Sukey jump

October 21st, 2009 by admin

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Posted in columns, October 2009 | 6 comments

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6 comments on this post.

  1. Jenny:

    August 11th, 2009 at 10:21 am

    As I’m reading all the way through this, I can’t wait for you to finish with a current pop-culture reference in HBO’s True Blood: The lead character is named Sookie and her best friend is named Tara. Sookie is white and Tara is black. Tara makes a comment in the pilot episode about how cruel it is for a southern black girl to be named Tara, but no one ever mentions the irony of a pretty white girl being named Sookie, except that it’s an unusual name.

  2. words1:

    August 11th, 2009 at 2:01 pm

    You’re right — I should have thrown that in, but the column was already too long (for newspapers). Sookie and Sukey are forms of Susan, so they’re unrelated to “sukey jump” as far as I know. I haven’t read the books on which the HBO series is based, so maybe that Tara/Sookie inversion is a deliberate cultural reference.

    By the way, stay away from the Wikipedia page on Sookie Stackhouse — it’s full of spoilers.

    Bill is a schlub. I like Eric. And Lafayette, who seems to be regaining his flair.

    Eric

    Best line of the season: Eric to small child: “Don’t you like vampires, little girl?”

  3. OwenKL:

    October 22nd, 2009 at 6:00 am

    Your article made me think of two things. Like you, I’d never heard of “sukey jump” before, but I recall “Aunt Sukey” being a name for a mule (Li’l Abner, I think, or Snuffy Smith, or maybe just some folksong).

    And the sound us urban kids used to enjoy shouting at the tops of our lungs, the hog-calling cry of “SUUU-EEEEE, pig-pig-pig”.

  4. ~ Sil in Corea:

    November 14th, 2009 at 10:25 pm

    I have Welsh friends who frequently use the word “chooks” to mean “chickens,” and the term “chooky-boots” as an affectionate nickname. As I’m an old farm-gal, I visualized the boots that you leave outside the house after collecting the eggs, because their soles are smeared with fecal matter. (Ewwh!) Slightly off the topic, I know. My apologies!

  5. Harold Kercher:

    December 13th, 2011 at 10:40 pm

    I grew up on a dairy farm in Oregon. We would yell ‘Sookie! Sookie! Sookie!’ to call the cows in for milking. This was in the 1950’s. Whether is was just a noise or a name, I can not attest to. I got the habit from my father who grew up on a farm in S. Dakota in the 1920’s. Just a similar thread I thought I’d share.

  6. Eric lerche:

    February 14th, 2012 at 6:35 am

    According to liner notes to ‘Leadbelly sings for children’ (SmithsionFolkeways (SFW CD 45047) by Jeff Place, Leadbelly started playing to Sukey Jumps in his teens and became to prefer the guitar on the cost of his ‘windjammer’.

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