second husband, or even of the exact date this suicide occurred, but what appealed was the steadfast way it came up with every major event in the life of the family-births, deaths, weddings and even the Kennedy assassination. The old lady had a hard time with the letter "L," so her time description always came out as "That'us before B'ee kid issef," remembering Pearl Harbor and "That'us after B'ee kid issef," referring to the day WWII ended. The family knew in fact, that Billy, on whatever date, had been considerably drunk and was walking along the railroad track being used by the Super Chief when he died, but this never daunted Aint Idy's opinion that it was a definite suicide and therefore a milepost in time.

My most vivid memory of Aint Idy's own time clock was when a new in-law actually asked her the date of Billy's demise, and she said; "I disremember the year, but It was sometime between hog ki'n and deer season."

This lumping of time into recognizable chunks works so well for Ozarkers that we apply it to other measurements, like a mess, a tad, a dab, a smidgin, a dollop, a bait, a pretty-plenty, a God's plenty, lavishes, worlds of-all terms applicable to food or time, and in a pinch, anything else.

It's probably been a long time since your aunt baked a pie, using a dollop of this and a smidgin of that. But I think that old measurements are things to hold on to. Aint Idy has been long gone, but I can just about hear her serene simplification of the times we live in: "This has all come about, since the time B'ee kid issef."