Citations:saw gourds


 * 1870,, The Heart of the Continent: A Record of Travel across the Plains and in Oregon, with an Examination of the Mormon Principle, New York: / Cambridge: Riverside Press, chapter ii: “Comstock’s — A Buffalo Hunt”, page 91:
 * I thought of these things with a tendency to philosophize, but Zeno himself would have gone to sleep after such a day as I had spent. In five minutes, thoughtless and philosophers, we were all “sawing gourds” together in the land of Nod.
 * 1873, Matt O’Brian, ’s Peace Papers, New York: G. W. Carleton & Co. / : S. Low, Son & Co., thirty-third paper: “Happy George”, page 216:
 * He was powerful glad to see Jenny Ann and the baby, and that night he come back to supper and he set by the fire a chawin his tobacco and swapped lies with us untill bed time, and we put him in the surplus room and he sawed gourds so, it was after midnight before we got to sleep.
 * 1892,, Early Times in Texas, Austin: H. P. N. Gammel & Co., part II: The Young Explorers; Or, Continuation of the Adventures of Jack Dobell, chapter xi, § 8: “Willie sticks a slow (but sure) match to Cudjo’s foot.”, pages 153 –154:
 * Cudjo had listened attentively for some time to Uncle Seth’s yarn, but before he had ended, sleep overcame him, and he was soon engaged as usual in his nocturnal occupation of “sawing gourds.” On this occasion, however, for a wonder, he had lain down with his feet to the fire instead of his head, and their white bottoms glistened conspicuously in the light. The sight of them suggested an idea to Willie, who got up the moment Uncle Seth had finished his yarn, and mixing a fuse of wet powder, he stuck it to the sole of one of Cudjo’s feet and touched a live coal to it. The fuse burnt down to the skin and went out, but Cudjo still continued to saw gourds, apparently in no wise incommoded by the burning of the fuse, for the bottom of his foot was exceedingly thick and it took the heat some time to penetrate to the quick — but it did so at last with a vengeance, and Cudjo bounced up like an India rubber ball, and went hopping round on one leg, much to Willie’s amusement.
 * ante 1897, “Rufus Sanders” (author, pseudonym of Francis Bartow Lloyd), Mrs. Lily C. Lloyd (editrix, widow of the author), Sketches of Country Life: Humor, Wisdom and Pathos from the “Sage of Rocky Creek”, Birmingham: Press of Roberts & Son (1898), chapter xxx: “The Natural Increase”, §: ‘The Natural Increase’, page 188:
 * When a farmer gits a good run of stock and various and sundry crops growin around him, with the natural increase in full swing, he is in the middle of the big road that leads right on to the land of peace and plenty and love and liberty. When the day’s work is done, and the gold of evenin meets the dusk of night, he can draw his bobtail night shirt about him and tumble down to pleasant dreams, knowin that while he sleeps and dreams and saws gourds his worldly possessions are growin and stackin up all the time.
 * 1917–1918, Hugh S. Thompson (author), (editor), Trench Knives and Mustard Gas: With the 42nd Rainbow Division in France (C. A. Brannen Series, № 6), College Station:  (2004), ISBN 1585442909, chapter iv: “The Raid”, :
 * I tried to figure it all out one night, in the darkness of our villa billet. Officers and two youthful orderlies snored in nearby bedrolls. The redheaded Owen “sawed gourds” beside me.
 * ibidem, chapter viii: “Badonviller”, :
 * Jensen now guarded the entrance to the deep sap, where men snored in lousy bunks after a wakeful night in the moonlit trenches. Others “sawed gourds” in the shadowy berths of my damp headquarters.