THE WORD “EVERKNOWN”

In the unusually cold winter of 1930, my father’s family was suffering through some particularly hard times.  The stock market had crashed the previous year, the national economy was down the tubes, and cash for a small, South Georgia, red-clay dirt farmer and his family was a commodity that was very hard to come by.   The family had enough to eat and a warm place to sleep, but there was just no money to buy anything other than the basic necessities for survival, such as coal and food staples. 

There was certainly no money for Christmas gifts for my father and his, at that time, four brothers.  A sense of pervading gloom had settled over the family, and there was very little happiness around this South Georgia farm.  The chickens, pigs, milk cow, and mules even quit smiling.  The three boys old enough to be in school had been dismissed for the holidays and the family faced a Christmas Day that would be void of any signs of Santa Claus.

On that cold and windy Christmas Eve the boys cut down a small cedar tree and decorated it with whatever meager decorations and scraps of colorful paper they could find.  Everybody went to bed early after a supper of fried side meat, collard greens, boiled potatoes, and hoe cake .  There was no need to stay up late waiting for Sandy Claws; he wouldn’t be coming by this year. 

Dawn broke cloudless, but bitterly cold.  The boys could hear my grandmother in the kitchen starting to cook a hot breakfast on her coal burning cook stove.  They heard the loud squeal as my grandfather opened the door of the pot-bellied stove/heater in the front room and laid a fire.  They decided they may as well get up and face their dismal Christmas. 

They went into the front room and heard their father exclaim, “Merry Christmas, boys.”  There were no toys under the scantily decorated tree, nor any indication that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or even the Tooth Fairy had stopped by during the night.  Their darned, threadbare stockings contained the expected oranges, walnuts, and pecans, but nothing like store-bought toys or trinkets.  Each boy did have under the tree one wrapped present that turned out to be a pair of new, home-knit socks.  It was hard for them to show much enthusiasm about the holiday and the way it was turning out.

Their father, with a twinkle in his usually non-twinkling eyes, said to them, “I think Sandy Claws left y’all something over there back of the stove.”  They rushed to where he pointed and there, unbelievably, was a brand new, shiny #2 foot tub with a big piece of green holly and red berries attached to the handle.  Inside the foot tub, curled up in an old piece of army blanket, was a beautiful short-haired pointer birddog puppy.  My grandfather had traded a farmer down the road three chickens and a guinea hen for the puppy, and three quarts of his homemade cane syrup with the traveling peddler for the new foot tub.  The boys immediately named their new puppy Jack, and took him out of his tub-basket.  They almost killed the poor puppy taking turns squeezing him and holding him.  This Christmas had definitely taken a turn for the better.

My father, twelve years old at the time, had been assigned to write a theme about Christmas to read to the class when school reconvened after the holiday break.  He sat down on the floor with his composition book and stub of a pencil next to the surprise from Sandy Claws and ponderously began to write a story to share with his ten classmates about this miraculous Christmas.

School took back in some days later and it eventually became my father’s turn to read his version of the Christmas story.  He read about all that had happened and how wonderful he and his brothers thought their new birddog, Jack, was.  He finished his story with this line, “My new birddog Jack is the best bird dog I have ever knew.” 

The teacher gently corrected him by saying, “Grover, you should have said, ‘my new bird dog Jack is the best birddog I have ever known.’”  She still gave him an “A,” in the spirit of Christmas, in spite of his minor peccadillo.   The teacher was not aware my father thought she used ever and known as one word.  When he got home from school his mother asked him what grade he made on his Christmas story and he replied he got an A.  “What did the teacher say?” she asked. 

He mulled it over for a minute and answered, “She said Jack is an evuh-known fine bird dog.” 

For some reason, the word “evuh-known,” (correctly spelled “everknown,” but correctly pronounced as shown) and the way my father had used it struck a chord with his parents and his brothers.  They immediately started using it as an adjective booster/modifier to be applied when mere traditional adjectives were just not descriptive enough.  The word everknown, unique to our family, became an oft-used part of our family’s lexicon, and is still used to this day by nearly all of the descendants of my South Georgia grandparents.

Everknown is used to add special and singular, one of a kind, emphasis to a word, phrase, description of an event or activity, or description of a person.  Examples of different uses of everknown would be:

·“This is an everknown good book I am reading.”

·“We are going to be everknown late for church.”

·“That movie was everknown sad.”

·“That woman has everknown big hair.”

·“We everknown got wet when it rained.”

·“We got everknown wet when it rained.”

·“This barbecue is everknown fit to eat.”

·“Tbone was an everknown good dog.”

Jack the bird dog lived to be fourteen years old and died just like he would have wanted, from the bite of a  copperhead snake while quail hunting with some of my uncles on Thanksgiving Day.  Not a bad way for a bird dog to go on to his rewards at the Rainbow Bridge.

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