Date:  Wed, 26 Oct 1994 11:23:38 EDT

From:  Wayne Glowka <wglowka[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MAIL.GAC.PEACHNET.EDU>

Subject: Re: P.S. re Offending Idioms



>2. My college roommate, who grew up in Tennessee, had a childhood pal

>  who:

>

>    "attached a 'nigger knob' to his bicycle handlebar".

>

>  Referring to the little hand knob that some people attach to their

>  car steering wheel. Here, I think, there is a connotation of

>  stupidity.



In San Antonio, TX, in the late 1960s, we called this old-fashioned

steering wheel attachment a _necker knob_. Older guys (who were

perpetually seventeen since the mid to late 1950s) with pointed shoes and

hair greased into ducktails had necker knobs on old fixed-up Fords and

Chevies. We may have had a euphemistic mispronunciation of the term, but I

always figured that a necker knob allowed the driver to steer with one hand

and then neck with his girlfriend with the other. I suggest that either

way the connotation of the term has to do with laziness (although I have

often thought that having one of those things would be a bit of

cleverness).





Wayne Glowka

Professor of English

Director of Research and Graduate Student Services

Georgia College

Milledgeville, GA 31061

912-453-4222

wglowka[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]mail.gac.peachnet.edu